Still catching up, Ebay mini-rant

When we got back we did a Big Brother marathon to catch up since we didn’t see it the entire time we were away.  Wow I can’t believe they gave the money to Dick.  It was impressive that both Dick and his daughter made it to the finals, they played the game extremely well.  However it’s hard to imagine Dick getting the money considering he verbally assaulted pretty much everyone on the jury at one time or the other on top of being the most obnoxious player I ever saw on the show.  Well I guess it taught a valuable lesson.  To get very far you have to be an asshole.

Now the onslaught of reality tv hits, our Tivos will be working overtime.  Off the top of my head, these are the shows starting up that at least one of us will be watching , Survivor, Dancing with the Stars, Biggest Loser, Heroes, ER, Ultimate Fighter, and Desperate Housewives.  Throw Eagles games and World Series of Poker broadcasts and it amounts to a ton of boob tube time.  One of the benefits of watching this stuff via Tivo is you cut approximately a third of the time off each show by being able to almost instantly bypass commercials.

Every night after work my house becomes a Roomba zoo.  After I unpack my stuff I normally let the three Roombas loose to chow down on the animal hair that is everywhere in our house.  It looks quite funny to see them all in action.

Sometimes Nicki gets caught in the middle.

Anyway having three of them going helps since they are cleaning a rather large area.  It amazes me how much hair, fuzz and dust they pull out of the carpet considering they are being run 4 or 5 times a week.

When I planted my cantaloupes they were very small as you can see below.

Ok now fast forward to 5 weeks or so later.  This is how the garden looks now.

Cantaloupe grow like crazy.  The lima bean, honeydew and watermelon plants are doing well too.  I am hoping to have a bountiful harvest.

Today I plan to return to my 300 workout after a full 3 week hiatus.  I am a bit nervous about it.  I am hoping I haven’t lost much number wise. 

This weekend will be as  busy as I want it to be.  The list of required chores isn’t very long, just the standard mowing, weed whacking, spraying the garden, cleaning the pool and sweeping inside stuff.  However there are a number of things floating around in my head that I need to get done sooner or later.  Plus we really need to do our September monthly cleaning project, the computer room/office.  For the past few months we have been blowing off the monthly cleaning project so I want to get back in the swing of it.

I have been a big ebay fan from the very beginning.  It is amazing what they have up there, you name it, they probably have it.  I also have sold quite a few things on ebay over the years. At first the fees for doing so were quite reasonable, however over the years they have been slowly increasing the chunk they take out of your sale. They almost have become RCI-like with the way they are constantly reaching into your pocket.  It is annoying.

Ebay dings you three separate times for a transaction.  You pay an up front fee to list an item which varies in cost depending on the starting price of the item and what features you want on the ad like bold print, pictures or special placement in the listings.  You pay this fee regardless of if your item sells or not.  Then when you sell the item, Ebay takes another chunk, based on what the final selling price is.  Finally when you go to collect payment from the buyer via Paypal (which ebay also owns) they take ANOTHER chunk of the sale, again based on the selling price.  It is basically double dipping the customer.  I recently bought some discounted Irobot Scoobas and resold them on ebay.  The 50 or 60 dollar profit I figured to make on each one was basically cut in half by the time I got done handing out money to ebay.  It pisses me off.  I think they have become overly greedy.  I may need to check out some of the auction site alternatives.