Birthday party

Yesterday, we celebrated my monkey's birthday with a party attended by some of her closest friends in our town. We had been planning this party for about 2 months, and the plan had changed a few times. At first, my monkey wanted a big party for about 50 people, we would charge $10 for entrance and all the food and drinks would be free. Then we thought about doing a mask themed party, and then had second thoughts. Finally, about 2 weeks ago, we decided to go ahead with the mask theme, but with less people. We invited about 20 people, and about 10 accepted with a few tentative. We figured that we'd have about 10-20 people in total depending upon how many extra people (like spouses) showed up, so we a good idea when planning our menu.

My monkey decided to only prepare a couple dishes, and buy the rest. Last week, we bought some non-perishables, chips, pop, cups, and cutlery. This weekend, we bought the liquor, a small keg of beer, the marshmallows (for our chocolate fountain), ingredients for our salads (greek and macaroni salads), the cake (which said "Happy Birthday Monkey", the ballons, and ordered a platter of subs ahead of time. Just before the party, I picked up some singapore noodles from a chinese restaurant and the subs. Everything went off without a hitch. In fact, just as I got home, the pizzas we ordered arrived. I had time to prepare the chocolate fountain just in time for the first guests to arrive.

About 14 people arrived over the course of the evening, and everyone had a great time. Everyone loved the food and the music, and most people stayed late, until about 2 in the morning. There was a lot of fun and laughter, and my monkey told me that it was the best birthday party she ever had. We cleaned up after, and we went to bed around 3:30 AM. We are so tired today, but it was worth it.

E-bay items sold out... a new account is borne

Today, the six items I listed for sale are ending, and I'm getting a LOT more than I thought I would! In fact, these items are selling for more money than the previous items did. In fact, I had a profit margin of almost 400%! Not only that, but the money we made from these six items alone will be enough to pay for another full shipment of 30 items from our supplier. We still have over 20 items left to sell, so whatever we make from those is pure profit! This is our third batch of items being sold on e-bay, and for the first time we are seeing a substantial profit. This is fantastic news.

The only bad part is that I just tried to list more items, and got the same mystery error message. So now, we've had to open a THIRD account with E-bay, and I was able to list seven more items. Once these are sold, we'll have to try re-listing with our first two accounts, or if not create a FOURTH account. E-bay is sure making things hard on me! But at least I'm striking back. Our goal is to one day get enough hits on our new website (still under construction) to warrant building an online store, and just list items there to our hearts content. I just don't understand why we are being penalized since we're loyal E-bay members with a perfect feedback rating on BOTH accounts. I figure four accounts would allow us to sell about 26 items in a 30 day period, which wouldn't be bad for a part-time business, but if we wanted to do it full time, we'd need four times the items sold per month... so does that mean we'd need SIXTEEN E-bay accounts? If that's the case, I better start having kids real quick and taking out E-bay accounts in their names, or making up a lot of imaginary friends and name accounts after them. Thanks E-bay, you're contributing to the growth of my split personalities, at least my online ones. Go Leafs Go, and take E-bay with you.

I have a new blog theme!

Today, I got a wonderful surprise. My darling wife, who I affectionately refer to as Monkey,revealed to me my brand new blog. As you can see, it has a hockey theme, specifically a Toronto Maple Leaf theme. I love the theme, and even the Maple Leaf fan begging for a Stanley Cup on the blog's banner looks just like me - minus the years of tears, bitterness, and anger. I love the little hockey stick shooting the little puck into the little net at the bottom of each post - although the puck obviously was not shot by a member of my Maple Leafs, otherwise it would have missed the net. Perhaps it was a member of my Leafs, shooting the little puck into their own net instead of the opponent's? In any case, it looks great. I also love the widget icons that look like big pucks. I wonder if the little hockey stick could shoot the big pucks? And if so, would they knock the little nets over? Oh sorry, my mind started wandering, that's what happens when you go your whole life for a Stanley Cup.

I owe a great big thank you to my Monkey for thinking of me and getting this done. I also owe a great big thank you to the very talented blog designer, Paty. If anyone is looking for a great blog design that won't break your bank account, visit Paty's website right now at Fairy Blogmother Design. I look forward to enjoying this blog theme for years to come, unless of course my Leafs actually win the Stanley Cup, then I'll be contacting Paty to design a brand new blog for me! In other words, you'll be seeing this same blog design for the rest of my life. Thanks Monkey and Paty!

E-bay battle part 4 - still a stalemate, but inching closer

Today, I haven't heard back from my good friends at E-bay. Surprise, surprise. I went ahead and listed two more items on my second account, and BANG! After I had seven items listed, I hit the same "limit" error message as I did on my primary account. So now I have thirteen total items listed, six on my first account and seven on my second account. We have a third account, however I'm not sure if it's still active or even if it's linked to our PayPal account. It's going to be a lot of work to get it set up, link it to our PayPal account, set up automatic PayPal payments, and list the items. Even then, we'll probably only be able to list six or seven items, and still have over ten items left to sell. Perhaps we can open a couple more E-bay accounts? Or perhaps E-bay will let us list more items after the first batch sells? There's really no way of knowing what to do since E-bay is giving me the runaround. If all else fails, we will need to find another auction site. So far out of the thirteen items for sale, only three have bids, all from our primary account. All thirteen still have a few days left in the auction so we're not too worried yet. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

E-bay struggle - part 3

In part 3 of my battle with E-bay, I struck back! I got an e-mail basically repeating what the first note said, that I was being accused of selling counterfeit items. They also added that they would not reveal the mysterious "list" of items that I could sell without restrictions, and that I could re-apply to have the restriction lifted in 90 days. So I replied and asked what this "restriction" is. Does it mean that I can never sell a certain type of item again? Or does it mean that I can sell them after my current listed items have sold. And how many can I sell after that? Their replies are so vague and impersonal. I know that E-bay is huge and I am tiny, but you'd think they'd make a bit of an effort for me since I stated over and over that I want to sell more items which in turn would make them money twice, once through E-bay and once through PayPal. Classic example of bureaucracy clogging the system. I'm sure whoever started E-bay wouldn't have wanted their customers to be treated this way.

I mentioned earlier that I struck back at E-bay, and I did. Unfortunately it's in a way that will help E-bay anyway and cause me to be inconvenienced. What I did was use another E-bay account that I had for years that had been inactive for a long time. Sure, I have to deal with two E-bay accounts now, and sure, I had to switch around a bunch of settings to link my PayPal address to the 2nd E-bay account, and sure, E-bay will still make money twice off me for the same items. But at least I get to sell the items! I've already listed several items, and have many more to list, but I'm tired now. I'll continue listed them tomorrow, and hopefully, I can list them all without running into this absurd "limit" on my second account.

E-bay experience update

I got a response from E-bay today, and they basically told me that they would not lift the restriction, and accused me of selling counterfit items. Not only is that not true, I told them that I have a 100% positive feedback rating. I pointed out that there were tons of similar items up for sale on e-bay, and asked why is it that my items were being targeted and not the others. Their note stated that certain items could be listed without restrictions, however they didn't list the specific items. So I asked for a list with specific item types. I also asked them if all the other sellers listing these types of items would have the same restriction placed on their accounts, or if their listings would be pulled.

I am very upset right now because I feel that I am being accused of doing something unethical when in fact I have the highest standards for client service. Not only do I have over 200 positive comments from my clients, I've even provided refunds when necessary - no questions asked. I've never had a dissatisfied client, and never plan to. I just can't believe that E-bay would make such a statement, and in what appeared to be a "form letter" no less. It was from a specific person but it was obvious that he/she used a standard letter format.

So now, I will wait for a response. I'm really hoping that they will lift the restriction, although I highly doubt it. It looks like I may have to use an alternate listing source. One option is building our own website with our own domain name, and then building an online store. We can accept PayPal for payments - and yes, I know that E-bay owns PayPal, but it's still the easiest choice. What's more, we'll save money on E-bay fees. Yes, E-bay will still make money via PayPal fees, but as big as they are, they'll lose some business from us. Not that it matters, but one day if they anger enough people, and with the competitiveness of online sites today, they may start to suffer.

In the interim, my monkey and I are in the process of designing a new website. It's going to be a site where we can share our experiences and advice on many topics, like travelling, gaming, movies, shopping, and much more. And one portion of the site can be an online store where we can sell our wares without having to worry about restrictions. We've submitted our ideas to a web designer, however she has not responded yet to our proposal. We're hoping that the web designer can go ahead with our ideas and that it won't be too hard or costly.

We'll see what happens with this e-bay thing......

My first problem with E-bay

Up until today, I have used E-bay for almost 6 years with no major issues to buy and sell things. Today, though, I got a very strange error message that I've never seen before. I put six items up for sale, and when I tried to post the seventh item, I got an error message stating something to the effect that I couldn't list any more items as E-bay limited the amount of items I could post for sale. I thought maybe it had something to do with the file size of my pictures, so I reduced the size of the pictures and tried again. I received the same error message. So I tried again after logging off E-bay without success. I shut down the computer and tried again unsuccessfully. I even tried from another computer and got the same error message.

I didn't know what to do! I have so many more items to list, about 25 in fact. After re-reading the error message a couple of times, I e-mailed e-bay customer service. I told them that I had a 100% positive feedback ranking, and that I had sold many of these items before without incident. Apparently if this is the case, you can ask e-bay to lift this limit, and so I did. This just happened tonight, so I am not sure how long it will take to resolve, or what I need to do. I just know that I have 25 shirts and a hat sitting in my home office waiting to be listed, so I hope it can be done!!! I will update my blog when I get an answer, and hopefully it will be a good one.

The trip is coming....

It's time to get excited! It's only another month before my monkey and I go on our 7 day Alaskan cruise. My monkey bought this cruise as a gift for us a few months ago, but just last month my monkey came up with another idea. She suggested that we drive back home at the end of our cruise instead of flying. So after our cruise, we will be touring Vancouver, Victoria, Langley, Vernon, the Okanagan Valley, and Banff for a week until finally arriving back home. I thought it was a great idea, and agreed.

Still, we had a couple challenges. We needed to plan a route home from Vancouver after the cruise, and we needed to arrange a rental car we could drive all the way home. Not to mention, we still needed to find one way plane tickets to Vancouver. I recently discovered that as a member of the Alberta Motor Association, I was entitled to a discount on car rentals. Last week, we visited the local AMA office and got a reasonable quote on a one week car rental, which included unlimited mileage and the ability to drop the car off in our city. The unlimited mileage is very important since we'd be driving about 2000 kilometers over the 7 day period. I was also able to get several maps of the area which we could use on our trip home, as well as a fantastic book detailing local hotels, restaurants, and points of interest we could visit.

Finally, we were worried because airline tickets were very expensive from our city to Vancouver. In fact, the lowest rate we found up until last week was $285 each person. But today, my monkey found tickets for only $185 each. She called me in my office and I said "Monkey...... buy them" and she did. So now we are almost set. All we have to do is buy some clothes and pack and enjoy! I can't wait for the next month to go by. It should fly by - only 35 days to go!

Civ 4 - the losing streak is over!

FINALLY... FINALLY.... FINALLY... my long and frustrating losing streak at Civ 4 is over. It took a lot of patience, and a lot of planning, but I did it. My opponents were Germany, Japan, Mali, Russia, France, USA, and my nemesis from Zulu. The world map was small, so I wanted to expand as quickly as possible. I only was able to build one more city, and then there was no more room. So I had to go with only two cities. Surprisingly, it worked quite well. I was able to develop both cities very quickly, as all my workers were focussed on them rather than being stretched out over 4 or 5 cities.

By the year 1000 AD, I had a strong economy, strong culture, and was doing very well in research. Around 1200 AD, Germany, my neighbour, declared war on me. In previous games, I had been unprepared for a war. Not this time. I was able to easily push the Germans back, and even took over one of their cities. In the next 50 years, I had wiped the Germans out. I then started to concentrated on research, building universities and specialists. By 1500, I had a big and advanced enough military to make a move on Russia. I invaded, and to my surprise, the USA and and Japan both declared war on me at the same time. I managed to hold the Japanese and the Americans at bay, while taking over a Russian city. After declaring peace and giving my troups a bit of time to heal, it was back to war with the alliance of Russia/Japan/USA. The war dragged on for 25 years or so, but late in the war I made peace with Japan and the US, leaving Russia to face me. I wiped them out quickly.

At this point, I declared war on the Zulu, reducing them to one city. But I had a plan for them. I wanted to leave them for last, to get revenge for all the past times they made me lose. So I declared war on France, and after about 50 years, wiped them out. Around the year 1700, I took a bit of time to concentrate on research again, and by 1880, I was ready for the stretch run. First up was Japan, and they were tough, and it took me about 50 years to beat them. I then beat the Malinese quickly, as they only had one city. Around 1950, I went after the USA, and by 1963, they were gone.

Hello Zulu empire. Remember all those times you caused me pain? Caused me to lose? Well now it was their turn. They had managed to build a second small city, which was gone by 1965. In 1966, I had a large group of tanks at the Zulu border, and kissed them goodbye. 1967 - game over - I win. Bye Zulu, thanks for coming out. Score one for the good guys. So I'm back in the winning column. Hopefully I can build on this momentum now that I've rid myself of the Zulu curse.

Go Leafs Go, and take the Zulu empire with you.

Lost at Civ 4 again - hopefully this time I'll win

The Zulu empire did it to me again. They invaded me just before I got "Chemistry" and grenadiers. So I started another game, and even though I wasn't invaded, I ran out of money because I only built 4 cities and a HUGE army. Eventually, my army went on strike and I started losing units like crazy. I was stuck at a 10% research rate, and had to drop down to 0%. That meant my research would take way too long, and the other civs would be too advanced for me and be able to easily take me over. So I started a new game.

This time around, I took the strategy of making only 3 cities. My immediate neighbour is England, and we share two islands. I am their biggest ally but am planning to invade them shortly - I don't really want to, but I really need to get more cities quickly as I'm falling behind in research. I've taken over one of their cities culturally but taking over militarily would be a lot faster. The other civs are China, Greece, the US, India, Carthage, and Spain. At this point in my game, the year is 1908 and I'm about 100 years away from getting tanks - I already can build marines. I have tons of money, and I'm starting to build my army. I still need to wait to build a navy, but I've hoping to invade England in about 120 years. My game score would be pretty low, but I need to get back on the winning track! I'll let you know how it goes. And speaking of going - Go Leafs Go, and take the Argos with you.