This week was marked by many deadlines and people not getting back to me. I hate that. However, everything worked out in the end. Last weeks’ e-mail was filled with meeting reschedules, short missives like "I got it" and even one Internet/e-mail pager.
The e-mail pager was sort of weird actually. I got a phone call about 2 seconds after I hit the Send button. The whole concept of "paging someone" is sort of hideous, unless you’re a doctor, if you ask me. I mean getting a price on a piece of computer equipment is not exactly life and death. But hey, I’m not the one who has to wear the high-tech pager. And if people would just return phone calls and e-mail, well, they wouldn’t need a pager now would they?
While I was waiting for all these people to get back to me on stuff, I spent a little quality time on eBay. The reality is that eBay is so disgusting to use on dial-up that I never did it. Waiting for 7 bazillion images to download painfully slowly is no fun at all.
The whole concept of eBay never really appealed to me because there was nothing that I really wanted. I’ve always thought of it as a really huge garage sale. I don’t usually go to garage sales because I don’t like shopping that much. When I shop, I usually have a list of what I want. I get in, get out, and get it over with. Browsing is just not what I like to do. Besides, you usually just end up with a bunch of junk that sits in a corner somewhere.
On eBay, I have checked pricing on a couple of nerdy items in the past, but never went there looking for something that I probably would not find anywhere else. Until the other day, that is.
It dawned on me that I have broadband now, so I could actually handle all those eBay photos. So I logged in, did a search and voila, someone was selling exactly what I wanted. So I bid. Then someone else bid. Then I bid. They someone else bid. Then I typed in the maximum amount I was willing to spend: the princely sum of $20. The auction closed at $12.50. Wahoo!
And thus, I discovered why people become so addicted to eBay. It’s actually fun 😉