It's been about a month now that I've been on a slightly heightened minimalism binge. Since I bought a house about 4 years ago, there's been no need for me to get rid of anything. My wife would disagree. But really, I don't buy that much stuff, and combined with the fact that I don't break stuff that often, I tend to end up with lots of old, slightly worn out things that I just don't use any more.
So now I'm selling it on eBay.
Most of the reason that I never sold anything on eBay before is just that it is such a hassle. PayPal makes the payment part easy, but then there's the delivery. Packing stuff up in a box and taking it to the post office to find out how much it will cost to ship, unpacking it to take pictures because you forgot to do that first, then doing the listing, then repackaging, then going back to the post office to actually send it, whew! Too much effort.
So I have my brother do it for me.
The company he works for will let him use the shipping department. They ship UPS, which seems to do a pretty good job. My brother is also a skilled estimator. He can usually guess about how much the shipping will be. I just have to find stuff, then write up some description of it. He usually uses my description to find a finished item on eBay, and then cribs together a description from that.
Why does he do it? He gets a commission.
Not just any commission, a sliding twenty down to zero percent commission. Why would he work for a zero percent commision? Well, in reallity he would not, but we capped his part to $45. So, in the limit case an infinitely expensive item would still only get him $45, which would divide out to a zero percent.
At first we had a set of rules (which I don't quite remember). For up to $75 we had one percentage, then it dropped to a lower percentage up to $150, where it dropped again. The problem with it was that he made more commission on a $74 sale than he did on a $76 one. This is part of why the IRS rules for tax bracket are more complicated than I think they should be. We decided that there had to be a simpler way. And really, it is obvious.
commission(price) = $45e-price/165
Easy, right?
Friday, October 29, 2004
Finally saw Van Helsing last night. Between the in-your-face overacting and the in-your-face gratuitous special effects, halfway through the movie I started thinking that I was watching some James Cameron fiasco. But then I realized that if Cameron had directed it, there would be at least one or two characters in it to sympathize with.
The friend that I saw it with rather liked the Jeckyl/Hyde character, but that one was gone faster than the opening credits were. I rather liked the creepy grave digger, but, well, I'm not going to let you all off that easily. You'll have to suffer through it yourselves.
So, you been following the elections? Something I read in the last week was questioning all the legal wrangling that is expected to start next week, wondering if it wasn't perhaps doing more unseen damage than either party really understood. (I'd put up a link, but can't find it. Anyone?) Their fear is that by casting so much scrutiny on the election process it will make the populous think that the electoral process--heck, democracy itself--is screwed up in the good ol' US of A.
Myself, I'm not convinced that that would really be such a bad thing. I mean, really. What is the worst thing that could come of encouraging Americans to take the time to think about the mechanism upon which all of the confidence in their government is based?
The friend that I saw it with rather liked the Jeckyl/Hyde character, but that one was gone faster than the opening credits were. I rather liked the creepy grave digger, but, well, I'm not going to let you all off that easily. You'll have to suffer through it yourselves.
So, you been following the elections? Something I read in the last week was questioning all the legal wrangling that is expected to start next week, wondering if it wasn't perhaps doing more unseen damage than either party really understood. (I'd put up a link, but can't find it. Anyone?) Their fear is that by casting so much scrutiny on the election process it will make the populous think that the electoral process--heck, democracy itself--is screwed up in the good ol' US of A.
Myself, I'm not convinced that that would really be such a bad thing. I mean, really. What is the worst thing that could come of encouraging Americans to take the time to think about the mechanism upon which all of the confidence in their government is based?
Wednesday, October 27, 2004
Representative Democracy
For the past five years, I've been working for a company that makes voting software. In that time, I've gone from thinking that American government is generally a bad idea that I wanted nothing to do with to thinking that American government is generally a bad idea but maybe I should participate somehow instead of just complaining.
A few days ago, someone sent me this link. If you follow it, click on one of the video links.
(In case the link quits working, it is a video of John Edwards fussing over his hair for an unbelievable amount of time.)
As I was watching it, the thought struck me: If I were to run for office, there is no way I could put up with fussing about my hair. I would not do it myself, and I could probably not tolerate someone else doing it. I would probably have brushed it somewhat back away from my face that morning--that should be good enough for anyone. Part of my campaign message would be: "Vote for me because I have more on my mind than just hair."
Odds are I would lose. But that'd be ok, because it would just mean that I am not a representative of the people.
A few days ago, someone sent me this link. If you follow it, click on one of the video links.
(In case the link quits working, it is a video of John Edwards fussing over his hair for an unbelievable amount of time.)
As I was watching it, the thought struck me: If I were to run for office, there is no way I could put up with fussing about my hair. I would not do it myself, and I could probably not tolerate someone else doing it. I would probably have brushed it somewhat back away from my face that morning--that should be good enough for anyone. Part of my campaign message would be: "Vote for me because I have more on my mind than just hair."
Odds are I would lose. But that'd be ok, because it would just mean that I am not a representative of the people.
Welcome
So, I expect that I'm just wasting my time here, but it seems that the time is right for me to try this "blog" thing out from the other side. One of the contributors on an email list I subscribe to has a .sig which says something like "A gentleman is someone who knows how to blog but refrains from doing so in public." Apparently I have an insecurity here, because it troubles me that I don't know how to blog.
Apparently "blog" is one of the ever-so-popular noun-verbs. I really dislike noun-verbs.
People who know me know that I like to rant about things, so this blog will probably be a soapbox where I will air out whatever concept I feel like ranting about.
I got to this "blogger.com" place from Julian Lombardi's Croquet Blog and also Croquet. I've been following Croquet from the Squeak scene since I first heard about it, a while back. After their first preview release (which became unavailable after being mentioned) I wrote this:
First of all, Croquet appears to be an amazing piece of work. It is an example of the type of work that I am always jealous of. I always seem to end up doing boring stuff in comparison.!From the documentation .PDF:
I believe that in the context of computers attached to the Internet, this is a mistake. Code is code, and data is data. Data are allowed to flow between computers without hesitation (modulo security issues, which are probably not present in Croquet) but code is restricted to the computer it is installed into. Installing code should require direct user initiation.
Look & Feel:
Fabulous. Simply fabulous. Very nifty how much stuff works within the view.
I am curious if any of that applies to the new release. But I am also tired, since it is now tomorrow, so I am going to go to bed.
Apparently "blog" is one of the ever-so-popular noun-verbs. I really dislike noun-verbs.
People who know me know that I like to rant about things, so this blog will probably be a soapbox where I will air out whatever concept I feel like ranting about.
I got to this "blogger.com" place from Julian Lombardi's Croquet Blog and also Croquet. I've been following Croquet from the Squeak scene since I first heard about it, a while back. After their first preview release (which became unavailable after being mentioned) I wrote this:
Critique of Croquet
First of all, Croquet appears to be an amazing piece of work. It is an example of the type of work that I am always jealous of. I always seem to end up doing boring stuff in comparison.!From the documentation .PDF:
Code is just another media type, and should be just as portable between systems. Late binding and component architectures allow for a valuable encapsulation of behaviors that can be dynamically shared and exchanged.
I believe that in the context of computers attached to the Internet, this is a mistake. Code is code, and data is data. Data are allowed to flow between computers without hesitation (modulo security issues, which are probably not present in Croquet) but code is restricted to the computer it is installed into. Installing code should require direct user initiation.
Look & Feel:
Fabulous. Simply fabulous. Very nifty how much stuff works within the view.
I am curious if any of that applies to the new release. But I am also tired, since it is now tomorrow, so I am going to go to bed.
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