01-15-2007
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Don says:
I've certainly been having fun building computers just lately. I'm running out of places to keep them but hope to find homes for some of them soon. Before long I'll gather up all my leftover hardware, persuade Lisa to do her usual superlative job of photographing everything and auction off the works on eBay.Buying things on eBay is a little bit like buying things at a garage sale except you're even more at the mercy of the seller because you can't see the item he's selling. You've just got to take his word about the items condition and whether or not he'll actually send it if you win the auction and make no mistake, there are underhanded, dishonest, and predatory sellers on eBay. Anyone who's done much buying has been burned one or more times but eBay does a good job of policing themselves and if you're careful about buying, you can usually control your losses. I've learned a few simple rules that have helped govern my purchases on eBay:
1. Never bid on any item without knowing exactly what the shipping costs will be.
2. Read every word the seller writes in his description carefully. Make sure there isn't a Catch 22 written into the description or terms of sale.
3. Always check a sellers feedback. If a seller has recently received two or more negative feedback posts don't bid on anything this individual is trying to sell.
4. Never buy from a new seller. A person who hasn't made any sales has no track record of feedback. Set your own standards and stick to them; for my part I won't purchase from anyone who has less than 30 sales with less than 100% positive feedback or has over 100 sales with less than 99% positive feedback.
5. Never leave feedback for a seller until you've received the merchandise or before he's left you positive feedback for payment. If a seller states in his item description and terms that he will leave positive feedback for you only after you've left positive feedback for him you have two good options. Either don't bid on the item at all, or don't give the seller any feedback, regardless of how pleased you are with the item you purchased. Sellers who withhold feedback after you've paid them are, in effect, attempting to blackmail you (into giving them positive feedback which they may, or may not, deserve). Don't let them get away with it.
6. Get a PayPal account and open a second, small checking account to use with it. Decide up front on the maximum amount you're willing to lose in the event you make a catastrophic error and make that amount the limit on how much you'll allow to reside in your checking and PayPal accounts. My personal limit is $300, or, no more than $150 in the checking account connected to my PayPal account and no more than $150 in my PayPal account so, if I get suckered into revealing sensitive information to a phishing scam, the most I'll lose is $300. Think of the fees for a second checking account as the "Insurance Premium" that you must pay to limit your losses.
7. Decide how much you're willing to pay for an item you want, wait until there's less than two minutes left on the auction, if your minimum hasn't already been exceeded, bid that amount and stop there, don't bid again. If you win, fine, pay for it right away. If you lose, go find another one, just like it to bid on. Repeat until you get what you want for a price you can afford.
Believe it or not, if you're careful about your eBay bidding you're likely to come out all right and, just as every eBayer has negative stories about the deals he lost money on, he also has a story or two about deals he came out really good on. Be patient, be careful and trust your judgement; you'll do fine.
It's cold and wet in Texas tonight. The Weather Underground says tonight's low will be 25 degrees (F). Mom had an appointment with her Oncologist this afternoon but they called and cancelled it a little before noon today. They said they'd call back in a day or so and give us another appointment time and date. The Oncologist's office is in Marble Falls, about 30 miles from here. I can only assume that they expected the weather to turn bad today since the woman who called said they'd be closing at 12:30 (PM)
Lisa says:
Did a new thing this week, being a Personal Chef. One of my cleaning clients has been ill for some time and her husband doesn't cook. They get take-out or they have TV dinners, every day. They have a bunch of food in the cabinets and freezer and need to use it up. He asked me what I thought about a volunteer food delivery service and I told him I'd never heard of anyone that had been happy with it; he had heard the same thing. When he said he was tired of worrying about food, going out or heating up something like frozen dinners, I offered to cook, but had never done it before so they were kind of at my mercy, but he was game. I went to their home and made meals-for-two that can be popped into a Pyrex dish and heated in the microwave.Scrounging around, I found a small steak, a couple of boneless pork chops, a big bag of breaded chicken thighs, lots of canned veggies and fruit, and assorted sauces and seasonings. I started by making rice and setting it aside to cool, baking a frozen pumpkin pie, corn muffins, and a big pot of vegetable-beef soup from the steak, adding onions, carrots, celery, diced tomatoes, corn, green beans, mushrooms and elbow macaroni. I baked the chicken thighs and for some of it made an oriental-chicken dish, a sauce made of crushed pineapple, mandarin oranges, soy sauce and ginger spooned over the chicken and baked. I found almost a full jar of frozen pasta sauce so I sprinkled Italian seasoning over the rest of the chicken and then spread the sauce over it and baked that, then when it came out sprinkled grated cheese over it and set aside to cool. I diced some bacon and fried it crisp; sauteed onions, celery, shredded carrots, garlic and soy sauce and stirred in the previously prepared rice, resulting in pork fried rice. Put the two boneless pork chops in the oven until almost done, then put thin slices of onion and barbeque sauce and baked until the sauce was caramelized. Then made some spaghetti, oiled and cooled it. Here's what it made; dinners for two, with extra oriental chicken and cooked spaghetti.
4 meals: beef-vegetable soup/corn muffins
3 meals: oriental chicken/ fried rice/ french-cut green beans
3 meals: italian chicken/ spaghetti with sauce/ spinach
1 meal: barbeque boneless pork chops/ buttered white rice/ corn
Beef Vegetable Soup Fried Rice Oriental Chicken Italian Chicken
Don and I have been cooking on and off this way for years, seperately and now together. We check out the fridge and pantry, do some shopping and then spend a few hours one day cooking for the next week or two. It seemed a natural crossover, doing this for someone else. I felt pleased to have helped my friends in two ways, using the food they had and providing some nourishing meals that are very cost-effective. The adventure continues...
