how to sell on ebay - a behavioral analysis

I've sold a few things on Ebay (40+ positive feedbacks, not that many , but still enough to have opinions to share).

First off, in the item description, give the impression that you give a shit about whatever you're selling, so do post good pictures. That means enough lighting, use a tripod, and (can't emphasize this enough) make sure the item's sharp in focus. If the item has observable defects/blemishes, document and show those too.

Side note: If you describe a product as NEW and the item turns out to have flaws, the buyer has a legit claim to get his/her money back. Describe it as LIKE NEW or EXCELLENT+ or EXCELLENT+++++++ and they'll be hard-pressed to bitch you out.

Answer questions/emails truthfully and respectfully, but don't make yourself look desperate. By that, I mean even if you check your email every 10 minutes, take time to answer it (rule of thumb: more than a couple hours but no longer than a few days). As long as you reply eventually, the buyer cannot accuse you of being a bad communicator. That way, buyers will know that you have better things to do than being their servant, and they won't feel compelled to manipulate you. This is what I mean by manipulation:

- negotiating fees/shipping *after* the auction closes. "How about we split the Paypal fee?" "Screw you!" You've set the fees in writing, they agreed to it by placing a bid, and they negotiate after the fact? I hate this so much.
- senseless claims. If they say the item has flaws that you know doesn't exist, and they ask for money back for repair cost, just ask them to return it for a refund excluding shipping costs.

Only leave a feedback after the buyer receives the item, approves it, and leave you a positive feedback. Since most buyers have less # of feedbacks than sellers, even the fear of retaliation will keep their behavior in check.

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No picture to show, but here's a bad academia joke I witnessed last week:

Student: "Professor, I heard a rumor that you're actually just a big softie who likes to feed squirrels, is that true?"
Professor: "..... I ... feed ... squirrels? ..... YES ! Wanna know what I feed to squirrels?"
S: "What?"
P: "Little pieces of grad students."

Happy Turkey Day

...Americans have a special holiday that glorifies gluttony and laziness. Go figure.

Ever wonder why Americans are so fat ?

Cats and dogs

Computer Architecture professor: "So, what happens when an out-of-order processor like the Intel P4 doesn't have in-order writeback? It's a mess! Kinda like cats and dogs sleeping together.

Wait, you guys are all foreign, what do you know about cats and dogs? (points to a student) You, what's like cats and dogs in Korea? a South Korean and a North Korean sleeping together ?"

I said it once and I'll say it again: AIM sucks

Was trying to install AIM 5.9 today, but I noticed the license agreement says it includes some sort of ad-supported weather program. i don't know if it's legit, but frankly i don't wanna know.
 Links to AIM 5.2 and older setup files are here.

BTW, there's AIM for Linux!. Although I still think Gaim is better, sometimes I need AIM for file transfer/direct connection etc.

Anyways, also Firefox 1.0 was released. Get it there, or processor-optimized versions here.

This is the way our Prof insults us ...

... during his lecture on Computer Architecture:

"... so Intel Itanium's branch predictor works by flip-flopping. You know, like John Kerry. Actually I probably shouldn't make political jokes, 'cause from what I see, most of you guys can't vote in this country anyways..."

Aiyaaaaaa....

... This week is gonna suck. I'll be glad when it's over. Whoever created the Lambda Calculus (blast you, Alonzo Church) needs to be shot.

On a sadder note, R.I.P. Chris Reeve and Ken Caminiti. Makes you think about what's really valuable.

Anyways, posted an extremely random picture. Is it worthy? Let me know what you think.

NFL season about to roll

In the spirit of the upcoming football season, here's a thought:

(16:53:22) HuLkRuLeS 2k: Vikings release DT Brock Lesnar
(16:53:26) HuLkRuLeS 2k: so much for that 1st pick
(17:32:33) Dave Haber: Brock Lesnar sucks.... they should have signed the Big Show instead

And more regarding yellowness:

HuLkRuLeS 2k: i just saw the greatest thing ever, an egg with 2 yolks
HuLkRuLeS 2k: is that like twins?
HuLkRuLeS 2k: man
HuLkRuLeS 2k: all my life i've dreamed of meeting a pair of yellow twins
HuLkRuLeS 2k: this is not what i had in mind

Meanwhile, David M asks about the existence of Santa Claus here. I guess big dude has moved to Colorado.

Puerto Rico

Posted some more squirrel action shots in the Animals gallery. Click on a picture to see it full size.








On a lighter note, mad props to the lady in Boston Market who asked me yesterday: "Are you Chinese? Puerto Rican?"

Yahoo Sports

Yahoo Sports headline: "Eagles' Kalu out for season"

Just thought that was funny :-D

More more more

There was an Indian woman in last night's episode of Crossing Jordan. A widow of a recently dead gay doctor with AIDS, she flirted with the only brown ME in the office. She's pretty dam hot, too. I wonder what she smells like.

A recent news article focuses on the rampant information phishing on the internet. I got a few of these too. One of the emails claims to be from Paypal, asking me to confirm that I have added an authorized email (one "laptopseller@yahoo.com") to my account. Of course, I haven't, and they conveniently provided a link to my account. Blah. Don't click on these. Don't be stupid.

Update: Interested on getting smarter about this? Click here for some tips. Also try out the "IQ" test to check your knowledge. I only scored 80%, and I thought I was smart.

While we're talking about Paypal, they settled a class action lawsuit. Further discussion here.

Best movie of the summer is this, of course.

Indonesia Uber Alles

I wanna just say sometihng about the Duke/Apple Ipod announcement. I think many students should be smart enough to realize they can sell the damn thing on Ebay and get enough $$$ for a spankin new Palm/Pocket PC/Treo/Clie whatever, which is *much* more useful (get a memory card for it and you can play songs decently). The price for 4th generation Ipods in the second hand slightly used market will plummet. So moral of the story, if you want one of these, wait till school year rolls :)

On a lighter note, congrats to Indonesia for having the 4th highest piracy rate in the world, just behind China, Vietnam and Ukraine. Rock on!

I also like this flower I posted.

Euler smells...

Posted another picture to the peoples/portraits/animals gallery, click on it to see it large.



If you'd rather see other people's photos, check out a pretty girl and her meal, or this ambiguously interesting nature shot.

If you'd rather check out a more relevant reading, click here. You're gonna be hearin these kinds of complaints soon anyways.

Mystery yet to be solved:
I still don't know what happens when somebody harpoons a nuclear submarine.
Radioactive sharks ?

Mystery solved: Remember in kindergarten/grade school, teachers/classmates ask you to draw these annoying pictures without repeating a line or lifting your pencil? Well, it's a documented problem in Graph Theory called Euler Tour (if you must finish at the same point as you start) and Euler Path (if you can finish anywhere). Any figure can have an Euler Tour if each vertex has even number of edges coming out of it, while Euler Path is possible if at most 2 vertices have odd number of edges coming out of them.


So in the figures above, A has Euler Tour and Path, B only has Euler Path, while C doesnt have either. Now go teach your kids.

Pics are broken, of course. Go Ask Jeeves. 

Mozzies

Check out this cool digital camera review, with actual shots of Michael Schumacher from Nurburgring! What's even better, the text is in Slovenian !

If you thought you've seen all the weird things in Philadelphia, check out this capture I took in Moravian Food Court. Never thought I'd find something that offends Moslems, Christians, and the Philadelphia Eagles all at the same time.. Hmmm.....

New favorite song: Lloyd featuring Ashanti - Southside. If yall haven't heard it, it's about some kid in his teens who wants to get with Ashanti (i.e. a hot and older -- not older, more "ripe" -- black woman). What an inspiration to us all!

I think I'm lactose intolerant. God I'm also broke.

You suckas got served ...!

Finally saw You Got Served. Dance moves were tight, but my favorite line from the movie was: 

 
"You guys are hatin on the wrong people. You gotta hate on the whiteys!"

Ha ha

Pics

Posted a picture in the animal portraits gallery. Click on the pic for larger size.


MSN Search is redesigned to be more Google-y. I can't really comment on how much better the search engine is, since none of MSN, Google, or AskJeeves can answer my life's most important question ("What are Ashlee Simpson's measurements?") as of yet;

Read this guy's name, and imagine what his jersey says.

IMing your (potential) girlies aplenty? Here's some advice for you. Or you can read this, if you're a woman or a gay (nothing wrong with dat, obv).

Worst song ever...

Posted one more picture in the Me, myself, moi, Mexican gallery. Click on the picture for a bigger image.

Some people have expressed pain and anger towards Hoobastank's hit single The Reason. Let me tell you this: For the absolute worst song of all time, I nominate Jennifer Lopez' Play. With this song, you get stupid melody, synthesized chords, and terrible lyrics ("play that song, come on DJ play my favorite song, play it all night long") ending in a stupid cuss ("just play that motherf___ing song!"). I don't think it can get any lower than this.

Rap snippet of the day: "When it comes to sex, i'm similar to the thrilla in Manila..." (Loon featuring Mario - Down For Me)

Movies, movies, Indonesia?

Huh?

I still don't understand how automatic urinals work. I would think that the sensor detects when you leave, but they start flushing as soon as you stop peeing, even if you hang around there longer. That's brilliant!!

Movies I saw this weekend: The Terminal, where Tom Hanks got stuck in the middle of nowhere for 9 months and somehow lands himself a smokin hot stewardess. Thought-provoking, considering I've been in the middle of nowhere for 7 years and I never even saw anything like Catherine Zeta-Jones. Also saw Equilibrium, where some white dude stabs and shoots Taye Diggs with Matrix-like smoothness. Cool action movie. Also saw Timeline, where Paul Walker travels through a wormhole to 14th century war-stricken France to rescue his father. As a friend put it wisely, it's a Braveheart/Timecop mixup. You'd think my respect for Paul Walker can't get any lower after The Fast & Furious and 2 Fast 2 Furious, well, it did.

Tribute to Brendan in England, he asked me to spread the word:

"On Friday I had to call Indonesia. At my newspaper we're doing a special issue on the sixtieth anniversary of the World Bank and IMF, so we're getting central bankers to contribute. One of my jobs is to call all these people and get them to do stuff for us. So I called the Indonesian central bank, and I talked to this woman named Yuni. Then I had to fax her stuff, and it took three tries to get it through. And then Yuni called me back and we talked for a few minutes. The whole thing sort of reminded me of you. You should put that in your blog."

What's your ideal job?

Apparently my ideal job is a Big Game Hunter, so I guess I need to forget Computer Science. Hmmmpfh..... Hell, I can't even hold a camera steady, who'd trust me with a rifle?

Wanna see a refractive eye surgery ("Lasik") procedure? Watch it here (6MB download). Now excuse me while I barf.

Anybody knows where I can buy large picture frames/mattes for 10x15" or 16x20" photos?

Amazing free software: Audacity for Windows/Mac/Unix/Linux. Ever wish your Powerpoint presentation would play just a snippet of Kool & the Gang's "Celebration" ? Use this sound editor to chop and tailor the song to your liking.

Ashlee Simpson can't sing. Mary-Kate Olsen needs to eat something.

Indonesians in NY

"Oh oh, I'm an Indo, an illegal Indo, I'm a yellow man in New York..." (~Sting)

Anyways, here's pretty much what we did in our bimonthly visit to NYC and brown women. Click on the picture to display it larger.


First thing I learned, people in NY don't care to stop when somebody is trying to take a picture in front of the Hello Kitty store.

Playing some table hockey in ESPN Zone. Apparently the timer was broken, cuz 8 credits lasted forever.

Which is a bummer cuz I got whupped in my air hockey game, and stupid thing told us to put in more points. We was like hell no.

Brown people posing. Tall dude in the background is Shawn Bradley. I was like, "Maybe he has a game against the Knicks tonight", not knowing basketball season's way over.

Blue M&Ms dude

Most favorite thing in the world: Yu-Gi-Oh !!!

Wasim enjoying his most favorite thing ever

Voluptuous white woman in Times Square and some random brown people

Shea Stadium

Paying attention to the game

Aight I'm out, I need to set up a color/noise profile for my camera, cuz the pictures suck.

The Fundamental Theory of Gender Relations

Crossing Jordan is 3rd on the Nielsen rating for the week. Hmmmmm.....

Anyways, in my neverending quest for the meaning of life, I looked and looked for the most reliable source, so I asked Jeeves for information on brown women.   Somehow the moral of the story: most guys still only care about boobies. Hey, while we're at it, guess what's a popular gift for HS graduates? :)

Best regards, I'll post more pictures soon.

I need to chill out ...

Cumulus (larger image here)

Cityscape (larger image here)


Not much to say this time. But I just wanna apologize to everyone who's spoke to me this past week. I'm a real bitch. Next time, tell me to calm the hell down.

I think I love Paris Hilton...

Lotus #2 (Larger image here)

Old School (Larger image here)


Mozilla Firefox/Thunderbird, and The Simple Life 2: Road Trip are out, new versions!

"I loved Louisiana. We stayed with a family on a swamp; it was, like, all muddy, but the people were so nice. I like Mississippi, too; they had a casino, and we went there." (~~Paris Hilton)

Bunch of people ask me why I don't use Limewire, Napster, iMesh, etc etc. I don't know. Never tried them, don't care for em. For real comparisons go here.

Jealous of Google's Gmail and their free 1GB storage? These guys claim to offer the same, although seems like they're more Mac-oriented. I don't really know how bad the service is, but I'm checkin it out. Regardless, I'd probably only trust these things for spam not for serious work...

UPDATE: I signed up for an account almost a week ago, I was supposed to get an activation email, no sign of it. So much for that.....

2 Pictures + 0 Thoughts

Lotus

Ninja


Happy birthday to Mary-Kate & Ashley. Big ups to Paris & Nicole, their show drops soon enough...

Anyways, I'm offering no deep thoughts today.  Bye.

Why things suck......

Added more pictures to the Fragrance series. Apparently they not too good, but meh... Larger pictures here...


I just found out that individual Blogspots are blocked in China.
Ahhhh, censorship....it's so beautiful!

Anyways, why things suck:

***Cellphones: Meant to be used for emergencies, now people use them most when they're bored. Carriers want market share so much that they're giving away minutes like peanuts. One of these days, they gonna be a lot bitchier about subscribers who use extra minutes just like the broadband peoples do these days.

***Xanga: Predominantly Asian??. Viral marketing. No support for RSS/Atom (is there ?) UPDATE: It does, see info here.

***Internet Explorer: Text magnification doesn't work all the time. Still no popup blocker (I know Google Toolbar and others try, but do they really work?). Firefox rules.

***Women: How many times have they ditched you because "they have to go shopping" ? Who the hell *has* to go shopping? It's like us saying we *have* to cheese steaks, with our mouth open too.

Best regards.

Why I'm down on Black Music

Added another entry to the Fragrance series. Larger picture here.


While we're still celebrating Black Music month, I just wanna say something about the current state of Black music. Two songs I really really liked had disheartening messages, so bad that I can't really enjoy them anymore.

Cassidy featuring Mashonda Get No Better: good beats, good video. But in the second verse, the young rapper tells the world he expects his women to *always* be in makeup, nails done, and look gorgeous "so [they] would look hot as a couple". What kind of message is he tryna send??? I'm not a girl, I'm still offended! Next thing you know, he writes a song about how he wants his wifeys to cook fried chicken all day every day. Oh whoops, that's actually my dream.

Joe Priceless: a well-performed R&B tune about finding true love in the ghetto. After singing about how great the woman is, she who hails from their poor hometown in Alabama, then in the 2nd verse he takes her to the mall for a $10,000 shopping spree and another $20g for a wedding ring. Moral of story: Even poor women only care about the dough. Ouch! What a terrible message.  PS: Why I'm still not in med school, I have no clue.

In contrast, in Story of the Year Anthem of Our Dying Day white dudes sing about how much they hate they ladies. Nothing really new, but instead of cussing like sailors he wishes a tide would drown the whole city, and the girl would be gasping for air the same way she'd suffocated him over the course of their relationship.

Cool biblical imagery!  Time to brush up my Old Testament papers.

So young, So angry, Damn that rap music!

Posted three pictures to jumpstart my Fragrance series. Comments/suggestions appreciated, of course. Larger images on the gallery, as usual.





On a more pissy note, I *love* how random people who don't really know me at all email me and say all sorts of crap, thinking I've graduated. Here's two of them:

***Letter #1***

Hi! 
I hope you've recovered from Senior Week and are having a good summer!
> I didn't participate in Senior Week, I was in Boston that whole time

I’m writing because I saw that you hadn’t given to the gift drive yet, and I wanted to make sure you knew you still could....
> Boooooo. I'll give after you people figure out when I will graduate.

Ok, I hope you can help, but more importantly, I hope your time after Penn gets better and better. Take care, and keep in touch! We’re forming a committee of ’04 who want to be active alumni during this summer. The more the merrier.
> Do whatever you want, I'm not your keeper.

***Letter #2***

How are you doing? I just wanted to thank you for ...
> Okay, I appreciate your gratitude

Have a great graduation, and best of luck for the future. Thanks.
> And your ignorance, too.

Fun fun fun.

Imagestation problems...

June is Black Music month. Shoutout to Prince, Ella Fitzgerald, and that one African-American in SoulDecision.

Photographer Ruel Tafalla posted pictures from his Central Java trip. For you non-indos, that's my mom's hometown. Check it out, it's quite pretty.

I also just found out you're not supposed to flush Q-Tips. On the other hand, Tampons are okay.

The Simple Life 2: Road Trip premieres June 16 on Fox. More Paris Hilton.

On a more serious note, I know some of you use Imagestation for picture hosting. Just to give yall a heads up, check this clause in the members' agreement.

6. License Grant and Intellectual Property Rights
"…you grant ImageStation, its successors, licensees and assigns, a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, royalty free license to use, modify, reproduce, distribute, publish, publicly perform, and publicly display your Member Content..."

Translation: Legally, some schmuck Sony editor can take your high-res picture (it’s free/unlimited, right? so might as well put everything online?), put it in some supermarket tabloid, and you may not get a nickel for it.

9. Code of Conduct
"…you agree not to post...any data...[that] displays any expression of bigotry, racism, or hatred, or is ethnically offensive, objectionable or inappropriate...defamatory, libelous, disparaging, obscene, pornographic, profane, threatening, abusive, deceptive, offensive, vulgar..."

Translation: No, you can’t put up pictures that make fun of latinos!

May not be a big deal to most of yall, but to see some alternatives, read this story

Best regards

Back here

Posted a couple of pictures from the weekend. Larger images on the website




On a lighter note, here's sacrilegious photo of the day by Martin Crespo. Excellent job.

BTW, cool (free/GPL licensed with source code) program Celestia. You can make funky-looking, high res scapes of outer space. I used it to make this ugly poster for class, but you can do better.

Gaim 0.78 is out

Gaim 0.78 (Windows/Unix AIM clone without the annoying ads, also MSN/Yahoo compatible) is out. Not sure what the new features are, but probably good things. TIP: If you use the "Bluecurve" theme, you can read people's away msgs just by hovering over their name in your buddy list. Read full story....

Click here and here for other people's pictures of the day :)

While I'm at it, big ups to Auntie Anne's Strawberry(?) Lemonade. Good stuff!

Yu-Gi-Whatta?

Contrary to popular beliefs, I do not know what's going on in Yu-Gi-Oh. I know about:

- Gilmore Girls,
- bad photography, photoshop, or illustrator, and
- philosophy?

but that's about it.

I don't know jack about economics or finance either

Comments on Wolfgang Petersen's Troy

(Spoiler warning) Brad Pitt's gratuitous butt notwithstanding, here are some of my problems with Petersen's Troy:

- The Trojan War supposedly lasted over 10 years. The movie made it seem more like 2 weeks.
- The final scene of Prince Paris killing warrior Achilles is not believable, after all the wussy Prince couldn't even beat Menelaus. They should have given us a clue that Apollo, angry at the desecration of the temple and the brutal killing of the defenseless priests, came down from the sky and redirected Paris' arrow toward Achilles' heel (get it? It's Achilles' heel).
- Petersen completely discarded the story of Agamemnon's demise: Legend was, before the war he slaughtered his own daughter as a sacrifice to appease the Gods and show commitment to the other Kings, and it drove his wife queen of Mycanaea to near insane. When he returned from Troy years after, she went crazy and stabbed him to death.  I don't know about you, I think this is a more epic story than Achilles killing Agamemnon to save a random hottie he'd just met.
- Love scenes are just too "Hollywood". Do you actually believe that the ancient Greeks do foreplay *exactly* the way people do nowadays? Check out the subtle incest scene in Gladiator,  it leaves everyhting to the imagination, now that's storytelling.
- A great general who's lead many victories, and he has a face (butt?) like a Backstreet Boy? Keep in mind that they didn't have antiseptic at the time, so the slightest wound can get infected and many times fatal...

On the other hand, mad props to Brad Pitt's battle coreographer. The opening scene of Achilles' lightning strike and quick stab to the shoulder of the Thessalonian giant is outstanding, I wanna see that again.

Moral of the story? The Trojan War explores the sinful deeds caused by greed and lust, but furthermore it also illustrates the proper conduct in war (and life in general?): respecting your women, children, and the dead...

(Everything I know about this topic is what I remember from reading and discussing Homer's Iliad way back in the day.

D'ohhhh!

 Leave comments if I am off)

[pics] Dodgers@Phillies

I posted pictures from last night's trip to the Citizens Bank Park. Here are some highlights.

Angry drunk white dude

Stupidity


Read full story here...

First entry ever

First post ever. Mission statement: **be concise** I have no deep thoughts anyway.

Anyways, here’s the latest metrosexual advice of the month. Okay, actually last month’s but people need to learn:

“Thou shalt not covet thy brother’s brown women”

Tired of Big Brother watching your back? Use PeerGuardian. This program works like a firewall checking incoming/outgoing traffic, and blocks access to/from sites in the blocklist which is updated regularly. Essential if you use Emule, Kazaa or other file sharing software. TIP: You can allow access to port 80 (http) if your web browser gives weird errors. Go to download site

On a lighter note, I posted a tutorial on taking pictures of squirrels. Read full story.

I also have up the pictures from Boston and also the Indonesian people over there. Read full story.

If you’re not into Indos or furry animals, lemme just show you some of my favorite works. This by James Russell. And this by Circle Photo. Good job, I aspire to be as good someday.

Peace

Poo

Okay I'm stupid. I can't figure out how to post a profile picture. Anyways here it is





... and it's broken.  story of my life.