Right. So I got up today early to get Zoë ready for school (normally, Andrew does that, but he had to go to Canberra on business today and left super early). I generally leave my computer on at night, so that I can leave stuff open and so on. I do disconnect from the net, of course.

Anyway, I came out to get Zoë up and had a bit of time to spare (amazingly!) and sat at the computer while she ate her breakfast. Guess what? The computer, she is broke.

Continue reading "Ze computer, she eez broke"…

Just wishing you a wonderful birthday and a happy, productive year ahead.

Australia will likely lower recruitment standards to let overweight people and mild asthmatics join up as it tries to boost troop numbers to combat regional instability, the nation's top soldier said Sunday.
 
Prime Minister John Howard last week unveiled a A$10 billion ($7.6 billion) plan to add two new battalions, or 2,600 troops, to the Australian army despite falling armed forces numbers.
 
Lieutenant-General Peter Leahy, head of the Australian army, said he was confident new recruitment targets that amounted to 500 new troops a year would be met, even if it meant lowering recruitment standards on health and weight.

EBAY faces a possible class action from disgruntled Australian sellers pushed out of business after the online auctioneer jacked up its merchant and other fees by as much as 500 per cent.
 
An online forum lists at least 250 Australian-based internet stores that have closed since the US internet auction giant hiked its fees last Monday.
 
The loss-making eBay traders could sue for unconscionable conduct under the Trade Practices Act, said trade practices barrister Neville Rochow.

Okay, so I got with the mid-noughties program and set up an RSS feed for this blog. NOT that I expect hoards of people subscribing or anything, but I set up an RSS for the Uncommon Touch site (which, by the way, I finished finally, so the archives and such all match now), and I thought to myself, "Self, that wasn't too hard," and further thought, "Maybe I'll add an RSS to my personal blog," which actually proved to be more difficult for various reasons, mostly resting in my own incompetence.

Whew. That was one hell of a compound sentence, eh?

Anyway. There's now an RSS feed for this blog, so if you're into that, go ahead and subscribe. Link is on the sidebar on the index page, toward the top, but in case you can't be bothered to look for it there, here's the link to the RSS again.

Ebay execs are at it again, raising the price of stores but a huge chunk of pocket change. One must wonder why they wish to commit corporate suicide on a steady basis, increasing pricing to the point that now both the small-time seller and the big business sellers can no longer justify listing on eBay. With eBay’s Paypal still deemed a customer service nightmare and fierce competition from Asia’s Tao Bao marketplace, people are beginning to consider that the home team will not make it out of this recent scrapping.

eBay Gets Knocked Down

Closing bell: Brokerage downgrade sinks eBay; Nasdaq edges higher

EBay online stores closing by the hundreds

eBay Fees Push Merchants Away

eBay Slumps on Downgrade

EBay Dips on Signs of Rising Costs:

Piper Jaffray analyst Safa Rashtchy downgraded the company to "Underperform" from "Market Perform" and lowered his price target for the stock to $25 from $30.

Rashtchy wrote in a note to investors that company trends "suggest a worsening picture for eBay."

EBay has made several moves this year, including increasing fees, to try to shift listings from stores _ customized seller home pages _ to regular auction listings. Core listings are more lucrative for eBay, but growth has slowed compared with stores.

"So far we have seen little positive reaction from sellers to any of eBay's initiatives over the past two quarters," wrote Rashtchy.

But sellers may not even be the issue. "We believe the core problem is with lack of activity from buyers, not sellers, and thus eBay's efforts are unlikely to bear fruit," he wrote.

To keep the machine running, "we believe eBay will be forced to spend heavily in sales and marketing or product development, or both, to bring buyers back to the site," the analyst wrote.

Now, coming upon this post as you are, unawares, I feel I ought to clarify the title (which was alternately going to be sex libris) straight away by telling you what this post is not, in fact, about. By “library smut” I am in no way referring to the photo books on native peoples, or the illustrated health manuals, or any of the other volumes which, in your childhood, you lurked about the library aisle to find with the sole purpose of sneaking guilty glances at naked bodies. Nor am I referring to the “risqué” novels by Miller, Cleland, Réage, or Lawrence you leafed impatiently through as a teenager. No. What I’m talking about here is the full-frontal objectification of the library itself. Oh yeah.

There was a blonde woman who was having financial troubles so she decided to kidnap a child and demand a ransom. She went to a local park, grabbed a little boy, took him behind a tree and wrote this note: "I have kidnapped
your child. Leave $10,000 in a plain brown bag behind the big oak tree in the park tomorrow at 7 A.M. Signed, The Blonde"

She pinned the note inside the little boy's jacket and told him to go straight home. The next morning, she returned to the park to find the $10,000 in a brown bag behind the big oak tree, just as she had instructed.

Continue reading "Financial Troubles"…

A federal judge ruled Thursday that the government's warrantless wiretapping program is unconstitutional and ordered an immediate halt to it.
 
U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit became the first judge to strike down the National Security Agency's program, which she says violates the rights to free speech and privacy as well as the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution.
 
"Plaintiffs have prevailed, and the public interest is clear, in this matter. It is the upholding of our Constitution," Taylor wrote in her 43-page opinion.

I was completely fascinated by this giant puppet. Really amazing! And if you're as fascinated as I was, also check out this video of the same puppet, although in a different city.

Well, I've mostly got the Uncommon Touch site set up. I need to tweak a few more things, and I haven't got all the templates for the weblog portion of it set up yet, but so long as you don't want to look at any archives or get a direct link to the complete Oztion listings (can't think WHY I didn't include that link, d'oh!), it's mostly there.

Took me long enough, don't you think? What is it, about a month... *sigh* I am so slack sometimes.

Online auction company eBay is facing an angry international mob of sellers who are protesting about new listing and fee structures to be introduced next week.
 
A boycott of the auction site was staged in Britain this week, petitions are being signed worldwide and a group of Australian sellers plan to make their stand next Monday in protest to the changes, which some claim represent a threat to their businesses.

Oh, dear. That darned unicorn in the Bible page is getting me preached at again. LOL!

Do note that the page has this disclaimer at the top:

Due to the nature of some of the email I receive regarding this particular page, I thought I'd update the page a little to include the following information. I am not an expert on Biblical history or ancient languages, nor do I claim to be. I don't read Latin, nor do I read Hebrew (although my husband reads some Koine Greek).

I cannot and do not necessarily think that all of the tidbits of information I've been able to gather are necessarily authoritative. In fact, I'm just collecting tidbits of information, and readers should take it as such. This is not a scholarly treatise. It's an offbeat hobby that I've been pursuing off and on for many years and which I felt like sharing because at least a few other people might find it interesting.

Naturally, the writer of the preachy, poorly written email either didn't read or didn't understand that....

I'm not going to post the whole email because it's mostly a lot of blah blah blah from someone who obviously has NO CLUE what I'm writing about, but it starts out thusly:

its funny to me the nievety of some people who are so quick to beleive in animals that have no real significance in any matter of life

Never said that I actually believe in unicorns, but nevermind. Some people never let what someone has ACTUALLY written get in the way of what they want to berate you for.

And by the way, my dear "anonymous" AOL user.... If you want people to take what you write seriously, you might try this little thing called "spelling" and "paragraph breaks". I also wonder why you send emails with no return address. What's wrong, afraid I might argue with you? Or did you just think it was more fun to do a "drive by"?

Regular readers (that'd be, like, two or three people, right? I'm under no illusions here...) will know I'm a bit of a Green Day fan. They'll also know I'm definitely a fan of parody and satire. And of blogging.

Imagine, then, my delight to come across a parody of Green Day that's about blogging with no readers! My new anthem! Woohoo!

Well, okay, maybe not an anthem, but still extremely amusing. Listen to I Blog Alone (MP3) for yourself. Perhaps you'll find it as amusing as I did.

(For your reading convienience, the lyrics:)

Continue reading "I Blog Alone"…

I'm constantly surprised by the number of people who claim to be running a professional business online and yet who have NO online presence outside of where ever it is they sell (eBay, Oztion, Yahoo, Amazon, whatever).

It's actually pretty simple to set up a weblog, and it can be done very inexpensively. I haven't set up a Blogger blog in a long time, but they've now even got a selection of templates and you can just plug one in and off you go, posting to Blogspot. No muss, no fuss. Learning curve isn't very deep at all.

And I'm not talking about hobby sellers who just want something to do and want to get rid of some random stuff around the house. I mean people who claim to be full-on professionals, who have a very high turnover and who send out dozens of items a week...

I just don't get it. The net is where you're selling. Doesn't it make sense to have at least SOMEWHERE that is just yours, where people can find you and what you sell via web search.... ?

John Howard calls Peter Costello into his office. "Peter, I have a great idea! We're going out to win the country voters."

"Good idea PM," says Peter. "How will we go about it?"

"Well," says Howard, "We'll get ourselves one of those Driza-Bone coats, some RM Williams boots, an Akubra hat - oh, and a cattle dog. Then we'll really look the part. We'll go out to the bush and win them over."

A few days later, all kitted out and with their blue heeler, they set off from Canberra and go west. Eventually they arrive at an outback pub. They walk in with their dog and up to the bar.

John and Pete lean comfortably on the bar drinking beers and chatting, and nodding now and then to people coming in for a drink. The dog lies quietly at their feet.

Suddenly, the door from the adjacent bar swings open and in comes a grizzled, bow-legged old stockman - complete with stockwhip. He walks up to the Blue Heeler, lifts it's tail with the whip, looks underneath, shrugs, and walks back to the other bar.

A few moments later, in comes another old stockman. He walks up to the dog, lifts its tail, looks underneath, scratches his head and goes back to the other bar.

Over the course of the next hour or so, another four or five stockmen came to check under the Blue Heeler's tail. Each leaves, looking puzzled.

Eventually, Howard and Costello can stand it no longer. They call the barman.

"Tell me," says Howard, "Why did all those stockmen come in and look under the dog's tail like that?

Continue reading "An Aussie Twist on an Old Joke"…

So, Aussies, don't know what this whole Oztion business is about? Check out this growing list of Oztion sellers and just have a look at the incredible diversity. And that's only a handful of the thousands of sellers there! Go on, have a look. You know you want to...

Well, I've had several sales at Oztion, and have bids on a couple more items, so yay!

It's also really amazing to note that at 2pm on 20 July, the membership of Oztion was 33870 and there were 95000+ listings.

Now, at 10:30pm on 03 August, the membership at Oztion is 43344, and there are 100000+ items for sale.

During one 24 hour period that I happened to be watching, there was an increase of 1000 new members, in 24 HOURS!

So, hey, way to go, FeeBay. You've given a heck of a boost to your strongest Australian competitor, who now have considerably more money to spend on things like advertising, and never underestimate the power of word of mouth...

Someone at FeeBay should have done some research on The Rum Rebellion and The Eureka Stockade. Aussies are pretty laid back, but when you muck about with their ability to earn a living just one step to far, you've got a serious rebellion on your hands....

You are driving in a car at a constant speed. On your left side is a valley and on your right side is a fire engine travelling at the same speed as you. In front of you is a galloping pig which is the same size as your car and you cannot overtake it. Behind you is a helicopter flying at ground level. Both the giant pig and the helicopter are also travelling at the same speed as you.

What must you do to safely get out of this highly dangerous situation?

Continue reading "We have a situation...."…

Okay. Got tired of the radio. Listening to The Bangles now. Walk Like an Egyptian is one of the best novelty songs ever, in my opinion. Oooh, here's the part where you whistle... Yeah....

Life's hard you know, so strike a pose on a Cadillac....

I'm listening to my favorite radio station, Vega 91.5. They do streaming broadcasting, so you can listen to Vega with me.