Just another WordPress weblog

I posted about a week ago saying I had an idea for a website that I wanted to try. That site went live today!

A Forum For Student Entrepreneurs

If you are a student interested in starting and running a small business, or if you are a person with business experience and would like to help young entrepreneurs I urge you to join and participate in the forum.

Yesterday for the first time since starting this blog, I skipped posting for the day. I realized that posting short, very personal posts wasn’t doing me any good. I have made the decision to begin posting much less frequently with the goal of higher quality posts. I guess you could say I failed, because my original goal was to post every day for a year, but after about a month of everyday posting I am still only receiving a few visitors per day. I feel like fewer high quality posts are better than more low quality posts, so that is what I am trying for from now on.

I am glad iran photoshopped those missile pictures. I like to see creative and quality photoshop work, and even if iran’s own photoshop wasn’t that great, it spurred a revival of creative photoshops by everyday people. I have seen more photoshop articles in the last few weeks than I had in a year prior, and I like it. You know what, I think iran should start using n-gage cell phones.

I just acquired a domain name that I feel has quite a bit of potential. I am going to be busy for the next couple of days but after that I will get a forum up on the site asap, and I will work on the design for the rest of the site from there. I am debating now on whether to use phpbb or vbulletin. I would love to see a recent comparison of the two, but all I can find are articles or forum debates that are to old to be relevant. If you have a recent experience with either of them I would love to hear it.

It is a .com address. It was between a three word .com and a two word .net, but the .net had longer words. The big selling point on the .com for me was that it was a name that I could brand for myself, it wasn’t just generic keywords, and I liked that. Also, it was easier to spell, and harder for someone to copy because there would be no way anyone was put an s at the end to make it plural or anything like that.

I posted a while back on how difficult it was to find a simple macbook case. At the time I was looking for a very simple sleeve, without even a zipper or velcro. I couldn’t find that so I gave in and went to the apple store to buy the simple zipper incase sleeve. Well, they were sold out of the 13″ sleeve in black so I decided to look at some of their other products. A very similar incase bag immediately caught my eye. It is just a little larger than the sleeve, but it has a small compartment on the front and back, handles, and a removable shoulder strap. To me that meant I could use it like a normal sleeve normally by removing the shoulder strap and tucking the handles in, but if I ever wanted to just carry my computer and a few small things I can pop on the shoulder strap and go. It also seemed to offer a bit more protection than the plain sleeve. It was twice the price and I probably wouldn’t have bought it if the sleeve I originally wanted had been in stock, but I am very glad things worked out the way they did. I definitely recommend this case. I know it is expensive. It is more money than I would normally spend on something like that too, but I would do it again in a heart beat.

Here is a link to the case in the apple online store.

http://store.apple.com/us/product/TL996LL/A?mco=MTIzNjQ3OA

I went to see the new batman movie today, The Dark Knight. My thoughts of the movie, in a nutshell, are that it was great for the first hour-and-a-half, but the next hour was a marathon of “when will this be over?” thoughts. That’s right, The Dark Knight is 2.5 hours long.

In between the “I just want to see the credits roll” thoughts I kept thinking about a preview that I saw before the movie.



Everyone wants to have a leg up on the world and lead them out of their problems, and this movie shows just that. This lady has sight in a building full of blind, and she leads them out of their troubles. No matter how cliche this may be, I can’t wait!

I was brainstorming today for ideas of potential sites and came up with one decent idea and one that I think could become quite large. I don’t want to give away to much information, but I would like to give social networking site-building a try. If you know anything about this kind of thing and are interested in giving me some pointers, comment and I will contact you via email.

So last night I made an offer on ebay for some brand new shirts. The offer was accepted, and there were more than 1 set available so the auction went on after I purchased mine. I paid immediately via paypal and things were good.

This morning I wake up to this email from ebay

Dear (my username and email removed),

Thank you for your bid on the following listing:

(item information here)

Unfortunately, eBay has removed this . All bids or offers on this listing have been canceled. Because the listing was ended, you no longer have any obligation to purchase this item.

Listings are removed for different reasons. For example:
- The way the item was listed may violate eBay policy.
- The sale of the item may be prohibited by eBay.
- The sale of the item may be prohibited by law.
- The removal may be part of a separate action taken by eBay that is unrelated to the listing itself.

We hope you understand that, due to privacy concerns, we’re unable to discuss the details of why this listing was ended. However, please note that the removal of this listing does not suggest that this seller’s standing in the eBay Community has been called into question.

For more information on why eBay may remove a listing, please go to:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/tp/listing-ended.html

For information on how you can protect yourself and help ensure a positive buying experience in the future, visit:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/buy/buyer_checklist.html

We’re sorry for the inconvenience and thank you for your understanding.

Sincerely,

eBay Trust & Safety

So now ebay no longer lists this item on their site, and it isn’t even in my ebay anymore where you can normally find items you have purchased. I check my paypal account hoping the seller got word of this and refunded my money but of course that isn’t the case so I send an email to the seller explaining the situation.

The seller promptly replies that everything is fine and she will update me later tonight with the shipping details. Now you might think that everything is worked out, but ebay just completed an auction, sent us over to it’s partner paypal to transfer funds, and then ended the auction and completely removed itself from all responsibility. On ebay, there is no record at all of my purchasing or paying for these items, and I don’t see any way that ebay could help anything here. Now I used paypal so if there is any trouble I know I am protected through them, but what if I would have sent a money order when the auction ended and then ebay did this. I would have absolutely no course of action if something were to go wrong.

This transaction could still work out for me, and chances are it will, but it shouldn’t be okay for ebay to end an auction after someone has won and paid for the items. This leaves the buyer with no form of protection from ebay, and that is unacceptable.

I started a new blog today to cover the changes of my 37 gallon planted aquarium (that would be a fish tank if you are confused). I have a few articles posted already that I copied over from some forums posts of mine so go check it out!

Planted Aquarium Blog

Before you go filling up your new pickup truck with your best friends garden supplies, check out the load rating, and think about how much weight you will be putting into the bed of your truck. I was moving some bricks recently, and we had to be very careful not to put to much weight into the truck. Some items can put too much load on your truck, even without filling up the bed. Going back to the bricks, the handling of the truck was severely degraded and we only filled it about half way. So don’t think that just because the truck isn’t overflowing with patio block that you aren’t done loading them. You fill a truck by weight, not by volume!