“There’s something brown in the town.”
— Lucy spots Wubie in the kitchen

We got a new iMac a couple of weeks ago. It’s pretty spiffy. The deal I made with myself on the actual purchase was:

You want a new computer? Fine—but only if you can pay for it with money made from selling stuff you already have. And make sure to sell the old computer while you’re at it!

Though I’d sold a few things to help pay for it, I hadn’t sold enough to cover the entire purchase—until this morning. Now, it’s been covered (and then some).

I had a pricey gadget that had been sitting in my closet for a while. I decided to post it on a few sites to gauge interest. One of the places I tried was Facebook Marketplace. Talk about a waste of time! Within a few hours of posting the item on Facebook, I received four messages. “Wow, that’s cool!” I thought as I opened the messages. All four messages were from different users with variations on the same scam:

“My (friend/cousin/sibling/etc.) would be very interested in this item. However, they are in (Nigeria/Africa). Can I pay you now? Would you take the following (goofy circuitous route) of payment?”

“Wow, that’s completely lame!” I thought as I deleted the messages.

Luckily, Craigslist came through for me. The prospective buyer and I exchanged emails during the week. Once I determined he was on the up and up, I arranged to meet him in an open public space (a mall). Rules I have on selling stuff:

• never let a prospective buyer inside your house
• cash only

If it’s an inexpensive/bulky item, I might meet them outside my garage. However, for higher priced items, I always meet them in a public space.

You never know who’s going to show up, so you’ve got to use your head and play it safe.  Anyway, the transaction went off without a hitch. Once it was completed, I had a bunch of cash and felt like a rapper for a second. However, I quickly reminded myself that this was money already spent.

Yep, the pragmatic polka singer in me usually wins out.

“Naked Time, Naked Time, Across the USA!”
— Lucy singing her own lyrics to the melody of “Booty Time” from
The Adventures of Ford Fairlane

Here’s another post on some stuff I sold recently, most of it via Craigslist (except for the iMac, which went to family). Craigslist is my main way to get rid of stuff these days. The main things I like about it:

• It’s free (how can you beat that?)
• It’s easy to post items
• It’s easy to get rid of large items (the customer just picks it up.)
• No shipping hassles because your customers are local

Occasionally I’ll use eBay, but that’s usually as a last resort. eBay is just too darn expensive (they really nickel and dime you to death with miscellaneous fees over there!) Also, the one or two times where I needed their support they truly, dearly just sucked.

Anyway…

It’s nice to have some open space. It’s actually quite amazing how much room you get back once you let go of a few bulky items.

“Who lives down in deepest, darkets apricots — apricots.”
— Lucy substituting ‘Apricots’ for ‘Africa’ when singing the Kimba the White Lion song

It’s 1:40 am and I can’t sleep, so I thought I’d do a quick post in hopes it makes me sleepy. Let’s see, it’s almost the end of the month, so I think I’ll just jot down a list of random stuff that happened (or will happen) this month:

I decided to do some cleaning up in the garage. Though the clean-up is a definitely still a work in progress, I’ve been stumbling across a few things I don’t really need. Here’s some stuff I found and sold over this past month. Goodbye, gadgets. May your new owners get much use out of you!

Stuff I’ve watched/read this month:

• movies
  • Avatar
  • The Botany of Desire
  • Extract
  • Pirates of Silicon Valley
  • The Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires
• books
  • Revolution in the Valley
• tv
  • Better Off Ted (Season 2)
  • The Biggest Loser (Season 9)
  • Project Runway (Season 7)
• web
  • Kimba Intro
  • Looking into the Past

Misc. January Events

• Lucy’s Birthday!
• I’m actually going to an old geezer’s friend’s 50th(!) birthday this weekend
• We got a chance to see John and family from Arizona

Well, I think that covers it for now. Time for bed!