General

Is it OK to sell gifts on eBay?

Dave Farquhar General , , , ,

This is a followup to Friday’s post. I really should let this go, but the journalist in me loves a great story, and this story has lots of twists and turns and weirdness.

I wrote on Friday about several people giving gifts to someone they thought was a disabled Gulf War II veteran who was getting into the hobby. As parts of his story began to fall apart, there was a falling out. For some people, the biggest slap in the face came when the gifts they had sent him showed up on eBay.I don’t want to delve into whether the recipient of the gifts was a war veteran, except to say there are enough inconsistencies in his story that some people began to question everything, even up to and including whether he even was a real person. He had either told me or posted in a message on the forum that he was disabled and walked with a cane, but in my digging I found a craigslist posting looking for odd manual-labor jobs, such as cutting down trees. It was in the right town, he was willing to accept Lionel trains as payment, and the writing had the same mistakes in capitalization, punctuation, apostrophe usage, and grammar that I was used to seeing in his messages on the forum. I’m pretty sure it was the same person.

War veteran or not, this illustrates a willingness to change his story if it might gain him an advantage in his situation.

After the trains showed up on eBay, one person contacted the owner of the account. She said she was letting him use her eBay account to sell them, and said she had some awareness of the situation but didn’t want to say anything else other than they were gifts, so wasn’t he free to do anything with them that he chose?

And that really got me thinking.

I guess selling gifts on eBay is becoming more common. I tried to see if Emily Post had written anything about reselling gifts but I couldn’t. I know my friends and I used to snicker at the Ben Folds lyric in "Brick" that went, "Then I walk down to buy her flowers / And sell some gifts that I got."

The way I was raised, for the most part you kept gifts out of respect for the gift-giver. Exceptions were clothes that didn’t fit, or duplicate gifts. And hopefully, as you enjoyed those gifts, it reminded you of the giver and your relationship with that person.

I’ll admit, a lot of the toys I received as gifts as a child ended up in a garage sale. I was 13, I had a room full of toys I’d outgrown, we were moving, and it was time to move on. They’d had a good, long run.

The other exception for me was post-breakup. After a relationship ended, generally I would get rid of the things the ex-girlfriend had given me as part of my moving on process. The stuff would end up at Goodwill, where hopefully someone would get some benefit from it.

One could make an argument that in the case of these trains, the conditions were similar to the post-breakup. But I don’t think so. The first item that showed up on eBay was a Lionel 1501 Lackawanna 4-8-4. That locomotive had a story. It started with him being invited into an elderly man’s basement, where he saw a giant O gauge layout, and this gentleman saw how much he appreciated the layout and the collection and gave him several gifts, including the Lackawanna 4-8-4 and a Lionel ZW transformer. "I will always cherish the Lackawanna 4-8-4 I received from my friend," he wrote on the forum.

"Always" ended sometime before 12 July 2007 at 05:18:30 PDT, when the cherished locomotive sold on eBay for $150 using buy-it-now. The eBay listing said there was nothing wrong with the locomotive, it was just too big for his layout so he decided to sell it.

The gentleman who gave him the locomotive had nothing to do with the falling out he had with his other train buddies. According to the story he posted on the forums, this gentleman died less than three weeks after he gave him the locomotive.

When he died, there was no fanfare, no tribute. Just a brief, matter-of-fact statement, something like, "With his passing, I’ve been wondering what will happen to the trains." Then someone asked if he had died. The response was simple. "I’m sorry I wasn’t clear. Yes, he died."

That’s pretty insensitive.

Of course, one possibility is that the gentleman who gave him this locomotive was a fabrication and he received the locomotive a different way. If that’s the case, then he isn’t insensitive. He’s just dishonest.

A lot of other people sent him trains because they wanted someone less fortunate than them to be able to enjoy their hobby. Spending time together in person wasn’t realistic, but maybe as he ran those trains in the basement, he’d remember the people who gave them to him, enjoy them, and the bond could grow that way.

When those trains ended up on eBay almost immediately after someone pointed out how he had told two people different stories about himself that contradicted each other, they came to a conclusion: This man had been telling stories to take advantage of them for financial gain.

Trains aren’t especially easy to pack and mail, and they aren’t cheap to send. It’s a lot cheaper and easier to send cash. Of course, giving him money wasn’t the idea. The idea was to introduce someone else to the hobby you love, in hopes he would enjoy it as much as you did. Send someone cash, and for all you know, the money is just buying beer.

Seeing a price on those trains was like seeing a price on your friendship. And in the case of the "treasured" Lackawanna 4-8-4, the price seemed arbitrary, and perhaps even insultingly low. I found one and only one locomotive like it in eBay’s recent sales. It sold for $281.

I’m only gonna ask this once.

Dave Farquhar General

There’s a commercial on TV. It’s using a dang AIR SUPPLY song in the background. Would somebody please tell me what product that commercial is for, so I can make sure I never buy it?And then if I see anyone else using that product, I can lecture him or her.

I have two coworkers who like to irritate my boss on occasion by seranading him with "Islands in the Stream." If they want to be even more annoying, I could float this idea past them.

Then again, if I did that, my boss would have every right to fire me and burn down my house. So I’d better not.

And here\’s something for you…

Dave Farquhar General ,

Last night my wife and I watched Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, a Steve Martin movie from 1982. It’s a parody of film noir movies from the 1940s and 1950s.Some reviews criticize the plot as being too simple or too unbelievable or too formulaic. I can see the point, but this is a parody. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of a single parody that had a plot that would have made Shakespeare jealous.

As entertainment, I think this movie is a home run. Even though the movie is about a murder investigation in which Martin’s character gets beat up a lot, it’s not a violent movie. There’s some double entendre in it, but not as much as you would see in a typical sitcom on network TV today. And I don’t think there’s any foul language in it either.

But more importantly, it’s funny, which is good, because that’s what it set out to be. I don’t want to give away the jokes, but the scene where Martin shows up with a puppy for a peace offering had me laughing longer and harder than I’ve laughed in years. And you’ll probably be able to watch the scene two or three times and notice something you didn’t notice the first time.

And if you’re a fan of old movies, you can have fun watching the old clips interspersed within and play guess-the-actor and guess-the-film with them.

If it sounds promising to you, buy it (used copies are pretty inexpensive online–around $5 plus shipping). Or the next time you’re in the mood for a movie and none of the new releases look good, give this oldie a spin.

But don’t blame me if you end up buying it.

My 2007 trip to Chicago

Dave Farquhar General , , ,

I just got back from Chicago. I used to go there a lot, but hadn’t been since high school. Consider this my travel diary. I don’t expect it to be interesting to most people, but maybe someone else will find it useful.Lodging

We stayed at a hotel in Rosemont. The rates are much better in the suburbs, but to get to the Museum of Science and Industry when it opened at 9:30, we had to leave at 7 am. That’s counting the shuttle ride to get us close to the El station, the trip in the El with a transfer to another line, and a transfer to the bus line. So we were spending roughly five hours of our day traveling to and from the hotel.

Transportation

We used public transportation because parking in Chicago is expensive and it’s difficult to drive there. We may reconsider that in the future. It’s also possible, though, that if we stayed downtown near the things we want to do, we still wouldn’t need a car. The trip to the airport would be longer, but we only make that trip twice.

The CTA tourist pass is a really good deal, and the more days you buy, the deeper the discount. And if you make a mistake and leave the station when you meant to change lines, the mistake won’t cost you any extra money if you have the pass. If you’re paying as you go, it will.

My sister and brother in law used a Water Taxi to go from the Field Museum to Navy Pier via Lake Michigan. That was after we had split up for the day, so we didn’t do the Water Taxi thing, but they said it was a fun experience.

We flew to Chicago. I love flying, or maybe I should say I used to. I’ve flown three round trips since Sept. 11–once to and from Dayton, once to and from Orlando, and once to and from Chicago. The “random” screenings are absolutely, positively not random. I’ve been flagged each and every time. I know why. My name sounds vaguely Middle Eastern (it isn’t–it’s Scottish). As I was being patted down yet again today, a thought occurred to me as well. Why would any Arab use the name “David?” That would be like a member of the Bush family using the name “Saddam.”

My bag set off alarms, so it must have tested positive for something. Other than shampoo or sunscreen I have no idea what, but they weren’t going to tell me what they thought it tested positive for. After all, with a name like Farquhar, I might be a terrorist. Can’t trust those bagpipe-toters.

I’m thinking the next time, we should consider Amtrak. Chicago is a 45-minute flight from St. Louis, but the TSA told us to get there 3 hours early because of security. Figure 3 hours sitting at the airport, whatever time the plane has to sit waiting to take off, the time in the air, and the drive to the airport, and you’re up over the 4-hour mark. Amtrak is about 5 1/2 hours. It’s longer, but it’s a lot cheaper (I found a rate of $88 for two adults round-trip) we won’t get as much guilty-until-proven-innocent treatment, we can carry more baggage, and as far as I can tell there are a lot fewer silly restrictions on what we can take. Since my wife is a diabetic, we have to keep some food with us at all times, which meant we had to buy a bunch of food at the only place within walking distance of the hotel. The quality of what we could get wasn’t very high, and the prices were double or triple what we would have paid close to home (think $5 for a box of Cheerios). And we had to throw away our leftovers since we couldn’t put them in our carry-on luggage. I guess there’s a bomb recipe somewhere that calls for Cheerios and apples. Oh, wait. No, bringing outside food in might hurt the airport’s profits. But we’ll call it “security” because that sounds better.

Driving is an option, of course, but I can’t drive to and from Chicago for $88 in a Honda Civic.

So I’m thinking Amtrak, and put the savings toward staying in a hotel in a less out-of-the-way place.

Things to do

As far as things to do, the City Pass is a good deal. For $50, you can go see the observatory, the Han*censored* Building viewing deck, the Shedd Aquarium, the Field Museum, and the Museum of Science and Industry. If you see four of those, you more than pay for the booklet. Plus you don’t have to wait in line. That can save you a couple of hours per attraction all alone.

We’d buy the City Pass again.

Where to eat

What’s the point of going to Chicago if you don’t get pizza, right?

We tried Gino’s East one night on a tip from a friend of my brother in law. Of course it’s good. The place has been around since 1966.

But we got to talking pizza with the bus driver as we were en route from the Museum of Science and Industry to the Han*censored* Building. He told us to try Giordano’s. As luck would have it, there was a Giordano’s within walking distance of the hotel.

Now that I’ve done some digging, I think Giordano’s was the place we tried back in 1989 on our second trip to Chicago.

I liked them both. They were both distinctive, and neither is something I should eat on a regular basis if I want to continue to weigh about 145 pounds. But on a future trip I wouldn’t mind eating dinner at one and then doing dinner the next night at the other.

I remember the very first time my family went to Chicago was in 1985. We wanted to get Chicago style pizza, and somehow or other we stumbled on this place called Perry’s. I have absolutely no idea where it was. I found a website for a place on Devon Avenue in Park Ridge by that name that’s been around since 1967, and the menu features the Gutbuster, which I vividly remember Dad pointing out to me on the menu in 1985. So it’s possible this was the place.

Being our first experience with Chicago-style pizza, Perry’s is now a family legend. And you know how legends go. They get bigger with each passing year. I think within a couple of months the pizza in our memory had become a foot thick, or at least six inches. And nothing we’d had before, and nothing we’ve had since was half as good.

Part of me would love to find Perry’s again, but part of me thinks it would be best to just let legends be legends.

For lunch, a good choice is the nearest hot-dog stand for a Chicago-style hot dog. Let me preface this by saying I normally do not eat hot dogs. I don’t care much for the taste, and I know they’re one of the least healthy things on the planet for you to eat. But I liked these. A traditional Chicago-style dog has onion, tomato, pepper, pickle relish, mustard, chile pepper, and celery salt served on a poppy seed bun. If you put ketchup on it (the person at the counter won’t), the ghost of Mike Royko will come haunt you, and he’ll undoubtedly have some other disgusting ideas for things you could have put on the hot dog instead.

I wouldn’t eat them on a daily basis due to health concerns, but I’ll eat one every time I go to Chicago from now on.

Shopping

There aren’t many places on the Magnificent Mile that I can afford to walk into, let alone shop at, and I’ve never been much for shopping anyway. I hear Chicago has lots of really great train stores. I stayed away from those, putting my short-term financial goals ahead of my hobby.

But if you like to shop, there are tons of places to do it.

Maybe this is the end of being like a yo-yo

Dave Farquhar General

I run this website on a shoestring budget, using a PC in my office strung off my home broadband connection. I’ve been doing it this way for something like 7 years.

That was all fine and good, but it stopped being reliable recently.My ISP hands out IP addresses over DHCP. It saves them some money and probably helps prevent abuse. It used to be that my address could go for months without changing. But recently that changed, and my address can change several times a day now.

I had a hardware device on my network that used to detect these changes and do all the updates that were necessary to keep me online at https://dfarq.homeip.net all the time. But then that stopped working.

I’ve fixed that now, so this web site should be a lot more reliable now. At least, if my Internet connection is up, my web site will be up.

My connection does still drop occasionally for no good reason. Southwestern Bell swears there’s nothing wrong with my connection. But I’ll fix one problem at a time.

The Calvin and Hobbes search engine

Dave Farquhar General

Sometimes a real gem turns up on Digg. Like the Calvin and Hobbes search engine. Remember the punch line from a priceless strip, but don’t remember much else? Key it in, and it’ll find the strip for you and tell you when it was published.

I found most of my favorites by searching for “aiee!”

I sure hope bringing attention to it doesn’t make it go away…

Making stuff the old-fashioned way

Dave Farquhar General

There are people on eBay who buy up old DIY magazines and books, cut out the individual articles that tell you how to make stuff, and flog them for $3 or $4 apiece. It seems like those magazine articles told you how to make just about anything.

But what if you get outbid? What if you don’t want to pay $4 to read a 4-page article? And what if you can’t find the article at the library? (Conveniently they don’t tell you where the article came from.)

I’ve got a web site for you.Visit vintageprojects.com. You’ll find a little bit of everything there. Woodworking projects. How to build go-carts and scooters. Even how to build tools so you can build ever more sophisticated stuff.

Give it a look.

And in the meantime, if you ever run across a stash of old ’50s DIY mags, you’ll recognize it as a business opportunity.

Incidentally, I found that link on retrothing.com, which is a really cool blog about old stuff in general.

This isn\’t the weirdest thing I\’ve seen stolen

Dave Farquhar General , ,

I heard about this on the radio yesterday: A Baltimore man was arrested when he was spotted driving with a 30-foot light pole belonging to Baltimore Gas and Electric sticking out of the front and rear windows of his station wagon.The DJs had some good questions, of course. Did the station wagon have fake wood paneling? How’d he get the pole into the wagon by himself? What was he going to do with the pole?

I suspect he was going to sell the pole for scrap. I thought they said it was made of aluminum (the story I found online didn’t say). At 40 cents a pound, a 30-foot aluminum light pole would be worth more than a few bucks. But I would think the people at the recycling center might get a little bit suspicious when someone brought in a pole that looks just like the one across the street. But maybe that’s just me.

Another possible explanation is just that there was alcohol involved.

The weirdest thing I’ve ever seen stolen was a 12-foot fiberglass chicken valued at approximately $1,500 (in the early 1990s). The chicken had been standing in front of a trailer park (where else?) in Columbia, Mo. When I did a search in the newspaper morgue, I found two other instances of chicken theft since the mid-1980s before the owner put an end to it by erecting a tall pole for the chicken to stand on.

The last theft turned into a media frenzy–hey, not much else happens in Columbia on Mondays–with people calling in to radio stations reporting chicken sightings all over town and people getting teary-eyed on the 6 o’clock news, bawling that the chicken meant so many things to so many people and they couldn’t believe it was gone, and wondering who’d steal a chicken.

I guess they forgot about the other two times the chicken had been recovered. People have short memories, I guess. After they put the chicken on a pole, reports of thefts ceased. (I have spies who keep an eye on Columbia for me, although, come to think of it, I do have much more important things going on.)

Hey, maybe the guy who stole the Baltimore Gas & Electric pole had a fiberglass chicken?

Dumbest line I heard all day, Installment I

Dave Farquhar General

"You don’t have to know how to program in PERL, you just have to know how to use PERL."

PERL, in case you don’t know, is a programming language. If you’re not going to program in PERL, what are you going to do with it?To me that’s like saying you don’t have to know how to ride a bicycle, you just have to know how to use one.

BMW is opening a plant in India

Dave Farquhar General ,

Here’s the best tidbit from the article I found:

“The Indian automobile market offers significant growth potential in the long term. With our increased presence there, we will be well positioned to fully tap into this potential,” Chief Executive Helmut Panke said in a statement.Well, duh. All those Indian IT workers are going to need fancy cars to buy once their salaries get more in line with the rest of the world.

Are other automobile manufacturers listening?