Tips for running a garage sale

Dave Farquhar General , , , , , , , ,

On a forum I frequent, the discussion turned to garage sales, and some people shared some horror stories. As someone who visits a lot of garage sales, I’ve seen the ways people deal with some of the pitfalls. In the interest of encouraging garage sales, I’ll share my tips for running a garage sale.

tips for running a garage sale
Quick: can you spot the common (but very serious) error in this photo of a table at a garage sale? Keep reading and you’ll find the answer. This may be the most valuable of my tips for running a garage sale.

One problem is people showing up at 5 or 6 in the morning wanting to get in early. The best way to prevent this is to be vague about your address. Be specific enough that they can find it, but vague enough that they can’t find it early. What do I mean? Don’t say “2329 Jefferson” in your ad and streetcorner signs. Say “single-family sale, 23xx Jefferson.” Then, when you’re ready to open your sale, put a sign in your front yard and open your garage door. Last of all, have a helper go out and put some signs on nearby major intersections.

The early birds can still show up if they want, but they’ll have no choice but to sit in the car and wait for you, since they won’t even know for sure which house is having the sale. Only the people really, really serious about buying something will, and those are the people you want.

Lowballers are the other problem. I’ll admit, I’ve asked for discounts before when buying large quantities of stuff, but I don’t demand them. I see some people demanding discounts on everything, no matter how low the initial price is. Yes, I know that’s annoying. I’ve actually had people running sales ask me if I’m interested in the same thing they’re getting lowballed on, in hopes of selling it to me instead. Garage sale prices are already pennies on the dollar, but some people insist on squeezing out every last penny.

The best tactic is to lower your prices late in the sale, say, after 10 am. Advertise that prices will be 25% or 50% off at 10 am, and maybe knock something else off at 11 am. When a lowballer tries to play games with you, just say, “no discounts until 10 am.” They can come back then, assuming the item is still there. If they really want it, then they’ll pay your asking price.

Do be realistic about your prices, though. I once went to a sale, picked out 10 items (unmarked) and asked how much. I was expecting $10, maybe $20 at most, based on what I paid at other sales. She asked $60.

What did I do? I went through the pile again. It turned out half of it was stuff I could turn a small profit on at $6 each. Half of it was stuff I couldn’t sell for $6 myself. So I put those back. I reluctantly paid $30 for the other five. I honestly doubt anyone else expressed interest in what I put back. If it ever did sell, I’m sure she didn’t get $30 for it.

If you don’t know how to price something, visit a few sales yourself to get an idea what stuff goes for. Or at least visit your nearest thrift store and see what they charge for the kind of stuff you’ll be selling.

Leaving items unmarked and soliciting an offer encourages lowballers to offer 10 cents for things that ought to be priced a dollar. Or it leads to awkward exchanges like mine, where someone puts most of it back.

Do keep in mind a significant number of people who come to your sale are looking for things to re-sell. They may have a booth at a flea market or antique mall, they may sell on eBay, or something else. You’ll have some bargain hunters and curious neighbors, but most likely the majority will be resellers. Their profit margin isn’t your main concern. But the general rule of reselling is that 3x markup is the minimum that works. If an item sells on eBay for $10, the most you’re going to get from a reseller is about $3. The reason is because eBay is going to take $1.50 in commissions. The government is going to take another $1.50 or so in taxes. So the seller spends $3 to make $3-$4. But of course the seller would rather spend $1, sell for $10, and make $5-$6.

I’ve seen old Marx train cars priced at $50 at garage sales because the seller claimed he saw one just like it go for $100 on eBay. In the cases I’m thinking of, it’s always been a very common car worth no more than $20, so I know the seller was either lying or mistaken. If you think you have something really special, my advice is to attempt to sell it on eBay instead. You’re not going to get eBay prices at a garage sale. Essentially, as a garage sale operator, you’re a wholesaler.

If you don’t want to hassle with eBay, take a name and number from anyone who shows interest.

One tactic I see sometimes (and my family used) is to advertise a sale as a moving sale instead of a yard or garage sale, in order to get better prices. Advertising a moving sale can allow you to get better prices for your highest-end stuff, like furniture or nice electronics or perhaps name-brand clothes in nice condition. But things like used toys and VHS tapes sell for about the same price no matter what you call the sale.

Some people post phone numbers in the ad. Unless the ad runs the same day as the sale, this is a mistake. It’s just asking people to call you and want to see your stuff early. I admit I’ve done it myself. There have been a couple of times that I couldn’t find a sale, the ad had a number, and I called for directions and ended up buying a lot of stuff. But if you don’t want people calling you all hours of the day in advance, it’s probably not worth it. Putting a nearby landmark in your ad is just as effective and saves you the phone calls.

Finally, I’ve seen people take out ads a week or two in advance of the sale. I don’t see the point. Most circuit regulars don’t plan beyond the upcoming Saturday. So placing an ad early just forces you to do a lot of explaining to disappointed people that the sale is next week. The best day to advertise is the Friday before. The day of the sale is often too late, as many people have already made their plans. An ad in Saturday’s newspaper can draw in people who change their plans on Saturday morning, or people who plan spontaneously. But if you’re paying for the ad, Friday is best. If you advertise on Craigslist, run your ad early in the week and refresh it closer to Friday.

Did you catch the mistake in the photo at the top? Arguably there are two, but one of them is worse than the other. Organizing the stuff into logical groups would help it to sell better. The toy cars, the tools, and the electronics ought to all be together, rather than making it look like someone dumped a box of random stuff onto the table.

But the bigger problem is no price tags. The box of miniature light bulbs in the upper right would easily sell for $10 online. Mark it at $3, and it will sell. Unmarked, don’t be surprised if someone offers 10 cents.

And those are my tips for running a garage sale. I hope they help you have a less frustrating, more successful sale.

I think I found my next major purchase

Dave Farquhar Saving money

At Costco today, I found a solar-powered attic fan for $319. I’ve been thinking about an attic fan for a while. Solar power solves at least one problem very neatly: no need to run wiring to the thing.

The idea is that your attic can reach 150 degrees, and blowing that hot air out removes that heat blanket, so your living space stays cooler and your air conditioner doesn’t have to work as hard.Supposedly the savings is around $200 a year. So the fan pays for itself in about a year and a half. Not to mention making the house more comfortable.

I’ll be paying someone to install it though. I hate roofs. I hate heights and have a peculiar talent for injuring myself. So it’s worth it to pay someone else to install it, even if it costs a year or two of the fan’s savings to do it.

It’s worth it. A savings of $200 a year is significant.

Counterfeit software

Dave Farquhar Software

I had my first brush today with counterfeit software. I guess I’m not surprised that people fall for it (or maybe some don’t care), but if you know what you’re looking for, it’s possible not to get suckered.The software was presented as OEM software. That’s all well and good, and there’s nothing illegal about buying OEM software even without a hardware purchase. The vendor certainly doesn’t like it, but once they have their money they have very little control over what future distributors do with their software.

The problem with this software was that it just didn’t look right. The seller claimed his supplier repackaged the OEM software in paper sleeves. That’s fine, but Windows CDs aren’t printed in color. They have a hologram on them. These discs appeared to have a scanned image printed on them with an inkjet printer. They may have even been stick-on labels, rather than printable discs, because some of the discs still had perforated centers on them.

He also tried to sell me some Adobe Master Suite CS3 and CS4 discs. I’d never heard of Adobe selling OEM versions of its master suite, but I humored him. I half expected the discs all to have the same license key printed on the sleeve, but they did have unique keys. When I questioned the discs’ authenticity, he just said nobody who’s bought from him in the past year has complained about not being able to use the software. He didn’t deny they were counterfeits, but he also didn’t try to claim they were anything but.

Having seen authentic Adobe CDs, these didn’t look right either. Like the fake Microsoft discs, the artwork appeared to be printed on an inkjet printer of some sort. It was fuzzy. The styling was also very different from what I’m used to seeing from Adobe. There’s a certain minimal, elegant look that Adobe goes for in its designs, and the busy surface of these discs just didn’t look like that at all.

I didn’t open the sleeves and probably wouldn’t have been allowed to do so, but I’m pretty confident that opening them would have revealed the discs were burned, rather than commercially pressed.

I handed all of the discs back and kept my money. The prices on the Microsoft software weren’t much lower than what I could get it for from legitimate sources. The Adobe software was considerably cheaper, but I don’t want pirated software, and I certainly don’t want to pay a lot of money for pirated software. I’ll save that money for a used, legitimate copy of an older version instead.

I found a blog

Dave Farquhar Saving money

I found a blog: Fivepercent.us is all about saving energy. Over the course of the last 4-5 years, Tom Harrison and his family cut their electric bill in half. I’m impressed.Politics aside (and Tom Harrison admittedly is to the left of me), energy consumption is one place everyone can save some money. He argues that many people can save $100 a month or more. That’s better than a $1,200 raise, because it’s tax-free.

And while I’ve done lots of things to get more energy efficient–programmable thermostat, new HVAC system, plastic on the windows, spray-foam insulation and weatherstripping–my bills are still a lot higher than I would like. $70 a month during the winter, when I’m not running the A/C, seems like a lot. And I know little to none of that is climate control. So I’m glad I found it.

Energy isn’t likely to get any cheaper. So it makes sense to get started now.

Wiring the house

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , ,

My trusty Linksys WRT54G started dying yesterday. I think I’ve had it 3-4 years, so it’s had a decent run.

I have some temporary wiring in place until I decide what I want to do, but I really think I want some wired Ethernet.For one thing, my phone wiring is really bad, and I think that’s affecting my DSL speed and reliability. Modern CAT5 wiring would solve that problem neatly. And if I ran a dedicated unfiltered line straight to the modem and filtered lines everywhere else, I could get by with just a single line filter, instead of a half dozen. That should improve reliability too.

And while I’m running CAT5, I might as well run two wires, so I’ll have convenient network jacks in several places in the house. And if I’m running wire, I might as well run CAT5e and get gigabit capability. That should give me faster and more reliable networking, both locally and online.

The project would take about $100 worth of cable and jacks, I estimate. I already have plenty of jacks, so I’d just have to buy a spool of CAT5e. That, and find the time to run it.

I may keep wireless around for ultimate convenience (a combo DSL modem/router/access point costs about $70, which isn’t much more than another WRT54G, and my modem is getting old too), but I like the idea of having my desktop PCs connected via gigabit. It’ll make sharing drives more practical, and potentially much more secure if I get fancy with network segmenting and firewalling.

I think I’m going to be asking the network wizard at work a lot of questions… Good thing he sits right next to me.

And now mostly I need a free weekend to do all this.

The "good enough" PC

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , , , , , , , ,

PC World has a treatise on “good enough” computing. This isn’t actually a new trend but it’s never stood still for as long as it has now.Jerry Pournelle used to describe cheap CPUs from Cyrix and IDT in the late 1990s as “good enough.” Running at 166 and 200 MHz, they ran Windows 95 and NT4 and Office 97 just fine. They weren’t good gaming CPUs, but for everything else, they were great, and you could build a computer with one of those and save $100 or more over using a comparable Intel CPU.

Trouble was, the mainstream moved. Intel knocked off all the upstarts by starting a megahertz war, and AMD came back from a near-death experience to compete. The requirements to run Windows increased nearly as rapidly, and it wasn’t all that long before 900 MHz was pretty much the bare minimum to run Windows comfortably.

But chips kept getting cheaper, and today you can buy a 2 GHz CPU for pretty close to what a Cyrix or WinChip CPU cost. But you get more than 10 times the power for that money. And Windows XP runs perfectly comfortably on a 2 GHz CPU, whether it’s a new Intel Atom or Celeron or a 5-year-old corporate discard. So does Office 2003, which is the very last version of Office that any sane person would want to use.*

*Besides being the evil spawn of Windows Vista and Microsoft Bob, Office 2007 also crashes more often than Windows 3.0 did. The only way I can go a week without losing work from Office 2007 crashing is to go on vacation.

The PC World author claims that Linux and Open Office running on Intel Atom CPUs will be the undoing of Microsoft. I think that’s a bit of a stretch. Netbooks running Linux got returned to the vendor a lot. I suspect the biggest reason is because they probably couldn’t figure out how to get their USB mobile broadband cards–I’m talking the stuff that cellphone vendors offer for 50 bucks a month–working in Linux. That, and they probably couldn’t get Flash working so they couldn’t see Facebook and other popular sites the way they could on their regular PCs.

Frankly, the two things that keep me from buying a $200 Dell Vostro netbook this weekend are the price of mobile broadband ($50 a month), and my concerns about the reliability of anything sold by Dell in the last 5-6 years. I work with a lot of Dell equipment, and once the warranty goes, their machines do not age gracefully at all. But I think Dell will sell a lot of these units, because the price is absurdly low, they weigh two pounds, and they run anything but 3D games and intensive graphics apps nice and fast. Sure, a dual-core system with its memory maxed out and a solid state disk will outrun it, sometimes even running circles around it, but that system will also cost 10 times as much.

I do think Office 2007 is the best thing that ever happened to Open Office. Open Office’s interface is a lot more familiar and doesn’t hide anything, and while it may not be as fast as Office 2003, it’s certainly faster at most things than Office 2007 is.

Linux has been usable for basic computing for a very long time, but getting it installed and configured remains a challenge at times. A netbook that connects painlessly to the wireless networks in restaurants and to cellphone makers’ mobile broadband cards while running Linux probably stands a chance. Giving some automated, easy means to synchronize application data and web bookmarks between the netbook and a desktop PC would probably help a lot too–something that does the same thing that Activesync does for moving data between Windows PCs and Windows Mobile PDAs. Will these things happen?

But I do think an era of “good enough” is upon us. There was a time when the top-of-the-line PC would be entry level within a year or two, and that’s not really true anymore. The entry-level PC of today is comparable to the mid-range PC of five years ago. For most of my lifetime, basic computing on a five-year-old PC was always painful, no matter how good that PC was when it was new. That’s not the case today.

Graphic designers, video producers, and scientists will always need ever-more powerful systems for their work, so they’ll continue to drive the cutting edge. But everyday computing is stabilizing. I don’t think Intel wants the future of everyday computing to be the cheap Atom CPU, but at this point it may be impossible to avoid it. If Intel decides to quit playing in this space, AMD can design something comparable to replace it in the marketplace. The Geode won’t cut it, but something based on the Athlon XP architecture and built using a modern process certainly would.

And frankly I’m glad about this development. It’s been nice not having to buy a new computer every three years or so.

The Pure Digital Flip Ultra F260W

Dave Farquhar Video ,

I bought a Flip Ultra last night. It’s the most featureless video camera I’ve ever used, but I like it. Surprised?

For what it’s designed to do, it works very well.The specs are unimpressive: Fixed focus, 1x digital zoom, 640×480 resolution, no expandability, 1 hour of recording time.

But sometimes you want simplicity. And it’s very simple to use. Hit one button to turn it on and another button to record. Plug it into your computer and software loads asking what you want to do. Arrange your recorded clips in sequence and it’ll shoot video straight to DVD or YouTube or your computer, among other things. If you want more features, you can load the clips into another video editor for heavier cleanup.

This morning I wanted to capture my son playing with his new toys. No problem. I set the camera up on a tripod and got to be part of the fun. All too often when shooting video, you miss all the fun because you’re babysitting the camera.

It’s small and light. It fits in a shirt pocket. I took it to church with me and shot a few seconds of my son playing in the cryroom.

You can playback and delete individual clips right from the unit, and you can hook it up to a TV if you want to see what it looks like on something other than its postage stamp-sized screen.

While I’d like autofocus, optical zoom, and the ability to record on SD cards, that’s just not all possible at a $150 price point. Not now. Maybe in a couple of years. In the meantime, this thing gets you by.

I’ll be able to capture some memories easily, and when I want to demonstrate something works when I sell it on eBay–like when I finally get around to selling those three Atari 8-bit computers in the basement, or thin the train collection a bit–it’ll take me five minutes to make the video and get it on Youtube. Embedding it in the eBay listing will be the hardest part. That’s good. And by being able to demonstrate that those computers and trains work, I should get higher bids, and I may even make back the money I spent on the camera.

For what this camera is meant to do, it’s great. Serious videographers will need something more powerful. But the casual user will love this thing. It works reasonably well, and it’s so easy to use, a lot of people won’t even have to read the instructions to start using it.

How to make a really nice $500 computer

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , , ,

Steve Jobs: “We don’t
know how to make a $500 computer that’s not a piece of junk.”

Steve Jobs is either lying or lazy. I’m guessing he just doesn’t want to play in that space. Of course, you probably
already knew that.

Here’s how to make a really, really nice $500 computer. All prices are
from Newegg.Intel Atom 330 motherboard/CPU combo: $82
Kingston or Crucial 2 GB DIMM: $20
OCZ Vertex 30 GB SSD: $129
2.5″-3.5″ HDD adapter: $19
Lite-on 22X SATA DVD burner: $23
Foxconn MicroATX case with 300W power supply: $40
Windows XP Home OEM $90

So there you have it. $403 before shipping. You still need a keyboard
and mouse, but there should be enough after shipping to get something,
assuming you don’t already have one. While this system won’t burn the
house down, the dual-core Atoms are surprisingly quick and more than
adequate unless you’re heavily into gaming or media production. But if
you’re into those things you aren’t in the market for a $500 computer
anyway.

The Intel board is unglamorous but very dependable. It also draws very
little power and runs very quietly. It’s great for word processing and
e-mail, adequate for multimedia, and it’ll play non-3D games just
fine. Other companies are making Atom boards, but I’d stick with Intel this time. ECS doesn’t have a history of producing top-quality boards, and I’ve never heard of the outfit making the other Atom boards Newegg sells. Plus, I think the non-Intel boards have Atom 230 (single-core) CPUs in them. It’s worth paying the extra $15-$20 to get that second core.

The SSD will make this computer outperform many more expensive
computers. But more importantly, it won’t crash. Anyone who’s gotten an
untimely phone call from a relative wondering why the computer won’t
start up and where all those digital pictures went will appreciate that.
A conventional hard drive would cost as little as $40 and gives more
space, but 30 gigs will last a while with a casual user. And the lack of
disk crashes is probably worth the extra money. Between the SSD and the
Intel board, the system will be very quiet, which is probably worth
something. In this era of PCs that sound like wind tunnels, you don’t
really appreciate whisper-quiet PCs until you have one.

The memory probably isn’t totally critical, but when you can get Kingston or Crucial for 20 bucks, it makes sense to do it. They’ve both been around forever and have a long history of making quality memory. There’s no reason to put anything other than a 2-gig stick in this board’s single DIMM slot. The system will take 2 gigs, and 2 gigs is cheap.

The rest of the parts are nothing special. Lite-on makes reasonably good
optical drives and has been for some time now, but if something else happens to be on sale for under $20,
or something else happens to be available with free shipping, that’s fine. You
won’t lose anything by using it. Foxconn cases look reasonably
professional without costing a lot of money, and their power supplies
are decent enough. An Atom board with an SSD won’t tax any power supply very hard anyway. You can buy a
cheaper case if you want, but be sure to read the reviews. Some cheap
cases are made of really light-gauge metal and are prone to cut you.
I’ve never had that problem with Foxconns.

The other trick with cases is to watch shipping prices. For whatever
reason, Newegg charges more to ship some cases than others, so it could
very well be worth your while to look at cases that cost $5-$10 more.
Shipping could actually make them cheaper.

You can get the proper mini-ITX case for boards like this, but you’ll pay more for it. Unless you need the really small form factor, it makes sense to just use a cheap and common micro-ATX case. The bonus is that you get some expansion space if you want to add another optical drive, card readers for your digital camera memory, or stuff like that.

And XP Home is XP Home. Vista may run on this system with 2 GB of RAM
and an SSD, but seriously, does Vista do anything that XP doesn’t?
Especially Vista Home vs. XP Home? I’ll stick with the old reliable. I
happen to know from experience that XP Home runs very nicely on a system
with 2 GB of RAM and an SSD.

This particular system will perform nicely, will be extremely reliable
(it wouldn’t surprise me if it still functioned perfectly fine 5 or 10
years from now), and depending on the case, can be easy on the eyes. And
if you want to get swanky, you can skip the cheap case, get an $80
Lian-Li and a separate sale power supply, and have a great-looking PC
while still staying south of $600.

Any way you do it, this system will cost more than a $399 mass-market PC. But I think it’s more than worth the $50-$70 premium.

And this is why I don’t drink

Dave Farquhar Baseball , ,

Early in the morning of April 9, 2008, just hours after pitching six shutout innings, 22-year-old Nick Adenhart was killed when a repeat-offender drunk driver ran a red light and plowed his minivan into the Mitsubishi sports car Adenhart was riding in. He died in emergency surgery a while later. Two other passengers died at the scene.This kind of bullcrap happens all the time, pretty much every weekend, in at least one major city. Usually it doesn’t even merit more than a couple of paragraphs in the newspaper because we’re so used to it. It made national headlines this time because one of the victims happens to be one of the California Angels’ best pitching prospects.

It’s a symptom of a macho culture where the measure of a man is how many six-packs he can put away, and what he can manage to do afterward. I saw this in college all the time, where the role models we were supposed to emulate were the losers who would stay up until 4 or 5 in the morning drinking, then sleep for two hours and get up, shower so they didn’t smell like a brewery, put on a suit, and go to the 7:45 church service.

At least my story doesn’t get any worse. Church was right next door, so they didn’t have to drive and put anyone else in danger. Of course, if they’re still playing the same game today and driving to church two hours later, that’s reprehensible.

But in some circles, driving 45 minutes to get home is part of the culture. Down a case of beer, make a lot of noise, then drive home without killing anyone, and somehow, that makes you a man.

Bull puckey.

Real men consider the potential consequences of their actions. Real men set out to do as little damage to the people around them as possible. Real men try to make the world around them better, not worse, as a result of their actions. There are even some men who manage to deal with high stress jobs with lots of responsibility, deal with that and with all of their other problems, and manage to deal with it all without ever turning to alcohol.

Now that’s a man.

I don’t care what the myths say. Supposedly if you weigh 400 pounds, you can drink about three times as much alcohol as I can, because you weigh almost three times as much as I do. And indeed, you may be able to drink larger quantities than me without passing out. But a beer or two still affects your judgment, whether you weigh 98 pounds or 400. I once saw a demonstration where a professional race car driver drove an obstacle course. He drove it effortlessly when he was completely sober. Then he drank a beer and got back behind the wheel. He still did fine. After two beers, he still did OK on the course, but he said he could feel a difference. After three beers, he could no longer drive the course.

So after three or four beers, you really don’t have any business behind the wheel. Your ability to react to emergencies is diminished enough that at that point, you’re putting yourself and others in danger.

I don’t know what the answer is. We can lock Adenhart’s killer up in jail, and that’ll keep him away from beer and out from behind the wheel of a car for a while, but eventually he’ll get out. Will he do it again? One thing I learned living with an alcoholic for 18 years is that alcoholics never really learn a lesson from their addiction, regardless of the consequences. At least not until it costs them something that they want more than the bottle, which is rare. I don’t know if he’s an alcoholic or not. If he is, you can make him go to treatment, but once again, if he’s not ready, it won’t take, and he’ll be drinking again shortly.

Taking his driver’s license away didn’t keep him from driving this time. Can you take his car away and prevent him from being able to purchase another one? That sounds good to me, but I don’t know if that’s legal.

Ultimately the solution is cultural, but I don’t know how you get rid of that. For some reason, a sizable portion of the United States is fascinated with people who can put away gutbusting quantities of alcohol. We don’t have the same admiration for people who can smoke a pack of cigarettes in one setting. We’re morbidly curious about people who can eat half their weight in hot dogs, but I’m not sure that we really look up to them.

And I don’t know why that is. Because frankly, all you have to do to be able to drink huge quantities of beer is to sit around and drink on Friday and Saturday nights. Do it long enough, and you get enough weight and tolerance to be able to drink a six pack or two without passing out. Some people see that as an achievement. I see it as someone desperately needing something better to do on Friday and Saturday nights.

Seriously. Get a hobby. It’s no cheaper than beer, but it doesn’t hurt anybody, and on Sunday morning you have something to show for it other than a bunch of empty cans or bottles and a headache.

Or in this case, a bunch of empty cans or bottles, a splitting headache, a wrecked minivan, and three dead victims. Not to mention a much-deserved new address, behind bars.

Marley and Me

Dave Farquhar Personal ,

My wife and I watched Marley and Me tonight. Good movie. Not as good as the book, of course. But I think they did a good job of adapting it to the screen.

I guess the book and movie hit me on three levels, rather than just two. I’m a parent, I have a Labrador Retriever, and I went to school to try to be John Grogan. That last part didn’t quite work out, but that world just doesn’t seem to exist anymore, not with a major newspaper closing its doors pretty much every week now.I’ll get the first question out of the way. Yes, the movie gives a pretty accurate picture of what life is like with a Lab. Some chew more than others. Ours has demolished a curtain, a window shade, and scarred a couple of doors, but not much else. Marley has her beat. I’ll spare you the stories about the fascination with toilets and dirty diapers. The book talks about that more than the movie, and it’s true.

And underneath the mischief is a heart of gold. You see that in the movie in spades, and it’s all true. I think pretty much any dog is capable of that kind of love, and capable of sensing when we really need them the most, but Labs are especially good at it. They may not know everything that’s going on, but they’re perfectly willing to just sit there with you and get through it, and they’ll never, ever hold anything you say against them.

The attachment between dog and child is every bit as strong as in that movie. When we first brought our son home, he was a bit suspicious of that big furry thing, and probably a bit scared of her. I remember him looking at her with those big, wide, not-so-trusting eyes. They weren’t the same big wide eyes he looked at Dad with. It took a little while for the two of them to adjust to one another, but they did. He’s 13 months old now, and he’ll climb on her or pull on her ears, laughing like it’s great fun, and she just sits there, tail thumping the floor in approval, trying to lick him. When he cries, if she’s not sure we hear it, she’ll start whimpering and jumping up on things until she has our attention.

It’s very easy to see the two of them growing up together just like the dog and kids in the movie.

I know from my own experience that his life as a journalist is glamorized. I lived that portrayal at the beginning. While all the other reporters have great stories to chase, his assignment is two paragraphs about a fire at the city dump for the police blotter. Sometimes that turns into a great story. One Saturday I was listening on the police scanner and learned about some guy burning leaves in a BBQ grill in his front yard. Then a gust of wind came, and the next thing we knew, his neighbor’s house was on fire, along with the same neighbor’s barn and field. I rushed out there and found a disaster. I have no idea what it was, but the neighbor really opened up to me, and it turned into a great story. The editors thought so too, and what normally would have been a couple of paragraphs in the blotter ended up taking up most of the page.

I chased a lot of stories of people burning leaves in BBQ grills–you wouldn’t believe how often that happens in central Missour-ah, with an "uh"–but it rarely even merited more than a line in the blotter.

I loved every minute of it. I hated every minute of it. It’s called paying your dues, because nobody wants to do write about misdemeanors and city council meetings for more than a few months. You hate writing meaningless copy, but the worst writing job is still better than doing anything else. Right? Um….

The gruff, bald, humorless, emotionless editor? True. Definitely a stereotype, but this particular stereotype has a lot of truth.

I think that’s what really hit me the hardest. Fifteen years ago I wanted to be a journalist. I changed directions because a computer professional can work pretty much anywhere. I didn’t want to be stuck writing obituaries and police blotters for a small-town newspaper 45 minutes outside of Toledo making $18,000 a year. I wanted to be able to afford a house and a car and a dog. The price I paid for a job that pays a living wage is boring and mundane work (although important). But I can’t write about it because I had to sign a nondisclosure agreement. I’m not even supposed to talk all that much about it, which is a shame because I have some great stories, like the one where a guy who makes three times my salary called me up, complaining that the network was broken because a service running on his computer couldn’t contact 127.0.0.1. (Translation: his computer couldn’t figure out how to talk to itself, so obviously it’s a network problem.)

Not being able to talk about it is the ultimate price. John Gorgan’s stories are funnier than mine, because everyone can relate to kids and dogs. People eat those stories up. I can tell you the story about trying to log into a domain controller and getting an error message that the computer can’t contact the domain controller. I yelled, "Look in the mirror!" The third time it happened, I probably inserted another word before "mirror." A small number of you reading are laughing and trying to diagnose the problem. The rest of you are wondering what on earth mirrors have to do with computers and why would anyone think that’s funny?

So I’m insanely jealous of John Grogan, but increasingly his life is something that no longer exists. Newspapers are closing their doors left and right. There aren’t enough jobs out there for the best of the best. And the only people this seems to bother are other journalists. I blame Fox News and talk radio, neither of which would exist without credible news sources to seed them, but that will become obvious soon enough.

So I’ll settle for having a son and a dog, and being able to afford to live in a safe neighborhood. And maybe when I’m 40 and too old to be in IT, I can finally tell those other stories.