Tempted by Tech

While at work today, I received a call from my wife. She was calling to tell me that Amazons deal of the day was a GPS. She wanted to know if she should buy it for me. I couldn't believe my ears. My first instinct is to say go for it. But deep down I knew I really new that I didn't need one more electronic toy. So as tempting as it was to hear my spouse want to spend money on a tech gadget for me, I tapped into as much will power as a man could muster up and said no. For now when I need directions I'll just have to rely on what man has from the beginning of time, the sweet voice of my wife telling me to turn left in .2 miles.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPod touch]

Junk or treasure

Occasionally in my business I have clients that have equipment that is so old, that they ask me to get rid of it. The most recent acquisition was a rack of old audio equipment. Before I saw what equipment they had, I envisioned equipment that I would value and have a use for. I was a bit disappointed when I took my first look and could tell the the gear almost predated my existence. I remember thinking to myself, now I know why they wanted me to dispose of it. Being a recovering electronics pack rat, I let the gear sit around for 6 month and then decided to list it on eBay. To my surprise there is quite a market for this stuff especially internationally. With that I'll end with the time honored quote: "One man's old dusty vintage electronics is another man's pay pal deposit".

Getting Schooled on eBay

This past weekend I listed two items on eBay. It has been a few years since I've sold anything on eBay. My wife is the master of eBay in our house and so I usually elicit her help in selling stuff. This time I decided to go solo, which was a big mistake. I used their quick format for listing the items. By using this method, I did not put in the typical jargon about restrictions on where I ship to. The first item sold for the buy it now price to someone in London. So now I'm trying to figure out the cheapest way to ship a Wii game internationally. This has become quite a hassle. Instead of shipping from my house, I now have to go to the post office and fill out customs forms. I like to think that have most things mastered when it comes to tech, but alas I must concede my crown to my wife when it comes to eBay.

The Joy of Backing up

Before upgrading my PC to Windows 7, I decided to try an online backup service. What I did not realize is the time commitment involved with uploading all of my data. It's been about 7 days and I only have about 60% of my data backed up. The reason behind trying this method of service is that I'm not diligent enough to backup data on my own regularly and I value the importance of having an off site copy of my important data. There's 4 days left on my free trial of the backup service. That should be just enough to upload the final bits. Oh how I wish someone would create an indestructible, high capacity, high speed, non-stealable hard drive.