The dirt on Craig’s List.

Preparing for (and partially financing) the new furniture that will arrive soon, I took the plunge and listed several furniture and home accessory pieces on Craig’s List. I’ve known about Craig’s List forever, but never actually checked it out due to the simple fact that I had no reason to check it out before.

But before I continue…

I have this thing about eBay. I don’t like eBay. Why is it that I don’t like eBay? I’m not really sure how it all started. Probably the first time I tried to navigate their klunky ad infested site while still being on a dial-up account living in Europe. Since then I have never been back and now it’s turned into something like the phrase ‘it’s the principle of the matter…” Kind of silly, really, but there it is.

So, I check out Craig’s List and immediately I’m engaged. Okay, the site looks like it was designed by some 13 year old PHP wizard in his garage, but within 3 clicks I was filling out a very simple form and uploading photos and not a 3rd party advertisement to be seen, anywhere.

One week and $4500 richer I mentioned, in a rather braggish sort of way, how “Craig’s List rules!” in my family email and quickly I get this reply from my sister Susan…

“Did you know that we (meaning eBay, the company for which she works) own Craig’s List?”

No!!!

I felt like I had been slapped in the face. Of course, I couldn’t believe it and demanded an explanation from her. (Like it’s her fault.) I can’t quite put my head around that business model. From what Sue tells me (and she really knows very little about it) it’s for the exposure and traffic it drives to their site.

I didn’t see that one coming.
I need to read the headlines a little slower. There’s no excuse for me NOT to have known that.

Their spin on what happened.
A little Q & A on the deal.
An interesting take on a broader topic.

Browser check.

I’m entering the world of Netscape 6.0 and I just saw what my web design looks like. And it’s nothing like it’s suposed to look like. And now I’m faced with tweaking it yet again. I don’t know why I bother. Not to mention some of my CSS text display fields are totally broken in two of my designs for previous clients. Gulp. I will give the Mozilla crew one compliment, however. Nice skin.

Web design class update.

Two students dropped the class and three didn’t show up at all. One girl went home with a migrane. I anticipate those four will be dropping the class as well. The rest of the students (all serious about the class) and I had a good time talking about the web server environment, then I turned them loose in the computer lab. One by one I went over their design documents and took a look at their website project. I was really pleased with the work they all did. This class more than made up for last time’s feeling of disaster. Maybe there’s hope for me yet.

Peter and Courtney are coming over for dinner tonight. I’m making Potage Crecy (creamy carrot soup) and grilled chicken sandwiches. Peter called the other day because Tim told him my computer could beat his. Heh. We compared stats and, indeed, Peter admitted defeat. He told me he’s planning to bring a computer game called “Black and White” and is not going to leave until I’m addicted.

It’s called a blog.

I checked the online order status and the new desktop is on the way. I can’t wait to use the flat panel digital monitor and see how it looks with the 64mb digital graphics card.

Did you know there’s a name for this little journal I have here? It’s called a “blog”, which is short for web log. Go figure. Now I can add “blogger” to my long list of titles.

Last night I watched The Contender on dvd. Pretty good movie, but the more I thought about it, why did she keep quiet about being innocent of the sexual scandal? Okay, it kept the movie suspenseful, I’ll give them that. However, since they went out of their way to make the woman’s issue so strong… It seems to me that a man would have immediately set the record straight, even if they were guilty. (Sorry guys, but you have old Bill to thank for that.) Good for her, I guess… But it still seemed a little too far fetched. Nice speech from Jeff Bridges’ character at the end.

Ich weiß nicht.

When I think about how long I’ve lived in Germany, and how much German I can actually comprehend, I feel pathetic.

Case in point. . .

I’ve managed to install something that turned my entire dial-up networking functions into German. And the worst of it is, I can’t figure out how to get them back to English. Aside from asking Telekom to help (I hate to admit defeat, but their software is to blame), I’m at a loss.

I’d welcome any suggestions.