At the bottom of my street are a couple of communal recycling bins, accepting paper, cardboard, packaging and plastics. They’ve been there for a few years, and I take care to seperate my recyclables.
Today, the council let us all know how much paper we’d saved over the last year……by putting a leaflet through our doors.
Honestly…Ok, so I’m on eBay looking for some bargains and I can’t help but think that some of the people using eBay might have missed the point of an auction.
Y’see, an auction is supposed to be a place where you bid as much as you are willing to pay for an item, and see who wants it the most. But over the past few days, I’ve seen a lot of people playing a different game. They seem to be trying to pay an amount as close to the item’s retail value as possible, without going over. Sort of like a real version of The Price Is Right.
I’ll give you an example. I was bidding on a used computer game. I had already had the foresight to look at online retailers to determine what they were selling it for. Play.com had the lowest price, so I deducted the postage costs from their price and found the maximum that it was worth paying for the game. Then I deduct a little more to find my maximum bid that I’m willing to go to.
In the end, I got sniped in the last minute of the auction, something I hate to see (but am forced to do myself in order to win any auction).
To these people, I ask you a question: What is the point of paying £24.49 for a used version of an item that sells brand new for £24.99? Seriously! Is it some sort of psychological compulsion? I know eBay addiction exists, and some people just have to win an auction, but I’ve seen this behaviour so many times, it’s worrying.
My sister once bid on a book and CD for teach yourself chinese. The seller actually put in his listing: “Please don’t bid more than £25 for this item as the book is still in print and sells for this amount.”
She was sniped in the last five minutes by someone who paid £27 for the book.
What a tool.
The problem is, I don’t see an easy solution. It’s a balance between getting the best bargain, and getting an item you really really want. If I put in the maximum bid I was willing to entertain paying straight away, I’d probably get sniped at the last minute, but I could end up paying more than I might have otherwise got away with. If I constantly re-bid on the item, I push the price up anyway and risk going over my personally set limit for the item.It’s a terrible thing when you realise you may actually be getting dumber.
For a few months now, I’ve been putting up with my Bit Torrent client hampering my web browsing, causing web servers to reset my connection because my computer took too long to respond to their requests.
Only now have I tried fiddling with the settings. Finding the controls that limit the number of outgoing and incoming connections seems to have corrected the worst of the problem, and I’m fairly sure that tweaking it will eliminate the error altogether.
But four months before I went looking for the settings?
I’m more than a little worried…
That advert for Heaven chocolate is getting on my nerves.
How come it’s OK to portray men as disposable commodities in adverts in the UK? We’re constantly bombared with images of men being used, abused and dumped by women, just to sell product.
This advert features a woman answering her door to her date, she throws his flowers nto her apartment, checks out his underwear, kisses him and ruffles his hair, then abandons him on her door step with the words:
“I had fun tonight. Call me soon.”
She then goes inside to eat chocolate. And I know that it’s an allegory, a deliberate exaggeration of events to emphasise the product. But all I can think when I watch it is he’s not going to call her any time soon because she comes across as slightly unhinged.Well afer my disasterous attempt to make Vista work on the internet for a friend, I now realise what the future of computing is.
What’s the problem Hal?
I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t communicate with that peripheral. Do you have the driver disc?
No Hal, I don’t have the disc.
I think it’s a camera Dave. Can you select which manufacturer from a list?
IT’S A PRINTER HAL!!!
An hour of trying to get it on the Internet. It couldn’t even recognise a local area connection, and seemed to think that all broadband internet is PPPoE (telephone based ADSL). My friend had cable.
I seem to have a reputation of being a ‘fixer’ of PCs. I tell you, the proudest moment was when my dad, cut off from my support help when I moved out, figured out a complex problem on his own. It was like that line in Superman
The father becomes the son and the son….the father.
Ever noticed how in a crowded lift going up, the people getting off on the lower floors are at the back of the carriage and the people going to the top are next to the doors? Thos going the furthest are in a poition to get out first, before those going a shorter distance.
And when you finally finish off the carton of juice or bottle of coke from the fridge, the last drop always fills the glass to the top, without overflowing.
I started wondering about these things while watching a boring movie at the cinema (yes, it was that bad).
Well, like most mysteries of the universe, the answer is in the maths.
The volume of juice in the carton or bottle is a function of the volume of the average glass size. Since most people will either fill the glass most of the way, or fill it half way when taking a drink, (when was the last time you saw someone pour themselves two-thirds of a glass), the volume of drink left at the end is usually exactly one glass full.
And the lift? Well, in a shocking discovery this week, I found out that if people are waiting for a lift to arrive in the morning to go up to work, those going to the higher floors arrive after those going a shorter distance. They then fill the lift carriage in the order they arrived.
But exactly why this occurs remains a mystery…Man, those adverts are annoying…
The latest one is about a cleaner for sinks, bathrooms and drain cleaner. It features the most disgustingly dirty sink followed by a grime encrusted toilet bowl.
The Cillit bang works as advertised and cleans away the dirt and limescale, looking like it hasn’t been cleaned in months. The lady in the advert says “I don’t use my ordinary bathroom cleaner any more.”
I turned to my sister and said “I don’t think she uses it now.”
