I was just about to describe how I’m feeling today based on how my eBay sales were today. Then I realized that to do so would be a co-dependent behavior and I should not do that.
It’s 4:02 PM and my schedule is happily drifting, as per usual! I am not looking forward to therapy tomorrow morning at 9:30 because that time is right in the middle of my sleep! Ugh, this is not cool, my dude. This is not cool at all and it’s going to end up how it always ends up… Depression due to my inability to regulate my sleep schedule!!!!
Yikeroni. I don’t know what to do at this point. My live has become unmanageable. No, it has always been unmanagable. There was a brief period of time when I had a solid routine. December 2019 for about a month I had a great sleep schedule, a great routine, I was doing well even though I was worried about my future.
Now what the hell is going on? Why does my schedule keep drifting? Oh yeah, sleep quality. My terrible couch.
Well I think I figured out a workaround for that. I’ve been sleeping on my camping pad and I feel much more rested when I wake up. I don’t wake up a ton of times and have to adjust to find a good spot. With this camp pad, I’m out like a rock and I sleep a solid 8 hours without interruption.
I suppose now I can start to repair my sleep schedule? The tricky part is dialing it back, waking up early means being tired. Going to sleep early means… doing the impossible!
I suppose I could pick up some melatonin, but that shit’s expensive!
I don’t know why I’m so adverse to spending money on my self care. I just bought another broken OnePlus One which I plan on repairing. It cost $36 and for once it actually has a working screen! It seems that screens are the most common thing which goes bad. This one I bought has broken volume buttons.
Anyway, I’m probably insane for buying another one, and I haven’t even flipped a single phone yet. I repaired one by doing a mobo swap, only to realize that the digitizer was partially bad. I got a little dismayed after that. Partially bad means completely bad, as that’s not something I would use for myself, so I can’t possibly sell it that way.
Today I wrote a big long description for the phone for when I actually list it on eBay. Shit about how the phone is, “a phone you can feel good about,” and how it doesn’t have Google Services Framework and that’s a feature not a bug.
It’s a pretty solid description and I think it will give the listing and the phone some flair. If I started selling OnePlus Ones today, I’d have the OnePlus One market on eBay cornered, so I could theoretically charge whatever I wanted.
Speaking of cornering the market, I was listing Precious Memories cards last night. Can you believe that people are willing to pay $7 plus $3 shipping for a COMMON Precious Memories card? Pretty unbelievable, but that’s what the sold listings say! The only thing is that there’s only about 3 sales a month like that. I was just looking through my stack of cards and it got me thinking about the money that would come in if I was able to sell the entire thing for $7 each! That would be a great return on investment.
I’m thinking of dedicating today to just listing Precious Memories cards. Last night I learned some things about listings with variations.
Here’s one of my listings. You can see that there is a dropdown for buyers to choose what card they want. I thought this idea was pretty beneficial at first, but then I realized that the dropdown menu adds a pretty significant list of downsides.
eBay calls the options in that dropdown selector, “variations.” I assume there is a limit to how many variations I can add, which makes this listing a ticking timebomb. Someday I won’t be able to add another card.
That caveat is enough to not use variations in this manner, but the list of caveats is much larger. The category the item can be under does not include the category which the card belongs in! In other words, only certain item categories allow for variations, and Japanese Collectibles isn’t one of those categories. Instead, I had to put this listing in Music Synthesizers, which means buyers might not even find this listing!
Once added, a variation cannot be renamed. This means that a card named, “01-050” is forever, “01-050.” What if I want to prepend “Rin” to that card name? I can’t. I would have to delete that card, then create a new card, “Rin 01-050.” as well as adjust my inventory level for that card, it’s price, and it’s picture.
I went through and tried for myself how the buyer experience would feel. It’s not good, browsing through a big list of card names. The names help, but I’d have to restart all my work because a lot of the cards don’t have names next to them. As a shopper, I want to see pictures, not card numbers!
Buyer experience: bad.
Here’s the last thing I wanted to comment on. This is how I create variations. In the right column, I can re-arrange cards however I want. I gave up on sorting by number because… just look at that wall of text! I couldn’t handle the visual parsing that was required. If the card names were in a neat column with a consistent width, I think I might have a better time, but this list is just going to get bigger as I add more cards. Dragging and dropping is less than stellar, as well. The animations and the behavior of dropping a name atop of another doesn’t feel good.
Seller experience: bad.
I think it’s safe to say that I’ll be adding individual listings for every card. This way, it optimizes searches. Buyers will be able to find what they’re looking for. It optimizes my seller experience. I can use the bulk edit tool to change prices or descriptions, without navigating through submenu after submenu of variations screens.
It was nice to figure out how to do variations though. In the future I’ll be using them for other listings, but at this point I don’t think it’s a good idea to use them for cards.
4:30PM. I’m going to go train before the sun goes down.
Training complete. I did 10 laps around the firepit, running the back half and doing 2 pushups per lap.
I haven’t done pushups in a few days. I feel a bit stronger. Last year, doing 2 pushups were a monumental feat. Today, I can do 20 in under an hour.
That metric doesn’t seem very special. 20 in under an hour I mean. Since I take long breaks between every set of 2, I’m able to do 20. I wonder how many I could do with no break? That might be a fun exercise to try in the next few days.
I asked my brother M. if he wants to go thrift shopping this weekend. We did that once before, years ago. I need to go thrifting and make some acquisitions. I’m out of thrift store acquisitions to list. Right now all I have to list is home stuff that’s been here for a long time.
I think shopping with a friend makes the experience much better. I don’t feel as anxious. I can share ideas and laugh and feel at ease. It would be nice if he wanted to go as well, since we don’t hang out that much anymore.
I have the cutest desktop wallpaper.
I wonder if this image is a composite of CGI and a photo, or if it’s 100% CGI? It’s got a film grain and lighting attributes to it which is readily reproducible in Blender nowadays. The textures would probably be the hardest part to get into Blender. They’d have to be scanned in somehow and mapped to the 3D structure of the objects.
I think the artist who made the above photo also did this one–
So cute! There is a really cute dance that this Mini Miku did on a park bench (or was it a table??) I have it downloaded somewhere but I can’t find it.
I’m watching a press conference from the SpaceX Crew Dragon in flight abort system. I just went ahead and skipped Joe Bridenstein’s introduction because I know what it’s going to be.
Go USA. Go USA. Go USA.
Something like that. It’s always a nationalism thing with him and I’m not into that. I skipped straight to Elon’s part in which he covered the nitty gritty specifics that I’m interested in.
Wow, people are going to be strapped to the top of a Falcon 9 rocket. That’s big news! Very exciting. SpaceX has so many good things going for it right now. I hope everything goes well!
Just yesterday, SpaceX launched a new feature on their website. I thought it was a joke at first, but on trying it out, I think it’s the real deal. You can basically reserve cargo space on their rockets via their website! It gives a quote and everything, based on the cargo specifications you input. I punched in some sample data and my quote was around 1.3 million dollars! It even has a place to enter a credit card. A 1.3 million dollar credit purchase. LOL, I can’t even imagine what making that purchase would feel like!
Wow, Loren Grush with the Verge asked a heavy question during the conference. She wondered what would happen if the first stage exploded while the Dragon spacecraft was still attached. I would have been too afraid to ask a question like that, but Elon’s answer was very enlightening and I’m glad Loren asked the question!
Today I learned that in the future, SpaceX would like to “catch the Dragon” using Ms. Bird and Ms. Tree, the two vessels which are configured to catch the reusable second stage fairing.
LOL, Elon pulled out his phone during the press conference to better answer a question from the press. Looked like an iPhone 11.
Bridenstine is such a tryhard. I don’t like him. Team Elon!
OMG, I think Elon and Jim might have a frenemy relationship going on. Immediately after Jim said he docked successfully and will do it successfully every time in the future, Elon goes ahead and says the docking simulator is, “pretty straightforward.” LMFAO take that, Bridenstine!
I think I’m doing the thing that I dislike people for. I’m being nasty towards a person. If I met Bridenstine in person, I’d probably be very respectful and congenial. But behind his back I guess I put him down?
Hmm, this judgemental behavior might require some reflection. It might be worth looking into why I do it.
I’m aimlessly watching YouTube now. I suppose I should list some shit on eBay. I guess I’ll do that once I finish writing today.
I’m grateful for SpaceX. I’m grateful for Elon Musk. I’m grateful for NASA.
I was thinking of jumping on the flif (image format) bandwagon. Then I realized it wasn’t a new thing and it has performance issues. I don’t think it makes much sense to do, unless the rest of the world adopts it. I’m not about to code a plugin for GIMP or implement a Firefox extension to make it work with the software I work with.
I dunno what else to write. I’m distracted by YouTube Investment Joy which is a channel that gives me hope for a future where I work for myself, work mostly by myself, and feel independent and provide value for my community.
I could be a laundromat landlord. Not that I really want to, but my dad says Laundromat owners make a lot of money.
Brandon on Investment Joy is talking about a house property he bought for $35,000. That is not a typo! Holy shit, that’s amazing. It was a dump when he bought it but he fixed it up to something that I would be comfortable living in.
It’s got wood flooring with pee stains but that’s totally fixable. I would just slap vinyl flooring over it and call it a day.
OK I’m gonna go list some shit before 8:30 when I hop on Squad because I’m an addict.
