Flashes of Panic

I’ve got three eBay auctions under my belt now, with the third (and least successful, cash-wise,) a CD burner, just waiting for payment. It’s been interesting; I’m not really “making money” in the sense that I paid more for these things than I’m selling them for, but I am in the sense that I’m replacing objects which have little or no use to me with a more liquid asset.

I’m definitely not going to try making a living on eBay, nor do I intend to scrape deeper and deeper in my closets looking for sketchy stuff to sell. But in terms of moving out stuff which isn’t in use? It’s fantastic.

Today I helped someone in the office sort out a Java application issue. (Mac running OS 9.2, throwing NullObjectException errors if I remember correctly; we switched browsers from Netscape 7.0.1 to (shudder) IE, and it worked. Must have been a VM compatibility problem.) He was watching eBay Live auctions, with the intent of bidding on one later this afternoon, after work.

Have you ever watched one of those things? It can raise your pulse just looking. I watched one start at $50 and sell at $500 in the time it takes me to compose a sentence. I can’t think that fast, usually. And we saw one where someone spent about $4k in about forty seconds. It made my head spin. Now, there’s an area of auctioning I’m definitely not cut out for.

Now Playing: Perfect Blue Buildings from August & Everything After by Counting Crows