Old Mail

LJ seems to be fixing the problem of missing journal comment notifications by re-sending previous notices. I've had a few messages from a week or two back, both of which I've seen before.

Then again, relocating a live and heavily-used site from one location to another can't be easy.

A flower upon your head, Yokospungeon!

Your card arrived just now, and you cannot know how immeasurably pleased I am to have such a wonderful, creative, thoughtful and thoroughly nutty person as a friend. If you don't have me howling upside down out of my chair with laughter, you have me aching inside from some wonderful insight into humanity you throw away in an LJ comment or a few salty words on Chit Chat. You are a total darling, and I am so envious of those who get to spend real time with you on a regular basis.

Think of me when the thermometer drops, because it is going to be over 30 degrees maximum from now until March. Hot and dry and windy outside. The clothes on the Hills hoist outside will be dry in a couple of blinks, but it's no time for walking abroad. I'm huddled here in front of the computer thinking it's about time for an afternoon nap.

Last night I sat outside with Kerri on the deck, looking out over the honeysuckle in the mellow night and just enjoying our time on earth together. Apart from a couple of lights ("from a distant farm house," she said) all we could see were dark shapes of trees near and far. A burble of traffic noise from Parkes Way and other roads. Very pleasant. In a couple of weeks we'll be on the Gold Coast, and the evening air there isn't so much mellow as warm velvet, so tangible is it with the humidity. Not unpleasant, but I prefer a dry heat.

onskype

Installed Skype on Kerri's laptop yesterday. Now we can talk to one another at long distance for free, even if one or the other or both is on the far side of the world.

eBay feedback

You know what cheeses me off about this? It's sellers who reserve their feedback until the goods are delivered and the buyer has given a rating. The buyer's part in the transaction is to pay for the goods. Once that's done, they can't do anything more, and the seller should rate them on how quickly and efficiently they paid, and then wait for the buyer to receive the goods and rate them on how well they were described, quickly shipped and so on.

But no. You get sellers who hang back from providing feedback until the buyer has given them a positive rating, presumably so that if the buyer isn't happy and gives a negative or neutral rating, they can then retaliate and do the same back, even if the buyer has paid the full amount promptly.

Well, stuff 'em. I'm not going to give feedback to sellers who don't rate me first. Not unless they are obvious newbies to whom each feedback point is precious.

I got stung once. Paid up smartly, got the book, had the temerity to give a (rare for me) neutral rating because the shipping cost the seller charged me was way above what he'd actually paid and he gave some cock and bull story when the postage was right there on the parcel, and he negged me back. I made sure he regretted it and withdrew the neg - you don't piss off an ex-hacker lightly - but still it left a bad taste in my mouth. I later heard about him from a customer who wanted to know if she could pick up a book from me directly as she was in the area instead of having to pay for postage. I said, yeah, come around any time, and when she did she said that once a certain seller insisted on mailing the book to her when she only lived a couple of blocks away and surprise surprise it was my old nemesis.