Personal

Digital Conversion Batch 3

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With the money I made selling off my old gear on eBay I more than was able to pay for my next round of digital conversions. I had about 1,000 photo’s and 35mm slides I got from my parents I wanted to scan. I also had a VHS tape my dad wanted on DVD, and my sisters wedding.

Once I send this batch out (hopefully over the weekend) and get the final product back I can goto my parents place and go through their remaining photos and see what else needs scanning. I think I have the bulk or at least over half of their photos already scanned.  Now all I need is for my mom to help me sort and date allot of this stuff.

I am still a fan of Home Movie Depot. They have been great. I just hope I don’t jinx myself as I am sending in another batch of stuff to be converted! Yes I am superstitious like that.

My Love / Hate Relationship With eBay

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This summer I have been keeping busy cleaning up my apartment and getting rid of or digitizing stuff. Part of that project has been to sell off stuff on eBay. I go through cycles of selling stuff and buying stuff. I am trying to offload stuff that I don’t need, is in good condition, and actually still has resale value.

In the past few weeks I have sold an old iPod Classic 160gb that I haven’t really used since I got an iPhone last year. I finally decided to part with it when I realized that it still has decent resale value. I sold my iPhone 3G when I realized it too could be sold even with all of AT&T & Apple’s limitations on it. I was amazed at how much one could go for. It didn’t pay for the new 3GS I bought at non-new contract price. It did come pretty dam close though. I also finally sold my old Airport extreme base station I had, and an old IP phone I had. I have a few more phones to clean up and sell, plus I am pondering a sale of my netbook since I like the size but the screen makes it hard for me to use it much. I am looking at some slightly larger screened stuff. There is a dell with an 11.6″ screen and some 12″ models are coming down in price. I am not ready to buy yet, since I think I want to wait till Windows 7 comes pre-installed but I am looking.

eBay and Paypal was nice and easy to use. I have used ebay for years, but the shipping of stuff was always a pain. I had previously bought some labels for shipping. After I realized that the USPS will pick up packages and my door man will hold stuff to be picked up my life of selling stuff got a lot easier. I can setup shipping and print out labels right from Paypal. That makes the system great. What really sucks about eBay and Paypal are their rules and all the fee’s. I had an auction that I wasn’t happy with the buyer so I refunded the money and canceled the auction. eBay only refunded me the final value fee. I still had to pay the insertion fee. Granted it was the cheaper fee, but the auction was made null. Why should I have to pay for buyers stupidity? What really got me was when I refunded the payment via Paypal I was charged a fee for returning the money. I could swear that in the past I was able to refund money without any fee’s. Now I have to pay money to return money? Come on. If there was competition I would say fine fee away, but Paypal is owned by eBay. What other payment system works with it like Paypal does? The answer is none. I won’t get started on the inability of sellers to leave negative feedback anymore. That is just stupid.

In the end my only real options on selling stuff is ebay or Craigslist. Both are good for some things, and not so good for others. I haven’t tried Amazon marketplace after they wouldn’t let me sell a mobile phone without a contract, but I should give it a try in the future.

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The Vegetative Weekend

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After 12 days of work, and several late nights I got this weekend off. One of the project’s I was on has a deadline today and we had lots to do. Thankfully I am now about to catch up on sleep for now. There was a few really late nights plus the weekend work. The funny thing is even with all the work I put in over the past two weeks it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as I have lived through. I am not trying to jinx myself or anything. I just noticed even with lots to do the management is aware of the toll it takes on people and tries to alleviate the pain when possible. I like that. For reasons I have gone into many times I don’t go into details of my work on this site, but one of the reasons I love my current job is in a lot of ways how people are treated. It isn’t perfect, but it is a far cry from where I was for years at Partsearch for example.

With work over late Friday I took the opportunity to relax and do not much of anything this weekend. Friday night I meet up with Mike, Luke, Stanley and others for a few drinks. Saturday consisted of sleeping late, TV watching, and some apartment cleaning. Today consisted of sleeping late (a theme for the weekend) more TV watching, work on this site, writing, and general lounging around.

Now the weekend is gone all to fast. I am back to work tomorrow, even if it is working from home. I am thinking of taking Friday off to burn off some vacation time. I will see towards the end of the week if that will be possible. Right now I want to finish up some writing and then I am off to bed.

The Vegetative Weekend

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After 12 days of work, and several late nights I got this weekend off. One of the project’s I was on has a deadline today and we had lots to do. Thankfully I am now about to catch up on sleep for now. There was a few really late nights plus the weekend work. The funny thing is even with all the work I put in over the past two weeks it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as I have lived through. I am not trying to jinx myself or anything. I just noticed even with lots to do the management is aware of the toll it takes on people and tries to alleviate the pain when possible. I like that. For reasons I have gone into many times I don’t go into details of my work on this site, but one of the reasons I love my current job is in a lot of ways how people are treated. It isn’t perfect, but it is a far cry from where I was for years at Partsearch for example.

With work over late Friday I took the opportunity to relax and do not much of anything this weekend. Friday night I meet up with Mike, Luke, Stanley and others for a few drinks. Saturday consisted of sleeping late, TV watching, and some apartment cleaning. Today consisted of sleeping late (a theme for the weekend) more TV watching, work on this site, writing, and general lounging around.

Now the weekend is gone all to fast. I am back to work tomorrow, even if it is working from home. I am thinking of taking Friday off to burn off some vacation time. I will see towards the end of the week if that will be possible. Right now I want to finish up some writing and then I am off to bed.

Thursday / Friday Update

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Not much to report over the past two days, but I wanted to write a bit since I have been neglecting writing for a bit. Worked from home Thursday & Friday. Ended up not going out tonight since it got really nasty out and most of my friends ended up not going anywhere either.

Work was hectic but nothing out of the ordinary went on.

A Birthday Dinner With The Folks

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Yesterday was my mom’s birthday. My parents were at my sisters last night, so we ended up going out to dinner tonight after they came back into the city since I am on the way home. Well I can be on their way home if they go through Manhattan instead of taking the GWB. We went to the Waterfront Crab Shack. I love that place. Well I love good sea food. I had some crab cakes. It was a nice night with my parents.

I gave my mom her gift. I gave her my Amazon Kindle. She had interest in one when my sister was given one so I decided to upgrade and give her mine since it was in perfect condition. Actually when she got home and opened it up she called all mad at me since she thought I spent a ton of money giving her a brand new one since i put it back in the original packaging. I assured her it wasn’t. She wont use it until she travels so I hope she remembers how to use it.

Dinner And a Wedding With Far Away Friends

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This weekend was my friend’s Joe & Karen’s wedding. I know Joe from my time working and living in Baton Rouge. I know Karen since she went to the same High School as I and we have the same group of friends we kept in touch with after school. As an aside I find it interesting I hang out with Karen now, but didn’t know her at all when I actually was in HS. That is true for a few of the friends I know from back then. Ok back to the story. One of my other friends John introduced both of them to each other when he was living down in BTR. And now they got married. Karen moved down south a few years ago to be with Joe, but they decided to come back to NYC to have the wedding.

Friday night there was a rehearsal dinner of sorts, but in reality it was just friends and family getting together for dinner. We went to City Crab. On a previous trip to NYC a bunch of us took the couple their (I had to be reminded that since i was like hey we are going to city crab i love that place when they told me the venue, and couldn’t figure out why they chose that location) so we went back. I had the surf and turf. Filet and Crab Legs. It was fantastic. Afterwards a bunch of guys went out for a mini bachelor party. We were going to do that Thursday but Jayson couldn’t get out on Thursday so we pushed to Friday. Gretchen did just have a baby on Sunday! We had a good time, and that is allt he details on that subject.

Jayson ended up crashing at my place instead of having to pay for a hotel. We got up today and hung out by my place for a while before heading into the city for the wedding. There may be another post on the shopping spree we went on. We meet up with Scott (yes another one) and went over to the hotel where the wedding was.

The ceremony was nice on a deck at the top of the hotel. We just missed the rain so it was perfect timing. John actually showed up. That was a pleasant surprise since no one expected him. His wife also just had a baby so he wasn’t sure if he could get out. He did. It was a fun wedding. I even danced a bit, but not much. It was relatively small, but I don’t like huge parties.

I grabbed a ride home from John after the festivities were over. Overall it was a great weekend.

Around NYC With Out of Towners

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Yesterday I got a call late from my friend Joe. He is in from Baton Rouge (or nearby BTR to be exact) for his wedding. His local friends and family flew in a few days early. He gave me a call to find somewhere interesting to do. I ended up meeting up with him and his friends at his hotel. We headed out to Little Italy for some dinner at my favorite italian place on Mulberry Street. We then headed to Union Square for a round of drinks at Heartland. We were going to head to some other pubs but Karen called and we meet her and some of her friends at a bar we went to back in May near their hotel. We hung out there for a while and then everyone headed home. it was a fun night. I met allot of Joe’s friends for the first time. I will be hanging with them tonight for dinner and at the wedding tomorrow.

I grabbed a cab home and thankfully it only took me 10 minutes to get from the east side to my apartment. I decided last time I was out with Joe & Karen that I will pay the extra money for use of the Tunnel to get home, vs the 59th Street bridge. it is so much faster, especially at night. I didn’t get home till 2AM, so I am glad I took today off.

Another Unplanned Day

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Today I was planning on heading to my “home base” office downtown. Everything was going according to plan until I got the email saying the express 7 train wasn’t running and I would be expecting delays. The station was packed when I got there. As I was waiting for the train I got an email from someone I am sharing office space with and he was going to be in the office at the same time as me. Thankfully if there wasn’t a train delay I wouldn’t have gotten the email since I would have been on the subway. Due to a short shuffle of desks I am sharing a desk with someone since we are both rarely in that office. Today we would be conflicting. With the train delay I wouldn’t make it to that office and make my 9AM call anyway. I decided to goto the midtown office and forage for an open spot. That place is allot bigger and I have a much better chance of finding space. Sure enough I did. The rest of the day was a bit different since i was somewhere i wasn’t planning on being. Now I had meetings that I could do in person vs over the phone. Things actually worked out really well since I got allot done. I like the mid town office, but I don’t always like schedules changing at the last minute.

I didn’t get out of the office till almost 6. So much to do! Thankfully I got my inbox to 0. My to do emails are only at 34. That is great for me. I am off to the mid town office again tomorrow to meet with someone who is visiting from out of town. That trip to mid town was planned though!

For dinner I tried some prepared chicken parm from the grocery store by my house that I bought yesterday. It was pretty good. That was the first or second time I have tired prepared foods from them. I will use them again for that sine I have had good luck so far. It is nice to just heat the oven and drop something in. It is also a change of pace from grilling up fish or steak. Either way it was tasty. If it keeps I have the other half of the portion for dinner tomorrow.

The Weekend Went By So Fast

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This was a totally lazy weekend, even by my standards. It was partially unintentional. I got a head ache in the early afternoon yesterday, and it didn’t go away the rest of the day. Thankfully it didn’t get really bad, but it was bad enough to curtail any evening plans I had.

Today was not much better. I did a bunch of shopping online for things I have been procrastinating buying. It was mainly replacing some clothes that I have that are getting ratty. I also did my laundry and cleaned up my apartment a bit. I waited for a Fresh Direct Delivery in the afternoon. Dined on fresh Sword Fish in the evening. I gotta love fresh stuff from Fresh Direct. I also decided to try and finish a book I started over a year ago. Not sure why I stopped reading Pattern Recognition because it was good, but I have about 1/3 left to go.

Now it is getting late and I don’t know where the weekend went. Oh well. I am off to read another chapter or two before bed.