Gail and I started a Christmas tradition a couple of years ago — on Christmas eve, we have fondue for dinner (bread and cheese fondue first, then beef fondue, and chocolate fondue for dessert), and then everyone puts on brand new pajamas, and we all do a big jigsaw puzzle. I bought some puzzles on eBay the other day just for this reason, and noticed that the seller lives in Hamilton. I asked him if he wouldn’t mind me picking the puzzles up to save myself shipping costs, and he said no problem. Once I won the auction, we arranged to meet at a Tim Horton’s (how Canadian, eh?) across from Limeridge Mall. I told him I’d wear a red baseball cap so he’d recognize me (Gail thought that the whole “red baseball cap” thing was very funny), and he said to look for an old man with gray hair and a cane.

I was going Christmas shopping anyway, so I showed up a little early and had dinner. Vegetable soup and chicken salad sandwich combo. On whole wheat. With a Coke. I finished that and then went back up for a donut and hazelnut smoothee (mmmmmmmm… hazelnut) and while I was enjoying that, a woman who was the quintessential “little old lady” came up to me and said “Excuse me, but are you the puzzle man?” I told her I was, and she motioned me over to where she and her husband were sitting. Her husband was the man with the cane – there was a large tree in between where they were sitting and where I was sitting, so I hadn’t seen them (good thing I wore my red baseball cap!). We chatted for a minute or two, I thanked them for meeting me so I could save the shipping costs, and went our separate ways.

My car still smells like hazelnut smoothee.

At work, we use the services of SpamShark to filter our email spam. Every now and again, I log in to their web site and peruse the spam I’ve received, on the off-chance that some useful piece of email was accidentally marked as spam. The top four types of spam I receive seem to be:

1. Cheap drugs (Viagra, Cialis, et al)
2. Porn
3. Stock tips
4. Watches

The first three I can understand – sex, drugs and money – but watches? Who the fuck cares? For me, a watch is a tool that tells you the time. If it’s got the date too, alarms, stopwatches, etc. that’s great, but the time is the important thing. My watch is a cheap Timex Expedition – $40 at Wal-Mart, and I’ve had it for years. If I were in a different line of work where I had to deal with customers face-to-face, and wear suits and stuff, then sure, I’d probably get myself a nicer watch. But are there really that many people who are dying for a Rolex or a Rolex clone? If I see someone wearing a Rolex, I think that either (a) he bought a cheap knock-off to try to impress people, or (b) he’s got more money than brains. Either way, I’m not terribly impressed.

It’s the same with wheels on cars – when I was picking out stuff for my car, upgrading the wheels is about the last thing I’d spend money on. I simply do not care one iota what the wheels on my car look like.

I wrote a letter to the editor of the Flamborough Review last week, and it was published in today’s edition. There was a column last week suggesting the possibility of a “gas-out”, i.e. a day where everyone doesn’t buy gas, forcing the gas companies to lower prices. I pointed out that if you don’t buy gas on that day, when you normally would, you’d have to buy it the day before or the day after, and so demand over that three day period wouldn’t change. If gas prices drop at all, they’ll climb right back up the next day.

This is the second time I’ve been published in the paper — I had a letter to the editor of the Hamilton Spectator published a couple of years ago.

It’s over. We were told that there were some more “matters” that the court had to deal with without the jury present, so we waited from 10:00 until about 11:30 when we went into the court room. The judge immediately told us that there was a “matter of law” that forced him to discharge us – that our services were no longer required. He thanked us for our service, and told us that we were free to go. And that was it.

We were later told that it had something to do with something that we heard yesterday – something that someone had said, that the other side did not have a chance to rebut. We’re not sure exactly what was meant by that, but we suspect it had something to do with the testimony of one of the witnesses. He started to tell us something during cross-examination, at which point the prosecuting attorney objected, citing hearsay. The defense attorney told the witness that he couldn’t tell us what the other person had said, just what he did in response to it, but the witness ended up telling us anyway. Nothing was said at the time (though the defense attorney looked a little frustrated), but I think that may have had something to do with it. I certainly don’t know the law well enough to know for sure, but that was the only thing that happened yesterday that was controversial in any way.

I really enjoyed my time on the jury, for two main reasons: I got to see the way our legal system works in great detail, and it gave me time to finish Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix – all 760+ pages of it – in about four days.

We had our first full day today. We started around 10:20, since there were some “matters” that needed to be dealt with, without the jury present. Again, I can’t go into any details about the case, but the prosecution finished with the complainant (alleged victim), brought in two witnesses, and then rested her case. The counsel for the defense then brought in the defendant to testify, and that’s where we finished off, around 4:20.

I’m finding the whole process rather interesting – not significantly different from what you’d see on Law & Order or any other trial show, though those ones are usually about murder or rape or something more serious than aggravated assault. Since it’s not a high-profile case, they’re not too worried about it, but we’ve been told not to read the local papers, in case there are articles about the case, and we’re not supposed to watch the local news and stuff like that. Again, given the nature of the case, it’s not likely to show up on the news, but you never know.

They don’t call it a “confrontational” system for nothing though — the defense attorney (I know that “attorney” is an American term, but I’m used to that term, having watched the various Law & Order series’ religiously for several years) certainly pounded on the prosecution’s witnesses pretty hard, asking the same questions over and over, and pointing out any inconsistencies numerous times, even making a few snarky and sarcastic comments, but was very nice and gentle (and quiet) when the defendent was testifying. We’ll see tomorrow if the prosecutor is as sweet and friendly on cross as she was when addressing her witnesses.

So far, I’m enjoying this jury thing!

I reported for jury duty this morning at the John Sopinka Court House in Hamilton. I was one of about 60 members of the jury pool for one of two trials – one criminal, and one civil. We were told to be there by 9:30, and were told at that time that they usually get started around 10:00. Well, we sat until about 12:15 (good thing I had brought my Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix book, of which I read about 300 pages), at which point were shuffled into the court room to start jury selection for the criminal trial. First they got rid of people who knew the accused, or the complainant, or the lawyers, or any of the witnesses, then people who had vacations planned, or medical conditions, or other reasons why they couldn’t be jurors. I had none, so I just sat quietly.

Eventually, they started calling people to be on the jury. They called 20 people, and I was about the 8th. One by one, we were brought up to face the accused, and the lawyers could either accept us onto the jury (“content”) or “challenge” us, in which case we would sit down again, to rejoin the jury pool for the civil trial. I was accepted by both lawyers, so I became juror #4. We then broke for lunch, and the actual trial started around 2:45.

I’m not allowed to discuss the case outside of the jury room, so I’ll just say that it’s an aggravated assault case that took place about a year and a half ago. I’ll post some more details once the trial’s over, if I’m allowed. The trial is estimated to be about 3-4 days. Lucky for me that I was accepted into this jury — the civil trial is estimated to be 6-8 weeks. Then again, I have two pre-paid vacations booked (OK, well, we haven’t paid for Tyrolean yet, but we’re booked) for that time period, so I probably would have been excused anyway.

Anyway, it’s been interesting so far. We start around 10am, get a 15-minute break around 11:30, then lunch at 1:15 to 2:15, then another break around 3:30, then we’re done around 4:30. We will only need to be sequestered during deliberations, otherwise we can go out for lunch and come home at night and stuff, and we don’t need to stay together. I’m getting a good look at the legal system — moreso than the last couple of times I was in a courtroom. Last time was earlier this year when I fought a ticket for running a red light – the cop forgot his notebook and the case was thrown out. The other time was during 2nd year university when I had to face the serious offence of violating the Retail Business and Holidays Act — the drug store I worked in during high school was open on a Sunday back when Sunday shopping was illegal. I was charged along with all the other employees, but the charges were supposed to be dropped when the store paid its fine. The crown attorney screwed up and forgot to drop the charges, and we all had to appear in court a couple of years later (during finals in 2A), at which time the charges were immediately dropped.

So I’ve sold about 12 CDs on eBay up to now. The other day, a bunch of my auctions ended, and a few CDs ended up unsold. I then got an email from someone who wanted to buy one of the unsold ones for the $1 original bid price. I replied telling him that eBay doesn’t allow selling of items unless they are won through an auction. His reply follows:

Thanks, I appreciate your responding quickly and your desire to be a good ebayer. Just to let you know, however, once an item goes through the auction process unsold, two people can always agree to buy and sell an item – it’s called commerce. Ebay may not like it – saying ‘it’s not safe nor protected’ but also because, having put people together, they cannot collect additional fees to relist – but they cannot stop it. We just communicate with each other using our respective emails and can pay via paypal if necessary. There is nothing immoral or illicit about it. I encourage you to broaden your horizons. Good luck with your auctions.

He’s correct that the buying and selling of good is not controlled by eBay. The thing is, his reply is too “rehearsed” for this to have been a one-time offer — sounds to me like he does this all the time. Sure, it’s legal to do this, but it’s against eBay policy, which both of us agreed to when we signed up.

The only difference between him offering me $1 for the CD and him bidding $1 on the auction is that (a) he won’t get outbid if someone else wants it, and (b) I won’t have to pay to relist the item, meaning that eBay will not get compensated for the sale. I guess it could be argued that eBay is getting compensated, since I had to pay to list the item in the first place. But then again, I could also be losing out here — if I relist the item and other people want the it, it could sell for significantly more than the $1 he’s willing to pay me. (One other CD I sold went for over $20.) If he wants it so much, he can bid for it, like everyone else. If he gets it for $1, then good for him. If someone else bids for it, then either he has to pay more, or not get it – either way, I get more for the CD.

I haven’t responded to him, and I’m not sure I will. I’ll just relist the item, like I told him I would, and see if he bids.

I’ve now sold a number of CDs on EBay, and have shipped to the following locations:

Ottawa, ON
Thompson, IA
Laval, PQ
Mt. St-Hilaire, PQ
Tomah, WI
Columbus, MI
Hope Mills, NC
Santiago, Chile
Fort St. John, BC (same guy bought 3 CDs)
Bessemer, AL
Oklahoma City, OK
Carollton, TX
Grimshaw, AB
Memramcook, NB
Oshawa, ON
Rochester, NY
Vancouver, BC
Beaverbank, NS
Quinto di Treviso, Italy
Brescia, Italy
Lisbon, Portugal
Lithgow, New South Wales, Australia

I’ll update this list as I sell more stuff.

Update: Sold 2 more CDs!

I officially became an eBay seller last week. I’ve got a stack of old CDs that I never listen to anymore, so I figured I’d try to sell them on eBay. I’ll probably also sell the Montreal Express jersey that I bought a few weeks ago, which ended up being too small.

I started off small – just listing one CD, and I’ll wait until it sells and gets shipped and everything before I do any more, in case I learn any tips from that one. I chose Robbie Robertson’s Storyville CD, and I’ve already got one bid (of $1). This isn’t a huge money-making venture, but it’s kind of fun. However, I did see that one of the other CDs I chose to sell (Salty Dog’s Every Dog Has Its Day) seems to be out of print, and rather rare, so that might be cool.

Search for auctions by eBay ID ‘scotch_pie’, and contribute to my “New (Larger) Montreal Express Jersey” fund!