I woke up to no Internet today. Argh! No Internet! Nooooo! I thought I had an auction I needed to bid on around 10:20 too, but apparently there was no such thing. What a relief. And the connection connected soon after.
I've had a sudden urge to bid on random items this weekend, and I've been looking at so many things I don't even know what I need anymore. An addiction to replace Youtube, maybe?
So far I've bought a silk shirt, a pair of shoes, a few N64 games, a bundle of Pokemon cards, a bundle of MAGIC cards, and a somewhat decent laptop with double batteries and upgraded RAM. Yeah! I'm on a roll!
All of said were purchased at a good price too, shipping costs included. Much cheaper than I could find said items new, and probably cheaper than they'd be at a regular second hand stores, but you usually don't find these types of things at second hand stores at all. I did find a small bundle of under-priced Pokemon cards once, but the only pair of shoes I've ever found (and bought) in my size was a robust pair of winter boots that give me blisters if I wear them too long.
They're very robust though. Good to have something you can walk in if all else fails and withers down with age and the future grows so dystopian auction sites are banned (reason maybe being they're too lucrative for the buyer?).
I don't think I've ever seen a laptop at a second hand shop either, though there's always a variety of monitors and a few overpriced stationary computers. And tons of cables. The diversity and quality is just on a whole other level online, and the pricing is much more flexible. As a seller you have the disadvantage of shipping costs, but as a buyer you can use those to your advantage while bidding on multiple items, or if you happen to live in the right place bypass them entirely (their being listed on the page makes it seem like the products are more expensive than they are, effectively getting rid of the competition). Spring is the best time to buy stuff too, since it's the time when people want to rid themselves of surplus, and the demand is much less than it is after summer or the end of the year. I don't think I've ever checked an online auction mid-summer. Maybe that's the best time of all.
Anyway, I hope I've justified my spontaneous shopping spree at least a bit with the bargain potential. I'm happy but nervous about the laptop - since computers are an uncertain area, happy about the shirt and shoes - that I need, and happy about the cards and games - that I probably don't need. The latter should be a good investment either way. The laptop probably won't have much future value, but if I can use it that's all that matters!
As for Pokemon cards: if I had the guts to buy gigantic bundles on thousands of cards a piece, I could probably make a small business splitting those into smaller batches and selling them individually, but even a real bargain price is a hefty price to pay for that big a batch. A bundle on 4,000 cards just passed me by, but it's OK. It would probably have been more work than profit, and it would probably have cost me more than everything else I've bought combined.
There are things I wish I'd bid more on, but it's a good thing I didn't get most of the items I bid on, especially fortunate with a few that I always regret bidding on as soon as I do. I mean, why am I bidding on PSX games I probably won't ever play? And would I ever wear purple shoes? I don't need another old Powermac either, even if it is blue and white and awesome. But the potential business for those large Pokemon card batches still seems intensely alluring...
There's some manga, a bag with a few hundred table tennis balls, a bundle of hard drives, a Wacom tablet, and a few PSX games I do want in my list of reminders, but when all this is done I'd better be done with my impulsive online auction urge. When you're considering bidding on things you have no use for, you know it's going too far. It's so easy.
Speaking of shopping: Dan Bull put out a collection of albums recently - his entire Generation Gaming series thus far, from 1 to 10, and his first three studio albums! First three and only three, thus far.
It's not 10,000 songs like he claims in his clickbait video, but it is a total of 13 albums containing 156 songs, and cover images in each. You can grab the full package for no more than $3 (the video says 1$, but that's not directly true either). I do appreciate the gesture! And thanks to this little gig I found Groupees, where many a similar deal seems to be going down. It's a whole world of possibilities there! I mean, just check out this Taxpayer Bundle, with games like Flatout 3 for no more than a mere dollar! It seems like a pretty cool place. Yes I did waste wisely contribute a few dollars.
That Dan Bull bundle was up at a total of 6,000 dollars when I bought it btw, but it's closing in on 10k fast! And 10 days remain. That's enough to pay the rent for an entire year. :O Impressive gains on a one-bundle campaign.
Otherwise? The week passed like lightning, and I'm running out of titles for these posts since each week feels like the previous. I did visit two museums (Sjöhistoriska and Idrottsmuseet) on Tuesday, which was pretty fun, and we've had a couple days that were as close to summer as you can possible get with spring, but of course I spent most of those most intense two in the office. (Not voluntarily.)
The weekend's been rainy though, and my jogging ambition's going so so, but I just started doing the Tapp Brothers morning routine at least. So far so good. I'm still not getting nearly enough exercise, but there's just so much to do by the computer! Both works and hobbies, and the daily writing, and movies, and games (I played through Oni again this weekend), and this one Flash project that should've been done months ago. I feel I need a real time-management overhaul soon.
In less notable events: I rolled by the Central Station last Friday, and noticed for the first time the bed of cigarettes that line the track. There were hundreds, thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of cigarettes just lying there. I guess there's never enough time to clean the tracks at the central station - this bustling meeting point to which all trains must stop and go.
Speaking of things you see on train rides: there's an abnormal amount of graffiti and tags beside the tracks too, and one gang in particular seem to be everywhere. BST, or BZT. I see their tags all the way from Karlberg to Årstaberg, and I think I spotted their mark in Jakobsberg too... or was that Spånga? They line the concrete walls and fences in an endless collage - especially in Karlberg.
They have some great graffiti, but I could do without the endless rows of scrawls and scribbles. It feels like they try to cover as much surface as possible, with little regard to artistic effort, or even suitable surface texture. Is that the goal? Is it to make an impression? Or a statement? Or is it pure territorial pissing? I'd like to know.
Aaand I think that's about it for this weeks thoughts and happenings. On the blog I've posted this this and this, and 6 movie reviews - among them all the rest of the old Star Trek movies. Finally got through the lot of them! And they weren't bad. Looks like I posted this too. Without further ado, here's last week to review, and that's all. See yall, in a few.