One thing that constantly drives me nuts about eBay/Half.com

Is that people don't leave you feedback. Had everyone with whom I'd done business had left me feedback, I'd have a score of 58. That is how many feedbacks that I have left. Instead I have a 38. TWENTY PEOPLE have gypped my of feedback. At least mine is 100% good.

Bastards. :-)

I think I may stop leaving feedback for the mega-sellers and only leave it for smaller people who leave it for me first.

I needed to leave feedback for a book that I just bought that came in late last week, that's when I decided to see how big my gulf had grown. I think it's ridiculous that you have to send someone an email asking them to leave you feedback, that shouldn't be the case. It should be automatic: as the seller, as soon as the buyer pays and the product ships, LEAVE FEEDBACK. For the buyer, as soon as you receive the product and verify it is in the stated condition or better, LEAVE FEEDBACK.

How friggin' difficult is that?! Apparently far too difficult for a lot of sellers, a lot being about one third of the sellers out there.

Sigh.

Harry Potter spoof starting up

A web comic that I quite enjoy, Sluggy Freelance, is starting Torg Potter and the President from Arkansas. It starts with Torg Lastnamelessone getting aboard the Succubus, not entirely willingly. (He's Lastnamelessone because in the comic he's just Torg.)

Previous Torg Potter series include Torg Potter and the Sorcerer's Nuts and Torg Potter and the Chamberpot of Excretions, neither of which I remember. Gonna have to get back and read them some time.

News of the Weird

I read several comics off of MSNBC.com. Unfortunately they rearranged their editorial cartoonists and I really don't like their new methodology. Anyway, they carry a feature called News of the Weird. Somehow they manage to be a week or so off from the web site from whenst it originates, but that's the way it is. Well, I quite liked the lead stories from last week's edition:


In July, after word got out that the video game "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" could be fitted with an online update to make some of its scenes explicitly sexual, an 85-year-old grandmother in New York sued the company, Rockstar Games, for having failed to rate the game AO (adults only, age 18 and up) to take account of the modification. However, Florence Cohen apparently freely purchased the M-rated version (age 17 and up) for her then-14-year-old grandson, even though it invites players to murder, steal and engage in gang violence and attacks on police. She complained only when she found out that the M version's unexplicit sex and partial nudity could be made explicit. [MSNBC-AP, 7-27-05]

News That Sounds Like a Joke

(1) In July, as teams of poverty-stricken soccer players from around the world showed up in Scotland for the "Homeless World Cup," immigration officials denied entry to players from Kenya, Zambia, Burundi, Cameroon and Nigeria because they lacked funds for lodging and meals during the tournament. (2) In March, when Knoxville, Tenn., prosecutors ordered 582 parents of chronically truant students to a meeting to advise them of their responsibility to get their kids to school, 241 failed to show up. [Guardian (London), 7-20-05] [Knoxville News-Sentinel, 3-16-05]


(News of the Weird can be found here, complete with archive of many previous editions.)