I sit here depressed.  I've written about the excitement of bidding.  I would go so far as to say winning an auction puts me into a euphoric state, albeit temporary.  I know a few of you have probably even yelped a "Woo Hoo!" when you won an item!  Say it with me now, "Woo Hoo!"

Then that "high" wears off for a few days.  You wait for your kind seller to carefully pack your item and ship.  You visit www.UPS.com or www.FedEx.com and track the spoils of this online addiction seemingly by the hour.  You watch as it moves state by state.  Day by day the excitement your felt days before creeps back.

"Ding dong"
The door bell rings.  Woo Hoo!  You look out the window and see the "Angel in Brown".  That goofy outfit they wear has never looked so nice.  You run downstairs, nearly tripping over the laptop bag you won weeks prior.  You navigate through obstacles, hurdling your dog, weaving around the fish tank.  Reggie Bush, Barry Sanders and the great Gayle Sayers would be jealous.  You sign for your treasured package...

...then it goes down hill.  The seller used three entire rolls of some impenetrable, futuristic tape to seal the box.  A mere knife has no effect; you go find a carbide tip blade for your circular saw to open it.  If that fails, the plasma cutter is your last resort.  Luckily you finally break through.  The ten days of waiting comes to...

...the wrong item.

As I said earlier, I sit here depressed.  I've had few bad experiences on ebay.  My first purchase was horrible.  I purchased a motherboard in hopes to rebuild an old computer.  The seller just tossed the board in a priority mail box.  No padding, no anti-static bag, none of the annoying Styrofoam peanuts I seem to spill everywhere.  I didn't bother trying to get my money back.  I re-read the auction and realized I wasted my money.  The seller had horrible feedback, there was no picture of the item, and no mention of the working status of the item.  What was I thinking?!?  Live, learn and move on.  That was over five years ago.  The few other bad experiences turned out better.  The seller took care of the issue.  Still, you have that feeling when it goes wrong.  It's hard to put in words.  The best way I can describe it:

It sucks!

edit: Some sellers are just toooo good.  I'm very lucky and could not have had a better experience considering the circumstance.  All is well in my little world. 

So a few weeks ago I purchased a laptop here on ebay.  It's a Compaq EVO N610c.  Great laptop.  It is only a 1.8ghz Pentium 4 mobile.  I say "only" because so many people seem to want the latest/greatest.  I'm using it just for business purposes (ie. writing email/documents, Quickbooks, etc) and it is great for what I need.  Honestly, I'd love to get a Mac Book Pro and run only Windows on it just to tick off the "mac-nuts", but that's another story for another entry.

...back to my little laptop.  I've already done quite a few upgrades.  It now sports 2gb of RAM.  I have a 60gb hard drive to put in it (one day).  I added a second battery and a wireless card.  I currently dual boot with Windows XP Pro and Ubuntu.  I couldn't be much happier with this purchase.

Adding the wireless card was no small feat.  I have a PCMCIA wireless card from the first laptop I bought here on ebay many moons ago.  Yes, I could have just shoved that in the slot and called it a day...but nooooo...I had to "geek it up" and install a card that the laptop wasn't really designed for.  By the way, I purchased the new card from an ebay store called "OldEgg".  Great seller.

For those of you who have laptops with wireless cards built in, you also have a wireless antenna in your laptop.  Most likely it's behind your screen or under the keyboard.  If wireless was an option for your laptop, and you decided to be cheap frugal by not adding it, you probably already have the antenna available.  Adding a $10 wireless card is about a 5 minute process.  This Compaq was designed to have a proprietary wireless module that fits in the lid of the laptop.  The problem is, it only comes in 802.11b flavor.  I wanted to have at least 802.11g and I wanted to make sure I could get it to run under Linux without torturing myself.  So after a few hours of searching, I figured I give it a shot.  I ordered all the parts from ebay and prayed I would not end up with a paperweight.  After a few days, I was ready to go.

Now, I've put together countless desktops in my day.  I've done some minor work upgrading laptops as well.  Changing out a hard drive here or a stick of RAM there is no big deal. Installing a mini-pci card isn't a big deal either; but the #$%^&* antenna was a nightmare.  You basically have to disassemble the entire laptop to run the cable.  The feeling of dismay when you look at your wonderful computer in 20 different pieces is one I'd rather not have again :(  I think Compaq put extra screws in this thing just to mess with us DIY types!  Normally I encourage people to do upgrades on their own systems, but not this time.  Too many tiny screws is bad for your well-being.

I finally reassembled the entire thing (still not sure where I put the screw for the keyboard) and powered it back up.  Everything was working properly, but I didn't like the amount of signal I was getting.  I was on par with my friend's laptop, but I wanted better.  Feeling a bit more confident, I decided I wanted to be able to plug an external antenna into my laptop.  After a few more hours of searching, I found www.netgate.com.  They sell all sorts of cool, geeky wireless stuff.  I found the what I needed, but had to call them to get some information not found on their website.  I left a message and received a call back in about 10 minutes.  Great company.  I ended up ordering a long cable to complete my hack next operation.

The cable was delivered yesterday.  So I've spent most of the morning taking apart my machine again.  This time I made a few choice modifications with my trusty cordless drill and dremel to help with routing the antenna behind the screen.  After a my first plan of attack failed, I finally managed to get the external port connected.  It fits perfectly under the motherboard next to the heat sink for the processor.  Now my little $170 ebay special can pick up 2-3 more bars than my friend's laptop can get (using the meter in windows).  I am seeing 5 wireless networks I couldn't see before.  If I remove the external antenna, we get about the same signal.  I can't wait to see what will happen when I connect the 9dbi antenna I've ordered. I'll be able to connect to your wireless router! (..ok...bad joke)  Plus there is just something about having an antenna sticking off the side of the laptop that just looks "hi-tech".  I must admit; I'm pleased.

...now off to search ebay for a good camera.  The next time I take my new toy apart, I'm painting it.  I want to take pictures of my handy-work.

...sniped.

I had a conversation with a co-worker a few days ago.  He's new to ebay and wanted my help getting a "new-to-me" computer.  I explained that people bid at the last second of an auction.  So the price shown isn't really worth getting excited over until ~10 minutes left.  We then sat and watched as a desktop went from $34 to over $150 in the time frame of about 4 minutes.  Only on e-bay.

I won't lie. I've done it.  I was happy when I won.  Like I did something special.  Like I had some secret "technique".  I've had people snipe an auction from me.  I felt like tearing my hair out!  Now that I'm a bit more mature (...not a byte yet; just a bit), I really don't understand the logic behind trying to "snipe".  If something is worth $50 with 1 second left, it is worth $50 with 4 days left.  Right?  If someone beats me by just a few dollars now, I just think to myself, "Why would someone spend that much money for that?  Pfft.  Fool."  It might seem silly, but having the mentality that my max bid is the absolute most amount of money any sane individual should be willing to pay for a particular item really eases the "pain" of losing a auction.  And I've lost alot of auctions.  :(

Am I the only one who no longer feels "cheated" when I lose an auction by a few bucks?  I know another similar item will come around soon; normally within a few HOURS.  This is ebay after all.  ::sings ebay jingle::  When I realized I should bid my true max bid and leave it alone, I actually started winning auctions.  Placing a max bid as the maximum amount you're willing to spend!  What a concept!

All of that said, I must admit, I still bid towards the end of auctions (but I rarely bid more than once).  Normally I will use Bid Assistant (great tool!), but sometimes I get caught up and the bad habit of trying to be "slick" sneaks it's way back in.  Honestly, I don't think it increases my chances of winning.  I don't think I will get a better price.  It's just a feeling.  Almost like your team is about to win the big game.  Is there a such thing as e-drenaline? 


Don't give me that look.  You know you've done it too.

Now, I'm not normally a person to "knock the hustle", but I have a pet peeve:

    Do not list your mis-categorized "stuff" in categories I'm interested in!

If I'm on "da bay", I'm probably looking at older laptops.  Heck, I'm typing this on a laptop I bought using ebay (thanks mrhic!).  I usually look for things I can...umm...afford.  If it needs to be fixed, I'm watching it!

Therein lies the problem.  I try to catch listings as they first appear.  I've found the items I'm interested in normally have low starting price, so I use pricing filters to see laptops I want to watch.  Not laptop hard drive caddies I want to watch.  Not some goofy pcmcia fan!  Not software!

Can someone please explain why people are putting there items in the wrong categories?  I know there is a category for laptop components.  There is a category for software.  To quote a line from one of my favorite cartoons, "There's a place for everything, and everything in it's place".

...but this post was initiated by a single ebay'er.  Please have a look at the profile page of onward_go.  This person seems to list his "best OS" in every category possible.  Except software.  Take a look at this listing filed under "CPUs for Desktop PC"!  I looked at 25 of this person's current listings; NONE of them are in the proper category.  They are spread throughout several different categories in an almost chaotic fashion.  It's ironic, he's spreading his linux distribution listings like a virus.

I haven't touched on the fact that he selling a linux distribution and other GPL software.  I just hope anyone contemplating bidding on "the best OS" will do a quick "Google" search before investing any time/money with this person.