Been away for a short break to not so sunny Cornwall, but it didn't spoil our holiday, with fanastic shops and scenery who could complain, I will go through the mass of pictures I took and post a few here.

Come back Sunday and had loads of ebay items to post.

Monday; It seems a new rule has been placed at my local post office, they will now not accept any more than 5 parcels or ebay items at a time.
And I'm standing there with 7, the person behind the counter said it's a Post Office rule to stop queues, it's no wonder that all the small post offices are closing if they can't take parcels in large numbers.

Anyone else come across this dubious rule?

Spent much of this morning at a boot sale looking for some interesting stuff for my shop only to end up buying books and expanding my own library rather than my stock lists :-o

This afternoon and this evening will be spent putting my wife's Ebay shop online so this is just a short post.

If you get a minute pop in and say hi to "dolphins" at Dolphins Ebay Shop  just mention Scruffyhippo :)

Only a few items at the moment but will have more on tonight and over the coming days.

Catch you all later

Today has been quite busy trying to get all the outside work done here at the house while the weather is fine so I have now finally caught up with what should of been done a few weeks ago.

The next lot of items for listing have now been photographed and some listed.

This morning had a few ebay buyers come to collect their items and had a great chat to one buyer about how for want of a small part, many items get thrown away, a good example is a chop saw I sold some months back, now I aquired this tested it and found it to have an electrical short and kept knocking out the fuse board and without time investigating the reason why, decided to list it as spares saying the motor had more than likely had it, the buyer actually needed the casing for his one and without it couldn't use it, that was the first listing for spares and I haven't stopped since.

The latest is a dishwasher listed for spares only so far I have had 3 inquiries, one for the controller and 2 for the motor, so before you throw something out, does it have a value to someone else?

The most discarded item at the moment is computer mice, 90% just need a clean, 10% are actually broken.

I have 13 at the moment all come to me as not working, all are now not only working and cleaned but I am using one of them on this computer........

Listening to the radio this morning, something caught my attention, there are far more germs and Bacteria on our computer keyboard than on the toilet seat, it seems that many of us neglect cleaning this item yet eat over, drink by and use this item daily, and in some cases some are used by many other people.

For this reason used keyboards have been taken off of the spares list of items I intended to list.

Try the test above yourself by clicking on the green badge and let me know how many germs you have on your keyboard...be honest now :)

There are many things that change over the years as you get older but my taste in music, I like to think has expanded rather than changed, one of the bands that have stayed with me since the early 70's is Pink Floyd and even now I love listening to there albums and CD's, (in fact I have "Delicate sound of Thunder" on the computer now) the best ever was seeing them live in 1994 at the Albert Hall in London and with the awesome light shows, they never cease to amaze.

The one thing I did come away with other than a fantastic memory is the Floyd 1994 promotional brochure, now up for auction from today.

Pink Floyd brochure auction

I will ship world wide to the winning bidder where ever you are.

One of my biggest faults, if you can call it that is that I am a terrible hoarder, I never throw anything away because some day it could be useful! this morning proved that theory.

I have been in the building trade for over 30 years and tools come and tools go, either break or wear out, some years ago I bought a concrete breaker off who we call "The White Van Man". doesn't seem to matter where you are working, The white Van Man will turn up with his van of tools at knock down prices, never heard of half the makers but hey cheap tools....

Anyway I bought this breaker drill from him and it worked fine for a week or so then the top of the chuck fell off into the pile of brick hardcore on the floor, we found all the bits except two small metal ball bearings which was a bit like looking for earrings in the sahara desert, at best impossible.

Needless to say I didn't find them and the breaker was packed into it's box and left in the workshop for the last 6 years.

I have had a B&Q breaker for 3 years now, cost me £40.00 and done loads of jobs for me, paid for itself on the first one.

Last week one of my labourers finished it off and killed it, the hammer action died, I won't lose any sleep over it, as it more than outlasted the time I would of expected of it.

This morning I had one of those brain waves and dismantled the chuck on the B&Q breaker and took out the bearings and fitted them in the almost new 6 years old breaker that lost its bearings in the brick hardcore never to be seen again.

They fitted, it works, who said being a hoarder was pointless :)

I was always known for writing in brown text back in the MSN chat room days, seems years ago now but the brown text is still here :)

I have been looking for a way to link my ebay shop with what I am all about and to be able to explain what I do and why and have only just come across the ebay blogs, what a brilliant idea!

I have had a few blogs going for a while now and even joined blogging groups and the most asked question seems to be how to get people to read and comment on your own blog.

Some say it's all about what you write and others say it's down to links and who you know on the internet.

Personally I think the ideal blog is one written with passion, written with interest, but most of all written because you want to write it!

A good blog draws readers, a good post attracts comments.

Why Scruffyhippo?

I have been asked this by dozens of people, even ebay buyers that collect tend to ask this question, all google searches that come up for Scruffyhippo are me!...true try it.

I've been online for 8 years with the same nickname so you'll find out more abot me on a google search than anywhere else.

So why Scruffyhippo, ah ok, back in... well a good fews years back while looking for a user name for MSN site, I tried many names all seemed to be taken, Msn had this feature to help suggest a user name and after a number of wasted attempts, up came Scruffyhippopotamus, well... I had to shorten it, bit of a mouthful let alone remembering how to spell it.

The rest, as they say is history.........

So how did your user name or nickname come about?