Never been one to let the carrier drop

So, I bought some passenger cars for my train set on E*bay – they were described as ‘Like new’. The trucks won’t hold the wheels, the couplers are all damaged.. my question is, do I give bad feedback? I hate giving bad feedback.. I’ve only done it once when a $500 item completely failed to show up. [at which point I discovered that paypal’s money back guarentee is useless because it only applies for like 20 days after the transaction – and generally you give at least 14 for things to show up, so you have to apply for it inside a week or so, and then they want you to do arbitration first.. anyway, that’s the only time I’ve ever given bad feedback on ebay – but, at the same time, the trucks and couplers are clearly damaged on all four cars.. these are *not* ‘like new’.

Don’t know what to do.

*sigh*

I’m becoming one of those people who only reads the first few paragraphs of news articles. Gah. I hate this in myself.

Wow. I should have read the second page. (And not underestimated the cleverness of the GNU people.. ;-))

(as I ponder installing linux on my desktop..)

is there anywhere I can send a donation that will help the opposing side on this lawsuit?

For that matter, how does one sue ‘linux’? That’s like suing ‘terrorism’. I suppose you could sue individual distributers of it..

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/05/28/100033867/

It’s occuring to me that microsoft isn’t really equipped to deal with a protest the size of the ones that happened in Seattle before.

If I ever had any doubt that the evil empire was evil – and I admit, for a while I did – well, there’s no doubt any more.

What can I do to singlehandedly help destroy microsoft corperation? Any ideas?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7193470719293309352

is it really neccesary for singingfish to crawl my web site three times a month, downloading every single MP3 on it every time? Wouldn’t it be enough to seek to a few random spots in the file and verify they hadn’t changed since the last crawl?

I could exclude singingfish via robots, but I do want people to be able to find my mp3s.. (I should really add some id3 tags to increase the odds, I guess…)

Also, why on earth is the most popular file.. by far.. http://www.sheer.us/stuff/Cloe_MP3/Tory-060704.mp3

it’s not any different from any of the many jam files I have on the server.. except for some reason it generates several hundred downloads a month…

Strange.

Fairly recently, I helped in a data rescue operation following a backup that didn’t include everything it should have.

Yesterday, I got chewed out for running unauthorized fiber and not letting the SAN people do their jobs. I should point out that none of the SAN people were actually *there*, and I was, and it’s very hard to run fiber via a network connection.

Now, since I was the only person – as far as I know – who had any idea what port the fiber needed to be connected to, and since the fiber was already run – and since I stayed up until 1a working on this so that the missing data could be returned to it’s former home – and since no one else seemed to be lining up to coordinate this operation – being chewed out for it tends to piss me off. More to the point, it makes me inclined to let someone else handle the details next time something like this comes up.

What I’m trying to figure out is what exactly I can say to the chewer to make it clear to them that they have made a major mistake without actually getting fired.

Oh.. another thing which may help the debt situation.. for the first time in several years I’ve gotten a raise. Woo, hoo, etc. Pity that after you count the higher cost of living in CA, it still probably equates to a net pay cut.. 😉

S.

I’m not willing to have anyone hurt or killed in the process of removing the government. I’d like a completely bloodless upgrade, carefully orchistrated, and with a backup plan for restoring the current corrupted operating system if the new OS didn’t turn out to be better.

Yes, I understand what bakeme is saying with it being very difficult to create – or at least find – intellectual property. Remember that creating IP is one of the things that I do fairly regularly at my job, and that I’ve helped create a CD, and many of my own tracks. I understand that this isn’t a easy thing to do.

But I also understand that somewhere.. maybe on earth or maybe in a galaxy far, far away – another musician is likely creating the exact same tracks – and that I shouldn’t ‘own’ the ideas because I created them first. Ideas are free for all.

For that matter, when you speak of someone else taking my novel and making millions – well, aside from the fact that my name appears on the cover, if I get a publisher to publish it, chances are that’s what happens. In the music industry, it’s not the artists (with a few notible exceptions) who are getting rich, it’s the publishers. So, we’re already there.

I think the world would be a better place if there was no *need* to worry about ownership of intellectual property. We could all have access to any IP we want, and the authors and artists could have no worry of starving or being unable to feed their children or unable to pay the morgage.

Yes, this is another of my ‘money sucks’ posts.

I’m sorry that my attitudes and views annoy so many of you. Would you all rather that I didn’t write about them? I’m not going to stop thinking the way I do, and it does make me somewhat unhappy when people speak – often in a somewhat aggressive tone – about how wrongheaded I am.