It's starting to be spring out there !

And, it's the time for April fools to reverse the trend. Buy wisely, report here on April crowds, prices, and hopefully success in buying lockers.

Do you remember when you first signed on to the world wide web in 1993 ?

Yep, it's 25 years old on 3 12 14 but before that one could join outfits like Compuserve and AOL as portals.

whnt(dot)com/2014/03/12/happy-birthday-internets/

Whoops....too busy picking I guess, but here it is.

March 9, 2014....

In like a lamb?  That's the weather here in central California but elsewhere super rainstorms are creating mud slides down near LA and Montana had an avalanche that killed at least one person.

So, weather wise it's a mixed bag.

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I'm going to a few auctions this week with a piece by piece being my favorite.

Now here's an appropriate story for "The Dump"

Mt. Everest was successfully climbed 60 years ago with "primitive" mountain climbing gear by Edmund Hillary, but 60 years later high-tech climbers are leaving behind mountains of trash, including empty fuel and oxygen containers and the usual waste of packaged foods, etc.

These climbers are anything but "green" to the mountain.

http://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/nepal-enlists-mt-everest-climbers-clean-trash-strewn-slopes-n44276

I saw this ad on Craigslist. Any takers ?

Hi, I'm trying to find a buyer for my web based business. We are a subscription based information service with established clients and an excellent reputation in the industry. The site brings in around 70K a year and requires you to invest between 20-30 hours a week. The website does all of the selling. The site has excellent traffic and is independent of pay per click ads. About 27,000 of our annual income is guaranteed because the subscribers are set up on recurring monthly payments. It's a fairly simple business to operate, if you're familiar with spreadsheets / Excell & Wordpress, you can easily run this business. If not, I can easily train you. Since it's an internet based business, you can operate it from the comfort of your home.

 I'm asking 150K and the price is firm. You should be able to make back your investment in 2 years. This is a great company and the reason I'm selling is because I am working on another site that requires all of my attention.

 I will offer full training and support for as long as you need it. Call (name & number deleted) for more information.

I've had pretty good luck for 10 years on eBay with only an occasional non-paying buyer, but in the last four weeks I've had one test instrument (new) sell THREE times because the 3 buyers haven't paid and I had to open cases.

Each of the three had less than 4 feedback (what a surprise !). One had zero, one had 1 and one had 3 feedback.

Ten years ago when this happened you could see the feedback on these d*bags go down say from 3 to 2 or from 0 to -1, but in their WISDOM eBay doesn't even do this anymore, and a seller CAN'T block buyers who have zero feedback. That probably makes sense as everyone has to start somewhere when buying, but these flakes who have 10 or less feedback should somehow be SHAMED in the community. Buyers need protection too.

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A non-paying buyer ties up the selling process for 3 days minimum and if a case if filed by the seller it takes another 4 days before the item can legitimately be relisted and final value fees returned.

Yes, the seller can just cancel the sale, but I think the final value fees are not returned if that happens. On a $150 item (as mine is) this amounts to a few bucks, so I just ride out the total 7 day wait and relist. Of course these people go on the "bad buyer's list" which prevents them from bidding on my items again.

eBay...love it, hate it.

I won’t use it, but maybe someone here will !

More than a hundred years ago storage units were tin cans buried in the ground. That was the case for this storage unit recently found in Tiburon, CA.

The cache of 1,400 gold coins has a projected value of  10 million dollars based on the uncirculated condition of many of the gold coins which were placed in the ground in the mid 1800s.

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/02/25/couple-finds-10m-in-gold-coins-buried-on-norcal-property/