Tuesday, June 25, 2013

How do I put this? I’m in between computers. You may have suspected, given the recent volume of typos, that I’ve purposefully manufactured them, like a clutch of rotten Easter eggs for you to discover. The truth is I’ve been using Notepad to produce our weekly posts, which means I must rely on reading and rereading, rather than squiggly red underlines, to identify misspellings. I won’t bore you with how I procured a slightly less antiquated desktop to replace my truly ancient one, but I will tell you this: in place of a 3.5″ floppy drive, my new setup will sport an SD card slot.

This will be a boon to my cottage industry–eBaying–because SD cards, I’m told, are how digital cameras talk with other consumer electronics. Gone are the days when you had to drop off a roll of film at CVS. Now, it’s simply a matter of pointing, shooting, and then shoving the picture card into the picture hole. I never realized how time-consuming photography could be, though, with finding the right lighting and framing and everything else. It’s, like, I’m not trying to be Ken Burns here! I just want to offload some quality merchandise online.

Photos aside, I’ve got the copy down pat. There are certain aspects to hone–I need to milk the illusion of free shipping, for instance–but the core conceit is there. The auction persona I’ve adopted is the “gee whiz, I have no idea how valuable my wares are, so go ahead and take advantage of me” angle, and it’s proven its worth, drawing bidders like moths to an auction portal for moths. Round two begins this weekend, on the eve of Independence Day, and I shall celebrate my liberty, freed from clutter, my customers freed from cash.