Fairly Busy

/
Tried to go to Hull Fair tonight. For those of you from out of town, Hull Fair is the biggest travelling fair in europe. It is kind of a mega-fair, when lots of fairs from around the country meet up. Some fairs have a dodgems. Hull Fair has around 8 or 9. It is huuuge. And tonight everyone from Hull and the surrounding area was going. In the end we couldn't get there, which is a pity as I'd like to have taken some pictures of the place.

Maybe later in the week.

Negotiation Skills

/
Many years ago our family set out to buy a car for mum. Having seen a few vehicles and dismissed them as being made of mostly rust, and lacking confidence for the back of some of them to actually follow the front around corners, we finally found a good prospect. Good condition, reasonable price, just a bit of negotiation to get things where we wanted them.

By now father and I were well rehearsed in whistling through our teeth, tut tutting and generally looking unhappy with the situation. This, we thought, would serve us well towards the end of the process where the seller looks at us and says "Well, what do you think?". We could then use these cunning skills to further drive down the price.

Except that for this trip we actually had mum with us. And she had not been briefed on this part of the process. When asked by the seller "What do you think?" she replied brightly "I think we should just pay the money". Which we did. Took all the fun out of it though. Turned out to be a splendid car. An original Mini with the lorry driver's steering wheel and the super whizzy handling. Great fun.

I was reminded of this today, when we ended up buying a car. That we actually did this was a tribute to the skills of the salesman. I'm not sure where they train these people, and perhaps I might be a bit more suggestible than some, but it is kind of worrying. If these guys ever decide to take over the world we are all in trouble. Maybe the good ones already have, and we are just buying stuff to keep them all happy. I tried both the techniques to ward off sales pressure that I remembered from the Which Report I read a couple of years ago. The car arrives on next week.

The memories kicked in when I was summoning my last reserves of negotiating skill to try and improve the deal and number one wife said firmly "I think we should just buy it". If it is as good a car as the Mini was, we will be fine.

Happy Ending and a York Drop Off

/
Got the money back. Never has thirty five quid looked so good. All was well and so we went off to York to drop off number one daughter in her place of studies. Very busy. All around were harrassed looking mums and dads with shiny new students trying to look as if their parents didn't belong to them. Left daughter in a room surrounded by a pile of stuff. And now we are two.

How to make people unhappy

/
Went up town and noticed that a shop was selling a particular DVD boxed set thingy (CSI Season 4 - more bodies than you can shake a stick at) for a very good price. In fact half the price of a shop that number one daughter had mentioned to me. So, being the caring parent that I am, I of course bought the thing for us to share. Good plan. Call it a win. Except of course that number one daughter promptly comes back from town and shows me the thing she has just bought (at the higher price of course).

Cue much regret and unhappiness in the House of Miles (tm). Nobody's fault of course, except mine. The current recovery plan is to throw ourselves on the mercy of the shop and try to get our money back. Or vouchers.

No, Honest

/
Went up town with number one daughter today to kit her out with stuff for university. I was going to buy her a few bits and bobs and a coffee out etc etc.

But I left my wallet at home. Daughter had to fund everything. I couldn't buy a toy for me (not that I wanted one, but you never know) or anything else. She even had to pay for the car park. And now she is toying with the suspicion I did it on purpose. I didn't. Honest. And it was very embarrasing having to say things like "..you know I'm good for it...just a couple of quid for the car park..." in public.

The lady is a pig

/

Have discovered that Io the pig is a girl pig. After this revalation the ladies in the house noted the cleanliness of her sawdust, her good behaviour and general air of niceness with which she has deported herself during her stay with us.

I can't help thinking that if she had been a he they would be looking at the same evidence and remaking on the mess, noise and the fact that there are not as many bottles of beer in the fridge as previously counted.

Never mind. I want them to get another pig. And call it "Silver". I'm sure the Lone Ranger would approve.
io

Ba Humbug

/
I've been setting my alarm clock this evening prior to my "all expensive paid" trip to Milton Keynes tomorrow morning. We have to get up at 4:20 am. Not good. I hate getting up before the sun. Never mind, the usual amount of car door slamming and loud talking from the kids will make sure that the neighbours are not asleep at that time too.

Of course I have no usual alarm clock, mine is manufactured by "Oregon Scientific", gets the time signals from a nuclear bunker near Rugby and emits a faint "Silence of the Lambs" whistle as it glows to tell you the time in the dark.

And tonight it was showing "Ba" on the left hand display. I thought that it had got it's little silicon brain skewed, and had defaulted to a day of the week setting for a language where Ba means Saturday. I reset the machine several times and laboriously re-entered the alarm time and stepped through the language options. And each time, the accursed Ba came back. And the display was a bit faint. Stupid clock.

After a while it dawned on me that Ba is short for battery. Oh yes. A couple more AAAs (I always have a stock of batteries - we have been known to run out of toilet paper but never batteries) and we are back in business.

Pig Lodger

/
Got a new (albeit temporary) member of the family. It s a guniea pig we are looking after for a friend of number one daugher. It has the somewhat ambiguous name of "Io". Very handsome beast (for a pig), I'll post a picture when we can get it to keep still long enough to be photographed. We are not sure if it is a boy pig or a girl pig. Apparently you can spot a boy pig because they poo everywhere, whereas girl pigs just poo in one corner and keep the hutch tidy. And they iron. Number one wife and number one daughter are unanamous on these "facts".

At the moment Io has not pooed enough to allow a definitive judgement on gender. And I've not seen him/her ironing either.

Ebay Madness?

/
My ebay thingy arrived today, bang on time. Very well packed. Not new, but in perfect working condition with all the bits there. I've been thinking about this. I could have bought a new one from a company somewhere for a bit less money. My order would have been very small beer as far as they were concerned, and so if they make a mistake, send the wrong thing, or it arrives broken, I would have a "fun time" taking on their complaints/returns division and all that entails.

But this thing was a very important transaction as far as my seller is concerned. I know them directly, and if anything is wrong I will have someone to talk to who has a real stake in the sale. If it all goes pear shaped they have something considerable to lose, in the form of their hithertoo spotless rating. I got to wonder if this was actually a better way to make sure of customer satisfaction from the buyers point of view? Or am I just rationalising my stupid bidding habits?

- either way, at least I got another point for a good transation - 31 points now!

Ebay Bidding Tips

/
Since I am now a seasoned Ebay player (got 30 points!) I thought I'd give you all a few tips about how to succeed on ebay.

  1. Choose auctions that finish at strange times. Some things, like for example memory cards, are "auctioned" at regular intervals throughout the day. By setting your alarm and bidding in your pajamas at seven thirty on a Sunday morning you can shave two pounds fifty off that closing price.
  2. Bid late. Don't show your hand by bidding early. Bid as late as possible, preferrably within a minute of the auction closing. Don't worry about your browser/network connection locking up at this point, this will hardly ever happen to you.
  3. Bid a couple of quid more than the current bid. This means that you will hopefully "leapfrog" the other person who presently has the highest bid. If they have done the same, at least you are going to make someone else (the seller) a happy person.
  4. Add a strange number to the pence part. Rather than bidding 10 pounds exactly, bid ten pounds and thirty seven pence. This also makes your paypal account numbers more interesting.
  5. Watch the bids climb as the auction closes. If you have the winning bid at the moment you can watch as the other people (or their sniping software) ramp up to your value. If you need to, you can whack in another, slightly higher, bid to keep you in the running. Even if the thing isn't actually worth it.
  6. Ignore words like "win" and "lost". This is not a game or competition. It is simply a way of getting stuff cheaper than any other. If the item is not worth having at the price, walk away. You can be sure that another, better, one will be available later anyway. Unless of course it becomes a matter of honour.
  7. Look at the price of previously closed items, make sure that you are not paying over the odds. Check on Google and pricerunner, because these always have the lowest price. Except sometimes.

By cunning application of all these rules, today I managed to buy a second hand item at only twelve pounds more than the brand new price. Ho hum.



Bin Philosophy

/
It has finally happened. After years of waiting we now have "wheely bins". These are bins on, surprise, wheels, which replace our old style, non-wheeled dustbins. The idea is that we wheel them to the kerb on the day the dustmen call, whereupon a cunning device empties them into the lorry, saving 17.5 seconds per house and allowing for for efficient refuse collection and better service all round. Hurrah.

I've been dreading them. For a start you only have the one bin. The colour leaflet is quite specific about what to do if you have too much rubbish to fit in it. The official advice is "keep the excess until next week". This advice, whilst workable in the short term, does have the potential for long term rubbish accumulation if you throw away as much as we do. Then there is the question of the path down the side of the house, which is not quite wide enough to support the bin at some points and has a sheer drop of at least three and a half inches down one side, which could lead to bin disasters that I'm not keen to contemplate.

But the final problem is the actual realisation of a philosophical question that has bothered me for years. We now have two perfectly serviceable dustbins to get rid of. But how do you throw away a used dustin? We could leave it outside for the bin men, but nothing will happen to it. It might get emptied, but that is not what we want. I think I might paint, in large friendly letters, "I am not a bin" on each of them and then leave them outside for collection. We shall see.