You know I am always looking for productivity tips and tricks, particularly in the area of email since I am literally inundated with hundreds of them a day.  In the area of KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) - 43 Folders shares their 5 tips.   Elegantly simple yet absolutely right on track…  I can honestly say that I practice all of these and with great success.   My favorite is 1 and 5.  Check less often and if you have no intention of doing anything with the email just file it! - either the circular file (ie. delete) or into a folder.

1. Shut off auto check
2. Pick off easy ones
3. Write less
4. Cheat
5. Be honest

When you are there you might also check out the little Related area just to the right of the article.  You will find a couple of other great nuggets of email productivity information there as well. 

Remember that email should be a tool that enables communication.  What I am finding in this day and age is that while people certainly communicate it is becoming ever more difficult to get things done as you read through the avalanche of email with useless, unnecessary communication. We’ve reached communication overload because it is so easy now.   Stay productive by incorporating a few of these useful tips.

Today (May 1) marks the start of another eBay seller strike - aka boycott.  Recall that sellers on eBay are up in arms about a number of different issues.   You can see my posts about them here…  The real question is whether this current round of boycotts will really make a difference at all?

I have noticed there have been a number of promotions on eBay lately trying to get people to list their items for sale.  I’m not sure that this is related to the general seller unrest that seems to be prevalent or simply eBay’s attempt to help stimulate listings due to soft economic conditions.  The bottom line really seems to be a matter of personal choice. 

My choice… I have nothing currently running on eBay and I’m not sure how long I will continue to NOT list.  I am trying out ewaey.com and I’ve dabbled with a couple of others.  What I really hope is that this general unrest will open the doors for these small guys to at least make a bit of headway into the online auction marketplace.  I’m a pretty firm believer in the concept that you don’t want to place all of your eggs into a single basket.  If you only list on eBay then you are tied to their every whim (fee increase, policy change, etc.).

So my questions to you if you are a seller:

• Are you a participant in the strike/boycott?
• What is your primary complaint with eBay?
• What alternatives are you using?

If you are a buyer:

• Have you noticed a decrease in listings?
• What are your thoughts on the eBay changes?
• What other online auction venues do you visit?

Leave a comment and let us know your thoughts.

As Earth Day (04/22) approaches, the city of Seattle is making the news with their announcement this month of a PLAN to begin taxing paper and plastic bags at grocery and convenience stores.  The plan calls for a $.20 cent tax on each bag that you use.  The idea being that with the money raised Seattle would be able to provide everyone in the city with a reusable grocery bag and perhaps other recycling programs.

I’m all for making the environment a better place for everyone but really $.20 for each bag you need?  Surely there must be a better plan that could be put into place.  I know when I head to the grocery store for my weeks worth of shopping the 1 bag that Seattle is going to give me isn’t going to even come close to what I need to get my groceries out of the store. And the reusable bags… our local grocery store charges somewhere in the neighborhood of $.99 for each of them.   For me not an issue - but what about those (think fixed income, and poor) that don’t have an extra buck laying around… not to mention an extra $10 or $15.  Every penny counts when you live paycheck to paycheck.

Why can’t we go down the road of personal choice instead of taxation?  Have the stores give me a rebate each time I bring my bags in for re-use.  $.20 seems rather extreme but even a few cents each time provides me with the incentive to bring them from home and to remember to bring them into the store when I get there.  Another tax is not the solution.  My current grocery store is doing this now and while I don’t know the success or how the program is funded I certainly made the choice to purchase the reusable bags.

Another question I have about this tax… who administers it?  Are they going to create a whole new department that has its set of overhead?  Perhaps that is why it needs to be $.20, they need to pay for the administration and enforcement of the program.   Not to mention the burden on the merchants for reporting, and payment.

Final question… you ever drive down the highway and notice how many pop cans, and beer bottles there are tossed out the window?  If you want to make a serious dent in recycling why doesn’t the state require (as other states do) a deposit on every bottle and can sold?  If you have to pay an extra $.60 for a six pack of beer you are much more likely to save the cans so that you can get your $.60 back… and if you don’t someone will.

"Green" is a great idea… but I think this tax goes too far too early in the "go green" mentality that is starting to make inroads not only with individuals but with corporate America.  Taxing people turns them off.  I don’t see this tax as doing anything different.

Projects Possible is a pretty young blog.  We don’t have high Google rankings and we don’t get thousands and thousands of hits per day (at least not yet) but we certainly seem to get a fair share of comment spam.  These are the spammers that want to post comments to my valid postings to get you to go to their porn site, or their prescription drug site or any myriad of other non appropriate or sales related Internet destinations.

WordPress allows me to block this spam in a number of ways including Akismet (their spam filter plugin) and options to not post comments automatically but to wait until they have been approved by me.   Unfortunately, I do not have the time needed to review every piece of spam so Akismet has been a lifesaver for me.   I can periodically just load up my comments and see that Akismet has already flagged them as spam.   With one click they are gone and if I never do anything with them in 30 days they are automagically gone.

Bloggers beware…  If you are new to blogging you need to get yourself protected and sooner rather than later.  I found when I first started the blog that I very rarely received a piece of spam but now it can be literally a hundred or more in a weekend and as I continue to post additional content and opinion it just gives them that many more messages to latch onto.  Do yourself a favor, get your spam protection in place early!

If you guessed Heart Attack then you were correct.   That muscle in our chest that does its job day after day, year after year, decade after decade is an absolutely amazing organ.  But we so often forget that it too is a muscle that needs to be cared for.  Conditions exist that cause the arteries in the heart to “clog up”, and once clogged the muscle can die.  Think of those arteries as highways that go through your community.  If you didn’t have the highway to bring goods and services the community would not prosper… eventually everyone would leave and you’d have a ghost town.   If we carry the analogy further and a our highway has a major bridge that collapses no longer allowing people access… what do we do?   We rebuild the bridge or we figure out a new way around.  This is the same process they use on the arteries with a Coronary Artery Bypass Graft (CABG) or more affectionately “Cabbage”.  When an artery no longer functions they rebuild it… assuring the muscle has the “goods and services” it needs.

Be kind to your heart.  Additional heart related information can be found at: The Heart Library (www.heartlibrary.com) become educated and help protect this vital organ!

For years I have been intrigued by the stars.  Last summer at the lake house we would have nights that would be so extremely clear and dark that the number of stars you could see were absolutely mesmerizing.   There were a couple of times that you could see the shadows of our arm of the galaxy (not sure what that is called - not pic to left - left image is The Fariy of Eagle nebula).  

At any rate, I decided that this year I was going to buy a telescope.  Now I didn’t want just any telescope but I also didn’t want to spend a ton of money to find out that I ended up so frustrated that I didn’t use it.  After doing some research I finally decided that I was going to purchase a used Meade ETX125.  It should be here any day.

Now for the help and recommendations.

1.  Good books that any beginning backyard atronomer should have in their library?

2.  Eyepieces - It will have a 2x Barlow and the standard 26mm eyepiece.  What else should I get?

3.  What do you think of the Meade CCD Camera?  I’m somewhat of a computer geek remember and thought the astro photography and video could be interesting.

4.  Autostar - tips, tricks and pointers?

5.  Is anyone using Winstars or other computer assistance to control your scope?  What are your thoughts?

Wish me luck.  I’m hoping for some first light this month but with our crappy spring snow and rain I’m guessing I will not have much luck.

As many of you know, WordPress is now out with their 2.5 version.  There are a number of plugins that I use that are NOT going to work so I thought now might be time to do a thorough review, clean up the old, make way for the new, reclassify things.   Call it Spring Cleaning for Projects Possible.

There may be times over the weekend that the blog will be unreachable as I work through things.  I might even play with a new theme or two.  I’m finding that I’ve had a couple of comments about things being somewhat difficult to find so I might simplify.   I love 1Blog (my current theme) but if you aren’t using the features it doesn’t do any good to have them right?

Stay tuned… we’ll see what happens!

Welcome to the March 23, 2008 edition of online auctions.

This is the first edition of the Online Auction blog carnival.   For those of you not familiar with a blog carnival, think of it as a magazine related to a specific topic.  Authors will submit their posts/articles to the carnival and then an editor (me) will put them all together for my readers to enjoy.

This carnival is specifically related to online auctions.  If you have any thoughts or comments related to the online auction environment then we would absolutely love to have them posted here for all readers to enjoy in a quick, concise format.   You can click on the submit post link above it will take you to the correct submission page.

This is the first edition of this carnival and there were not too many submissions…  All are related to eBay so I have broken them into separate categories

eBay Auction Tools

Bill presents a review of a tool that he uses to place SNIPE bids on items on eBay.  Sniping on eBay is the act of bidding in the last few seconds of an auction not giving any of the other bidders an opportunity to react to your bid.  The article titled Free eBay Sniping Software - Gixen Review can be found on his blog Projects Possible.

eBay Auction How To

Raymond presents a great article called eBay Guide To Buying and Selling Wholesale Products posted at Money Blue Book.  In this article he points out some great tips for buying and selling on eBay and points out quite a few SCAMS that are in play and what you can do to avoid getting caught up in them.   Great reading for all eBay buyers and sellers.

eBay Auction Controversy

Raymond also presents Feedback About eBay’s New Pricing Structure and Policy Changes posted at Money Blue Book.  With eBay’s recent announcements about changes to their platform, there are a lot of opinions out there as to what if anything this is going to do to the eBay venue.  This article gives one viewpoint.

Bill presents a different viewpoint in these two articles found on Projects Possible.  The first article My Thoughts on the eBay Seller Strike list the pain points for sellers and the author’s view of those pain points.   The second article Another eBay Seller Boycott - May 1 discusses the continued dissatisfaction of the sellers and their intended boycott to begin on May 1.  This one also has a link to a YouTube video that is circulating.

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of online auctions using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.  Remember this carnival is about anything and everything related to online auctions.  I’d love to get some posts about different online auction sites, tools that you use to bid, buy, list, etc… Next posting will be in the middle of April.

Technorati tags: online auctions, blog carnival.

Blog Carnival
online auctions - archives | submit post

We were looking through the current issue of Cabin Life magazine this afternoon and came across an advertisement for a P-Pak.  I couldn’t help but wonder why I would ever want or need such a product.   I went to the website in the advertisement to find out.

The following are quotes from the press release:

1. “he ThermaCELL P-Pak is compact, sanitary, easy to use. Utilizing patented LIQSORB®, a combination of an exclusive biodegradable pouch containing a biodegradable polymer substance that immobilizes bacterial growth quickly, urine is absorbed quickly turning it into an odorless, spill-proof gel that is nontoxic and waste disposal safe…”

2.  “This unisex urinal is puncture resistant and has a spill guard, making it easy to use for all members of the family…”

3.  “Hunters, who spend long hours in tree stands or believe that their prey can be deterred by the scent of human urine, will find this product to be incredibly valuable…”

4.  “For campers who do not want to brave the elements in the middle of the night or when on the road, stuck in traffic jams, and there are dirty or no restrooms accessible…”

5. “ThermaCELL P-Paks fit easily in your glove compartment and can be used discreetly…”

Ummmm… I can say that in my 40+ years I can’t think of a time that I wish I had a P-Pak.   Maybe now as I begin to approach the downhill side of my life I might have to get a supply.

The USPS is really making it convenient for home businesses to ship items.  You print postage online, and schedule your mail carrier to pick it.  It really couldn’t be much easier…No more waiting in those long post office lines.

On March 6th I sent 4 Priority Mail packages.  Now their website clearly indicates that Priority mail is delivered in 2-3 days versus Parcel Post which can take a week or longer.  In the case of my 4 packages we’re talking delivery on March 16th.   Sixteen minus six is 10 days for delivery.   My customers paid a premium price for 2-3 day delivery and it took longer to get them than had they been sent via a much less expensive level of service.

After multiple calls to the post office I was informed that the plane that my packages were on had to make an emergency landing due to engine problems at the airport in Missoula Montana.  I was also informed that they had no idea when they were going to be able to get my packages delivered because Missoula did not have the necessary equipment to remove the containers from the plane so they could be offloaded to trucks and transported to a processing center.  They also had no idea if they could get the plane fixed, since the plane wasn’t theirs .  (Did you know that your USPS packages are often sent via Federal Express?)

The packages did finally arrive.  When I called about refunds I was basically told that Priority Mail is NOT guaranteed and they had no way of knowing if my packages were even on that plane.  You can bet that the USPS is going to ask Federal Express to compensate them.  I think the least they can do is compensate their customers.   Interesting thing about this…when I was talking with the Customer Service agent she explained to me that if she gave me a refund the media may get wind of it and then they would have to process refunds for all 42000 pounds of Priority Mail that was on the plane. 

So eBay sellers, and other small business people don’t get suckered in with the 2-3 day delivery time they advertise because your package is in NO WAY guaranteed to arrive any quicker than a parcel post package would arrive.  For Spokane I was told that they have a very good on time delivery rate of 91%.  That means 9 percent of the time it isn’t 2-3 days and they consider this good!