Today, Omni of Every Topic in the Universe(s?) wrote a post entitled "How to bid on eBay". It's mostly good advice -- especially point #4. I'd also expand that advice to include "Buy It Now" auctions -- even if there's a chance that one could save a dollar or two by winning a competitive auction, it's a lot easier to just pay the set price and get it over with than bidding and possibly bidding again and then waiting for the auction to end.

And now for my disagreements and additions...

Where Omni writes in point #2, "Don't bid before the last few minutes of the auction unless you have to, and then bid as close to the end as you possibly can... bid far enough in advance that if your computer crashes right as you're bidding, you have enough time to bring it back up and get back to the auction and place your bid, but no earlier," I'd say, "Bid seconds before the end of the auction," and discount that last part entirely. I mean, if you're like me, you probably don't absolutely need the item on which you're bidding, so if you don't win it (because, say, your computer crashes), it's no big loss and you probably could've done without spending that money anyway. So risks can be taken! Maybe it's because I'm running an extra-stable build of Win2K, but I've never had any crashes in the last few seconds of a bid. For what it's worth, I've also never lost a bid that I attempted to win via this "sniping" method.

Also, per point #3, I'm not sure if most people bid in whole dollar amounts or not -- and I'm not sure that we could know that, since eBay only bids up to what was needed to win the auction and doesn't display the maximum bids. For my part, however, I never bid in whole dollar amounts. Not that this means anything if you're following the bidding guidelines set in Omni's point #1 and are bidding the absolute maximum price you're willing to pay -- whether it's a whole dollar amount or not -- but I'm just saying.

And finally, remember to take the shipping into account!!!! There are people out there who will auction off items at super low prices -- especially with "Buy It Now" auctions -- but charge insane and unreasonable shipping fees to recoup their losses. And if you get caught by such a seller, there's not a whole lot you can do about it, since the shipping is usually displayed on the auction pages, which means you should've known beforehand. Where a seller doesn't want to include the shipping for this reason, however, there will usually be some sort of note along the lines of, "E-mail me for shipping information." And yeah, you could do that, but I usually don't even bother with those kinds of sellers. If they're too lazy to post the shipping info on the auction page -- because if they're asking you to e-mail them for it, they obviously have it on hand -- or at least include a shipping calculator, they don't deserve your business.

As far as the job search goes, I've got something of a dilemma. I got a call about a job back at the college -- pretty much what I did before, and it's in the same office, but apparently it's a slightly less paying position (like, $40 a week less). They're supposed to get back to me about perhaps raising it to my old rate -- which would be preferable, natch -- but I'm not sure I want to take it. I mean yeah, it would pay well, I know and don't mind the people there, and it's full-time (though temporary, but there's a possibility it could become permanent, not that I necessarily want that), but there's another job I'm also up for (I think!) and would like to take. And not only would this one be more/less new, but it would keep me in the know for the kinds of jobs I'd like to get in the future -- which may have kinda hurt me during last month's interview.

The problem? This one's only part-time and will probably pay significantly less than even the lower salary of the college job -- and I can't do them both because of scheduling conflicts. To make matters worse, I'm still waiting to hear back from the folks I interviewed with about a month ago. Again, given the time that's passed, I'm not terribly optimistic about my chances, but if I were to get the position I'd take it hands down and be in NYC like tomorrow -- so as long as that's a possibility, I'm still kinda hesitant to take any position around here that I may have to leave at a moment's notice. And I would. I'd be gone, man. 'Cause that job would be awesome. My fingers are still crossed.

All for now. Ja!