I forgot to set my a/c timer this morning. It's annoying because when I get home from work my house is hot and stuffy. If I set the a/c units to click on an hour or two before I get home, it's usually OK. Otherwise I do not end up doing anything because the hot stuffy room makes me want to just lay down and have a little snooze. I might have to wire up some sort of contraption.
I think I am getting screwed on an ebay auction. I posted my robotic doll and someone bought it right away for $150. The payment has been sitting in my paypal account, however it said it would not be 'cleared' until the 10th. I figured that was fair enough, but when I checked again today it said it would not be cleared until the 23rd. I smell some sort of flim-flam going on there, so I wrote to the person and told them it was ebay policy to give payments within 7 days of the auction ending, and if I did not have my payment by Monday I was going to cancel the transaction and report them to ebay. It really pissed me off because I was expecting that $150 bucks today.
Speaking of flim flam, I think some old man in my neighborhood is getting hoodwinked. I see this guy every morning, some old black man with a white beard. Every morning he slowly makes his way to the bus stop and then goes who-knows-where. The past couple of mornings there has been a slick-looking white guy with a goatee hanging next to him at the bench, chatting with him. This morning he was next to him and showing him some sort of booklet. The old man was just sort of glumly looking down to it. The other guy was actually turning the pages and pointing out things to him and chatting rapidly. He had the earnest 'I'm your buddy' look that salesmen have. I get the feeling he was either trying to hoodwink him over something, or was a Jehovah witness or something. He seemed a little too, I don't know, too swarthy to be a Jehovah witness. He was probably trying to suck out the old mans secret fortune.
New ghost hunters on tonight. (blows little horn)
2026 Update
I dial the creaking machine back to May 2006, where Ed's thermostat, PayPal, and a shady bench salesman await.
Ah, 2006, when a home was a swamp box unless you remembered to toddle over to a wall-mounted timer, and the grand solution was “wire up some sort of contraption.” Now we simply scold our thermostat from the couch while it learns our schedule and judges us. That PayPal hold was the original gray laminate flooring—invisible, eternal, and designed to make you scream into a dial-up void; today every payment is instant except the one you're waiting on, and you'll still be told it's “pending” while the vendor's already spent it. I love that you threatened an eBay policy citation like an ancient curse. Meanwhile, the bus-stop man with a booklet—that whole species has evolved; nobody hand-picks a mark in person anymore, they just send a scammy text that reads like a relative having a stroke. And yes, Ghost Hunters on “tonight”—we used to schedule our supernatural disappointment; now it's all streaming, so you can be disappointed about demons on demand. Your hot-room nap instinct, Ed? That one remains eternal.
“2006 Ed, between your robot-doll PayPal hostage situation and the goatee salesman flipping through a booklet at the bus stop, which flim-flam did you truly believe deserved a strongly worded eBay policy citation?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2006 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, honestly the eBay one got my blood up, because there was a policy involved and a deadline, and by golly I had written a strongly worded citation before my coffee even cooled. That $150 was supposed to be mine, and PayPal was sitting there going, “Cleared on the 23rd, buddy,” which is a special kind of flim-flam that makes me want to chew my own keyboard. The bus stop guy, though? That one just made me sad and suspicious. He had that swarthy, fast-talking, “I am your new best pal” energy, and a booklet, which is never good news unless it’s a menu. Could be a preacher, could be a con. I didn’t have any policy to throw at him, so I just hoped the old man wasn’t signing away his porch. But yes, the doll payment was the true, paperwork-worthy outrage.
