When Half.com burst onto the web several years ago, I was elated. No longer would I need to find a Cutler’s or an Orbit or an indie music store to track down quasi-obscure used CDs. I could punch onto their website and sate my desire for an import Sundays, used, cheap.

A couple of years out of college I realized that I too could unload my pre-loved CDs and books via Half.com. I dutifully entered a bunch of UPCs, named my own price, wrote up some jazzy editorial. (Helpful: if a text had markings in it, the copy would read, “Minor notes in pencil by Yale BA History ‘99.”)

I quickly began making some decent cash, and was getting rid of books I no longer needed (which isn’t to say that eighteenth century journals by women in the Middle East didn’t serve its useful academic purpose at one time). $350 a month was not unheard of. Life was good.

Then, eBay’s acquisition of Half.com meant that the powers that be wanted to transition Half.com buyers and sellers over to the eBay platform. Margins are better for eBay on eBay, and they probably wanted to shed the maintenance costs of operating the Half.com entity.

Half.com sellers, myself included, were tres annoyed. Where once we could punch in a UPC and let a book languish for months, now we were being told to sell on eBay and hope it sold within a week. If it didn’t, we’d have to re-list and bear the listing costs once again. Sorry, but the market for obscure CDs and academic texts isn’t the same as the market for the rest of eBay stuff. A lot of Half.com merch is a slow burn. There’s a dude out there who wants my used copy of Necromonicon, but it’s going to take more than a ten day listing for us to find one another.

And so with a heavy heart, many diehard Half.com sellers transitioned to the Amazon marketplace. Margins were slimmer here, it was difficult for buyers to rate us and thus differentiate the good sellers from the bad, and there was no automated way to confirm an order in the way that Half.com allowed. I resisted at first, clinging to the hope that eBay would abandon their transition plans. I even tried eBay to miserable results. But after analyzing the userflow and realizing that the Half.com property was pushing its visitors to eBay, I realized that my efforts to sell and buy through Half.com were in vain. I moved everything over to Amazon.com — both buying and selling of used books n such.

And then, a couple of weeks ago, Half.com announced that they were putting off their plans to transition to eBay indefinitely, suggesting that they may never kill the Half.com platform. But it was too late. I’d already realized that most consumers go to Amazon.com for books and CDs to buy used, and despite the lower margins, I was turning inventory over more quickly and netting more loot while getting rid of such classics as “Mormonism: What You Need To Know.” Sure, some of the functionality that Half.com offered is dearly, dearly missed, and buyers through the Amazon.com marketplace seem to be on the balance less ‘net-savvy than Half.com buyers, but on the balance, it works for me. I didn’t want to use Amazon.com at first but now that I have, I’m okay with it.

But suddenly, Half.com is back at my doorstep. Sadly, it’s the heartbreaking moment when Rico is apologizing to Vanessa for having befriended Infinity in Six Feet Under. Vanessa still loves Rico, yes, but the time they were apart allowed her independence to fluorish and she liked it. She never intended to prefer being a single mom to being married to Rico, but it happened anyway. She doesn’t mean to hurt you Rico, but she wants a divorce.

So Half.com is a little bit like Rico here. I love(d?) Half.com, and I didn’t want it to go away, but once I got to know Amazon.com I realized I preferred it.

I’m sorry, Half.com. I don’t mean to hurt you, but I’m selling my books and CDs through Amazon.com marketplace from now on.

:)

Engaging citizens in the political process

At my reunion this year, I attended a lecture by Cynthia Farrar, the Director of Urban Academic Initiatives through Yale’s Office of New Haven and State Affairs. Something tells me she’s also a professor of history as well. Her lecture outlined the By The People vision and results to date.

I’m exhausted from packing all day and don’t have energy to crank out some pithy description. Click the link above to read an overview; basically you randomly pick local folks then get them together to discuss political issues. The effects on the people are profound: they find themselves thereafter more interested in politics, feel engaged in their community, and on the balance are more likely to consider a point of view other than their own. Farrar’s goal is to take the best from Athenian democracy and treat citizens like citizens — not just consumers who are either going to buy “Candidate A” or “Candidate B” at their next trip to the mall, err, voting booth.

It’s an interesting concept. I’d like to see it rolled out, along with mandatory civic duty (which could or could not be military duty — would be up to the citizen).

Time to sleep.

When you’re packing up the place in which you’ve lived for the past five years, you’re bound to discover some juicy tidbits. I found a journal that I’d purchased while on a layover on Chicago (I think); there was only one entry. I’ve backdated it and added it the blog.

Not in love with indica

Click the link above to check it out. I’m patting myself on the back for ever having crafted such a masterpiece ;)

Claire (Lauren Ambrose), with her coke-fueled slide into egocentrism, really brings back the breathtaking fun and poisonous self-involvement of being a brand-new adult. But even as she blurts out arrogant proclamations about herself and her photography, her courage and naiveté could still charm us into the sack faster than you can say “Billy Chenowith still belongs in the nut house.”

(Click the quotation to read the full article.)

1. I met Lauren Ambrose in person nearly a decade ago, and then ran into her four years ago when I was in the thick of my internet-fueled slide into egocentrism. The first time I met her was at a birthday party in Greenwich after she’d finished wrapping for ‘Can’t Hardly Wait’ with Ethan Embry, Jennifer Love Ho-itt, & Seth Green. We discussed the original name (’The Party’) and she explained why they changed the name after sending out the press kits (something about a film in the forties with the same name.) She struck me as kind of blinky, round-faced, nice … Claire-esque pre-season 4.

2. This paragraph is brilliant, but overall, I must admit that I am a Six Feet Under whore. I love the show. My commuting schedule revolves around the show. I see parallels in the lives of the characters in my own life. The storylines bring me to new emotional highs and lows, usually in the same hour. Rich, complex, delicous. This Heather chick eloquently outlines why.

3. God, do you remember what it was like to be in your early twenties and so ridunculously self-absorbed? Longtime posse members will remember t-4, when zinegrrl.com was little more than something akin to a webcam attached to my headboard. Good lord. The (s)exploits were fun but empty and emptying; I was in sixth gear but running on fumes. (Reminds me of W’s approach to fiscal management … hmmm …) Fun at the time but really screws up the engine over the long haul. I’m still dealing with the side effects, and no, it doesn’t involve burning or frequent urination, but thanks for asking.

4. Trump obviously didn’t select me for the third season because he has a fragile ego and couldn’t bear the thought of a sharpie like me drawing a Fu Manchu on his portrait. His reaction to Bradford was classic “You didn’t appreciate the gift I gave you.” Consider if you will that classic line from the movie Christine: “Well don’t think about it too long or I’ll throw you out on your stinkin’ ass.” This is from the owner of the body shop, who has just offered a job to the guy who keeps raiding his junk pile, to Arnie, who replies, “Well I’ll have to think about it.”)

Trump exhibits the same reaction. He offers Bradford a get out of jail free card, and Bradford says thanks but no thanks. Trump is miffed and freaks the fuck out, firing him. Throws him out on his stinkin’ ass. Classic! Imagine how he’d respond to the girl that suggested she might fuck Trump in the ass during her semi-final round interview for Apprentice season three. :)

5. How much do I love the use of ‘deus ex machina’ in the article????

6. Thanks to LHS a.k.a. Jo, Esq. for plucking the quote and ALO Esq. for providing the source.

7. When does the next season of Curb Your Enthusiasm start? :)

The coterie of grrls with whom I used to play Scrabble on Thursdays should recognize the phrase ‘market failure’ as they’re the ones who coined it. Let me expand with personal storytime which, while the bane of every sociology class, is the stuff that blogs are made of, no?

I went shopping on Friday. I was feeling unusually good in this godforsaken season of death: I’d scored a quickie project that would pay a month’s rent for three days of work; I’d just killed an interview for a very big firm that I’d very much like to work for. (Talk about “problem with authority” to “working for The Man … but that’s another post…) Why not blow some loot on some togs? Last time I bought new clothes I believe it was some sensibly priced underpants — purchased only because I was in Canada and dammit if the exchange rate wasn’t favorable.

Let me tell you about how I’m built. I gots big feets. Big, flat, wide, long feet. Paris Hilton has nothing on me. I’m a regular platypus. I’m also tall and long limbed, but with broad relatively muscular shoulders.

But the market fails me. Admittedly, stores have gotten exponentially better at carrying tall sizes and size 11 shoes. If I could re-live adolescence I might not have to suffer the cruel injustice of high waters or boys-only shoes. There’s still room for improvement if the market wants to get a passing grade. Here’s why:

• The sleeves are too short. Take the size four shirt and the size ten shirt. Line up the sleeves. Are the proportions (width to length) the same? Hells no. They just make the trunk wider for size ten. So people like me — who are tall and normally-proportioned, rather than simply being a size four wearing a fat suit — stick their arms out in front of them and watch the ends of the sleeves slink up to their elbows. Boo. Getting tall shirts helps, but you can’t for the life of you get a patterned button-down work shirt (read: suit with style!) in talls. Only the solid colors are carried in tall. Thanks, market.
• The shoulders are too narrow. I can deal with the waist of jackets coming in a little too high; it’s actually kind of flattering. But the shoulders are killing me. I can’t move my arms when I walk let alone cross my arms in front of me. When the shoulders do fit, the bodice swims around me like a burlap muumuu. Ay dios mio!
• The jeans stretch too much. Length is no longer cause for complaint to my delight. The problem is that jeans that fit my booty (generally stretch jeans) don’t squish my thighs appropriately. I like a durable non-stretch jean that disciplines my thighs into conformity. These stretchy jeans, while great for skinny fifteen year old, do no good when they stretch around every lump of my sausage legs. However, the non-stretch jeans don’t accomodate my booty OR if they do, leave that insufferable gap at the waist requiring a belt to avoid major underoo exposure.
• The shoes are too narrow. Assuming the size 11 is actually an honest size 11 (oftentimes not), it’s not going to be wide enough for me. Again, the shoemakers just take a size six and make it longer. This is not how feet work. Think proportions, people. If it’s longer, it’s gonna be wider too. I think I may simply have to suck it up and head to stores that outfit transvestites if I have any hope of getting a tweedy pointed-toe flat or kitten heel this fall in size 42 euro.

All I’m sayin’ is: stop trying to encourage girls to play sports if you’re not going to make clothes for us to wear once we’re all growed up. I drank my milk and ate my vegetables and now I’m tall; don’t punish me with frump-a-dump clothes for the rest of my life. I already have a tendency to dress like a grandma as it is.

Market failure !!!

I read a lot of articles or blog posts poo-pooing the use of networking to find a job. The official word is that personal and professional networks are used to fill some 80% plus of available job openings, or that most job openings are never officially listed by the time they’re filled by a friend of a colleague of an associate of an acquaintance.

But time and again, people are out there hitting their heads against the wall about their inability to get a job through schmoozing.

Here’s my balls-out honest theory regarding why some people will never be successful using networking to land a gig: They’re unlikeable and/or unqualified.

I’m no guru on the subject matter, but I have met a lot of job-seekers in my time running DinnerGrrls.org, a national not-for-profit women’s networking and career development group. I’ve also worked with people through Category: OTHER, where I help job-seekers with their interviewing and negotiation skills in an effort to help them make more money.

Broadly speaking, people fall into one of two categories in any given business relationship: self-aware or clueless. The self-aware are generally open to social relationships with their coworkers, make an effort to know them as people (not just as perl developers that will help them get the spam out the door that much quicker), and keep in touch with people after their formal relationship as classmates / coworkers / clients draws to a close. They’re not always angling for a value-add from the other party; they genuinely like them and/or have a sincere interest in helping the OTHER person succeed.

The clueless types make me wince. They’re all business at the office, see their coworkers and clients and vendors as worker bees and worker bees alone, prance around at networking events forcing their business cards down everyone’s throat, and only get in touch when they need something from you. Gag me with a spoon.

Truth be told, most of the time I’m self-aware but sometimes I’m clueless. And sometimes this is on purpose: I genuinely dislike some of the people I meet in the workplace, and I’m not about to pretend that I find their regurgitation of the viewpoints of faux-hipsters as impressive. So I’m not opening up to them, and I sure as hell am not going to check their six as their career progresses. It’s no accident that I don’t return their emails or put on a false smile should I suffer the cruel injustice of running into them after our formal relationship ends.

But getting back to networking as a useful means for getting a job. It’s the clueless people who can’t use networking effectively. Why? The people that they consider as in their network don’t give a shit about them. They don’t like that person; they’re not interested in helping them succeed. This pariah only gets in touch when they need a job, never offers help in return, doesn’t even pay for lunch when they pull you away from your to-do list to help THEM out.

Yes, this has happened to me. On more than one occasion. And wouldn’t you know it, the same people that sit there at lunch and offer nothing in return are the people that whine and moan and groan about how ineffective networking is for them in their job hunt.

Here’s some quickie advice from yours truly on successfully networking to get a job:

• Sincerely care about your business contacts. Give a shit. Get to know them as people. Pay attention to the pictures on their cubicle, or the music they listen to, or the books they read, or the sports teams they follow. Whatever. Don’t be the jackass that comes in with your agenda and no time to look behind the professional mask. The people you care about are going to be the people that care about you and your search for a job.
• It’s a marathon, not a sprint. If you need a job NOW, you’ll need to leverage the network you’ve built up to this point. Now is not the time to cull a bunch of business contacts. You should be building your network along the way. You’re in a better position to help others when you’re not the one that needs help; others will be more receptive to helping someone they already know. Even more receptive to that someone who knows they love the Cubbies, gets their dorky jokes about artificial intelligence, understands their need for a stick-shift car. And: building your Rolodex is something that you do every day of your life. Middle school nerd camp. High school. College. You’ve been building it all along.
• Give some to get some. When you do hit up your business contacts, don’t just come in with your agenda. You should also make it clear that you are poised to help them in whatever it is that they may need help, be it professionally or personally. I’m not saying you bust out the knee pads and crawl under the desk of every stressed-out investment banker in your contact list. But if a colleague mentions offhand they’re planning a trip to Morocco, ask your buddy who just got back if he has any inside tips. And pass them along. If you’re asking someone to keep their head up for job opportunities, the least you can do is keep your head up for whatever it is they might need.

I truly believe that networking is an incredibly effective way to get a job. My friends IM me with job openings at their firms that aren’t listed; my name gets passed on by people with whom I’ve worked to others who are looking for talent; I polish my presentation skills while schmoozing so that come interview time, I’m ready to blow ‘em away.

So boo hoo to those who poo poo. Maybe the reason they’re not getting a job through the people they know is that only someone who has no idea what they’re getting into would hire them … ?

Autumn is sweeping its way up and down I-95. The intermittently warm days, the sun setting early, the crispness in the evening. Locusts. Death.

A list of things that fall reminds me of:

• Running long distances on country roads for cross-country, a sport I took up only because nerd camp interfered with volleyball tryouts and my track coach thought it would be a good idea. To this day I am not a fan of slow and steady. That is so not my pace.
• Highjinks associated with the nervous energy of the beginning of a school year. Junior year at the Academy and sophomore year at Yale bring back particularly fond feelings.
• Heartbreak. Every non-insignificant romantic relationship that I’ve been in has come to an end in the fall. My high school sweetheart broke up with me over email (he’s now married). A deeply irrelevant putz broke up with me by starting out with the tender words, “I don’t want you to think that it was just a summer fling.” Uh-huh. And on and on and on. This is the season for the end of things. No matter how beautiful I felt things were, we were unable to hold on to it and the magic died, came to an end, changed color.
• Mormons. This is the season of visits from Missionaries, hopeful trips to go bowling with apple-cheeked Mormons, baking cupcakes, reading the Book of Mormon by an office park pond.

It’s a beautiful season, yes, but bittersweet. I’d like there to be new memories associated with fall, would like the warmth to be punctuated with long spells of bliss rather than melancholy afternoons of reminisce.

My inner math geek desperately wants a neat little algorithm to provide me with guidance regarding the direction my life should take. Career, housing, relationships … all of it. I need some black and white answers, preferably presented in grid format.

An essay I wrote in freshman year English focused on the infinite grays of adulthood, how the simple black and white neatness of childhood was being supplanted by confusion and ambiguity as t marched proudly towards infinity. (I suspect I used that exact phrase.) At the time, I thought this was kind of cool — that there were no clear cut right or wrong answers. Adulthood was awesome, dude!

Now that I am in the midst of a whirlwind of uncertainty, it’s like, totally NOT awesome dude. I don’t have confidence in any of the choices I make these days. What I would do for a quadratic equation or some nice binomials! It is wrong of me to want to know, with absolute absoluteness, that the direction I am taking is the right one?

I was IM’ing the other day with a former boss and oftentimes mentor of mine. He’s 40, three kids, married, mortgage, two cars. You know, the prototype for those I gently mock out of a vague fear of turning into one of them overnight. He told me that he knows two couples that “know” — two couples. Four people.

Out of his entire Rolodex accumulated over the years from prep school to college to bschool to his professional career … four people get a quadratic equation? And the rest of us chumps have to flounder about in the infinite gray of uncertainty?

Reminds of that scene in A Christmas Story when Peter Billingsley’s character realizes the Little Orphan Annie decoder ring was just an ad for Ovaltine. We’re sold this big magical fairy tale of happily ever after, only to realize in our jaded adultness that it ain’t like that, unless you’re one of the lucky four.

Why the American system of education is narsty

Pablo just IM’d me this review on slashdot. Haven’t read the book, but there are some excellent quotations within the body of the review.

It touches a nerve in me because oftentimes in my life as a corporate peon I wished that I could have been a little less analytical, a little more stupid, a little more willing to tolerate mediocrity. Oh, if only I couldn’t read so good!

This also reminds me of that Twilight Zone where the kid takes a test to see if he’s smart, and then he does too well so Big Brother kills him off.

Oh to be average and simple!

I’m trying to use up all the food in my refrigerator. Food product #1: Tub o’ Crisco.

Recipe is modified from Wyoming’s Best Snickerdoodle Cookies as collected in some recipe book by A&W Root Beer.

Ingredients:

1 c Crisco
1.5 c sugar
2 eggs
2.5 c flour
1 tsp baking soda
0.5 tsp salt
optional: 2 tsp cream of tartar

cookie coating:
3 Tbsp sugar
1 T cinnamon

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375.

Cream together shortening, sugar, and eggs. In a separate bowl (which I failed to do … oops) mix the remaining ingredients; add this mixture to the creamed stuff in small parts (about 0.5 c at a time worked well for me). Roll into balls somewhere between the size of a walnut and a golf ball and coat in a mixture of 3T sugar and 1T cinnamon.

Bake on an ungreased cookie sheet for 10 minutes. I put tin foil on the sheet so that I should put together a second sheet while the first bunch was baking. After ten minutes, check to ensure that the cookie center has fallen (it should be fine). If not, bake a little longer.

Take out and cool on a rack. I don’t have a rack and used a metal colander and was fine.

Enjoy! I’d post a picture but I’m too lazy.