Nice shirt

So as I've already mentioned a number of times, I missed the Thursday events from comic con. Well, now a little piece of Thursday is mine, care of Ebay :)

Probably my single biggest miss was the Paramount panel. I was hoping for some big Cloverfield news from JJ Abrams. Also he was going to talk about the new Star Trek movie he's making. Well while he did talk about Star Trek, and confirmed the casting of Zachary Quinto as Spock, he did not mention much at all about Cloverfield.

All he said is that the film is NOT called Monstrous as was being reported last week, and he unveiled the new poster for the film. There was no new footage, and no more information given. Oh I suppose hew did say that they had just finished production a few weeks ago and were moving into post. But really other than that, there was nothing.

So for fans interested in the film at least they got some consolation in the freebie giveaway t-shirt that Paramount had for them at the entrance to the conference hall. Free Slusho t-shirts for everyone in attendance! Now thats pretty cool. I mean I got free t-shirts, but do i really care about an Invasion t-shirt; no of course not.

So I have gone onto ebay and purchased myself a Slusho tee. I won the auction and for a mere $10.50 it has become mine!!! Check out the picture. Hooray for me!

Impressive auction

I was reading WiiFanboy this morning, and saw a story about this amazing auction on eBay. It's not particularly cheap or anything, but it is really just amazing! The guy here is selling EVERY SINGLE LICENSED GAME for the NES released in North America; ever! That covers 650 games, and includes the actual NES system, and 10 different peripherals including The Power Glove, and R.O.B. the Robot! . Currently the bid is up to $25, 000 USD. Just check out the auction to see the very cool pics. Honestly even just seeing everything collected together like that in a single pic is pretty sweet.

Ahh, if only....

I spend my eBay spoils

So usually I'm not one for really super endorsing one "store" over another, especially on the blog, but there are a very few exceptions to the rule, and today I thought I'd mention one of em. In Stock Trades is absolutely THE best place online to buy comic books. It is far and away cheaper than anywhere I've seen for new books, they are constantly having deals on different titles, and if you order over $50, shipping is free. I pretty much buy all of my trade paperbacks there. The only other place I ever buy comics is from a local second hand store called Aardvark Books that sells everything at half the cover price or lower.

So I know I didn't get too much cash from the whole eBay debacle, but I finally got it all finalized and sorted out. Or at least as much as I can for now. And I spent the money on a couple of new comics that I'm really looking forward to. I picked up all four volumes of the 'epic' storyline X-Men: Age of Apocalypse. These are pretty massive books. In beautiful full color, on nice glossy pages. And while I've never read the story I think it'll be pretty good. Perhaps a bit befuddled, as it took place over a large number of years and I think most of it was while Marvel was going bankrupt and no one was reading. Not that that means it's a great story, in fact most of the Marvel stories at that time weren't considered so good, but hey... it can't be as bad as The Clone Saga right?

I am excited at least because it looks very pretty and it will tell a whole big story that I really know nothing about. I think its some kind of alternate timeline thing. Anyhow, I'll be sure to let you all know if it turns out to be good. I have high hopes though.

the big bucks

$285 - Money made from selling comics on eBay
-
$57 - eBay listing fees
$40 - boxes and packing material
$15 - Paypal fees
$83 - shipping costs
-------------------------
$90 - profit


Some of these numbers are a bit rough or rounded off, but man thats low... A lot of effort for not so much cash. I only sold 10 lots of 19. I'm currently re-listing 2 of 'em that are very good and probably should've sold, and the rest of the comics... I'm going to try to sell at work. After that I guess I'll just give em away.

$90 for the total number of issues sold, exactly 250, works out to .36 cents a comic book.... low, low, low. Maybe if I can sell these two relisted lots I'll bump it up to $100 total but we'll have to wait and see. eBay is frusterating. I think you really need to have something worth a lot to make selling effective. Oh well, as Erica said, its all money that I didn't have before. At least that's true.

Yo, I'm back

Do you ever feel like all the old people on the plane just suck up the moisture. I'm so dried out. Planes are gross. totally make me feel like I'm getting sick. Gotta remember it's all in my head, persevere.

Erica and I got back yesterday around midday. We had a long time getting home, with troubles both mechanically, and with the dreaded border patrol. US customs is for chumps. I mean seriously look at the Canadian customs versus US customs. The guys who work at Canadian customs are young, friendly kids, often times its a summer job away from college. They are happy that you're coming to the great white north and treat you with the civility and courtesy of a guest. Oh they are still professional, but they don't carry guns, and they manage to do their job while still maintaining a positive image of Canada. Compare that to the US guards and its a whole other issue. Granted the people that work at the airports are slightly better than the ones at overland border crossings, but generally speaking US border patrol scares the heck out of me.They're gruff, armed, and seem pissed off just being there. It's a career of dealing with crap and they hate every minute of it. Did you known that because of forced quotas the most common people pulled aside at the airport checkout line are people of mid-eastern decent? well maybe that's not so surprising, but the second most pulled aside group is young white women. Why exactly? do they look dangerous? No, actually they are pulled aside second most because the border patrol has to meet their quota of (random) searches and knows that young white women will generally not give them any trouble. Very disturbing...

Ok, sorry for the rant. I've just woken up and am a little distracted / asleep still. Thanks to all the people who bought my stuff on eBay, it seemed to be for the most part a success :) I sold over half of the lots I put up and made, after all the shipping, and ebay/paypal fees (I think), around $240. That would've been more but I accidentally screwed up on the listed shipping costs, so some people literally got away with a steal. D'Oh! my fault though, good for them for noticing the mistake I guess. I'll probably re-list 2 or 3 of the lots that didn't sell, or maybe rearrange them to make a more attractive collection. I suppose my final resort is trying to sell them at work too. Which would probably work, only I would definitely lose money on it. As of now my plans for the money go about as far as picking up the Robotech Protoculture Collection, and a few more trades.

I'd better go get myself together for the day, its New Years Eve tonight. Hooray! We've got plans to go over to our friend Miriam and Florian's house for a small gathering, should be fun. I'm sure I'll be back with more later, I had a really good time in Toronto, got to hang with Erica's family, even had a bonding moment or two with her father. Seriously! and I got to catch up with my buddys Bernard, and Lisa. Good times all around. Ok, I'm off to shower lates.

buy my stuff... please

Hey everyone,

So I'm in Toronto now. Well, not exactly Toronto, but Caledon area, and as expected it's very nice. Unfortunately though, they lost our luggage in Chicago with all the Christmas hullabaloo at the airport, so we have no presents and are stuck wearing the same clothes until we get them back :( Thankfully that should be either tonight or tomorrow, and they're even going to deliver it to the house.

I did get into the city today and saw Bernard which was great.

What I really wanted to let you all know though, is that my items on eBay have finally gone on sale. I'm selling something like 430 comic books in 19 different lots (of 20-40 books a piece). I'm selling them cheap, so if you or someone you know might want some comics, please go check out my eBay Sellers Page for more info.

Thanks all.... happy holidays :)

a mostly great weekend

This past weekend held a little bad, and a lot of good for me.

The bad, frustrating, terribly awful , and annoying thing was that I went for a charity run, The Christmas Classic through Golden Gate park, and I actually couldn't finish. I think I mentioned that I'd been having knee troubles. Well its getting worse. I went to the doctor a few weeks ago, and she gave me a recommendation for a specialist. When I went to the specialist he said that my right knee predominantly, and somewhat on my left, is 'tracking' wrong, especially when fatigued. Basically that means the plate on the knee, the patella, isn't following the set alignment that it should when bending. You know that it floats right? ok, sorry; everyone knows that. So thankfully though, he said it actually isn't a physiological problem, nothing is physically wrong, and I should be able to retrain my knee to bend properly. He suggested a few sessions of physiotherapy and that after i build some strength in different parts of the knee I should be good as new. This is a very good thing. I know way too many people who have knee problems, and none of it sounds even remotely good. Of course the problem now is that I haven't had time to go to the physiotherapist yet, and won't until the new year. Running is becoming a problem though, and its extremely frustrating. I know the thing to do is not push it, but man.... I can't even finish a 5km run! After about 2 miles my knee just blew. Ok, it didn't blow out really, but it just started killing. Like sharp crippling pain with every bend. So i had to stop. it was depressing, and I know I shouldn't beat myself up over it, I just was pretty upset about the whole situation. So I stopped and rested the knee for 15 minutes or so, and was then able to walk around. Nothing permanent done at least. Erica and I had a good plan though. Because I have a gym membership with my work, I'm going to stop by one of their facilities that has a pool tonight. I think maybe I can handle swimming laps, and that at least will be some exercise. And zero impact too. It won't fix the problem, but it can't hurt.

The really good thing this past weekend was that because Erica and I are going to spend Christmas with her family outside of Toronto, we had Christmas with my family yesterday! Hooray for Christmas! Although we actually see my parents like once every week or so this was a very good visit. I should actually get some more pictures of the kitties. Loki and Freya are sooo cute now, and they've grown so much. We had a good meal too, of some yummy salmon. But of course most importantly, we all got presents. Erica didn't get me anything now, because she got me the Wii a month or so ago, which is totally amazing and I love, so that is really my best present this year. Other than that though, my mom bought me a ton of clothes for Xmas that I badly needed. I actually went with her to pick them out last week, then she took them home and wrapped them up. Its nice to finally have something new to wear again. And then my dad got me a great gift too. He's going to pay for my airfare and entrance fee at this years San Diego Comic-Con!!! Yup that's right kids. I'm going to the SD comic-con! And I'm very excited about it. Sure its not til the end of July, but it's going to be sweet. Erica might actually have to be there for work, but that's not going to be for sure until a bit closer to the date. So for now at least I'm going to plan on going with my buddy Joey. Yes I know this is super geeky, but man it'll be fun. I went two years ago and really loved it. This time, I think I'll have to save up some money beforehand though, and really plan out a proper schedule for the panels I want to see. oh, so exciting...

The main present Erica and I got my parents was tickets to the symphony. We also got tickets for us too; so that should be a fun night, especially since I've never been to a symphony before. And the main present I got Erica was some kitchen knives. I know, I know... it's not super romantic, but she's a practical girl... and really these are very good knives ;)

I also went to a kinda lame holiday party. But that's ok. You can't have all good parties. Oh but I did get a ton of stuff set for sale up on Ebay. I have 13 lots of comic books set to go on auction on Dec 23rd at 8am. And actually 6 more lots to add to the mix still. So please check out my sellers page and buy some comics if you're interested. oh wait, actually you can't see anything there cause nothing has gone up for auction yet. But after the 23rd I'll post that link again. ok, I'm going to sign off for now, there's more I'm sure, so I'll talk to you all laters.