The Insanity of the Holidays

Maybe its just me.  But it seems like things get crazier every year at this time.  With people fighting over the latest must have toy or gadget.  Lining up outside stores Wednesday mornings to take advantage of Black Friday sales.  The grinches who think its cool to destroy Christmas decorations people put up in their homes.  Or how about the people who go crazy with the lights on every conceivable, and some not so conceivable, surface of their house and yard.

I can remember a time when Christmas decorations didn’t even hit the store shelves until the first week of December.  Now, they are up in July.  Maybe thats why so much of the magic has left the season.  Its become way too commercialized.

I am not complaining so much, as wondering where the insanity will stop, if at all.  Next thing you know, you’ll be able to buy that inflatable Christmas Tree when you buy the cupid decorations for Valentines Day.

Regardless, here’s wishing you and yours a safe, happy, healthy, and SANE holiday season.

Its Good To Be Back

I never realized just how dependent I was on my computer until I was without it for the better part of 3 weeks.  I was able to use my brothers long enough to check emails, and do my banking, but that was about it.  Now a new hard drive, additional memory, and reinstalls of all my favorite programs and I am back up and running.

Its so nice to be able to log on to the internet at 3 in the morning when I can’t sleep, and to spend more than a few minutes deleting all but the most important emails that need to be answered.  It’s even better to be able to catch up on the ebooks I haven’t read yet. (I still haven’t yet found an eReader that I am happy enough with to spend the money on, so I’m still reading on the computer.)

Thank god I’m anal about making backups and backups of backups.  That was the only thing keeping me sane during the days without my trusty computer.

Oh you want to know what happened.  Simple really, my hard drive crashed. Which may have been a blessing in disguise.  I was able to add the additional memory I wanted at the same time, and add a larger hard drive.  While checking out the computer, the friend who was fixing it for me (can you say bartering for homemade Christmas gifts for his Mom and Girlfriend), discovered a couple of other minor problems that would have led to major problems if not taken care of.

As I sit here and type this all I can say is  “It’s great to be back!”

Look At The Cute Cake I Found

Okay, so I was searching for something unique for a friends birthday, and this popped up in the search. It was simply to cute not to share. Almost makes me want a baby. Scratch that, rather let my Brother and his Wife produce any new little rug rats. Its amazing the talent some people have for things like diaper cakes. Oh well, back to searching for that perfect birthday gift.

Yeah the links work

Cool, the link actually works. So I will be trying to alternate posts every other week, with items I am selling, and cool items I have found while searching bonanzle. Probably not more than one post per week. And I am certain there will be times when it is more than a few weeks between posts as life happens to all of us.

Hope everyone has a great rest of the summer, and I will see you next week.

Bonanzle’s New Affiliate Program

Whether its going to increase sales or not, I’m not sure yet. The nice part, you can sign up as both a seller and promoter. So a couple of different ways to profit from it. Now whether the links work or not, I’m testing them out this week, so bear with me, and lets see if this actually takes you to the page of antiques that I searched out or not.

Antiques on Bonanzle

Of course I think the single item links would probably be easier to work with. We shall see.

In Loving Memory

My father passed away on Monday, July 27th. He had not been ill so it was very unexpected.

He was and Easter baby, having been born 84 years ago on Easter Sunday, April 12, 1925.

He served in WWII in both the Army and Air Force. He had signed up with the Air Force, was drafted by the Army, then called up by the Air Force after completing basic training, and just before he was due to be shipped out.

He taught school for a few years in the late 50’s. He also farmed, worked in construction, followed the fruit harvests, and late opened his own business.

He was the youngest of 8 children with 20 years separating him from his oldest sister. He has two brothers still living.

He and my mother were married for 53 years. I cannot, recall them ever having a single fight. They survived the loss of two children (one miscarriage, and one still birth), a bankruptcy in the 1970’s, and the stress and fear that goes along with open heart surgery in 2001.

My father was a generous man. Sometimes too generous. He would give every dime in his pocket to someone who asked for a loan. He was repaid maybe 1% of the time.

He never complained, or spoke bad about a person. If he did not like someome, he tried to stay away from them. If he couldn’t, he held his tongue and “killed” them with kindness.

Although raised in a location and at a time when those who were not white were discriminated against, my father did not have those same feelings. He treated everyone the same regardless of their race, religion, sexual orientation, or political beliefs.

I can only hope to be half the person my father was.

I miss you Daddy.

Bonanzle Affiliate Program Coming Soon

As many of you know, I left ebay for bonanzle, and my formerly bleeding ulcers thank me daily. Now the boyz are getting ready to launch a new program. From what I’ve read about it, it sounds great. Of course the proof will be in how well it works or doesn’t work after its launch.

So for those of you interested in affiliate marketing, this may be something you might be interested in. Its created quite a stir among the sellers on bonanzle. You can read more about it, here.

If it works the way everyone is hoping it does, it will be a win-win for all concerned.

Christmas in July Sale on Now

Several of the sellers on Artfire have banded together and we are having a Christmas in July Sale. Discounts will vary from shop to shop. There is a very good selection of items available, from baby items to high fashion and everything in between. You can click on the banner at the top of the page to shop all the CIJS items, or type CIJS into the search box instead. Hope to see you there.

Its Still Stealing!!!!!!!

There are people out there who complain about thieves stealing from them, whether it’s breaking into their home, or taking their car or wallet. Yet these same people think nothing of going to a website and downloading free copies of e-books that they did not purchase. They use the excuse that the authors don’t need the money, they’re already rich. Or one little download won’t hurt. Let me introduce you to an author e-books (not me, but I am an avid fan of hers). You tell you me how much it hurts.

This author is a single mother of two young children. She has a mortgage, car payment, insurance payments, food and clothing, and all the other things that go along with just trying to survive in the world today. Her e-books sell on average for $5.99. If purchased from the publisher she gets a 35% royalty, if purchased through a licensed reseller such as fictionwise or allromaneebooks she gets about half that.

So that being said lets do the math. These are estimates of sales only. Assuming that all her sales in a month are through her publisher (just for ease of figuring) that means she receives $2.10 for each e-book purchased. And lets assume she sells 500 e-books a month through the publisher. That means she has earned a grand total of $497.90 that month. But at the same time 500 copies of her book have been downloaded free of charge from a site that allows anyone to put anything up to be downloaded, whether they have the rights to the work or not. That’s $497.90 that she could have used to take care of her kids and help pay the mortgage. If you multiply those figures by 100 or more, and you will have some idea of the amount of money that is lost by authors due to their works being pirated in a single months time.

The reality is that in one month alone there were enough pirated copies of her books downloaded that she lost well over $2500.00 in royalties. Think about it. Would you like it if, instead of the full paycheck you were expecting next payday, you received one for half as much, because your boss decided that you only needed to be paid for half the work you did.

Its time that we as readers took a stand against these sites that allow the illegal downloads to happen. If we can’t stop the sites themselves, then lets boycott their advertisers, and make sure that we explain to the advertisers in blatant detail why we will no longer be doing business with them. If enough of us complain, and continue to complain, perhaps the sites that allow this will finally be forced to actually stop offering the services to anyone and everyone without regard to what they are allowing to be downloaded.

So before you download that free book look in the mirror and ask yourself this question, Am I a thief?. If the answer is no, then please go to the publishers website, or one of the legitimate resellers websites and purchase the book instead.

auntieshe on Etsy – HAND CRAFTED WITH CARE by AUNTIESHE

I have been working on my etsy shop. Hope to have it completely stocked in a couple of more weeks. In the meantime thought I share what I’ve done so far. (via Auntieshe)