Diary of a Diehard

One of the fastest growing markets within the Internet is in the area of on-line auctions. The largest of service provider for these auctions is eBay. I had not really looked into this service since I really had no idea that I was in need of anything. I did not realize how wrong I had been. I began as an amused observer as I watched auctions begin and end and before long, I began to wonder what types of things were out there that I may be interested in. I began perusing the database of auctions available to eBay users. The number of categories was impressive. I found things I never even knew existed. For example, there was one guy in Indiana that was selling used toilet seats. I would have never believed that there was a market for such a product but then I noticed that he had 5 people bidding on his auction. Then there was the unknown user who was auctioning off a human lung construction kit. Wow this was quite a place. Then I reached the baseball cards listing. Baseball cards? No way! I have been trying to add to my collection for years but never could find someone who had what I was looking for. My fingers trembled as I began to type into the search engine. Yes! There they were, Topps factory sets from years that I needed. I quickly began bidding. I sat there anxiously as I waited for the auctions to end. I had bid with aggressive abandon and was leading with less than 2 minutes remaining. I was finally going to have that set of cards that I needed. 10, 9, 8 seconds remaining. Three, two, one seconds until the cards were mine. What! Hey, what is going on? I was outbid? How could this happen. I was leading just a second ago. This eBay bidding was more vicious and cutthroat than I had anticipated. Black beard himself would have marveled at the pillaging that was occurring by these price pirates. For the next several hours, I began to monitor eBay to try and develop a strategy of how I could obtain these cards. This was going to take some time. Lucky for me that the Diamondbacks are out of town for a while so that I can devote some time to this.

I was just getting ready to leave work yesterday when I got a frantic call from Andre. “Have you been listening to the radio?” Well I had been locked in a cubicle for the past 9 hours and I am pretty sure my cube has some sort of force field around it that destroys all radio frequencies since I can barely get my cell phone to work let alone a radio. I told Andre I had not so he began to let me know that there was late breaking news about the Arizona Diamondbacks. Since it was September 1, I figured it would be that the rosters had expanded and some of the players from Tucson were now with the Major League club. Either that or maybe they had pushed Brandon Webb’s start a day to allow him more time in Kentucky. But no, that was not the news being announced. He suggested that I sit down and go to the KTAR web site to find this story.

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