Selling on-line through eBay is easy and (at the same time) challenging. It’s slightly addicting and euphoric when people bid and you make a sale. I was at a comic convention and some stuff I had I couldn’t sell (my target audience is right there) no matter how low I made the price, but on eBay I’ve sold more than a few for more that the same price at the convention. Setting it on a table with a sticker is way easier than photographing it a posting it on-line and then wrapping it and shipping it (and collectables are harder to wrap).

I sold some used 5 Finger shoes for close to what I paid for them (originally on sale), they were in great shape (almost new) but I just didn’t like the way they felt compared to my four other pairs; I sold a well worn pair too, much more than I thought I’d get for them. Stuff I think should sell high, sells low (or not at all), stuff I think won’t sell get snatched up in ten minutes some times (wished I’d made that buy it now price higher). If possible I post extra pictures (if free) and tell why I’m selling it.

If you’ve never shopped on eBay, go buy something, anything; get a spare charging cable for your iDevice or cell phone. Then come back here. Why? Because you need to understand the buyers end of the transaction. Plus, to buy something you need an eBay account and a PayPal account and if you have those set up then I don’t need to explain that part…

It’s easy to sell:

1. Take a picture, make the item take up most of the photo (or crop it if you know how). Some items let you post more than one picture for free (generally collectables?).
2. Write a single line title (mot categories charge you for more than one line).
3. Pick a starting price. Most people say start at a penny, and I understand the logic (more bids makes an object look more desirable) but if it’s an odd item and no one is looking for it…
4. Pick a buy it now price. If they don’t want to bid they can buy it now for this price (FYI, you pay a slightly higher price if they chose buy it now).
5. How long is the auction for? Pick 7 days (10 usually costs more).
6. Write a short description. I say make it a bigger font and center it and use a few colors. Presentation is everything!
7. Pick a price for shipping, for your first few: if it’s heavy (up to 6 pounds put $8-$10), if it’s light (less than a pound) put $4-6; you’re learning if you lose a few dollars on the first few, not a big deal, right?
8. Pick where you’ll ship to. This is important, who knows what shipping costs to Timbuktu (yes, it’s a real place), narrow it to the continental 48 states for the few few.
9. Make sure your additional charges are $0.00 then submit it (then submit again not he next page).
10. Wait.

It seems like until someone bids on it you can revise it. Sometimes (maybe if people are “watching” it) you can’t revise the title. Even if someone bids on it, you can revise it, but it appears appended at the end of your description.

An eBay item end time is set the instant you publish it (for the number of days you select). If it’s an auction, don’t end it at 3 AM, a lot of the bidding happens in the end few hours. I try to end my auctions during the work days (3 or 4 PM Eastern) or in the evenings on the weekend (Sunday evening seems to be a big time) or even on a week night (I seem to sell a lot of buy it now items on weeknights). But I like to make the ending time be when a good portion of the country is at home or still at work, not during that travel time. For 10 cents you can delay the publish time to be a time of your choosing (I use this occasionally, it’s 2 am and I’m ambitious, I’ll post these to not go up until the afternoon of the next day.

If after a few days no one is bidding, consider lowering the start bidding price and the buy it now price. Or look around and see what other people selling are charging or what they’re saying in the description.

What does it cost to sell on eBay? If it’s an auction, it’s 9%. If it’s a fixed price (or buy it now?) it depends on the category, they take 7%-13%. eBay motors is probably different, but you’re not going to sell a car as your first item are you? You also get charged around 3% for the credit card transaction via PayPal. So 10%-16%. If you sell more than 50 items in a month, there might be some small fees just to list an item with buy it now, but you haven’t sold anything yet, so don’t worry about that.

Every so often they have (1-3 day) specials for listing fixed price for free or adding buy it now to auctions for free. It seems like it’s towards the end of the month, but not always.

And I think there is a limit of 100 items per month to sell (or $5000) but what you do to expand that, I’m not sure. I haven’t had that “problem” yet.

Books, DVDs and CDs are a whole different animal, I’ve sold a few, but it’s barely worth it. There are a million people selling these exact items and there really isn’t much of a difference between them. I think the people who are making money on these have thousands of items for sale and make their money by quantity. I’ve made more money on a used pair of $50 shoes than on a half-dozen new (still shrink wrapped) DVDs. I’m not saying don’t try it, I’m just saying don’t make it your first item.

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I love learning. I also like talking (sharing) about things that (I hope) other people are interested in. Today xkcd talks about how many people each day learn something that everybody knows.

At their site, if you hover your mouse over the comic you always get an extra thought/punchline/jab. Today’s extra was “Saying 'what kind of an idiot doesn't know about the Yellowstone supervolcano' is so much more boring than telling someone about the Yellowstone supervolcano for the first time.”

xkcd is an excellent comic that talks about life, love, tech, math, science and more. Sometimes it’s just a few frames, sometimes it’s dozens. Sometimes it’s really tall and you have to scroll and once in a while it’s got a little bit of color in it. Sometimes it’s funny and sometimes it’s serious.

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I don’t like sitting at the computer all the time, so why do I do it? Because that’s where all the information is at! With KindleFeeder.com I get my information sent wirelessly to my Kindle (I have the Kindle Keyboard 3G) automatically twice a day and I can read it anywhere! It’s in a magazine format that makes it really easy to navigate around. It looks pretty good on the iPhone and iPad Kindle readers too, not exactly the same format but still very easy to navigate.

So I’ve got 38 FULL feeds that I removed from my Google Reader: NYT, BBC, Economist categories I like (science, tech, most e-mailed), a few other (long post) blogs, some finance (Get Rich Slowly and The Simple Dollar), and a few learning Spanish sites (that I’ve never read before). Then I added a dozen feeds that were popular at KindleFeeder. I took those feeds were on my Google Reader and I put them in a KindleFeeder category, so I’ll know that I don’t really need to look in there for those articles (unless looking for something particular) and eventually I deleted them. These are my longest, most interesting blog sites (that aren’t very colorful) that I can read on the go, very comfortably, even in the sun.

Bottom line: I think KindleFeeder.com is well worth the $20 a year! Convenience and time is everything. So try it out!

You can generate some sample issues (10 feeds with up to 512 MB of images) without paying anything to try it out (but you need to try it for a few days in a row, it’s a little overwhelming the first time you run it on a few sites since you get everything).

Warning! The downside is that it doesn’t work easily on the newer (late 2011) B&W Kindles unless you transfer the files via USB (super inconvenient, IMHO). You can read the articles fine, but it’s not in the easy to use navigation.

Geeky stuff you really don’t need to know: I was worried about the number of images (4 MB max per delivery), but the first time you add a feed it adds all the past articles, once you’re past that (issue) I think it’ll be okay; some feeds only update a few times a week, but they’ve still got a history. Two feeds each had a history of 20 items were both each over 3.5 megabytes, so they looked bad the first time, with twice daily deliveries it’s rare I miss an image; I put the few sites that I don’t care about images last, so if any turn up missing, it’s those.

It has a clips feature that will let me easily mark something on the web (via the Kindle) to save it and thenI can delete that “issue” from my Kindle, so that’s good (but I don’t know if I can “un-clip” them later). From the Kindle (if you’re a paying subscriber) you can even request the delivery of another issue at any time (and if you have a 3G model, you can pull it down free over the 3G network).

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I’ve got too much stuff. So I’m cleaning, trashing and selling 500 pounds of “stuff”. I hope to do this in a month, but we’ll see how that goes.

I’m also reading (as one of many changes) in an attempt to keep my place cleaner neater.

I’m starting with books. I’ve got a lot of them, I’m listing a few on half.com (eBay’s sister site) and I’ll see what I can get for some old ones and some newer ones. For the old ones, I’ll have to see if it’s worth the effort to actually sell something for a dollar or two (plus shipping). I think if I can do a dozen books, CDs or DVDs, I’ll be able to get a better feel on selling these smaller things. I might just be better off donating them to Goodwill or the Salvation Army (but I’ve got no clue what to estimate the value at) which would be minimal effort to do compared to labeling and shipping items out.

Also, Amazon has a buyback program which gives you gift card credit (click the book above and you’ll see an image similar to the left). That might be significantly easier for newer items (but I have less of those to get rid of), but I’ll try that too (maybe).

I guess I should actually put some in the Amazon used section too…

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So I’m going to try this, one photo a day for every day. It’s not to late to start! Well, it is too late, but you can still post your photos!

31 Photos in 31 Days has begun for August 2011, so don’t forget to take 1 photo today, post it up on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, blog or anywhere else you share your photos, and then post your link by clicking the ‘Click here to enter’ (on their page).

I was trying to come up with a theme, but I couldn’t come up with something. So I’ll do a photo each day and talk about it and theirfore I’ll be getting some blog posts done at the same time!!

So I got a new pair of Vibram Five Fingered Shoes, I got the ones like my first pair of Vibram Shoes called “Sprint”. I was googling all over trying to find a good price but I know there are a bunch of fakes out there. What I ended up getting was a pair from someone on eBay who had the wrong size. They look brand new, the soles felt a little thicker than my current pair (but my old pair is definitely broken in) but when looking up information on fake Vibram’s everything seems to pass. The color is off a little, just check out my big toe! But otherwise everything seems to be okay.

Except, my tan line at the top of my foot doesn’t line up at all. I’ve got a similar casual pair that is like the Sprint (but without the strap and it’s not made out of the same waterproof material) and the tan line doesn’t stand out like this. Anyone out there have a few different pairs of Vibram Sprints that don’t line up the same?

So until they really break in, I’m really not sure if I’ll purchase them again like this.

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I started reading FreakAngels a few months ago, I thought Neil Gaiman mentioned it somewhere (but at this point I can’t find the reference), and if Neil mentions it, I’ve at least got to take a look at it. It’s a good series, it’s from the UK and feels like it. Lots of pages with just artwork, no people and no dialog, and it’s not just that the artwork is great (it is great!) but the pictures tell a story to. It makes me want more, so I’m always left wanting.

The whole series, all five volumes (so far) is on line, they release about six pages a week on Friday (about every 3 or 4 weeks it seems like they skip a week) and you can read the whole series from the beginning on-line. I found it a when I was home sick for a few days in a row and read most of it. Just make sure you read Freak Angels from the beginning, if you just go to the main site http://www.freakangels.com/ you start with this weeks’s story.

It’s the story of a bunch of kids, born at the same time on the same day and they’re “connected” but it’s more of a (present day?) post-apocalyptical society where they are trying to make things better; they have abilities / powers to help, but that’s not the only ways they help (they’ve takes a group of regular people to take care of and defend). It’s more complicated than that, but I don’t want to give anything away (there are a few flashbacks and I don’t want to speak out of order).

Sidebar: Reading this series made me think the UK series Misfits, they’re very different story-lines, but the buildings and the accents made me go back and watch both seasons of that series again (they only do six episodes a season).

But I’ve liked the series and sometimes Friday mornings it’s the first thing that I do, see this week’s episode, I’m pretty bummed when it turns out to be a skip week.

They’re winding the last story down, I’m not sure if there is only a week left or only a week left in this volume (I’m going to guess former). I have so many books, I wish there was a universal way of buying these digitally that would always be forward compatible. I think I’ll buy one of the shirts (I just never wear t-shits very often, but it’s the same ones some of the characters wear) or just see if there is a donate button.

I did order a graphic novel that one of the artists colorists did called “Fish and Chocolate” by Kate Brown, I’m enjoying that story so far; I’m savoring it slowly since it was pretty pricey shipped from the UK and was self-published.

So it’s an interesting story, but it’s post-disaster, it’s not a happy-go-lucky story, but there is a nice moment or two. The characters are interesting, but sometimes I got them confused with each other. Otherwise, it’s one of the better graphic novels I’ve read in a long time.

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Sign up for Google+ now! Availability for Google Plus comes and goes, but it’s going right now so give it a try.

I’m not sure what to do with it yet. But at least I’ve got an account :)

Actually, the only reason that I wanted to hop on was to get “garylapointe” but it doesn’t look like your user id ever shows up in the web address, so not a big deal…

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So I guess I shouldn’t complain about life too much. Things could certainly be worse.

Although, that’s not really true, one of the things I learned from volunteering at the shelter (and/or the crisis hotline) is that if you’ve got problems, it doesn’t matter if someone else has it worse, they’re still your problems (and you’ve got to work them out). Although, sometimes, diagrams like the above sometimes help to put them into perspective…

Jessica Nagy does these great diagrams on index cards on a great site called “Indexed” and she’s got a book or two (or three) out with similar types of content.

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I like using a NewsReader on my iPhone (or iPod Touch) and one of my favorites is Doppler. It’s easy to use and it synchronizes with Google Reader so it makes off-line reading easy to do. So this means that when you read an article it marks it as read on Google so you don’t end up reading it again.

It caches all your RSS feeds for off-line reading so it’s pretty fast when you’re going through the news since it cached it in advance; but this means you do click to click on the link a minute before you’re ready to read since it doesn’t download in the background. I usually tap it before I leave the house since it’s faster on the WiFi, even if I don’t read it soon, it’s cached most of the recent articles so that when I do sync over 3G it’s already got most of the new news…

TIP: When configuring to sync with Google it lists all your individual feeds at the top of the list, but if you scroll to the bottom of the list you can choose your “folders” as defined in Google Ready

I’m mentioning this software today because it’s free for download until July 20th, 2010. It’s worth the money, but free is better, isn’t it?

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I remember how excited I was when I managed to get an invite for the service. Back then we actually called it Google gmail (or was it just Google mail?).

Looks like I gave away about over a hundred invites back when they were “closed” for accounts (maybe more if I deleted some, but if I did, I don’t know why all the others would still be in my sent box). Towards the end, they pretty much had unlimited invites but you still had to know someone to have them send you one.

Little did we know we’d have all the Google applications that now come along with it.

It’s the number one e-mail that I recommend to anyone these days, even though it may not be the address I always use as my return address, it’s generally where the mail gets forwarded to.

PS – I always tell people to not use the e-mail your internet provider (cable or DSL company) gives you for free, you’ll lose that when you want to switch providers. If you use that address for important things you won’t want to switch since you’ll lose that address. That’s why some people are still hanging onto AOL addresses after all these years…

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One of the best parts of How I Met Your Mother is when they mention a web site in the show, such as
“It was the best night ever dot com“, they’ve actually gone and got the site ItWasTheBestNightEver.com

And the site actually has some photos and a video of Marshall singing the song with Nuno Bettencourt.

It’s just one of those silly things that I enjoy when TV shows go the extra mile.

(Although, I thought the episode was a little slow otherwise)

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Are you friends with your coworkers on Facebook? Have you found this to be beneficial (fun) or detrimental (annoying)? From Friday Question #83 at ilaxSTUDIO.

I think that generally when someone at work has friended me on social networks that I have accepted. I don’t really blog/complain about work, so this isn’t too much of a problem for me; I try not to put things that future employers would find unappealing; it’s not perfect, but I think the acceptable stuff vs. (what might be) unacceptable is so overwhelming, it’d be irrelevant. Those co-workers have chosen to be a part of my social network and need to behave properly; if they reveal something of me, they’ve probably put more inappropriate stuff on-line. And keep in mind, on-line I stay pretty mellow.

In the end it hasn’t been beneficial or a problem. I guess if I do something cool or fun they might share it with someone else, but since I don’t post too much stuff I would care about, it’s not really detrimental.

When I travel I’ll post blog posts but things on-line for coworkers to see. But I’ll post it separate from my blog. For example, while for my trip I sent this link to co-workers for my Costa Rica 2007 trip, it’s virtually the same as my blog category of the same name. The co-worker link doesn’t include links back to my blog or (sadly) allow comments (couldn’t get it to work without the rest of the blog). The stories are all the same, but if I would have has something no so work safe, partying at a bar or pictures of a something like a bikini contest (but you get the idea), I’d not have added them to the “work category” and you’d only have seen them if you went to the main blog and not on the page for co-workers. Actually, I don’t really post it separate (it just shows up separate), the blog software does it for me; I haven’t figured this special category out for WordPress yet, not sure how to generate a category page without all the other junk, in MovableType I knew how (any tips?).

I know co-workers have found my blog, but it’s not what I gave them as an address, so it’s not what I shared with them, it’s what they found on their own. Since they found it and I didn’t invite them, it’s more like them running into them at the bar or on vacation or something.

I’m rethinking what get’s reposted to my Facebook page automatically though. I think I have a few co-workers and a few college students that I’ve taught. But the Facebook page and my blog intermingles so much, it’s hard to separate it…

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Playing around with the new MMS on your iPhone? You can use text4free.net to send yourself a MMS text to test it out. Actually, it’s not just for texting to yourself, it will let you send texts around the world for free!

It’ll send a picture or audio file. I sent a few, some went quick, some took a few minutes. It says it’ll send video too, but I haven’t tried video yet.

There is a maximum file size of 1 MB and allowed file types are .jpg, .png, .jpeg, .wbmp, .mid, .midi, .mp3, .mp4, .wav, .wma, .3gp, .mp4

This will work with phones other than an iPhone, I just brought up the IPhone since MMS got turned on for all the US AT&T users today.

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The OpenInternet.gov site is kind of boring so far, but the here’s the intro video (the first 60 seconds of the below intro probably says all you need).

Here’s the direct link.

The speech given this morning is different (video not available yet) and has some actual content and the speech is pretty good, so be sure to read it, it’s an interesting mini-history of the Internet. They talk of their six principals of transparency but they don’t mention Net Neutrality.

I think some people think OpenInternet.gov opening as the governments response to support Net Neutrality. Search Google for Net Neutrality OpenInternet.gov or Net Neutrality (at least results as of this moment) and it’s practically treating the OpenInternet.gov and Net Neutrality as the same thing.

The point that I’m bringing up is that they specifically don’t say the phrase on the site. And not in the speech, if anything they seem to be avoiding the phrase “Net Neutrality”. As a matter of fact they I can only find the word “neutral” once, in the last line of this mornings speech:

Our work now is to preserve the brilliance of what they contributed to our country and the world. It’s to make sure that, in the 21st century, the garage, the basement, and the dorm room remain places where innovators can not only dream but bring their dreams to life. And no one should be neutral about that.

I even had Google search OpenInternet.gov for “neutral” and it only found the same phrase (no hits for “net neutrality”).

I’m not saying they’re not going to support Net Neutrality concepts, I just think it’s interesting they went out of their way not to say Net Neutrality or even to say that they’re support concepts of it. And that so many places are reporting the phrase Net Neutrality in the headlines in regards to the this site and speech.

I’d like to read more, but they don’t have an RSS feed to use. They mislead you with some Twitter, Facebook and RSS icons, but those are just for the FCC site.

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Wow! Did you realize how much information about yourself (and friends) gets shared when you take a quiz on Facebook?!?

Did you realize how much information of yours gets shared when a friend takes a quiz on FaceBook?!?

The ACLU has a FaceBook quiz that shows you how much quizzes can find out about you. It actually pulls some data (it takes a minute) and then shows you what it can get. Their quiz is only three questions long. At the end they have a link for going into FaceBook and adjusting your privacy settings for quizzes.

Even if you haven’t taken a Facebook quiz, you probably have a friend who spends all day doing so. But did you know that every quiz your friend takes gives quite a bit of information from your profile?!? I’m assuming the same information is given away to applications that you run?

PS – While you’re in FaceBook be sure to add me as a friend!

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Interesting. Mostly because: I blog, I twitter and I try to keep my FriendFeed up-to-date, but there is so much overlap I never know what to how to separate these things and I’ve really been thinking about it lately.

FriendFeed accepts Facebook friend request
We are happy to announce that Facebook has acquired FriendFeed.

As my mom explained to me, when two companies love each other very much, they form a structured investment vehicle…

[From FriendFeed Blog: FriendFeed accepts Facebook friend request]

I’d recently decided that my blog is my real site, my main personal identity on-line. FaceBook was for my non-geeky friends (I look around comments, repost blogs there and I think it grabs my YouTube stuff). My Twitter was for tweets and I’d also auto-magically repost blog posts (including video blogs from Seesmic and 12Seconds. FriendFeed just kind of has everything aggregate there (blogs, photos, YouTube, Amazon favorites, Flickr).

What I really really don’t like is when have a blog post show up at my blog, Twitter, FriendFeed and FaceBook and I get comments from all four areas that unless someone goes to all four areas you don’t see the comments. I really want the comments at my home, not at some other site; I want my comments in just one location.

So I’m really more than okay if it goes away, I think. I’ve been auto-posting the last few days my blog posts with images trying to make FriendFeed a little more useful to the people who subscribe. But I’m not sure if I want people there, or if I just want them at my Gary Said… blog.

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So in my attempt to start using Twitter more I installed TweetDeck today. Coincidentally, later on today they also released a free iPhone/Touch version of TweetDeck today which will sync with your columns (you need to download the new desktop version for the syncing). Syncs with multiple desktop clients too.

It seems like a great iPhone/Touch client even on it’s own: Take photos and immediately post to Twitter (via TwitPic etc.), shake to refresh, reorder columns.

And TweetDeck appears to support multiple Twitter accounts (I don’t think that feature was in there earlier today).

Later: Looks like it only syncs columns you create after installing the new version. At least that’s the only way I can get it to work. And I manually had to sync, it doesn’t seem to be persistent, but I’m not changing my columns that often so no problem for me. (I relaunched to test but still no joy, maybe I just need to wait?)Not getting any syncing between my “columns”. I think I’m doing something wrong(?).

Even Later: So the iPhone version is syncing when it loads today (it was not doing this yesterday); it actually asks before adding a column. But the desktop version (for Mac) isn’t asking me to do this.

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Does anyone really care if their feed is RSS 2.0 or RSS 0.92 or Atom 0.3?

I’m assuming most people’s concern is full feed or partial feed? (I like full feeds with images).

I’m also assuming most feed readers handle all types these days?

My experience is most Atom feeds are full feeds, does anyone use partial feeds with atom?

Just looking for some opinions. Deep feedback / technical feedback is optional :)

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Starting tonight (at 9PM Pacific) you can reserve your own Facebook vanity id. This means (hopefully) I’ll be “http://facebook.com/GaryLaPointe ” instead of “http://facebook.com/profile.php?id=736138968“.

You should be able to just go to http://www.facebook.com/username/ to get your name.

As always, you’re welcome to add me as a friend…

SUCCESS! I did manage to get my name (as above). It’s not case sensitive but I like the caps capitalized. And there is no trailing slash (“/”), it causes an error.

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So I’ve got a new theme. I figure I have to mention it because if you just read the RSS feed, you’ll never see it.

It’s pretty much the Simple Indy theme by India Fascinates. It really reminds me of a few other themes out there, but it handles my long categories, works well on Mac, was easy to modify, it’s zippy and it works really well.

I’ve modified it a bit here and there to fit my needs but it’s pretty close to the original code. I like titles on all my archive pages and added my header image. I also changed the way it marked posts with the tags and categories. I also like full posts, if it’s the main page, archive or search results. And I like error messages to come with a search box. So other than that a few other minor changes it’s 99% the original theme. I still need to integrate my old logo into it…

The photo will probably be changed soon, but it was one of the first ones I tried that fit okay. Currently it’s a view of the Pacific from Quepos, Costa Rica. I think maybe December of 2006 (New Years Eve,I think). If it’s not a picture of the coast with two tree trunks (like the thumbnail), then I changed it to something else ;)

I liked my old theme but it just loaded too slow and it had been bugging me for a while.

Please leave a comment or trackback about I’ve finally got a new theme set up for my blog, click the tags and categories below for related information or visit http://GarySaid.com/ for more posts.