howeird | Stars and Chocolate (Reply)

As advertised, I went to the PO this morning and picked up the registered packet with the latest lot of star sapphires. Unlike the last vendor's batch, this one was all winners. Each stone is at least 1 carat, most more than 2. All have stars, seven of them have clear bright stars in a translucent stone (as opposed to less valuable opaque). So my $80 investment is worth maybe $1k. Not enough to retire on, but when I do, I hope eBay is still around to help sell these.

Speaking of eBay, I signed up for their September advanced sellers class, and I see

howbearca's buddy Griff is the head of the teaching staff. I'm looking forward to meeting the legend. The class isn't as much for me to sell my own stuff as it is to help friends who want to open an eBay store, and don't know what tools they should use. I'm not a big fan of database programming, but the times I've done it have proved relatively painless.

Pointed the new camcorder at the fish last night, it works pretty well. I think I will bring it to the tour, in addition to the Nikon. Very strange playing with a Sony camcorder again - I spent a year and a half doing QA on Sony PCs, mostly using camcorders and i-link ports. I need to get an i-link to standard firewire cable - the cable which comes with the camcorder is i-link to i-link.

Another half hour and I'll put some blue ice in the cooler and head for Berkeley. I expect to buy a lot of chocolate at the Scharffen-Berger factory.