Pollywogs!

As of 4:39PM EST.  If no one thought of it first, is it 'my' idea?  This is considered publishing it and copyrighting it?  Sorta?  Anyway…

How bout each member only gets one 'last bid' in the 24 hours of the auction (24 hours seems like a most fair fit).  Up to that point, refresh and bid as much as you want.  But, in the last 24 hours, you only get one refresh and rebid.  That would prevent people from sniping items (as I just did about 15 seconds ago) from someone else.  Everyone would flurry the bidding the moment up to the last refresh, but then you see what the actual interest is in the item, what the price fleshes out to.  If only two people are interested, there wouldn't be much of a bidding war in the moments leading up to the 24th remaining hour, and there would be no action, just a normal 'snipe' at the last minute.  BUT!!! that final snipe would simply be what the person truly wanted to pay, even if they counted it down to the final 15 seconds.  Because, they know if they don't wait till then, they could still be sniped.  BUT!!! knowing that they only get one, each simultaneous sniper will bid what they, in their hearts, truly believe is the highest amount they are willing to pay.  I call it HonestBidding ™ copyright by Garrett Socling 2006 All Rights Reserved.

If eBay ever comes out with such a feature, I'll sick the DCMA on them, and have them shut down and their servers confiscated, just like the Swedish police did to The Pirate Bay, eh?  Oh, uninvolved parties took it in the ass because of that kind of bullshit?  DCMA sucks doesn't it…copyright holders run amok suck ass, don't they…companies that find good ideas, 'lift' them and say they've been working on that very concept for two years before your blog entry suck, don't they?  Unless they pay me royalties of $0.001 on each transaction.  Does that add up to $3 million a year?  If not, please adjust the per transaction fee accordingly.  Thank you, current CEO of eBay.

I'm a Buddhist.  Its very easy and natural to be a Buddhist…like falling off a bike easy…I managed to do it without realizing I was doing it.

I thought of a couple other things…and forgot them before I could write them down…sigh…

Oh, I am also a Pastafarian (just to cover all of the bases, I wouldn't want to piss any one god off). 

Further: I belong to the Church of Reality.  A tidy quote from the site: 

How much do you have to scare a person to get them to believe in something that's totally ridiculous? That is the real question here!

Wolf Creek.  Good stuff…well done.  I was very pleased with this movie (even though while watching it I almost couldn't bear it).

May I further recommend the 'Making Of'?  Worth the watch, very interesting as well.

I heartily recommend Wolf Creek to anyone who likes a scary movie!

Light topics tonight:

HOW TO LISTEN

BY LARRY KING

* The key is to focus. The truest thing I've ever heard in my life is: "I never learned anything when I was talking."

* If you don't understand what you are listening to, simply say: "I don't understand. Can you explain it to me further?" There is nothing wrong with not knowing. It is wrong, however, not to admit that you don't know.

* Sometimes it is hard to get someone to talk, but keep working at it. Here's a good case in point. I was interviewing an award-winning fighter pilot who had shot down 11 enemy planes during the Second World War. I had one hour with him.

My first question was why he enlisted in the air corps. His answer was, "I liked it." I could immediately tell that not only was this fellow nervous, but I would struggle to get him to speak for an hour. He was shaking so much that I switched gears and asked him about fear. Within 10 minutes, he was saying things like, "We dove through the clouds… I could see the whites of their eyes." In other words, I had moved him into his territory and expression came out. So the tip here is to look for the person's comfort zone.

* A conversation requires two people. Listen to what the other person is saying.

Larry King is the host of Larry King Live on CNN and author of How to Talk to Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere: The Secrets of Good Communication.

From HERE.  I've often thought that the skill of listening is one of the most important things that never seem to get mentioned.  To sum it up:  Be quiet, attentive and focused, prompt for more clarification when necessary, make sure your subject is comfortable with the process and make sure that the give-and-take of the conversation provides positive reinforcement that keeps the subject going on topic.

This is interesting for about 30 seconds.  I don't like math rap either. 

Thats about it for me.  I was 'trying' to play guitar for about two hours to a Pearl Jam concert from Detroit of this year, it was a lot of fun.  The guitar is slowly going from a bizarre wooden stringed instrument to something that almost feels like it might be part of my body after another ten years ago.

Need something else to read?  Check this out, I'm sure there are one or two things that will entertain for a couple minutes.  Start HERE, recommended :)  I'm glad someone made a video like that, I've imagined such a thing, it was wonderful to watch…actually, what I imagined was the journey of a hydrogen atom from the Big Bang to a glass of water in front of me, but its the same sort of thing.

The full-ish moon was southward, K & I were having a glass of wine outside, watching the clouds fly by.  First I noticed was extremely bright while it was illuminated by the moon, moving from south to north very fast, somewhat west of our position.  The second was much dimmer, moving north to south nearly overhead, and moved much slower.  The third was roughly the same brightness and speed, and was moving in a west-south-west to east-north-east direction, slightly south and east of our position.  The first two were only a minute or two apart, the third perhaps five or ten minutes after that, all around 10PM EST. 

Strange, I haven't seen a satellite in forever!