eBay Nightmare

It's only been 3 days since the last time i blogged, but it seems like it has only been about a day. I guess time just flew right past me.

I'm starting to get a lot of things for my studio.. when i first came to LA - i thought about living very simple. A bed, desk, computer, and a small fridge. But now - i got all these posters from BR with frames that cost me $24 a piece.. I have a queen size mattress.. Desk with computer obviously - a small oven toaster.. I brought my reclining chair from home and also brought my 13" TV. I have an ab roller in the corner and bunch of other crap.

I recently bought:

1. Stainless Steel Fridge. I'll take a picture of it one of these days and show it here - it's perfect for me cuz it's not too small nor too big. It was $199 but i got $10 off cuz it was the last one on display.
2. I got a 900W microwave. The salesperson at Home Depot was trying to make me buy the 1200W which was $20 more.. but i was like.. err.. i don't need that much power. This microwave cost $59.99
3. I got a small vacuum cleaner. It's very small and compact - yet it's VERY powerful.. i can totally feel that thing sucking air when I'm using it. $60

I still want to buy a entertainment system. But this will come eventually when i have extra cash laying around. A few trips not gone to Ktown might help me do that. haha.

1. 25 or 27" TV
2. DVD player
3. VCR
4. TV Stand with cabinets for the DVD and VCR.
5. New computer speakers cuz mine are sorta broken.

I think other than that - i'm pretty set right now.. i don't feel the need to buy anything else right now.. is there anything else that i even need? Man - i've been charging my card so much to buy all this - now i gotta pay it off.

I also had to deal with eBay for quite some time now. Not really a great place to buy things cuz there are always problems.

1. The first story is when i bought my Geforce3 Ti500 video card off this guy.. i got it for a decent price and when i opened it - the fan didn't work. So i tried to fix it - and broke it. Thankfully the guy had a $200 insurance on the thing - so i sent it back to him so he could claim that. It almost seemed as though it was a scam to begin with. He gladly refunded me my money back. But then now i had to bid on another video card to replace that one.

2. I got a 64MB CF card for my digi cam - which works perfectly.. that was a good transaction.

3. I got a 512MB PC2100 DDR ram cuz one of my ram chips was damaged. OH yeah.. do you remember when my computer kept rebooting and giving me the blue screen of death? It was ALL because of the stupid ram.. not because of the video card.. not because of my motherboard, HD, or anything else. My theory is that when the rear fan broke.. and wasn't working at the correct RPM - the ram got too hot and burned out. Anyways, the computer ran very slowly with only 256MB.. so i bought the 512 and now i have 768MB. The computer is working great. But when i first installed the ram chip - the computer wouldn't boot.. so i thought i had gotten another mickey mouse.. and got pretty pissed off. I was thinking of how horrible it is to keep going back to the post office to return these items and have to deal with bidding again.

However, after a few more tries in different combinations of slot positions - it just magically worked. So now i'm happy and it's all good.

4. The current video card i'm running is a VistionTek Geforce3 Ti200 with 64MB.. i got it for a pretty good price and even got my shipping refunded, cuz the guy forgot to ship it 2 day fedex, instead shipped it with Priority mail. When i got the card - one of the ramSink had fallen apart and was dangling inside the anti-static bag. The backbone metal piece was also bent badly.

Now i was pissed again.. how could this shit happen twice? Ugh! So i used some pliers and fixed the metal piece, but i didn't have any thermal adhesive to put the ramsink back together. I e-mailed that guy and explained what happened. At this point, i really did not want to ship another card back - and have to deal with bidding all over again. OH yes, i forgot to mention - why all of this was going on.

- My video card Geforce4 MX fuxored on me.. so i didn't have a computer for a bit. I went to best buy and bought a Geforce4 Ti4200 for $189 bucks. I knew it was a rip off - but i had no other choice because i couldn't use my computer to buy something online. Best Buy also had a 30 day refund policy so i had 30 days to bid on eBay for a decent card. After the first card i got from eBay came with a bad fan - that was 2 weeks into it.. so i was running out of time to return this one.

And back to my story.. when i got the current card i have right now, it was a Monday and actually the 30th day i had kept the GeForce4 Ti4200 which i went and returned. SO.. obviously i didn't want to return the card i bid on eBay because that would leave me w/o a video card on my computer.
The card itself works flawlessly at the moment.. so i'm not complaining but the heatsink worries me because it's there for a reason. Heat is the #1 cause of hardware failures.. so yeah. I e-mail that guy again and told him I would prefer not to ship it back to him.
First off he refunded me $15 for shipping cuz he fuxored up.. and now he even ordered a thermal adhesive from outpost.com for $20 to keep me happy. Now that's a great eBayer. Hopefully when the adhesive comes, the card will be brand new again.

I guess all in all - everything worked out with the eBay deal - but there was so much hassle for some of the bids.. unless you really want something for cheap - i would stay away from eBay.

I'm at the CSULB computer lab right now.. i had some extra time to write all of this. I have to drive to Home Depot today to return an extension plug and buy a multiple extension plug. I will probably also stop by Food4Less and buy some frozen food now that i have a fridge.