rant

It all stared easily enough. I sold an item on TradeMe, someone bid and won the auction. I emailed them within a couple of hours of the auction closing, and twice again over 3 days without receiving any contact from the buyer. When he finally does get in touch he's not exactly helpful. He finishes by becoming abusive in a quaint, slightly retarded kind of way, even getting his wife to continue emailing me after I ask him to stop.

RE: Trade Me -- Sold with reserve met. Auction: 95419618 Wooden drawers with cupboard

---

Andrew Stephen <email@address>
Tue, Apr 17, 2007 at 10:02 PM

To: [email protected]

Hi there,

The drawers can be picked up from [my address] by
arrangement.  Someone is usually home during the days.  Please call on
[my phone number] before coming around.

Thanks,
--
Andrew Stephen
http://www.evil.geek.nz/

Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person
who doesn't get it.

It was 1982 and I was 10 or 11 years old. I'd always been interested in computers and electronics and read science fiction almost exclusively. Of course, being 9 years old and it being only 1981 and all, I'd never actually seen a computer - I'd only read about them.

There was a local electronics shop (Brian Snell, just down the road on George Street in my home town of Dunedin, New Zealand) which had a spectacular display of new-fangled digital watches. These things had all sorts of amazing features. There were calculators and and even games on these. I had a Casio watch which had a golf game with a little man and a tiny black dot on a green-shaded LCD background.

One day, after school, I went into this shop to look at the watches and calculators and spotted something new; in the middle of the store was a small black box connected to a TV set. The TV screen was completely white (well, a slightly fuzzy light-gray to be accurate) with a small black-on white "K" in the bottom left corner. I was curious and went to investigate.