eBay, Journalism Jobs, Food Prices & Global Warming

eBay. Some people love it. Some people hate it. Either way, you ought to be careful if you’re buying from them.

A Calgary man was scammed out of $20,000 when he tried to buy a car on eBay recently. Apparently the scammer hijacked a reputable account and successfully, so far, got away with Shaqir Duraj’s money.

Aside from Duraj losing his $20k, I was not impressed with the reaction of eBay, which feels that it doesn’t have to respond to media enquiries and, if I remember correctly from the radio, wouldn’t even return calls to PhoneBusters. Maybe eBay doesn’t realize that PhoneBusters is actually a joint operation between the Ontario Provincial Police and the RCMP. Perhaps eBay officials should be charged with obstruction of justice?

I’m not sure if the fellow who was scammed used PayPal, eBay’s payment arm, but it would appear he’s covered up to $2,000 if he did. He should be anyway. Maybe eBay can do the right thing and at least give the guy $2,000. I would also suggest they cooperate with law enforcement in trying to solve the case.

I would be extremely careful about buying anything on eBay. I’ve bought a few little things, but I wouldn’t buy anything over the protection limit. Try making a successful claim. I’m sure eBay is worse than any insurance company in trying to get some money back.

Writing jobs

Life’s been busy lately. Isn’t it always? My wife started a new job up in Edmonton and she’s really liking it. I’ve been doing some contract writing work and also had two job interviews in Edmonton. Same company. I’m hoping I get the job. It’s with a software company and I think I’d do really well there. It’s doing technical and corporate writing.

Everyone I’ve met there seems really nice and relaxed. I think it would be a great work environment. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

So when I’m not looking North, I’m sort of packing up the house and getting it ready to sell. Another move. But, it’s where we want to be. We cleared out our big storage locker a couple weeks ago and moved the contents to heated storage in Edmonton. We donated a lot to the local Salvation Army-equivalent in Rocky Mountain House. I think we’ve taken two or three pickup loads of surplus stuff there. I would like to have sold it in a garage sale, but it’s to a good cause and I just want to be rid of the stuff. It makes me feel better in a number of ways. I’m doing some good and the stuff is no longer a headache!

Journalism and writing job site

I recently completed an SEO (search engine optimization) course as well as a web writing course. I’m planning on taking more of these kinds of courses. I see a good future in this work area.

I’ve been paying close attention (obsession) to my journalism job site and the traffic I’ve been getting. It’s grown consistently since I started it. The site design is virtually unchanged in the last year.

But, I’ve been mulling over ideas of what to do with it. I have some ideas to grow the traffic to it, and after that, who knows? What really amazes me is how high my site ranks for a number of search phrases. I’ve seen my site hit #1 out of 111,000,000 for one phrase! Obviously I’ve done a few things right without even realizing it when I built it.

I’ve also been kicking around a number of other website design ideas with people close to me. I am planning on helping them construct their own sites. I’ll do a lot of the writing and SEO work. As for the actual site construction, well, I’m not sure. My design is serviceable, but hardly award winning.

Rising food prices & global warming

It’s always interesting to see the unintended consequences of human activity. With seemingly unrestricted population growth and carbon dioxide emissions, we might not have enough to eat in the future.

It seems that global warming might lead to a 16 per cent drop in world food production by 2020. You think that the population will drop that much by then? Forget it! Starvation might take the population in that direction though.

So, global warming, paired with the biofuel industry are conspiring to limit the supply of food and jack up the price. As they say in the article, that’s not going to be good for the world’s poor. We’ll probably be fine in North America, though we’ll probably grumble about high prices for food and gas.

How long we’ll remain insulated from reality here remains to be seen. Our “leaders,” and I use that term loosely, are playing political games when we need solid action on global warming. Australia’s new government signed Kyoto as its first act. Ask Australia about drought and their thoughts on global warming. I think they take it seriously there.

As for our Prime Minister, well, let’s just say that “action” and “global warming” aren’t to be found in the same sentence with Mr. Harper. Let’s see how much actually gets accomplished in Bali. I think the Canadian delegation will get a tan, and that’s about it. Harper doesn’t seem to want to do anything unless everybody else does something too. I guess he doesn’t understand the word “lead.” How about “to go first?”

Instead, Harper would rather criticize the Liberals, deservedly so, for doing nothing since they signed Kyoto to actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions. No question, the Liberals did nothing. How long can you sing that song before people get tired of it though?

Yes, we know the Liberals did nothing. Now, what are the Conservatives going to do? Are they going to keep pointing at the Liberals and waiting for the rest of the world to get its act together before doing anything? Might be too late by then.

We need real action now and we need a leader who is going to do it. I’m not confident it will be a Liberal or Conservative. They’re both so concerned about power and nothing else that they won’t be able to do anything. Green or NDP? Not sure either.

Spare me the “argument” that it will hurt the economy. How much would it hurt the economy to have a desert from the Rockies to the Great Lakes? No, being a leader in green technology will help the economy and any costs, if structured properly, will be more than offset by savings. As we enter the era of peak oil, remember that energy prices will rise, and substantially. I think that models calculating savings need to reflect much higher energy prices in the future.