Just Little Old Me! In September 2007.

    I have been a semi-active member of eBay since October of 2003 and a very active member since November or December of 2006. I am ## years old and retired on a federal disability since June of 1995 when I had a minor stroke. I was able to return to work after several years and worked for another 7 years before I retired for good. I spent over 30 years in IT, or DP (Data Processing) as it was called when I started, in private business as well as federal and state government. It was an area that I kind of stumbled into. I was selling real estate in Arizona and was offered a night shift job in an entry level position in DP with a local bank. I took the job and also took a class in Intro to DP at a local college, and I was hooked. I wrote my first COBOL computer program in that class. Working two fulltime jobs and attending class three nights a week doesn't work well when you have a wife and a young child. So I had to make a decision between Real Estate, which was just starting to really pay off, and Data Processing, which was a new and exciting area for me and many others though the pay was much lower that I was used to. I chose Data Processing and I have loved every minute of my career. Getting an early start in the field really helped me to move up the ladder and I've had the opportunity to hold just about every position in DP except for keypunch, which I had to learn anyway.

    Now I am retired and spend much of my time as an active member of eBay, managing to keep busy working on the Internet, which I started on as a Site Administrator on a Milnet node for the Navy back in 1989. Back then the majority of the sites on the network were government (.gov or .us for states), education(.edu), computer manufactures and other government suppliers and contractors (.com).

    My wife and I have been married for over 36 years and we have three wonderful sons, Dax, Derek and Robert. Each one of them are very special in their own ways. We have one grand-daughter, Hallie, who is two and a half now and she will have a little sister next month (Oct. 2007). She is the daughter of our second son and his wife.

    Our oldest son who is returning from a year in Iraq, as I write this, will be 35 at the end of this month, September 2007, and out of the Army for good. He was a manager at UPS before his Reserve unit was activated not long after he got married and he will return to that position with UPS here in southern Idaho. He started working on my coin collection with me when he was about 8 or 10 and has always known that one day it would be his. What he doesn't know is that I am going to start turning the collection over to him section by section as soon as he gets home and settled. He and his wife are shopping for a larger home as they are going to start a family now that he is done with the Army for good. I have been busy this last year trying to get the collection, which I started over 47 years ago, into shape for Dax to take over.

    Our youngest son will be 24 the day that our oldest son arrives back on US soil. He is an energic young man holding down two jobs most of the time. He is very much like his dad in that respect. He has been too busy to become too serious with anyone though there is a very nice young lady who is just waiting for him to make a move. Or at least that is what I believe she is doing. I hope that I'm right. The entire family thinks the world of her and I hope that Robert decides that she's the one here pretty soon.

    My main interests are collecting coins, photography, reading, collecting autographed books, fishing, getting out in the beautiful back country that Idaho and its surrounding states have to offer. Its like being born and raised in paradise. And now that I'm retired we try to get out and about as much as possible, though that isn't always possible. I used to spend a lot of time fishing and hiking with a friend of mine from around the time we were 5 years old, but my hiking days are over now and I thankfully have the photos to remember them by.

    I hope that you find in dealing with me that I am fair and trying to serve my customers as best I can. I try to offer the types of items that I myself would enjoy having and I always try to be fair when setting shipping and handling fees. What the buyers don't always think about is the fact that some items cost a lot more to ship than others. If the shipping containers are larger, so are the costs, both for the container as well as the postage. If it is an international order it is going to cost a lot more than a domestic one will. And that isn't even taking into consideration the time and materials used for packing some items. Some of them require a lot more padding and careful packing than others, and it can really take a lot of time for some items. Especially old glass lamps, hobnail bowls, etc. If you find an item that you think any of the seller set costs are unreasonable, please don't hesitate to drop me a note and let me know what you think. As that good friend of mine always says, "One thing you never know, you know, is that you never know, you know?" How true that statement is! I may have been working on listing an item the would cost more to pack or to ship than the next one I list, and if I was listing several of the more expensive items to send, I may have inadvertently use the figures that I had been using for the previous item. I'm far from perfect, though not far! I am always open for consideration to any suggestion that you may have, so please don't hesitate to let me know.