eBay Experiment Day 1

First item up for grabs is a Bill Hicks book. I bought this from Amazon, but got a second copy as a gift. I was lucky enough to see the great man twice before he died. Check out the auction here.

My first bid is on a stormtrooper for the Star Wars miniatures game.

First day so no wins and losses to speak of yet.

My eBay Experiment

In the spirit of making a change to your life or trying something new for 28 days, I've decided to try an experiment with eBay. Each day I will list a new auction and each day I will bid on a new auction. Hopefully this will be a fun way of getting rid of some of the clutter in the house. I will keep a running total of money made versus money spent and at the end of the 28 days we will see who is ahead, me or eBay.

Rules for the game are as follows:

1. Only 1 new auction to be posted per day.
   
2. All auctions are to start at £0.99 and no "Buy it Now".
   
3. Only one bid per day is allowed.
   
4. I can only bid once on a particular item.
   
5. I'll need to rely on myself to be sensible abou this, but bids shouldn't be above the market value for an item just to make sure I win it.
   
6. Links to all the auctions and pictures of what I've sold and won will be posed to this blog.

Here goes nothing. . . . .

The Death of the Toy Soldier

Back in the day, when I was but a youngster there was nothing better than than setting up huge armies of OO scale plastic soldiers and waging crazy warfare with a marble or other suitable artillery. Where did all these toy soldiers go? My preferred brand was Airfix, who had their financial problems, but if the demand was still there why didn't someone rush in to fill the vacuum? I wish I knew. These days toys are as much a fashion item as trainers (and I don't understand that either) and the days of the banker toy are almost gone. By banker toy I mean a toy that was a good gift regardless of the current fads. I'm not going to pretend that there weren't fad toys when I was young, but they weren't so all consuming. You could always fall back on a banker, namely (for me anyway), Lego, Airfix models, Airfix toy soldiers, or toy cars. Of these only Lego and toy cars still persist to any great degree and even then Lego is vastly different, consisitng now of kits designed to make pretty much the model you see on the box and nothing else.

Fad toys now rule the roost. Toy store shelves are now only just filled with "Batman Begins" toys, which will soon be discounted to make way for Fantastic 4 toys. My son's birthday is in June so he has missed most of these toys as potential birthday presents and I can be pretty certain that by Christmas they will have been swept from store shelves to be replaced with something else.

Of course it is not just about fad toys, there seems to be a move away from the kind of traditionally violent boy toys that my youth was filled with. The second world war was over 60 years ago, so should we still take delight in slaying hordes of little plastic Germans? Yup. We sure should. I liked playing with my Waterloo Assault Set. It didn't matter that Waterloo was 155 years before I was born. Without wanting to disappear up my own arse, this kind of play teaches imagination and creativity. They may be motionless plastic soldiers spread across your bedroom floor, but in your mind, they are fighting their way across treacherous battlefields, defining heroism and sacrifice. Surely this kind of play is way better for kids than using their Fantastic 4 toys to recreate scenes from the movie like little automatons?

Of course, if making a line of toy soldiers would be commercial suicide, what should take their place? Little plastic suicide bombers, insurgents (whatever they are) and car bomb plastic kits? I'm joking of course. We have just finishing celbraating the 60th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe. If there was ever a better time to launch a line of WW2 toys osldiers I don't know what it is. Maybe it is just nostalgia mixed with being thoroughly sick of political correctness applied to children's toys, but I really don't see the problem with toy soldiers and I certainly don't understand why they went out of favour. I could continue this rant to include toy guns but it is Saturday night I want to park my ass on the sofa.

The journey is complete

10 days and a lot of washing, but my son now seems pretty much potty trained. He crossed the final hurdle this morning by doing a poo in his potty. I'm still prepared for the odd accident, especially when he is out with his friends and forgets to come back in, but for now the worst is past.

5 times in one day

Well, with a subject line like that, I hope to get a few more hits. . . . I am of course referring to my son's potty training. 3 times in the potty and 2 times in the big toilet. Totally brilliant.

I also got a bunch of new toys in the mail today: a new Heroclix booster, D&D Miniatures Starter Set and Rebel Storm Starter Set as well as a couple of Spanish Main boosters. Many thanks to the guys at Leisure Games for their quick service. The new Heroclix got an outing tonight when my daughter kicked my ass. The other will stuff will have to wait for some Daddy quiet time. Spanish Main has already had some play at our monthly gaming days and it is a lot of fun.

Pretty sleepy today after pulling a late night at work yesterday. Looks like it was worth it though as everything is running smoothly (ish).

Dull night in work and cool kid's stuff

Well. . . Despite my big machine fetish, spending the evening on a plant trial at work is not proving as exciting as I had thought. More on what my work actually invovles some other time, but given this gift of free(ish) time, I thought I'd take the opportunity to add links to a couple of things I like to do with my kids:

• Heroclix. This is a lot of fun for grown-ups as well as kids, especially if you like comic books. The big advantage for kids is that there are basic rules which are still a lot of fun but remove a lot of the complexities. My daughter is 6 and loves playing this with me.
• Kids of Catan. Nice, simple boardgame. Based on the complex adult game Catan. This is one for the whole family as my 3 year old son has just about the staying power for a whole game. The game pieces are a lot of fun to play with on their own and in a nice touch, the instruction encourage you to do just that.
• Toy knights. A big castle, some knights and a dart gun and you can recreate Agincourt! Not quite, but almost. Endless hours spent with my son setting them up and knocking them down again. Papo rock.

Make that 3 pees in 5 days!

Up and running

Phew. After along day I have finally managed to update my website. It now contains a link to this blog on the navigation bar and some new content for only the second time this year.

The real question is whether or not I am able to maintain a blog with any more regularity than I was able to maintain the website. Time will tell I guess.

It worked out well that I had the day off work today (in-laws on holiday so I drew baby sitting duties) as I doubt I would ever have had time to modify the website at any other time, though I was going a little stir crazy around the house.

Potty training of my son continues (hence the stir craziness). So far he has managed to use the potty 2 times in 5 days. He can only get better tomorrow.