God has apparently decided I am NOT going to be wealthy. As a result, I've discovered that I can make things, fix things and invent junk that a wealthier man wouldn't even bother to make, fix or invent. In case you're in the same boat as me, I created this site to share the "wealth" of experience God has given me as a shade tree mechanic, fix-it guy and back porch inventor.
12 Things to Look Out for When Selling Your Stuff Online
I posted a treadmill I'm trying to sell on Facebook Marketplace. To my surprise I had 3 inquiries right away. They sounded like a sure thing to close the deal, but it soon became evident that all three of them were trying to pull almost carbon copy scams.
It works like this:
They jump on the posting quickly to put you in a good mood and receptive. "Wow! That was fast," you think.
They create a group with you and the buyer that is managed by the buyer.
They claim to live in your area, but are "...out of town on vacation." or something like that.
They want to pay you now, but won't be able to pick it up for a while. This gives them time to work the scam. They say they will pay you now to hold the item you are selling in order to increase your sense of trust.
They tell you they use Zelle. They need your information to send the money.
Next they contact you and say they sent the money, it was debited from their account, but Zelle says that because they are a business account and you are a personal account that they need more money to meet some sort of minimum payment.
They say they will pay the $300 or whatever if you'll refund extra pay back to them.
Zelle doesn't work that way. The scammer hopes you will go ahead and send them back the money because you mistakenly trust them.
If you wait for the money to clear to your account, they disappear.
Track down the buyer's profile. I've had three, so far on a treadmill I listed. One was apparently German, another from the broken English was a semi-illiterate Nigerian, and the third posted largely in Italian and talked about going to events in Rome. It's unlikely any of them will come to my house in Washingtonn State to pick up a treadmill.
Don't share a lot of information with these guys. With Paypal, they only need your username so I have started telling buyers I don't use Zelle.
“Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves." - Jesus (Matthew 10:16)
Remember there are bad people out there. Fortunately most are not very bright because they do the same routine time after time. Then someone comes up with something new and the rest of them copy it with varying degrees of success. Even those of us who are wise about scammers are still, by nature, trusting souls. We want to believe there are decent folk out there who wouldn't scam us. But there are, just as there are political parties and governments that are evil. They promise a utopia and proceed to create a dictatorship and send anyone who complains to the gulags.
Sorry for the sermon there but they are part and parcel of the same thing. Some people believe that kind trusting people are nothing but lambs to be led to the slaughter. They have no morals, nor any decency.
I spent three years teaching English to Chinese children. These
kids are smart and driven (mostly by their parents). I once had
to do a phonics intensive version of See-Saw Margery Daw so I put down
the puppets and ran and grabbed my Squared Eel to play along. The kids
are fascinated by my home-built Mike Gregory classic.
I owe a lot to Michael. He single-handledly restored me
to the company of active banjo players. I lost two banjos and two
guitars in moving to Washington State with my wife. She went on ahead.
We were broke and family invited us to come up and "help" with a sick
relative. We were supposedly never going to have to worry about a place
to live again. We arrived on a wing and a prayer. We paid my wife's
entire disability check for rent and she did all the housework and I did
the cooking. That arrangement lasted a year until the friction between
the alpha dog and myself (a junkyard dog that isn't impressed by
authority figures) became too stressful. We crammed our worldly goods in
a storage unit and embarked on a month-long sojourn as homeless people.
God helped us find a place and we settled in. It
wasn't long before I began trying to figure out how to get my hands on
another banjo. Like the proverbial white knight, in rode Michael Gregory in his top hat and soon I received a package of parts from him which purported to contain almost everything I needed to make a genuine Squared Eel as demonstrated here by Johnny Button.
My heart leaped for joy! The parts (below) looked decidedly
unsophisticated, but wonderful things often come in simple clothing.
Mike suggested an alternative head material in the note he sent with it - a plastic soda bottle.
That started me on a whole chain of fun modifications to the basic
Squared Eel. Briefly my modifications included the soda bottle head,
made by cutting apart a 3 liter soda bottle into the largest flat piece
possible (by removing the top and bottom). I followed Mike's instruction
for assembling the neck, head and base. I stretched the pop bottle
plastic over the rectangular head space, put down some powerful glue
pressed down the plastic and then proceeded to secure the edges by
hammering gold decorative tacks at regular intervals around the head.
Then, following directions, I applied a hair dryer to the head and was
tickled to see the head stretch taut over the frame. Not only that but
after I trimmed the excess plastic it looked marvelous.
One problem! I set the neck a little too low and with the
bridge at standard height over the head was too high over what was to be
my fretboard. Mike has this nifty design using old windshield
wiper blades for frets, It became clear however I was going to have to
add a fretboard material over it. Then I got a Stewart McDonald catalog
in the mail and low and behold I found I could get a standard guitar
fretboard for about 20 bucks. So I ordered one. Along with it I got a
nice bridge and nut precut for a five string banjo. As you can tell from the picture the cut of the pieces is pretty simple and glue up is something you can do with hide glue bungee cords and rubber bands.
The basic structure looks like this. It's ready for the tuners, fretboard and head.
When the fretboard arrived I found that if I pushed the top
of the fretboard up against the nut, I had some gap space at the bottom
of the neck between the board and the pot. The measurement for the
bridge put the bridge a little high on the pot. So I measured
what the length needed to be to make it into a longneck banjo and lo'
and behold, the neck was long enough. Sooooooo, I downloaded a template
for a longneck fretboard from the Internet and moved the guitar
fretboard so that the top of the fretboard lined up with the third fret
mark from the nut. Then I added a thin piece of hardwood the same
thickness as the fretboard between the nut and my commercial fretboard
and glued it to the top of the neck.
I clamped the ears together and attached them to the end of the neck instead of the sides as Mike does, thus creating a longneck banjo.
Here's where Mikes wire windshield wiper core frets came in handy.
You can also buy fret wire from Stew-Mac if you'd rather. I sawed the
fret kerfs into the upper fretboard and tapped the wire into the
grooves. I clipped the ends of the fret wire and rounded the rough edges
on the ends with my trusty Dremel Moto-Tool. I may one day stain the
upper section to match the lower fretboard but at the time I was more
interested in finishing the project. Instead of a tailpiece, I used
screws and looped the ends over those. I had to fiddle with the bridge a
little to get the strings to the right height. I wound up shortening
the bridge and deepening the grooves on the nut, but I wound up with a
satisfactory action when I was done.
You may wonder about the width of the guitar fretboard.
That worked out to be a surprising bonus deal for a longneck banjo of
the sort I wanted. The overlap where the sixth string goes hangs over
the top edge of the neck. Once I put in the block for the fifth string, I
discovered that the resulting lip allowed me to use a small plastic
furniture clamp as a fifth string capo. Best one I ever had! With a
longneck, your capo gets a real workout and this feature allowed me to
avoid retuning the fifth string when I went for the lower or higher
frets from standard.
Clamped the heel of the pot, glued and bungeed the headstock to get the level fretboard and angle the headstock.
One other thing I did, was beef up the headstock by drilling a
hole as shown and both gluing and screwing the headstock into place. I
made one modification after I took this photo. I removed the headstock
and cut the end of the neck at a slight angle and reglued and rescrewed
it into place. The headstock as you can see in the finished photos, is
canted back a little bit which gives the strings more purchase against
the nut and seems to reduce detuning when you play. You can see the
tuners installed in this view.
I next stuck a screw eye on the front edge of the pot and looped
an old leather belt and attached the ends to the eye. It made a dandy
banjo strap. The final product makes a nice little banjo with a
funky soft sound. To ease stress on the neck I used nylon classical
guitar strings with an extra e-string for the fifth string. MIke uses
fishing line, but I actually had an extra set of classical string in a
drawer, so I used those. The tuners were simple standard banjo tuners.
The ones I used were nice tuners and don't require a lot of retuning
when you're playing it.
I had so much fun making this banjo and I've played it for church services so it sounds pretty good and is easy to play. Here's a video of me playing my new Squared Eel after a four year hiatus from banjo playing. It ain't great, but it's recognizable as Cripple Creek.
Here you can see the basic Squared Eel ready for the fretboard and the
finished head attached to the pot. I stained and varnished the wood and
put wood button plugs into the screw holes to give the pot a finished
look. You can see two of the buttons on the butt end of the pot.
Here you can see down the length of the neck of the finished longneck version of the Eel.
You can see where the fretboard overhangs the neck under the fifth
string allowing you to use a small furniture clamp to capo the fifth
string. You can also see where the commercial fretboard and the add-on
fretboard I made. I got some experience installing frets doing that
little bit. It was satisfying discovering that I could install frets
accurately.
You can see the headstock and the top 3 frets more clearly here.
Even if you have a store-bought banjo, this thing is a bunch of fun to build and Michael sells the kit pretty cheaply. Thanks Mike. You're the man!
The camera on my Lenovo T-410 kept going off. I use it with Skype and Movie Maker and Facebook so it's inconvenient when the thing isn't working. I couldn't figure out why it quit on me. At first, I figured that the camera was broken, but then it unexpectedly came back on. Then it went off again.
I looked up the laptop and found the original drivers and reinstalled them. The camera came right back up. Next time I shut the laptop off, the camera didn't come back up when I booted up the laptop again. Here's how I fixed the problem.
I did a Google search on how to turn the laptop on and off. Bingo! I discovered that there is a not very well described and not very intuitive way to turn the camera on and off. Apparently I've been accidentally turning it on and off. On the Lenovo T-410 there is a function key in the lower left corner of the keyboard. To turn the camera off and on, hold down the function key (Fn) and simultaneously press the F6 key. It turns the camera on and off.
Solved my problem immediately. So, if you have an onboard laptop camera I recommend two steps.
Look up how to turn your particular laptop integrated camera on and off. Try it and see if it works.
If that doesn't work, look up the integrated camera driver software for your particular camera and install the software.
Then, try step 1 again and see if it works.
If that doesn't work, you probably have a busted camera. Get yourself a USB camera and plug it in. It's too expensive to try and replace the onboard camera.
Hope this helps. I read through a lot of ways to fix a camera that doesn't work, but these steps were the only ones that worked. If your camera is on, The camera will work when you fire up the software that uses it.
