Just finished "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows"

I took the day off from work today and finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7). About the book... I won't say anything at all. Except I'm glad I read it, a little sad it's over. For me that marks a good book. But no details. You'll have to read it yourself.

One Warning: If you are planning on reading the book, do not read the table of contents. Do not flip through the book. Start at page one and read on through. I say this because I accidentally saw three words towards the end of the book before I should have, and it ruined a surprise for me. Caveat lector.

I got the book at nine minutes after it was released at 12:01 AM on Saturday, 21 July 2007. I had pre-ordered my book from Borders, and they had a little celebration. Since Sònia and Daniel were in Barcelona, this was my first and only opportunity to be present for one of these Harry Potter celebrations. I'm really pleased I got a chance to participate in this phenomenon. The group of folks who gathered at the Borders were my people-- kind of geeky. The group represented every demographic, and I was surprised to see a lot of people who I normally would not have picked as readers participating in lively debate over very exacting points of the previous six books.

There were tiny children who could not possibly have been born when the first book came out who could quote you chapter and verse of any of the books. There was a woman, about my age, who had come with her mother, and apparently this series of books have become a source of constant discussion for them. There was a young man, probably 15, who came dressed as Albus Dumbledore, right down to the pointy hat, who argued passionately that Snape was a good man. He reminded me of me when I was 15, except he seemed a lot more comfortable with his role as "alpha geek".

I wonder what will happen now? My niece read Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Book 3) nine times when she was just eight years old. It would seem a shame for something that has so animated kids to read not to have some successor, even if J. K. Rowling does not write it.

Running with the DCH4 in The Sticks, Maryland

One of the few benefits of having Sònia and Dan go to Spain every Summer is that I get a little more freedom to get down to DC to see old friends and run with the DC Hash House Harriettes and Harriers (DCH4). I began running with this group when I was a young Marine stationed in Arlington, VA in 1989 (that's 18 years ago). The last time I ran with them was last year when Sònia went to Spain.

This was a farewell run for Mother Chalker, a great guy I've known since the very beginning. He co-hared with Sounds Like Pushy and her kids. The trail was excellent: a lot of brambles, a lot of poison ivy, a little getting wet (which was welcome in the 92ºF weather). Great food, too, top notch stuff.

I got to run with Bobby Long Hare, another guy I've known from the very beginning. After five knee surgeries he's still running really fast. It was fun catching up with him on the trail. I also chatted with Deb and Lynn about living in Anacostia (which would have been unthinkable ten years ago) and life in DC in general. Funny how things have changes so much since I was there. Funny how so much has stayed exactly the same as well. I talked with Amelia Airhead and Slow Man for a while about old times and poison ivy (always a great topic at the hash). I saw Dragon Lady, which was wonderful; she and Charlie really helped me out when I was fresh back from Peace Corps. Leisure Suit Larry told me about a book he started writing with his dad that he is finishing by himself now-- I'm always fascinated to hear about someone actually writing a book and getting it published.

I ended up pulling out the guitar and singing for a while with Sushi, who has a great voice. Kind of like Joni Mitchell. We did a bunch of old stuff. I'm finding that the songs I learned before I turned 25 are rock solid in my memory but the more recent stuff slips away more easily. What a drag it is getting old. Sushi teaches children using music. We talked about how Daniel and I mess around with the guitar together. The hash is great for stuff like that.

Anyway, a really good day. I was scratched, sweaty, exhausted, full, and happy when I got in my car to drive back to Philadelphia. Great day.

How to import dBase tables into SQL 2005 using SSIS

Ah, SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS). Just when I'd learned to love Data Transformation Services (DTS) in SQL 2000, they completely changed how Extraction, Transformation, and Loading (ETL) is done in SQL Server 2005.

That's okay. Something else to throw on the resume.

At my current position I have to read in dBase files (DBF) a lot. We use ESRI ArcMap and everyone here uses ESRI shape files, which put data in DBFs. So I had to learn how to read in DBFs in SSIS.

I was going to go into all the troubles I had doing this, but the fact is there is just so much that can go wrong here. Here is one way to make things go right:

1. Change the name of the DBF file you want to read in to be 8.3 format. That is, 8 characters before the dot and 3 after. e.g. If the data file is named "2007 Data Load for Finance.DBF", change it to FIN2007.DBF or some such. SSIS will reckognize the DBF if the file name is not in 8.3 format, but will not be able to read data from it. This caused me much heartache before I figured it out.
2. In SSIS, set up an OLE DB Source. Hit the "New..." button for the OLE DB connection manager". Choose "Native OLD DB\Microsoft Jet 4.0 OLE DB Provider" as the provider.
3. For the Database File Name, put in the path to the DBF, but not the DBF file name itself. You will not be able to browse for this, because SSIS is looking for an MDB file at this point, which is not what you want. e.g. if your DBF is in c:\databases\FIN2007.DBF, put in "C:\databases\".
4. Click the "All" button, scroll up to Extended Properties, and put in "dbase 5.0". If you don't do this, SSIS will try to read your dBase file as an Access file, which will fail. While you're here, you can hit "Test Connection" and it should work.
5. Hit OK until you are back at the OLE DB Source Editor screen. Choose the name of the database file from "Name of the table or the view".
6. At this point you should be able to hit "Preview..." and see your data. You can now use this DBF connection as a data source.

How to sell books on Amazon without losing money

The problem of the overzealous reader
Sònia and I have been looking a lot at the huge pile of books we've been dragging all the way from Barcelona through New Orleans to Philadelphia. It's too dang big. About half the shipping container we brought from Barcelona was just books.

On the one hand, I love having books around me. But I've discovered something. I really love the library. It's like having someone else's dog around. They're fun, but you don't have to pay for their food and when you're tired of them you send them on home. Incidentally, if you live in Philadelphia, the Philly Free Library even has a web page that will let you order books. They'll notify you by email when the books are ready to pick up. It makes you feel smug and important when you go pick up your $500 worth of books at the library for free.

Which brings us back to the mountain of books I bought and now have sitting at my house. I finally decided to sell about 100 of them. That's a laughably small fraction, but it's a start.

Amazon to the rescue
Amazon has a system by which you can sell your old books. The process to become a seller is relatively painless. You have to have a credit card or checking account in which you can receive the payments, and they go through a verification process to ensure your account exists.

Listing books
To list books you want to sell, the simplest thing is to enter the ISBN into a form Amazon has on their seller's page. You don't have to scan images of the books or write descriptions, all that is taken care of by Amazon. The only trick is that the book has to be in Amazon's catalog, but you'd be amazed at what they have in the catalog. All of the Spanish language books I put in were listed, and almost all of the Chinese books were found as well.

Assigning a quality rating
The one thing that is a little bit of a pain is that you have to assign a price and a quality rating to the book. The quality rating is subjective. You look at it and try to see if there is notable damage to the book, etc. You have to be honest on this. If you aren't you can get a bad reputation score and no one will buy from you.

Assigning a price: A little math problem
When you go to assign the price, Amazon tells you what the lowest price is at that moment. I'm not a big volume seller. I just want to get rid of these books, so I just undercut the lowest price by a little. However, sometimes there is no profit to be made by doing that. In my case, if I calculate no profit, I just don't sell the book (maybe someone gets it next holiday season).

Amazon takes a commission: set the price accordingly
Of course, you get the money for the original price you set for the book. However, Amazon takes a commission for the sale. The commission for books is 15%, plus a 1.35 closing fee, plus a 99 cent transaction fee:

Amazon's take = (Your price) * 0.15 + 1.35 + 0.99 Example: $10 Book -> ($10 * 0.15) + 1.35 + 0.99 = $3.84 commission

Shipping costs
I sent out the orders via Media Mail, which is a U.S. Postal Service type of shipping that only allows books, CDs, DVDs, and the like. It is slower (5-7 business days, usually), but cheaper. Here are the rates for Media Mail by weight:

Weight (lbs)	Shipping cost
1	$1.80
2	$2.14
3	$2.48
4	$2.82
5	$3.16

A standard padded mailer envelope from the post office is $1.65. You can probably do better than that at Office Depot.

Pricing: Putting it all together
So you need to keep in mind Amazon's commission, shipping costs, and materiel costs when setting the price. A couple of examples:

(Your price) - (Amazon's Commission) + (Shipping Allowance) - (Media Mail Shipping Cost) - (Envelope) = (Your profit)

$10 book that weighs 1.5 lbs: $10 - $3.84 + $3.99 - $2.14 - $1.65 = $6.36

$4 book that weighs 2.75 lbs: $4 - $2.94 + $3.99 - $2.48 - $1.65 = $0.92

$2.50 book that weighs 1.1 lbs: $2.50 - $2.72 + 3.99 - $2.14 - $1.65 = -0.02

Take note of that last figure. You actually make no profit on that sale. I put myself a minimum of $1.00 profit on every book, it's just not worth it to go to all the trouble to sell for less for me.

You see a lot of books being sold for 1 cent. This is because big volume sellers pony up for a special Pro Merchant Subscriber account that gets Amazon to waive the 99 cent fee. Also they may have figured out a way to ship more cheaply or get shipping materials for a lot less.

Receiving orders
About an hour after I had all of my books in the system, I started receiving orders. These come in the form of "Sold, Ship Now" emails from Amazon. You can also just check the "Recent Orders" report on the Amazon Seller's page. I responded to each of these orders immediately with a message about how soon I was going to ship the order. From the same report page you can print out shipping labels and packing lists. I just printed out the packing list and stuck it in the first book of each order so I knew what to ship out.

Resetting the low price
One annoyance I noticed was that people continuously change the price on their books to get the lowest price. So if you want to sell relatively quickly, you have to spend some time every now and then at the "Your Marketplace Open Listings" page to check that your low, low prices are not higher that anyone else's.

How much I made
Finally, once I shipped the books, I was able to write to my customers to tell them everything had been shipped. My first run netted me about $25 on the sale of eight books. Am I going to get rich doing this? Probably not. It's a lot of work for not much money. But we have less books now, and some other book lover has our old books.