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.

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.

My 25th High School Reunion this Friday

I'm headed back to Lumberton, Texas for my 25th High School reunion this Friday. I'm not quite sure I'm expecting. I was kind of an unpopular geek in High School, though I have some very fond memories-- especially of some of my teachers like Michael Perryman and Glenda Peacock. They were good folks.

I guess everyone grows up, and though I'm still a geek, I'm a lot more comfortable with that fact (of course being a geek these days is not a big deal).

Anyway, I am looking forward to seeing some of my old buds. Funny, my first ever girlfriend, Carol Weil, won't be there. Probably just as well.

I've moved my blog!

I've actually moved my blog over here to Blogger. I was a tough choice, but considering that when I was paying for it, the blog was costing me about three times what I was getting on AdSense, I decided to drop out of it. I'll be fully over here by this weekend, I think. Hmmm, what to do with the domain timallen.org now?

Photos! Fotos!

PHOTOS! FOTOS! http://picasaweb.google.com/TimothyChenAllen http://picasaweb.google.com/sontida These are our new Google Picasa photo sites. We will put up new photos as they happen there.

Moving my blog

I've recently had troubles with my blog software (I had been using GeekLog), so I finally decided to bite the bullet and move my blog over to blogger. I figured out some Python code to move my stuff, though I've discovered that I can only post 50 posts every 24 hours via code. So it'll take a few more days to get everything over here. When I'm done I might post the code (though it's embarrassingly simple and basically just reuses code from the blogger API site).

A change in how I blog

No more politics

After talking with some good friends tonight, I've decided for my own good to close off part of my blog. I've written about politics a fair amount on this site. But I've decided that it's not for me any more.

The problem is that politics has the tendency to separate us at times when we most need to pull together. Sometimes, when we're arguing, saying, "as a nation we should go this way", we really need to be looking at each other and saying, "I really like you, and I need you to know that".

Why the change? Someone who I care about very deeply is sick now, not doing very well at all. He and I don't agree politically. But I love him. I don't want to waste another second trying to convince him of anything. He's a grown man and he's entitled to his opinions, and the fact is that compared to how he's feeling, I don't really care about his politics.

That goes for everybody. I'm done trying to convince you of anything. It's not that I don't care anymore. But I'll talk politics as soon as I've gotten around to telling my loved ones just how much I care about them. That might take a while.

"Lost Values: A Study of Predatory Lending in Philadelphia" Released

I rarely write directly about the non-technical part of what we do here at my work. The one real mention I've made of our mission here was in hate. where I decided that the one best way to handle the problem of homeless guys on the street screaming at me for smiling was to do my job as well as I could-- building opportunity allows more people to live lives with dignity.

I work for The Reinvestment Fund. We're a non-profit financial services organization. We fund a lot of stuff-- under-privileged housing, sustainable energy, charter schools... stuff I'm proud to be a part of. I hold together the databases that help make our work possible, and help folks get their hands on usable data so we can do our job better.

TRF put out a publication today called Lost Values: A Study of Predatory Lending in Philadelphia. It is a study of predatory lending practices. It explains its concepts at both a macro and personal level. It also points to solutions that may lead to the regulation of the sub-prime lending market. In the right hands, this information may lead to more opportunity for people who need it. I'm proud that an organization I'm a part of does things like this.

Incidentally, the author of the study is Ira Goldstein, the husband of Linda from How We Evacuated from Hurricane Katrina. Small world.

888-226-3713 - Blue Green Resorts (Be careful)

I get a call from the same number on my cell phone every day: 888-226-3713. When I answer the call, the caller hangs up immediately.

I finally decided to call the number back from my work phone. A recorded announcement thanked me for calling back, and said that the call was from Bluegreen Resorts. The recording pitched some 3 day trip to Vegas.

I thought this sounded fishy, so I Googled "bluegreen resorts", and about the 3rd link was for The Ripoff Report.

I have no direct experience with Bluegreen Resorts, but I would say that in the very least, you should proceed with caution if you deal with them.

(Note: that number was 8882263713, Bluegreen resorts.)

12 years

I celebrated 12 years today. Not much to say about that, another little miracle in a long series of little miracles.

Back from Rome and Barcelona.

We're back from Spain now. We were in Barcelona from 30-Dec-06 - 14-Jan-07. We stayed with our friends Beatriz and Ricardo, who are kind of like Daniel's surrogate grandparents.

When we landed in the Madrid Airport, we saw the damage from the ETA bombing. Folks, it was a lot worse than the US news made it out to be. The news here in the US said that it was a minor bombing with about 15 people treated for ear injuries. In reality, an entire four story parking lot was completely demolished, and two people were killed. I was taking photos of the broken glass all across the front of the airport when Sonia told me to look at the parking lot across the street. It was unbelievable. There was even a slight crater where the parking lot was before. For days afterwards the rescue workers dug to find the bodies of two innocent Equadorian immigrants who could not get out of the parking lot when it was evacuated.

ETA are a bunch of gillipollas. How does killing a couple of innocent immigrants forward their cause? The one thing I am sure of is that if there ever were an independent Euskera, I certainly wouldn't want that bunch of bloodthirsty clowns to be in charge of it. I doubt that the Basque people want that either.

Sonia and I were able to go to Rome for a weekend and leave Daniel with Ricardo and Beatriz. Rome was great. We took about 200 photos (at http://picasaweb.google.com/sontida). It was impossible to take a bad photo in Rome.

We're glad to be home, but are already planning our next trip.

Hate 2: City Face

A few weeks back, I talked about how I got yelled at and threatened by a crazy guy on the street here in Philadelphia (Hate). This same thing happened to me again a week ago. Another crazy homeless guy yelled at me. I tried to play it off, but it kind of got to me. The first time it could have been a chance thing. But twice in a month? Maybe I was provoking it somehow.

I asked a native Philadelphian about it, and he told me to stop smiling in the street. I needed to adopt a "city face", not smiling at strangers, not looking at strangers.

It sounds awful, but I've been trying it out. The fact is that I understand why city folk walk around with zero expression on their faces. No one messes with me now. Homeless guys don't bother asking for change.

It has its downside-- I walked right past a friend without seeing him, for example. On the other hand, I understand that there are a lot of people out there who just aren't right.

Hate

This morning I walked out of my house to catch the trolley to West Philadelphia to see a friend preach at a Mennonite church. I turned down Chestnut street. The sun was shining, and I was happy. So I smiled.

I heard a voice yell out, "fucking faggot!". I turned to see who was getting yelled at. On the other side of the sidewalk, a young black man was looking right at me. He repeated, "fucking faggot! what you smiling at?". I then realized he was yelling at me. He ran right at me and stopped a foot away, yelling, "FUCKING FAGGOT WHAT ARE YOU SMILING AT?" Just then, a father and his young son were right next to us, and they broke into a dead run to get away. Everyone on the street was looking at us.

I don't know why I did what I did next. I smiled at him, turned away, and signaled to the crowd that it was all right. Then I walked away. I could hear him behind me, murmuring, "faggot... fuck faggots... smiling mother fucker".

I guess I could have died back there. I'm glad I didn't try to fight him. I wondered how he saw me smiling and concluded, "faggot". And I wonder about what suffering he is in.

As I walked away, a toothless old homeless guy came up to me and signaled that he wanted some money to get something to eat. I smiled at him and said, "I'm sorry. I'm not in the mood to help now."

I'm trying to wrest a lesson for myself out of all of this.

UPDATE: See Hate 2: City Face.

My Dalai Lama story

Today is the Dalai Lama's birthday. He's 71. In honor of this occasion I'll tell my Dalai Lama story.

In 1996 I was on a project for Oracle in Denver. I was to meet some friends at a bar in lower downtown. They were late arriving. Newly sober, I was uncomfortable hanging out in the bar, so I decided to walk around the block. I saw a group of people in saffron and maroon robes on the sidewalk near a hotel, holding signs and chanting. I didn't know what they were there for, but they all seemed pretty happy.

A black limosine pulled up, and a group got out. They rushed into the hotel, and a large crowd formed around the front of the hotel. They were having a press conference, and it was visible through the front glass of the hotel. I ran up and joined the crowd, still unaware of who was giving the press conference. I was working my way through the crowd to see who was inside, when suddenly the crowd parted in front of me, and I fell forward towards the glass. I put my hands up to break my fall and thumped the glass.

Just at that moment, I saw the Dalai Lama answering reporters' questions. He stopped to see what the ruckus had been, saw me with my hands still up above my head against the glass, and must have thought I was waving at him. I'll never forget this moment: He looked me straight in the eye, smiled, and waved back at me. I'm not sure what he was thinking, but he seemed to be amused.

Beau and Elena's Wedding/La Boda de Beau y Elena

I had the huge and unexpected honor of marrying my friends, Beau and Elena, while we were visiting Spain. Beau and Elena were the people who we evacuated from Katrina with. Here is what I said:

...Y ya llegamos al final de la boda y el comienzo del matrimonio. Sólo os puedo compartir mis propias experiencias con vosotros.

...And now we've come to the end of the wedding and the beginning of the marriage. I can only share my own experiences with you.

Hace unos años conocí a una chica catalana. Era muy guapa. Nos reimos y lo pasamos bien juntos, y al final de un tiempo decidimos casarnos. No tuvimos ni idea de que haciamos.

About seven years ago I met a Catalan girl. She was very pretty. We laughed a lot and had a good time together, and after a while we decided to get married. We had no idea what we were doing.

Sònia y yo hemos experimentado, como decis, la prosperidad y la adversidad. Han habido momentos en los que nos hemos preguntado, "¿y porqué no me hubiera podido enamorarme de alguien de mi propio pais?"

Sònia and I have experienced, as you say, better and worse. There have been moments when we have asked ourselves, "why couldn't I have fallen in love with someone from my own country?"

Nos dijeron en nuestra boda que, como mínimo, uno de nosotros siempre seria extranjero.

They told us in our wedding that at least one of us would always be a foreigner.

El otro día pregunté a Daniel, nuestro hijo de cuatro años, "¿y porqué la gente se casa?". Me dijo sin dudar, "porque quieren". Lo he dado muchas vueltas y me he dado cuenta que Dan tenía razon. Nos casamos porque queremos, como de razones prácticas hay pocas.

The other day I asked Daniel, our four year old son, "so why do people get married?". He responded without a pause, "because they want to." I've thought about it a lot, and I've realized that Dan was right: we get married because we want to, since there aren't many practical reasons to do so.

Así que os presento el Señor y la Señora Lambert: dos personas, poco prácticas, que se casan porque quieren, y porque se quieren muchisimo.

So I present to you Mr. and Mrs. Lambert: two impractical people who got married because they wanted to, and because they love each other very much.

You may kiss the bride...

Mérida: Wedding

I'm in Merida, Spain, right now, at the house of Juan Carlos and Filo. We came here because I (get this) had to marry their daughter to a friend. The service went fine-- the bride and groom were Beau and Elena, the folks we evacuated from Katrina with. I'll post my comments from the wedding when I get to Barcelona.

Mérida is terrific-- the Spanish Ministry of Tourism is making a big mistake by not advertising the type of town like Mérida more. There are Roman ruins here from before the year 0.

Loving another's character defects

I recently have been focussing a lot on my character defects-- taking something of an inventory of what's good about me and what could, in my eyes, be improved. This is not an easy process; some parts of my personality are not easy for me to look at, some I like even though they cause me trouble, and some I actually forget about until they get me into trouble.

When I consider the changeable and uncontrollable nature of my own personality, why do I have so much trouble accepting the character defects of other people? Often the people I love the most have predictable and well-defined characteristics that make me insane. If I cannot control the foibles of my character that I seem compelled to follow, why do I expect others to control theirs to suit my liking?

So I've been trying to practice seeing others' characteristics as part of them, and loving them for those characteristics.

With some people it is extremely easy: when my son starts to act like Veruca Salt, I can smile a little, see it as characteristic of his age, and try to give him some guidance through the clever use of parenting.

With others it is not so easy-- what about my friend who is always angry? Can I love him for that and not condition my love for him on my desire for him to change?

What about my President? The message I get from my spiritual teachings is that I should try to love him-- and I should also try to love Bin Laden. How do I love their character defects? And yet it is essential for my personal growth and well-being that I try. The fact is that the President has no idea what I think of him. But *I* know, and the feelings I get about him sometimes remove me from the sunlight of the spirit. And that hurts me-- my own inability to love the President's character defects hurts me.

I feel I'll be working on this for a while.

A USNA Companymate killed himself

I got some bad news this morning. One of my companymates and a member of my class at the Naval Academy killed himself.

We lived a couple of doors apart-- never really got along too well. He always seemed angry at me when I was around. At 18 I didn't understand that maybe that was more a sign of a deeper suffering.

I talked with one of my roommates from the Academy this morning for the first time since graduation (20 years ago in May!). It was good to hear from him, and get emails back and forth to another classmate.

It really made me think about those four years at Annapolis. There were some amazing people there. I always felt a little inadequate in comparison. I talked with a friend of mine this morning who pointed out the insanity of this. It's important to appreciate the gifts we are given.

No one understands what our classmate did. I hope his family is... I can't imagine that his family is okay.

Becoming accustomed to the presence of peace

On Monday I was having a tough day. I couldn't put my finger on what the trouble was. I was talking with a friend when we hit on the fact that I had not prayed or meditated in three days.

It's always bugged me when I've heard people say that they skipped a day's prayer or meditation and had a bad day. It smacks of magic to me: that a prayer to the "cosmic concierge" affords me a good day, and if I don't pray, I am punished with a bad day.

But I think I'm beginning to understand it: when I pray and meditate on a regular basis, I accustom myself to the presence of peace.

This is important: people are not always right or easy to deal with. Sometimes people will come with aggression where none is necessary. Sometimes they will act out of despair. If I am not accustomed to the presence of peace, I have nowhere to go in that situation but towards more aggression. But if I let myself experience peace on a regular basis, I can meet aggression with peace. Aggression plus aggression escalates. Aggression met with peace: that's something we can work with.

One of my set prayers is the Prayer of St. Francis. It gives a formula for what is basically unfamiliar to me by nature: peace in my daily relations. The prayer asks that when there is hatred I may bring love, that where there is wrong I may bring the spirit of forgiveness. As a male, I have been taught that my basic tools in most cases are aggression and comic deflection. Learning something new here for me is essential. If someone near me makes an obvious error, becoming aggressive to that person hurts everyone. Forgiveness of an error is a path towards peace.

It seems easier to think about this in terms of people I already love: my wife, my coworkers. But it gets tougher with people I have not learned to love yet-- for example, when President Bush makes what I believe to be an error, if I aggressively condemn him, I actually cause less peace in the world. If I can somehow find the spirit of forgiveness for one of his errors, I channel more peace.

This is a difficult concept for me. Neither do I think I am supposed to blindly follow my president down a hate-based path of aggression towards all. I think I'll have to think about this aspect of my spirituality some more.

No lunchtime Kung Fu in Philadelphia

It's been nasty cold here in Philadelphia, and I've taken a hiatus from running as a result.

I've been looking for a place to learn Kung Fu for the last three weeks. Some advice for Martial Arts instructors in Philadelphia: if you want to get rich, set up a Martial Arts class in Center City, Philadelphia, at lunch hour. There are no Kung Fu, no Aikido, no Karate, and no Tae Kwon Do classes within walking distance of Chinatown in Philadelphia at lunch time. There is one place that teaches Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (http://www.maxercise.com) but have you seen those guys fight? They start by pulling each others' ears off! I still might consider that place, though.

We're also looking for a T'ai Chi Ch'uan (Taijiquan) here in Southern Philadelphia for both Sonia and me, but again, it seems there is a dearth of Tai Chi schools here. Which seems odd, because I thought people were getting more into this sort of thing, but I guess they really are just interested in Yaga and Pilates these days.