The Yak Shack Forum

As of tomorrow (have one more very important auction left to run until tomorrow morning) I plan to ban myself from Ebay. No browsing, nada. I'm planning an overseas trip at the end of the year and I really can't afford to keep buying things :P

Anyone joining me? Or am I a lone voice in the wilderness? 8)

FTY
Administrator, Ebayaddicts Anonymous

Wow that's pretty impressive. That must take up a lot of self control! I don't use ebay myself all that much but if anyone told me I couldn't use it then there would be about a million things I wanted on it!!

I really dont use EBay so I'm in if my vow counts. I'm saving up for other stuff like things I want besides the cards and for me EBay doesnt really stamp me there. And things that will help when I need something to shut up some one like a kind of emergency stash so to speak ;D

Good for you FTY!   :)  I have been off ebay since the middle of December and have not spent a cent!   :)  It was hard at first but now its a piece of cake!  I realized I was spending way too much money on cardboard!   ;)

Well done Ed, so there is hope for me - I shall have to get you to do a motivational speaker stint for Ebayaddicts Anonymous...:

Savage: Hi, my name is Ed and I used to be an Ebayaholic
EA: Hi Ed!
Savage: I have not been on Ebay for 4 months now
EA: *gasp*
S: And I have saved a fortune! So stick with the EA program... its tough, but is worth it! The BIN button is evil. Repeat the BIN is evil.
EA: The BIN is evil
S: See, it was not so hard, was it? Thank you all for your kind attention!
EA: *Applause and tears*

Good one FTY!!   :)  It got to a point where I do not have the physical space to keep collecting Sideshow/Weta products and other items I was purchasing.  Being married you just can not go around and plunk down this stuff anywhere you want.  We do try to maintain a sense of style and taste!   :)  

CARDBOARD!!! :o
*looks scandalised!!**
Next you'll be saying these bits of cardboard have squiggles on them!! :o :o :-[

Good for you Ed!
Nice to see someone has some willpower, though referring to them as 'bits of cardboard' was a bit strong I thought. :-\

Very expensive bits of cardboard with squiggles and scraps of material and whatnot :-X

*sighs* :'(

Well you and savage727 have more will power than I do!

Just a thought; someone could invent a patch (like nicotine patches) to wean you off of Ebay and trading cards.  They could come with all different pictures on them and maybe even have variants ;D.  You could start collecting these.......or maybe I have just defeated the object ;)

By the way, your overseas trip.  Coming anywhere near old Blighty????

ROFL!! ;D

I daresay she is - we plan to go to the Temple Church - erm... near Temple tube station in London - and if you are saying "hang on a minute, this is beginning to sound like the Da Vinchi Code tour of Europe"... then you might be on to something!

Aye, that is the plan 8) I plan to follow Robert Langdon's route around Rome. Need a 1GB memory card for my digital camera which is NOT going to be cheap :P

I am dragging my debatedly 'better half' along on my Roman/Grecian holiday (poor guy :P) and possibly popping in to the UK to see some friends. When I suggested going to the UK, he said 'The only place I am interested in going in the UK is Anfield!'

As in Anfield stadium, home of Liverpool FC. Football nut ::) I am still hearing replays (with disturbing crowd screams and team song renditions) of Liverpool's 2-1 win over their Merseyside rivals Everton last week ::) ::) ::)

Anyone else here a football fan?

What's it take? SD? Well bear in mind I have some cards and if you remember to visit us  ::) you can download pics and pop them on CD/DVD whilst you are here!

Well - if you are a football fan, its as good as sold ::) I've always wanted to visit London :D

I'll join you FTY, i've been ebay free for over a week now, my spending has finally caught up with me and i need to earn some more money before i buy any more of those silly bits of card! ;D

Me too.  I booked a last minute cruise yesterday. W e leave on April 30th so i can't afford eBay.  Must resist.  At least I have you guys to keep me busy during the day!!!

good on you guys!
I was off ebay for several months... but now that I'm settled somewhwere again I'm back on---although just looking for a few things I've been after for awhile. But no new items and certainly no impulse buys. Must stick to the "want list", and price limits.

FTY, as for the memory card, dare I suggest ebay?? I think I bought two 512Mb cards off ebay for the same price as one 256 Mb card bought in a store in Oz. Think of it as another way of saving for your trip...
And I'm sure there will be plenty of internet cafes along the way where you can get the pictures put onto a cd for not much money (but stay away from actual photo stores--i.e. kodak, fuji, etc...; they charge you at least twice as much).
I had two 512 cards and 1 256 card for my recent travels. But my pictures are 2-3MB each and I was often in areas where there were no internet cafes to get my pictures on CD.

Sounds like a fun trip though!

Yeah, eBay does have great prices on those. I even bought one from there!

Thanks for the advice... I'll definitely look on Ebay when the time comes :)

One question - can you use any memory card for any camera? Or are they like DVDs and will only accept cards from the same country the camera was purchased from?

Yup. The country that camera and card are from don't matter, as long as it's the right type of memory card.

Speaking of DVDs, anyone happen to know a way around that stupid 5 times limit for changing the region on your computer??

Yeah you need to reflash the BIOS on your DVD drive to make it region free :) You'll need to know the model number of your DVD drive for that.

Then you'd need a special program called DVD genie to do the same for your DVD player program. All in all I think it's easier to buy a region free DVD player (or like me a PS2 with the DVD Region X package).

I agree with Mark that the best way around region coding is to just buy the DVD player (or Playstation 2, if there's enough interest for you). I've searched everywhere for one of these in America ... almost any retail outlet that you can think of ...

Anyways, I ended up getting a mult-region DVD player for my birthday, and I think a plethora of them can be found on dare I say ebay!

How do you go about getting a DVD region x package for your PS2?

I have a PS2 and I was curious about this because I didn't know you could do it.

Um, ok. and how would I do that? I agree a multi-region DVD player would be better but I don't have any money. I'd certainly appreciate help on this (since it's OT you could PM me).

I just went into a shop and bought one lol! It's sold at Game, and Gamestation in the UK, but I'm sure you could easily find it in many dedicated games stores around the world.


OK first find out what model of DVD ROM you have. To do this go to my computer, right click and go properties. The click on the hardware tab. Then click Device Manager and expand the DVD/CD-ROM drives branch. Then you should see your drive sitting there happily with it's manufacturer, description and model number. Mine has a picture of a CD and drive and says SONY DVD RW DRU-700A, which tells me it's made by Sony, it's a DVD Rewriter and its model number is DRU-700A.

Then you want to go to http://forum.rpc1.org/dl_all.php and search for your manufacturer / model number and download the firmware upgrade. Once you have downloaded it you should run it and hopefully your DVD ROM drive will be region free. Now I know the process of updating the firmware for a drive is supposed to be a bit dicey and there are all these disclaimers waiving all legal obligation from the makers and distributors of the firmware upgrades but I've never had a problem. Having said that, please don't sue me if it all goes horribly wrong ;)

I know it's a bit off topic but hey that's how conversations work! They meander and go all sorts of weird places. If I wanted to talk about one topic only I'd attend a business meeting! LOL!

OK. done the first I think. But running into problems on step 2.
it won't let me access the page--says critical error, could not connect to database


and no worries, no one is to blame if it doesn't work. Thanks for all the help!

Thank you, I will have to check around here and see if the stores have it  ;)

Weird it works for me! Try again, it's possible the site was down when you tried...

ok, i can get to the page now and it has a patch for my DVD player.
I'll admit to be a little nervous with all the warnings...given that, what does this mean "To be installed correctly, a drive region code must be selected before using a patched firmware. "

My drive is currently set to play region 4 DVDs-is that what this means?
*confused look*

Is Region 4 Australia and NZ? Maybe Jo can help us, Region 1 is US, Region 2 is Europe and Japan. I thought Region 4 was Aus so that's ok.

Region 4 is Australia/NZ. Does it not come with a preset region perhaps? So the first DVD you play would therefore be the selected region code?
I just want to make sure that I don't need to do something else.

Does it prompt you to select a region or is it giving you an error that there is no region selected?

it says that on the webpage in the part about the patch for my DVD player. I haven't tried installing it yet because I wasn't sure what that meant. I'll try it tonight and see how it goes.

 :D Ok, here's the deal. When you all get tired of the cardboard with bits of scrap material and whatnot, I'll give you $.25 for each piece of  HP cardboard.  ;D Even better, for the pieces with squiggles, I'll give yo $.50 each.  ;D ;D What a deal!!  8)  :D :D :D :D :D

Good try, but I don't think you'll be getting any takers. ;)

I suspect you are too right.  :D

Well, Im following Jo's earlier example and placing an ebay ban on myself.  Ive been spending like there's no tomorrow and it has to stop, especially as my car rego is due next week and I can only just cover it.   >:()

It also appears that I cant block ebay on my computer, so Ill need a few people to keep an eye on me to stop me from making purchases. ;D  My only exception is to sell stuff if I have anything to sell, as this is making money, not spending money...

Kate

Best of luck Kate... you'll need it ;)

It did save me some money while I was on it, so hopefully you'll be on track for GOF :D

Hey Jo!  Instead of going into total withdrawal, you could limit yourself to checking auctions with misspelled words in the titles. You can find some real bargains that nobody else will notice, and then sell the wins to cover the cost of the trip.

A while back I saw a whole batch of auctions for "Harry Poter" cards. ;D

I once won a £200 vintage new in box nintendo "Game & Watch" for £21 because it was labelled "Mario the Jiggler" - the real name is "Mario the Juggler" :P

ooo, I broke my ban  >:() but honestly, I actually saved myself money, if you can believe it  ::) Ive been looking for a framed ulysses butterfly, and they usually cost $au65-100, and I found one on ebay BIN $au15!!!!  :o too good an opportunity to miss, so I pounced.  its so pretty too. But my ban is still in place, that was just a little detour  ::)

Its OK Kate, its always difficult in the beginning *hugs* ;D Good luck with it!

I'd like to call to order another meeting of eBayaddicts Anonymous.  GOFU is about two months away from release, so it seemed like a good time to stop spending, start saving, and get ready for the big blitz at the end of April/beginning of May.  Therefore...

My name is Cindy and I have not purchased any trading cards since January 24.  Someone grant me the strength to resist eBay, even though certain Yak Shackers, who shall remain nameless (but you know who you are ;) ), send me links to auctions.

I know this can't be me...I stopped sending you links when I stopped watching eBay since Christmas. May I have the power to continue this streak.....  Oh wait, I just bought a UK burnt tent incdentive within the last month...didn't I ::)

That's okay, Sister Sara.  Start your ban from the day you bought the prop. ;)

OK so this means you don't want to hear about the absolutely amazing........  :rofl:

Case incentives don't really count.  After all Ebay is the only place most of will ever get one.  So technically Sara you are still on the wagon  ;)

I officially join the ban!  I bought a Riven PS game last week, but no cards for about a month now.  I did buy a couple of things from 2 fabulous Yak Shakers (you know who you are), but I don't count those.  I swear not to buy anything else off ebay, or to browse for cards on ebay until GOFU comes out.  0:)

*sigh* I'd love to ban myself on ebay temporarily since LOTR: Evolution comes out soon...  I must try to be good!

Im not on a ban, but on light spending duties...trying to buy very little, just a few last cheaper cards that I need...plus Ive sold more than Ive bought, so I figure that counts for something  ::)

UUMMMM!!! :-\ :-\ :-\
Not so sure I can commit to this right now!!  :P
My will is not that strong...unless something FANTASTIC shows up!! Then my outlook is "I WILL have that card!!" :rofl:

*puts hand up sheepishly*

This is the founder of Ebayaddicts Anonymous. I admit that I have severely lapsed from my initial successful giving up of Ebay. I hope that the newest members may provide me with the support I need to get back on track.

Its OK.
I know how you feel.

The usual, "I wont look for a week on e-Bay" trick never works for me.
I just cant imagine all those great cards going to someone else!  ::)
I try to limit my self apurchase from e-Bay one a month, or 2 at the most.

It is hard to keep away though.
Must... find.... help...  0:)