Ebay

Sweet, my busted Tivo is already bid up to $107 on ebay.

That's enough to cover all the stupid impulse ebay purchases I've made in the last week or so.

Ebay is a really dangerous place for me. In certain conditions, I tend to be really competitive, but in a personal way, not like "I have to show that guy", but more like "I will NOT be beaten". You can see how this is not good.

So I'll be sitting at home, and I'll get an outbid notice on a book that I've bid on. Now, I put down $15 (for example) because this is all the book is really worth to me. But then I see that someone outbid me, and through my head will flash "How DARE he?". So I'll hop onto Ebay, and end up bidding more than I really thought the thing was worth, just because a) I'm impatient and I don't want to bid and wait again, and b) because there's no way I'm going to let that punk-ass beat me to something I want.

I've even caught myself saying "How you like that, BITCH?" when I outbid someone who has tried to snipe me. It's quite sad.

However, I am now the proud owner of Final Fantasy Tactics, Final Fantasy 8, and a copy of The Codebreakers by David Kahn, which is a 1200 page history of cryptography that looks really interesting.