Sellers remorse.... it's real

One by one my guitars are being sold... starting with a few of the nicer ones, now some of the acoustics, and a lot of pedals and gear etc. A few might be harder to seel due to cost/tast... I mean who wants a Baritone??

I want to do those things 1st so I can aquire a good 5* seller rating on Marktplaats before I unleash the bigger items, like the Gibson 355 ad Darkfire which are higher end, also the bike and closer to Dec the car.

But every sale of guitar is....killing me.. just killing me, the careful collecting of these bits of wood and string have been something I've loved doing for 15+ years and to watch them go out the door with just mere money to show for these lovely things fills me with remorse. Its like watching your kids grow up and leave.

I am getting more or less their value, some things I've sold to friends at a slight discount, most things I've sold at just about what I paid and few at above. So I'm going to make a few of those mere monies to fill up the bank account.

But dammit, it really hurts. But yes, they are selling and aside from a few silly buyers on Marktplaats making silly offers, we're not in the firesale timeline yet so I can keep them on sale until a good or buy it now offer comes in.

Mind you this weekend I had an Oculus Quest 2 (256gb)for sale, and someone pings me saturday evenng to buy it, (Paraphrasing from memory here) 

"Do you have time?"
"for what"

"I want to buy can I come round"

"sure ok" says I.,

"when can I come round.."

"anytime" says I, "just hit the buy button and its yours"

....pause

"how much do you want, we're on a budget and we're poor."

"Its only been online for a day, the price is 200 and thats a very good price for it, I'm not haggling, you can find lots of them on MP  some are cheaper but a smaller memory and a bit beaten up"
"But they are not good, I want this one"
"Then the price is reasonable at 200"

"I will ask my parents...:" pause... "oh but we're very poor we can't afford it, what will you take"

"feel free to make an official bid, but I won't look at bids until the unit has gone unsold for a few weeks"

"But if I make a reasonable offer, why is it fair you said no?"

"umm do you know how this works, there's a buy it now price which is reasonable, if you want it you buy it, if you want to pay less take your chances and put in a bid, its been on line for 1 day, so Im not dropping my price yet"

"well thats too much, we can't afford,  cya"

"ok I hope you find one at a price you can afford"

strange, clearly a youngster

next day

"I begged my parents to buy it for me they said ok" he msg's

"sure... I will send you the offer with options to pickup" ..marktplaats has a send offer button which the buyer can then accept and pay, the money goes to a holding company in escrow, and when they pick it up if all is well they hit ok and I get paid... simple

"Do you take cash"

"no sorry, I need to keep track of my transactions".  This is true, when I leave NL I will have to report my current bank and cash assets for my tax status and so on, I don't need to pay taxes on sales of my own goods but I do need to show all my income and prove the bank savings came from savings or selling my assets.. but also, there's a good chance he'll come round with less than 200 and try to haggle which I don't want;.here's the final straw though.

"oh, but how can I trust this."

Now, I could have explained the concept of escrow to him and how its actually safer for him to have a record of the transction in case the goods are faulty or misrepresented, but it was Sunday morning and I hadn't had my coffee yet.

"you need to learn how to use Marktplaats, go buy from someone else".

And I ended the chat and blocked him... I have a low tolorance for stupidity at 10am on Suinday.

Lucky 99% of the other msgs I get are people just testing the water with low bids or asking reasonable questions on the goods. Sales are going well and my 5* rating is building and my savings account growing nicely. Still got a lot more things to sell too, so Im confident we can put a very nice sum in the account by December to fund our 1st year in Thailand.

Ahthankyew

Some good news

It takes a very long time for HMRC to do anything, but.... they do do it.. after paying almost all my NI arreers last year I have been waiting patiently for the website to update with a list of my complete years..

Only for it to show a couple of years I certainly paid marked a incomplete and not counting toward my pension.

gulp

But I have the bank records od the transfers and even though they sent me a bill for 20odd quid in March for a year I had paid, I paid it anyway to avod issues... 

I sent them a letter, since I have had no luck at all contacting them on the phone, my phone provider cuts me off after 30 mins on hold.

And waited...

and waited..

and... oh it updated last week... and all is good, my payments are recorded, my pension is on track

I still have not had a bill for last year, which I need to pay as well as the next 5 years, that will come soon. But at least I will get my full UK Pension when  I hit 67. This is an important point as its central to our retirement plans. Onc I hit 67, we should get the full uk pension as it will be in 2030, but since Thailand isn't part of the group of countries with agreements on pensions there will be no furhter rises on that UK pension ever.....

We can debate the fairness of that another time...but having the full amount is important. My dutch pension will increase over time, due to inflation and other factors, so I don't have to worry too much about having a decreasing pension as I get older.

So that was some good news this last week... lets see if we get more next week.

Ahthankyew

You can not be serious.... no really

I lost my appeal, on the grounds that goods/services were delivered....

It seems the fact those services didn't produce any valid result or resolve an easy (for them) fix to a simple problem does not mattter, not does the fact I have unusable tickets...they are still goods.

utter utter utter nonsense from Paypal Its now valid to do no work for services charged and to deliver faulty goods with no comeback...great work...not.

Of course  with no options I contacted eDreams and SIA and guess what..... nothing we can do contact SIA<-> eDreams...

But, there's a tiny glimmer of home, the SIA agent, who I think was human (it said it was) mentioned that the issue is probably due to the small local airline at the Singapore to Chiang Mai end, ,SIA can't change those tickets (only eDreams can)  so I contacted Scoot and got a "human" agent, who said.....

yes we can change that for you, we'll need to call you back about it so give us your number and wait for our call.

Can you also change our SIA details to to correct the gender and spelling? I asked .... and yes we can do that too.

wtf.....

ok well that sounds promsing, but so far... no call, but I do have a case number and a transcript of the conversation so If nothing happens by Tuesday I will try and ping them again.

you can't make this shit up can you...ai bots are just the worst things ever when you need a human to look into the harm this denial of service results in its nowhere to be seen.

Ahthankyew

You/re shitting me!

Despite a mountain of evidence of their lack of competancy or care, I lost the paypal claim, it seems they don't think that payment protection counts in cases of services not being up to scratch..

But I have appealled... we'll have to see.

if the appeal fails I am litterly stuck, as its impossible for either eDreams or SIA to move to a sensible arrangment, though SIA are willing to discuss with eDreams and even have a specialist sales team who will we happy to come to some kind of compromise.. eDreams just sticks to its, not my problem response.

One thing I did discover from SIA though is that the actual cause of all this is the flight from Singaport up to Chiang Mai on a short commuter flight, its an small local airline, and they won't allow the tickets to be changed...

If they can just change the ticket between Singapore and Amsterdam I will pay for a cancellation and rebook on the local flight, its a few hundred euros, but if it stops this crap I'll do it..

Still shocked that PayPal refused... hope my appeal wins.

Ahthankyew

How am I supposed to sleep now....

23.59 came and went... no update on my case.

not much I can do I guess, but dammit this is really making me stress out.

Ahthankyew

My suspenders are killing me

Every day I've checked the status of my case dispute with eDreams on paypal, and for over 217years its been labled as "in review". No amount of checking every 2 minutes has changed it...

I hate having to wait days on end for what really should be a very simple case of them not providing a service they charge for and clearly don't even attempt to deliver. But thats the way it works.

Today, is the day, and I'm sure it will not come through until 23.59 hours, probably even a we need a few more days.

I honestly can't see anyway they could find against me, I documented every stupid email, every yes we'll fix that for you, no we can't fix that contact SIA, and every SIA reply, sorry but edreams needs to contact us.  As well as their, sorry we'll try something else, sorry they didn't reply, and the coup de grace, we've concluded this is your problem..... utter rubbish. That leaves us with a useless unusable ticket for Jirawan.

The stupid circular blame game is exactly what the paypal claims is supposed to help with.

But its a lot of cash over 3700euros and the great irony is when we get it back, it might not be enough to rebook the flights which get more expensive each week closer to the fixed date we have to for our trip.

There's reports that Thailand is having a massive downtrun in tourist numbers, that might help, but so far the flights are still about 5% more than when we booked them, so we might just need to book a cheaper hotel..

But one thin is certain, I can't do anything at all until I get a we find in your favour reply from PayPal. which is due sometime today........nope, still nothing......nope, still nothing.

Ahthankyew

now we wait

And eDreams responded ot PayPal, sadly I don't get to see the response, but it can only be, user made a mistake, we tried to help, SIA's ssue or similar.

I can't see any situation where Paypal would not see the astonishing lack of service provided by these jokers, but we have to wait and see. Hopefully only a few days.

We need to rebook these tickets asap as every week we delay the price goes up, and availabilty of flights goes down.

Fingers crossed.. but honestly its not supposed to be this hard to book simple flights in this day and age...

Never use a booking agent again, no matter what apparent advantages they say they offer, they simply don't deliver and in eDreams case, lie through their teeth.

Ahthankyew

and they reply after 11 days

4 days after their deadline..... they send the same standard, contact SIA email.... you can't make this crap up..

forwarded to paypal, let them deal with it.

Ahthankyew

still nothing, 1 day left

eDreams, give us 7 days is almost up, if nothing here by 5pm tomorrow I escalate the case on paypal, which they have not even responded to...

Really is shocking that they can be this uselss, when they take so much money off you.

Ahthankyew

Flights not booked

What a palava.... we booked our flights to Thailand last month but when we got the tickets we noticed there was a typo in Jirawans name, not really uncommon for Thai names, we could probably have travelled ok, but worse they had her as Mr... it seems the default booking page defaults to 2 male passengers.

ok no problem you say, just contact the agent and get them to change it, yes, I did that,....and they said sure, we will fix that... and then ...sent a message saying, we can't you need to change at Singapore Airlines.

ooookaaayy, go to SIA website and manage flight, enter details, and... nope only booking agent can make changes..

ermmm... contact agent, explain they have to make the change... and.....

yes several contact SIA, SIA say contact eDreams,  sessions later

I call, (long hold) get profound apologies,  and assurances that it will get fixed, send passport pic to prove spelling and gender and wait a few days..

Wonderful

A few days later... get standard mail to contact SIA.....

and this goes on... 

The excuses vary a little, prove SIA wont fix it, we think they are wrong, we conclude its SIA's fault, we contacted them, will update, we didn't get a reply, they refused to change, we are investigating other options, contact them, and so on.

SIA are very sympathetic on the phone and online but are quite clear that we are not the customer, eDreams bought the tickets and eDreams need to make the change...eDreams don't do that and now we're kinda stuck

I asked for refund, to rebook, then told they can't be certain of a full refund....then more contact SIA nonsense.. 

Eventually I send an ultimatum, fix tickets, or full refund, otherwise I go to PayPal on the not as expected service option

Get a reply... go to the SIA website and change, its easy..... its not, and I showed you that they don't accept any change...

Few hours later......get another, contact SIA they told us its too late to change it.

Thats it... no more, full refund, or new correct tickets, no excuses....

sigh... escalated to PayPal, hopefully it should be a quick resolution their lack of service is very clear and they are causing a lot of hassle... never ever ever use eDreams... shocking company

updates to follow.

Update day1, get 2 mails, one a profound apology, 2 another, our top team are on it and we'll get it done, give us 72 hours....

I forward to paypal, as proof they do indeed have the means to fix this, and will now wait for their inevitable, you have to contact SIA reply in 3 days.... I won't respond directly.

Update, end of day 1... another email, referring to Jirawan as Mr in the greeting... so they just don't read the mail trails.. Seems theyve sent it today 29/5/25 to SIA.... I remind you they've claimed to have sent it multiple times already, and now they want 7 days to resolve... well you can talk to PayPal about that, Im not responding.

Ahthankyew

Website updates, mostly painless

As a professional, if slightly long in the tooth programmer, Ive had my fair share of oh gawwd moments when doing some boring bit of code.. But the worst type of coding is websites. I really, really really hate coding websites, and the tools available to make it "easy" do not....ever make it "easy"

But I have to say I updated my website in preperation for the 2nd edition content, pretty easily by asking my claude.ai account to take my exisiting code, and use a new template for it, and revamped everything, adding in new pages and layouts.

It was really simple a few errors and some why is it doing that questions that got answered and my site is up and running, ready to have some new content plugged in...lots of features added that would have taken me days..weeks even, all done with a simple request.

I think this is a superb way to use AI systems, but its still pretty crap for C++ game coding.

Ahthankyew

Last bit

The book is now in the publishing phase, some , probably a lot, of proof reading and formattin to be done and a few tweaks, but the publisher has announced it, and will be sendng me mock ups of the cover and 1st proofs, in the coming weeks.

In the meantime the updates to the website are progressing, starting with the all new Pi3/PC builds that will go live 1st, in the next couple of weeks, with the Pi4 content later on when the book is near ready. There's not a lot of difference, just some of the extra shader features that the Pi3 can't handle. The Pi3 does need a slightly different set up though so best to keep them seperate.

exciting times.



https://www.routledge.com/The-Fundamentals-of-CC-Game-Programming-Using-Target-based-Development/Beuken/p/book/9781032863801?_gl=1*1bhm1kg*_gcl_au*MzgwMjAwMTEwLjE3NDE0NTc2NDc.*_ga*NjcyNDgxODIyLjE3NDE0NTc2NDE.*_ga_0HYE8YG0M6*czE3NDY3MTI4ODQkbzMkZzEkdDE3NDY3MTI4OTgkajQ2JGwwJGgw&_ga=2.197532841.723068559.1746712886-672481822.1741457641

Ahthankyew

Sale now on

I've sold a few things already to friends who expressed an interest and allowed them to buy things at mates rates since I knew they wanted them.  But now its time to start being serious and start selling everything to the general market....

Given the sellers guilt I had, selling my Les Paul to Richard my old band mate I may very well end up catatonic selling the others but they have to all go, in the next 6 months or so.. And the Car, which I am very pleased to find has held its value very well, as well as the bike..which deserves someone who enjoys polishing metal more than I do. 

Im testing out the marktplats site 1st to see if it brings in some local sales, if not its ebay time... but 1st up is Frankie. I was hoping Jelmer 2 would buy her and let him take custory of her for a few months but in the end as much as he likes it he can't spend the cash... So its now up for sale... lets see..

If it goes quick I will start listing the other things and hope to keep regular sales going...

feeling the remores just posting the ad....but has to be done.

Ahthankyew

Done, now back to work

The book is done and off to production, there will be formatting and spell checking reports to deal with but they'll get it all done and it will be out in a few months.

So now back to normal services, getting stuff sold, workng on my Empires project and getting ready for my last half year at BUas. We still have a block D to do but I don't really have a lot to do in that as its a group project for all the disciplines, and programmers are working with Unreal so nothing much to teach.  Just supervision and small bits of gameplay/tech advise. They're basically on their own now.

But after summer I get 1 more block of retro game and 3/4's of Pi that I have a big hand in so I will try to go out with a bang.

Looking forward to seeing the new book on the shelves, I really hope this one stays current for longer, I made a point to make it less raspberry specific, while still focusing on the limits the raspberry imposes. If I did it well it will be a soild foundation for any new game progreammer... fingers crossed.

Ahthankyew

ouch...but ok..

Flights and accomodation are booked for our trip to Chiang Mai, in the autumn,  was a bit pricey I have to say, but 3 weeks in Thailand isn't going to be cheap, we just have to deal with it.

This time we got a hotel, no need to live like the locals we got a taste for that last year and loved it, We will be doing house hunting and hopefully bank account sorting.. Though the latter may prove hard given the recent crackdowns from banks on giving "tourist" accounts.

We're not going on a tourist visa though, so we should be ok, I'll apply for a 3 month visa closer to the time. That should make it fairly straight forward.

So now the savings have taken a bit of a hit, we need to rebuild them before October since I need 400K in Bhat available to show for the visa.

247 days to go... still not really got anything major sold yet, a few bits and bobs, but have to make sure I start listing all the small things as well as the big things. And sadly maybe have to clear out a lot of crappy stuff that has no value but might be useful to someone (like a lot of the very old SBC's)

Ahthankyew

Finishing the book

Hopefully this is the last weekend of editing and formatting for submission on the new book.. I say new, its a 2nd edition of the old book, but there is a lot of new content in there and quite a bit of rewritten/corrected content. The manuscript was done a few weeks ago but I have found the submission requirements pretty overwhelming. But thanks to a bit of help from the publishers I have only a few things let to do this weekend and it can go for proofing and typesetting. 

There will still be a few things to correct/fix/change, over the next few weeks but it will be good to get it out the door. 

I can then move on to fixing the website and the support projects which all now need updating as I use a new template for the code that allows cross platform dev. And as a bonus, I managed to get  that template to be compatible with the Pi3 content from the last book, though with a bit of fettling and re-jigging.

I'm really pleased with this new edition though, it corrects some of the waffle I had in the last one, removes some errors, and introduces some cool new stuff. I hope it sells a bit better with the cross platform focus. PC users can now get something out of it.

I kinda like writing, but hate the need to hit deadlines.  Writing, like coding comes in waves of enthusiasm and inspiraiton, if you don't have it you don't get much done, when it comes it floods...

I suspect I will write a few more books when I retie, I do actually have some ideas, I just don't know f they will be out of date by the time I get round to working on them..

Ahthankyew

A friend I never got to meet.

I find myself very upset tonight. As our plans to retire progress, part of my research has been to watch a lot of youtube videos of houses for sale/rent and also some personal vlog style videos of people who have also moved to Chaing Mai and document their expereince. 

Its quite a treasure trove of useful info to hear from someone who's been there 16 years and someone only just arriving and finding their way around.

I have a few that I regularly follow and subscribe to, and drop the odd comment on their channel. One  chap was an Aussi, my age, who has been there a year, during the course of one of his livestreams I discovered he was a model builder. A hobby I really want to get back into when we settle. We had exchanged a few simple comments and I liked his content.

He had a motorcycle/scooter accident 10 days or so , and got a bit banged up, but despite a few broken bones and bruises he did a nice livestream praising the medical teams and care he had... I dropped a few comments about wanting to pick up the modelling hobby again soon, and he said some encouraging words that when you retire having a hobby is good for you. I agree.

Sadly I just found out, he passed away suddenly a few days after that exchange, from a heart attack, walking into town for a coffee. Probably in part caused by the accident, but either way... 1 year on from moving to Thailand he dies..

Dammt, thats very sad, and he was alone over there, no family/partner.  I am sure we would have met up at some point when I move, picked up some tips on modelling  and good model shops, and been friends. So even though I never met the chap, it feels like a loss. RIP Peter at Oz ScaleModeling  https://www.youtube.com/@OzScalemodeling

 

Once again, life just isn't something you can always rely on, the dumbest things can take you out in an instant. Make sure you use up every ounce of your allocation doing nice things for yourself and others.

Ahthankyew

Or are they.....?

hmmm strange, got home today to find a letter from HMRC asking for 29.20 for a year I already paid.....

not at all sure why, but I've paid it and drafted a quick query letter that will no doubt take time to have a response but... hmmm that year is now showing as not compelte so I will assume its a mistake, not going to worry about it.

Ahthankyew

Pension up to date now

Ok

made the last of the shortfall payments HMRC  allow, and now I just pay my yearly class 2's so that in my old age, if I make it, I get my UK pension while living in Thailand.

Lets hope there's no strange changes in the pension laws between now and then. But overall I think this is good, having not realised I could make those shortfalls was a major error in my understanding of the pension system, that I wish someone had informed me of many years ago and I would not be in a mad panic now. Our HR dept really need to have someone there who handles or advises non dutch employees on such things, so many of us were unaware, and I've been spreading the word. At least 2 have found out they had shorfalls they needed to fix so thats good, but lucky the younger ones still have lots of years to make up their minumum.

So, its all done...cost a few grand but the return is very worth it. I was however expecting a bill for this years class 2, instead I got a bill for class 3, of 0,00 which I have of course paid :D

I suspect it will come through in due course. Im no longer bound by or afraid of any time deadlines. I've paid up, in time, and can now just deal with normal stuff.

phew..

Ahthankyew

Never buy from facebook scammers

Its not fair to say all facebook ads are scammers, but so many of them are, some deliberate, but most just incompetant drop shippers acting as middle men for cheap warehouse sales being scammed themselves.

Almost every time I've bought something on line from a facebook ad, I've had a totally different product sent or missing parts etc.

I think out of 5 online purchases for me and 3  or so for Jirawan, only 2 have been legit.

I recently bought a neat looking set of rechargable batteries in a nice self contained charging case. Think earpod style but for AAA and AA batteres. I tend to use a lot of them in pedals and things so having a case that kept some on charge while others were being used appealed to me.. So I risked my $35 or so and waited nearly 3 months for it to arrive... a very nice case... with no batteries.

hmm so begins a series of where are my batteries and, send us pics, and $2 offers of refunds culminating in, this item doesn't come with batteries... so escalate to paypal.

I should get a full refund, paypal tends to be pretty good at dealing with these types of scam, but not heard back yet.

Just annoying that you get so many of these daft scams, or useless dropshippers falling for other scammers promises of wealth and reward from home. Which is why I give them the benefit of the doubt sometimes. It might just be some granny with a laptop trying to make a few bucks with a shitty website, taking orders and passing them on to a chinese warehouse thinking that the 20c they make for each one adds up.

Annoying.

Ahthankyew