[trystan830]

okie dokey!

lets see.

once upon a time, there was a little dragon named.. uh. Derpy! he liked listening to all kinds of fun stories.

but one day.....

[Kaderin Triste]

Awwww....story time with Trystan.
XD

In non-book related news, I was browsing items I want on Etsy and discovered a couple shops that had stolen images and item descriptions from other sellers to scam people with (because while I haven't bought any yet, I am VERY familiar with a particular shop's poseable art dolls since I follow them on both Etsy and Instagram). I couldn't figure out how to report the shops, but am at least attempting to report the items. XP
Hopefully something gets done about it.

[trystan830]

oh wow, that's just not right!
glad you were able to report the images though.

[Kaderin Triste]

Also messaged the original creator about it. Apparently they already reported the shops a few times, but Etsy hasn't done anything about it. So that's a fun thing to know about Etsy..

[trystan830]

oh yikes. yeah, that's not really all that good on Etsy's part.... :(

[Kaderin Triste]

On the plus side, it prompted me to see if the seller happened to have a shop separate from Etsy...which they do! So I can eventually buy from them without supporting Etsy. And because they don't have to pay etsy fees on their own site, the prices are actually lower.

[trystan830]

oh nice! glad that works out well then. :D

i bought a pin from a shop on Etsy, mainly because i wasn't sure that the actual shop website had tracking, and i wanted to be sure, as it was coming from Australia! and after all that - i ordered it on sept 14. etsy tracking said i'd get it between sept 27 and oct 26. i got it on sept 24!!! but now i can't leave a review on etsy until oct 26. :blink: yep.

~~
i'm still reading the book in my sig, the Towering Sky. i should be finishing it soon. :)

[Kaderin Triste]

Yeah....I think Etsy has it's good points (name recognition especially) and can be great for just starting out with a shop or for offering potentially "safer" (more familiar) online shopping options than an independently run international shop site might normally have/be able to offer, but it also has some pretty big negatives. It's become increasingly easy to offer non-homemade items with their decision to allow people to sell "vintage" items or craft supplies which doesn't sound like it's that bad until you try searching something specific and all you can find is empty containers, bulk label printing services, and/or old items. And the way they just ignore scam sellers is very problematic. I can see maybe waving off a report if it's just one random person reporting it, but if a shop, who can legitimately prove that the item/images are theirs reports something several times and they still just brush it off, that's not okay.
So will I still buy from Etsy? If it's a shop I trust (have bought from previously or has more than 50 positive reviews from different users, preferably with at least a few purchase photos so it's less likely to just be them or their friends rating the shop up) and I know they don't have any other site they sell on, yes. If I can get their items from a separate shop even if package tracking isn't a guarantee? No. 100% no. I don't care if I don't know the exact location of my package once it leaves their country, I will just keep my fingers crossed and check the mail every day. XD

And yeah, etsy's review system is kind of a mess. Like, I wish they would let you mark an item "arrived" or something if it gets in before the estimated delivery date so you can review it sooner. But I also wish they gave more time to review items. (I think you get like 2 or 3 weeks after the delivery window before they stop letting you review an item.) Mainly because some of the items I get, most recently a shampoo bar sampler and hair rinse for hard water, tend to take extended use before I can really determine how well they work. Otherwise I'm forced to give a shallow review based minimal use that may not be accurate to how I feel about the product long-term. I think my shampoo bar order, my review window ran out before I'd even gotten around to testing them because I bought them early before I had used up the last of my previous shampoo.

As for books....I am still working through my in-progress ones in my list on the first page. Definitely am not making it to my book goal for the year, though if I remember the name of it, I can add a children's picture book to the list!
>.>
I was bad and read it while checking books in because it looked cute and also didn't have many words per page so I could get through it quickly.

[trystan830]

And the way they just ignore scam sellers is very problematic. I can see maybe waving off a report if it's just one random person reporting it, but if a shop, who can legitimately prove that the item/images are theirs reports something several times and they still just brush it off, that's not okay.
yeah, that's not good at all.

don't care if I don't know the exact location of my package once it leaves their country, I will just keep my fingers crossed and check the mail every day. XD
not so sure I trust our mail. but the cost of the shipping was the same as the cost of the pin, so I wanted some guarantee that i'd get it, so I went to the etsy shop - it was the same name as the actual website with the same items, so I felt safe using etsy for that.

as for reviews, i don't get items that need some time to use, so there is that.

the fun part about reading more books than last year is that next year i have to read more than this year! XD

[Kaderin Triste]

I mean, the mail here isn't always the best, but I've only had major issues twice. Once was 2 stolen packages, which I basically got told "sorry, nothing we can do" by both usps and the seller (which was/is a pretty big lip balm ingredient supplier) and once was 2 packages being delivered to the wrong house, assumed lost, then delivered a few days later.
But anything arriving usps usually goes in a dpecial package box, with the key for it going in my locked mail box. And ups or fedex USUALLY gets dropped off in front of my apartment door, though that makes me nervous as many of the people in the building tend to leave the main doors propped open, defeating the whole point of it being a "secure building".

I mean...if I was better at managing my free time, I'd be better at reading more than 6 books a year tbh. But I let myself get distracted too easily in my time not at work so...yeah.

[trystan830]

uhm, yikes on the lost packages. that's... not right though.

i'm GOOD at getting distracted, honestly. i'm surprised that i read as much as i do. :D

[Kaderin Triste]

I need to invest in a set of timers (the cube shaped ones that you flip to a side and whatever number faces up is however many seconds/minutes the timer runs for) to use for timing how long I do stuff. Like 10 minutes to pick up the bedroom, 30 minutes to read, 60 minutes to craft, etc.
I'd use my phone alarms except phone = biggest distraction. I will spend hours hopping through YouTube videos or scrolling through Instagram. Especially now that the algorithm has properly calculated my penchant for cats, dragons, cute comics, and magical creatures. XD

[trystan830]

heh of course.

i have an android phone with the google assistant, so can can "ok google, set a timer for X minutes" and i don't even have to unlock my phone.... but i'm also good at dilly-dallying and making things take three times longer than they should.....

[Kaderin Triste]

Lol. I mean...I could use that feature to tbh. But I don't really like using voice commands for stuff. It just feels weird to me.
XD
And oh yeah, I'm pretty good at that too. >.>
*stares guiltily at my bedroom which hasn't been 100% clean in several years as I tend to spend all day hyper-focused on just one aspect/section (like picking up/putting away laundry just for an example) and never quite get to everything so it gets dirty again before it's fully clean*

[trystan830]

yeah, i get that using voice commands is weird. i only ask google to do a few things, and i'm glad my house isn't wired either! o_O

XD

[Kaderin Triste]

Lol. I remember when google announced they had added the "lumos" and "nox" commands. As a big Harry Potter nerd, I was excited. But I quickly realized I really never use the flashlight on my phone so the novelty wore off fast.
XD
I haven't used voice commands since then.