Telephonebuisnman: "Joe just won an e-bay auction, got a great deal on an iPod. He used a tactic e-bay refers to as sniping, which is perfectly legal. It can be very lucrative. However, due to the necessity of control over one's bid, the lucrative benefit could never be achieved when using the "max-bid" feature."

OK, to explain. Last week, I was talking to this guy, Joe. I've talked to him online before, and even hung out with him a couple times. He always seemed normal, and, *gasp*, nice... The conversation started out with him asking me about iPods, and how to sync them using Windows Media Player. I have never used WMP for this, as I think it's a lame program, the only reason it's on my computer is because it came with Windows. So I basically told him this, and said there was a way, but I'm not familiar with it.

He then proceeded to tell me that he tried to install iTunes and it messed up his computer by associating every file type with iTunes. This is ridiculous. I've installed iTunes twice in the last month alone due to updates, and I know that there is an option to associate files with iTunes, but, if you're installing iTunes in the first place, you would probably want to do that anyways. So, I tried to explain that to him.

At this point, the conversation was still somewhat pleasant. Soon, though, he started going on about bidding on an iPod on ebay. He was telling me about a different way to bid. I've sold and bought on ebay a lot, so I disagreed with him that there were 2 separate ways to bid on something. Then the conversation took a nasty turn and he started getting really defensive, and then really personal, and just spouting off everything he didn't like about me.

I was just like, dude, I don't care that much, please don't say another word about ebay to me. He did. I blocked him. So, I was on the phone with Walt when this happened, and I went outside after I blocked him to have a smoke. Within 2 minutes, I got an alert on my phone that I had a new message on MySpace from Joe. Argh. So I went in and checked it. The subject was I apologize, and it was an apology for the most part. I should've left it at that.

Instead I unblocked him. We started talking again, but soon it was the same damn story. So, by the end of the night, nothing productive had been said, and I blocked him again, figuring there was no point in me talking to him again, I was now of the opinion that he was a complete asshole.

So, this morning, a WEEK later, I wake up to the above message. Note: that is not Joe's screen name, it's some random friend of his. 8:00 in the morning is not the time to fuck with me. I was pissed. So I sent a text message about how lame I thought he was for having his friend IM me about something I didn't care about in the first place, and after he has known that I have no interest in talking to him again.

So, he started sending me these text messages, getting all nasty, making his little assumptions about me. I message back, but only because I couldn't block him from my phone. Eventually, I just started taking the messages he sent me and forwarding them back to him... My phone will only let me add 20 recipients, but, they were all him... I hope he pays per text message. Then he started calling, at which point, I turned my phone off.

What a fucking loser... :(