Then why did you buy the book???

In the effort to recoup the massive amount of money I have poured into textbooks over the past four years, I've been selling books on half.com. It's really easy - just type in the ISBN of each book, set a price, and that's it! No need to monitor a bidding war like on eBay. You only pay a commission when the item is sold. Since school is starting again, I've been able to make a few sales.

Most of the interaction I receive with buyers is through the seller feedback area, where users can leave comments about the interaction. Yesterday, however, I received the following letter in the mail:

"To whom it may concern:

Received the book on **********. Its very nice but was surprised at the price of such a small book. Is there a reason for such a high price? Was expecting a bigger paperback.

Thank you,"

...

Are you serious? Then why did you buy the book? I didn't force you to buy the book. In fact, if you look at the book information, it tells you how many pages are in the book as well as its dimensions. I can't believe someone spent more money and time writing back to me. And, now that I think of it, it's slightly sad that I took even more of my time to blog about it here.

Freaking WHOIS

So during winter break of my Sophomore year, Harry, who is in China, IM's me and tells me that he can't register harryzhong.com, because China's firewall prevents him from going through with the transaction. Since I'm a nice guy, I register the domain name for him, and fill our the appropriate information so he can start building his website.

Now, a few years later, I've learned about WHOIS and lo and behold, if you do a search for harryzhong.com, this pops up:

See: http://www.whois.net/whois_new.cgi?d=harryzhong&tld=com

Registration Service Provided By: 2mhost co.
Contact: sales@2mhost.com

Domain name: harryzhong.com

Registrant Contact:

Reid Yokoyama (harryzhong@**********.com)
+1.916715****
Fax:
673 Escondido Road Rm 350
Stanford, CA 94309
US

Administrative Contact:

Reid Yokoyama (harryzhong@**********.com)
+1.916715****
Fax:
673 Escondido Road Rm 350
Stanford, CA 94309
US

Technical Contact:

Reid Yokoyama (harryzhong@*********.com)
+1.916715****
Fax:
673 Escondido Road Rm 350
Stanford, CA 94309
US

Status: Locked

Name Servers:
ns1.2msrv23.com
ns2.2msrv23.com

Creation date: 04 Aug 2004 14:53:54
Expiration date: 04 Aug 2008 14:53:54

Lame. Good thing the address is my old Kimball dorm room from Sophomore year and that the cell phone number is Harry's and not mine. Information on the internet is so public!!