Posts Made By: Larry Geary

Does anyone know what happened to Julie Smersh (formerly Julie Burger)? Her account is gone, but I believe she was active within the last few months. I know several people who never received merchandise they purchased from her in early/mid November, and there is no response to repeated emails. She seems to have vanished sometime in late November. Can anyone shed any light?

Something seems different and I'm lost. I purchased from a member on Amart and I want to give the transaction a rating. However I don't see any way to do that. Can you please point me in the right direction? The Ad is #711327.

I'm not sure where to ask this, but I'll try here.

I have an old astronomy program I want to place up for auction. Since it is both "vintage" and software, I wanted to place a brief ad in both the Antiques category and the Astronomy Software category under Classifieds, pointing people to the auction.

Is this permitted? I just don't want to break any rules, and I can't find anything that addresses this.

Thanks,

Larry

Take the pluck foam layer out of the case. Lay out your equipment on the surface. Use tooth picks to stake the corners of each item and create an outline of each part. It's best to leave two rows of squares between items.

Using your fingers, pull apart the tops of squares along the lines between tooth picks until you have separated the top of the whole pattern. Now using 1-4 fingers, separate the foam all the way to the bottom along each line. Just work your hand down to the bottom breaking the seams as you go. Try to keep the plug intact.

When you have the plug all separated, pull it out through the bottom a little ways. Place your item in the hole on the top, and adjust the plug down or up until the item is at the desired height. Now remove the item, take a pair a sharp shears, and cut off the part of the plug sticking out of the bottom. Hold onto this piece in case you need to make fixes at some later time.

You may need to get more elaborate for items with more complex shapes. For example, for the finder plus bracket in the photo, I removed the center section of the plug after I had cut it to height to fit the finder, so that I could accommodate the stem of the bracket. Then I snipped out the tops of two squares for the two top adjustment screws.

Pelican also sells desiccant canisters, and I've been leaving room for one of these in my cases, too.

That's the basic idea.

J Keith Hurt said:

Has anyone but me noticed that certain individuals delete their ad and repost it when it starts to move down the list- Why is this tolerated??, I would assume its not supposed to be done??

I want to revive this thread because I don't feel we received a definitive answer, and because I am "guilty" of this practice. I have been posting a wanted ad for vintage eyepieces. When it starts to move down page 2, I delete it and repost it. My experience working the back end database on OLTP websites like this is that about 92% of queries are for the first page. Once an item scrolls off page 1 it might as well not exist, and the hit count on my ad confirms this. In practice, I reposted my ad every 2-3 days just so I would NOT be abusing the system, and I deleted the old ad so as not to clutter the pages. I don't believe I did anything wrong either morally or according to the TOS.

An additional question I have is this: My ad really needs to be seen in two categories, "Eyepieces" and "Antiques". The "Antiques" page moves very slowly, and I would only need to repost it every few months. So the last time I reposted my ad in "Eyepieces", I posted a similar ad in "Antiques" - different title, different text, different photo. BOTH ads were suddenly deleted, so I guess I ran afoul of the rules.

So my question is, is there a way I can post my ad in two categories within the rules? I'm a Supporter and want to be a good Astromart citizen, so I'd like to know how to do this "legally". Otherwise, I won't do it.

I worked on Wall Street for many years and even shopped several times at that Burlington Coat Factory. It is not at Ground Zero, people! It is at least two blocks away, if not more.

That building was damaged on 9/11, and airplane parts and human remains have been found there. It is considered part of the "hallowed ground" even though it is not physically at ground zero.

The hidden subtext here is that most Americans recognize that Islam is the enemy, and it is idiotic to allow our enemy to build a triumphal monument on the site where they were most successful in damaging us.

As for freedom of religion, at the Founding that concept was understood to apply to Christian sects and Jews. There were no Muslims here. Had the founders been faced with a political ideology and rival form of civilization constituted as a religion, whose primary tenet is the death or enslavement of members of every other religion and the destruction of the Republic the founders were trying to create, they would have written differently.

You do not extend tolerance to someone intent on killing you; you get a restraining order.