the new schedule starts Monday

As the Real Job, which starts later in March, looms near, it occurs to me that I'll have to prioritize the blog-reading and posting. I've been lucky, with my private English teaching schedule, to have a fair amount of time on my hands, but this won't be the case in 25 days, when I'll be teaching at the university and still teaching privately. In an effort to keep blogging time down, I've decided to institute a schedule. The benefit to you, the reader, is that you'll now have an idea of what to expect here at the Hairy Chasms from day to day. And so will I!

The schedule will provide discipline and structure, and while this may mean a certain loss of spontaneity, I find that my best work often comes about when there are clear and confining parameters. So:

MONDAYS: Koreablogger roundup (le parcours coréen)
TUESDAYS: Maximum Leader, Asiablogger, and Otherblogger Roundup (le parcours des blogueurs)
WEDNESDAYS: Anything goes
THURSDAYS: Buddhism/Zen day; mainly to force me to write about this topic, to present you with new information on it, to induce me to review my old notes, learn new things, and share the knowledge
FRIDAYS: Religious diversity day-- matters of religious pluralism, philosophy of religion, interreligious dialogue, comparative religion, etc.
SATURDAYS: Saturday Swag. Since I won't be making any money as a gigolo, I'll be devoting this day to promoting my mental spilth-- my book, my CafePress products, etc. It's not simply that a Hominid has to eat: a Hominid has to pay off enormous college loans. So unlike Mel Gibson, I don't worry that I'm going to be burdened by moral questions arising from wealth. We at the Hairy Chasms are far, far too deep in the negative regions for those questions to bother us anytime soon.
SUNDAYS: Yes, I've decided. Sunday will be devoted to one thing only: a weekly SUNDAY COMIC. I haven't decided on a format yet; it might be single-panel, might be multi-panel, might have a storyline, might not. I'm not starting this Sunday, so I still have some time to finalize this.

I do have an e-commerce question for Paypal-savvy people: how do you set up a PayPal button to sell a SINGLE (i.e., UNIQUE-- no copies) item? I've been through the PayPal button selection, and there is indeed a button for selling "single items," but as I read more deeply into what the button was about, it doesn't seem to fit my needs.

Here's what I mean. Let's say I create a soap sculpture or brush painting of Bodhidharma, and I want to sell this via PayPal. How do I prevent two people from buying the same item at roughly the same time? I don't think PayPal offers a button that "closes itself off" to the rest of the public once a purchase has been made-- i.e., a button that reads, "Sorry, no more in stock!" when the item's been purchased. The problem I want to avoid is that of time-wasting refunds. The best solution I can think of right now is to have people email me first, then establish a PayPal button just for the first person whose email I receive (or send them the button through the mail, which I think PayPal allows). Surely there's a better, more hands-off way to deal with e-commerce for limited stock!

OK... that's it for now. The new schedule starts Monday. As Kevin Bacon said in "Apollo 13"...

"See you on the flip side."

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