Fax War Day 22 Update: 80 faxes sent, 2 in the queue. I have escalated to 6 a day.

The new technological world we live in can be a cold hearted place, because a lot of the human interaction ha been replaced by machines. I embrace the new world, because I think less human interaction involved with our day to day transactions creates a more precise world. Very rarely these days do you have to write something down, and give it to someone else to read. Also seemingly growing more is people having to type in strings of numbers, which also reduces human error. This situation can also have a down side.

The situation I am referencing is my recent purchase of show tickets to The Beatles based Ciqrue du Soleil show in The Mirage Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. I accidentally entered the incorrect show date. My bad, no question about it, I screwed up. Well, since the tickets are "e-tickets", they email them to you. The second this email leaves their server, there are absolutely NO refunds or exchanges whatsoever, because for all they know, you printed out your tickets, and now you are trying to rip them off. This is a good measure, and I completely understand why; however, if this was 10 years ago, I would simply call The Mirage box office, explain the scenario and they would have taken care of it. But these days, no go!

So now I have these tickets that are useless to me. Great. Wait a second, the same reason that I am in this shitty scenario in the first place, is the exact same reason why it is probably not a big deal. Since things are so technologically advanced, with a few clicks of my mouse, and a few keystrokes, I can have these bad boys up on eBay, and just sell them to someone who can use them. Yaaaay!

I stick the tickets up on eBay. Since the event is only 10 days away, I put the auction up for 7 days, and started the bidding at a penny. I put int he description the story of how I got them by screwing up, and how some lucky chap could benefit from my stupidity. I figure any money at all that I can get for them is better than losing 100% of it by just tossing them out the proverbial window. Within 5 minutes of the auction going up, I get an email from a guy who just so happens to be going to Vegas, and wants to buy the tickets right out. He told me he would not have the money until the next day, but I really didn't care, so I told him fine, and that I would do the deal for 100 bucks. I paid $154.30 so I was taking around a 50 dollar hit, but hey, I would take a $154.30 hit if I didn't sell them, and I make some guy happy in the process. I tinkered around with eBay to try and figure out a way to just sell the tickets to the guy for 100 bucks, and couldn't figure out how to do it (damn technology!). Anyway, by the time the guy had gotten the money setup to pay me, the bidding was already up over $100!!!. It was sort of a bummer, but I am a man of my word, so I told the guy to just Paylpal my the money and I would give him the tickets. A few minutes later he gave me the money, and I sent him the tickets, then cancelled the auction. I wonder how much money I could have made back, or even if I could have made a small profit, but those things didn't really matter at that point, so I didn't dwell long.

In summation, the duality of the world today is certainly interesting. Sure, you make a few wrong keystrokes and you get screwed by a machine, but then you can turn around and use another machine to make it alright. Seems like The Mirage should have a side business as an auction house for their own tickets, and charge people a few bucks (like eBay does) to buy and/or sell. Hmmmm. I wonder what people who are not quite as savvy as me would have done in this same situation. Who cares 8-).