How I’ve felt throughout the production of the card manager

Jim Rohn randomly popped into my head, figured I’d share a quote of his I’d like to turn into a lesson for my kiddos 😂

Back to fixing bugs/workflow blocks, today in the Condition Review part of the system. The sleeved image shouldn’t have defect boxes marked on it so that’s what’s being fixed right now. As soon as I can make it through this step with these seven cards we’re almost at the end of this system, generating the csv with the data we’ve generated through the workflow and list 🙃 not fully automated yet, just need it working for now as I’ve spent a month and a half on it and haven’t listed anything since January…

*insert daily ‘card tool’ dev update* 🙃

2026-02-10 For the last few weeks, maybe a month and a half, it’s felt like my eBay sales fell off a cliff. At first I tried to explain it the normal ways. Maybe it’s seasonal, maybe the Christmas money dried up and people tighten up for a while. I’ve seen predictable slumps and peaks before, back when I was generating paperwork at the youth ranch thrift store that showed it. Then I started looking for platform reasons. eBay changes things, traffic shifts, and I wondered if I just wasn’t getting the same exposure. But that didn’t fully fit the numbers in my head, because I’ve ramped up hard, from around 100 items near the start of last year to over a thousand by the end. If my “fishing” thesis is right, more hooks in the water should mean more impressions, which should mean more views, which should mean more sales, at least in aggregate. I kept telling myself sales are out of my control. Or so I thought. I even let it drift into macro stuff. You scroll social media for two seconds and end up seeing the world on fire. Things feel like they’re heating up globally, and I wondered if people were just spending less because of the general background fear. Who knows. But today I opened the seller page to fulfill the first order I’ve had in a few days, hovered over the marketing tab, and clicked into promotions. Then it hit me: I’d been running that “buy more, save more” discount, the one that not only nudges bigger orders but also creates that visible little callout on the listings page, and it expired on December 31st. So I’ve basically gone almost 40 days without the exact thing that was helping drive sales and bulk sales. I turned it back on immediately. I feel a little stupid, but whatever, this one doesn’t expire for years, and now I get to see if that missing lever was the whole story or just part of it. Either way, it puts me back where I need to be: moving product and increasing my surface area to the market instead of spiraling on explanations. The Pokémon card workflow still needs to get unstuck too. I’m leaning toward abandoning the full API dream for now and having the app generate a clean CSV plus a folder of final cropped, organized images, something that I can actually push through consistently to get inventory up.

When it comes to connecting my Pokémon card app to eBay‘s API, eBay expects an HTTPS connection, but I’m running the app locally on my computer. Do I have to upload it to a server to make this thing work if they require that?

Getting back to work on a complex task sucks. Wish I could just stay awake for a week and do it all in one shot while the motivation’s still there.

Time to go shampoo vac my old room. yaaayyyyyy….

Used gpt’s agent to review the card app and asked it to guide me through applying for the eBay api creds. It just did it for me 😂 I guess it’s time to test and see if listing directly from the app is possible…

Maybe they released the e files so we wouldn’t notice it’s the Winter Olympics?

Should everyone run a nostr relay? What does that even entail? Why would or wouldn’t you? #asknostr

So codex 5.3 is way better than 5.2.

When Siri not suck?

Listening to this while working

Seeing if codex5.3 can connect my trading card manager with eBay‘s API. 😊

The next significant step in this trading card manager is generating eBay API keys, establishing a connection to them, and utilizing them to directly upload items and images to listings. However, I’m extremely hesitant and hesitant to proceed with this task. 😅 i’m not sure why, I’ve already been approved for the eBay stuff. I just need to set it up.

This is the AI slop my nieces watch on YouTube

“Who disturbs my slumber?” First time he’s ever gone in on his own :)