Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] O2 And CO2 Guages

[William Alford <walford@dbtech.net>]

At 06:44 PM 1/9/2003 -0800, Jake Colman wrote:
>I am looking for some inexpencive (not for my sub)
>Carbon Dioxide and Oxygen meters/Guages. I am
>looking to spend not much more that 20$(U.S.)

I assume you mean "pressure gauges", not "analyzers". If so, you cannot
beat monitoring eBay.com. I've bought much scientific and laboratory
equipment (often new in the box) there for pennies on the dollar. Since
most auctions are completed in 3 - 5 days, if the object that is desired is
not there when one first looks, then one must return and search again often
and, sooner or later, it will turn up. Not only that but I learned that I
must search for the same object in multiple searches with variations on the
name. For instance, looking for an oxygen gauge, I had to do searches for:
oxygen meter, oxygen monitor, oxygen gauge, O2 meter, O2 monitor, O2 gauge,
etc. Searching for just the single keyword such as oxygen may also turn up
items that the seller has entered with a misspelling, such as oxygen guage
(sic). Of course many irrelevant items (hundreds!) will also turn up on
such a broad search and require more time to sort through.

I use MicroSoft Internet Explorer as a web search engine and so created
*searches* as “Favorites” to save for repeating the same searches. To do
this, I first opened the “Favorites” window by clicking on the “Favorites”
button in the IExplorer  toolbar. Then I created a folder by clicking on
“add” in the “Favorites” window, then clicked “New Folder” and gave it the
name “eBay”. Then I went to www.ebay.com and clicked on “search” and
instituted a search for the required device. Once the search was completed,
I then clicked on “favorites” in the tool bar, and then clicked “add” in
the favorites window when it opened. A name would appear that said “items
matching [name of item]”, for instance “items matching [oxygen gauge]”, and
I would then save this to the eBay folder I created. Now the next time I
wanted to repeat the search for that same item, I’d simply go to the
favorites, open the eBay folder and select the name for that item search
and IExplorer would automatically jump to eBay and each time this was done
a *new* search would be performed that would display new items that might
have been placed on Ebay since the last time I searched. I would not have
to repeat the cumbersome ritual of retyping the permutation of names of the
item sought each time I repeated the search. It has sometimes taken me up
to a year to find a rare and highly desired exotic item, but this technique
makes it fairly effortless. 

William Alford
walford@dbtech.net

Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner