The Netty Professor

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In his actions, too. One night in mid-May, he came upon Ebersole in the final stages of ordering from eToys and tried to stop her so that he could look for coupons on the site. "He got all upset because I didn't do it the way he does it," says Ebersole. "I don't use coupons in real stores, so why should I use them now?"

Weinberg concedes her point. "I should let her be, with her on-line shopping experiences," he says, sounding genuinely disappointed in himself. But he recovers from that quickly, excited about that minivan he bought on-line.

On Wednesday morning, just past 10 a.m., he gets an E-mail from the dealership's head of Internet sales. That car, the message says, has already been sold. To get what he wants, he has to wait three months -- oh, and pay full price too. "They'll dash the American spirit, these lowly car dealers," Weinberg shouts, thrilled by this fresh twist. Settling inside the nerve center, he stares into his monitor, from which a cartoon Batgirl stares back. "Oh man," he squeals, clicking buttons. "The Noosies are gonna be flying."

Joshua Hyatt is a senior editor at Inc.

Inc.com recently sat down with the Netty Professor to talk about his favorite sites. Also, join Weinberg when he hosts a virtual tour of the best places to shop online in a free online conference Wednesday, November 29 at 1 p.m. EDT.

Great Moments in E-Shopping

Bruce Weinberg absolutely insists that there was a time -- though he's awfully sketchy about the exact chronology -- when he worried about whether he ought to censor the writing in his on-line diary, in which he chronicles the year he's spent shopping exclusively online. "But once I got comfortable," says the associate professor of marketing and E-commerce at Bentley College, "I decided to just be myself. So I put a lot out there."

Did he ever. Even diary reader Sandy Baird, a toxicology consultant who's a close friend of Weinberg's wife, admits that "I know much more about them than I did before I started reading Bruce's diary. I think maybe I know more than I want to know."

Apparently, that's OK by Weinberg. "He likes to give people a little perspective about the man behind this," says marketing professor Jonathan Hibbard, who has served as Weinberg's informal adviser on the "Internet Shopping 24/7 Project." "Who would read it if he just wrote, 'Went to Pets.com. Got a dog collar at a good price. See you tomorrow.' ? It's the drama of it that makes it so engrossing."

Such as? Herewith, some of the startling confessions and life-changing revelations contained in the well-chronicled life of a devoted e-shopper:

1. In an entry dated November 15, 1999, Weinberg announced that his wife was pregnant with their third child -- a fact, incidentally, that Baird didn't know until she read of it in the diary. "When something like this happens," Weinberg mused, "it helps put many things in perspective. ... Suddenly, getting the best printer at the best price was not as important to me."

2. On December 31, pressured by his two "tired and cranky" young sons in the backseat of the car, Weinberg "almost entered" a Toys "R" Us store, thereby violating his vow to avoid real stores. "With reservations, I headed for the store," he wrote. But he shrewdly took the long way, giving his kids time to fall asleep. He had been none so canny on September 23, when a flat bicycle tire had prompted him to buy an inner tube at a store. "Oh dear," he lamented, "we humans do not change overnight." Clearly. On October 27, as he tattled on himself, he stepped inside a gas station convenience store against his will. "I tried not to look at the candy shelves below the counter," he wrote. "I'm not really here, I thought."

3. His April 13, 2000, entry, in which he ostensibly explained his affection for buying Internet domain names, deteriorated into a pagelong list of possible domain names relating to the Three Stooges (among them: www.OhaWiseGuyEh.com and www.ImavictimofSoicumstances.com). Other entries include parodies of Paul Harvey and Frank Sinatra. "You have to be about Bruce's age to get some of these jokes," says Hibbard of his 41-year-old friend's diary.

4. "I WILL NEVER NEVER NEVER (if I can help it) USE PEAPOD AGAIN," began Weinberg on February 28, as he inflicted one of his dreaded Noosies on the on-line grocer, after a delivery arrived damaged and more than 90 minutes late. His edgy temper flared again on April 18, when he lowered the boom on Zoots, a dry cleaner. He began, "Knock, knock. Who's there? Noosie. Noosie who? Noosie to Zoots." He was furious not only that Zoots had delivered the wrong clothes to his house -- three times -- but also, on March 24, that he'd spied a delivery person rummaging through a bag of clothes he'd left out for charity. So much for the E-shopping relationship that seemed so promising back on December 3, when Weinberg wrote: "Zoots collected my dry cleaning on Friday morning. It will return on Tuesday. Let's keep our fingers crossed that it turns out well."

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