Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Greed, Stupidity, Insidious Marketing Techniques & Curiousity
Those of you who are my friends on Facebook received an unfortunate spam-like message from me a few days ago. But it wasn’t spam. I sent it on purpose, because I am a total retard.
To all of you: I'm really sorry about that.
Captivated by a similar message from one of my friends in my inbox, I took the bait and sold my friends list to the Best Buy devil. I saw the promise of “A $1000 Best Buy gift card to the first 20,000 fans!!!” and figured I hadn’t much to lose socially in the Facebook department, anyway.
So first I clicked the button signing myself up to be a fan.
And then I clicked the button that sent a message to everyone I’m connected with on Facebook.
And then I clicked the button that was supposed to take me to my prize.
But there were still a few easy, quick steps to take before getting my prize! My $1000 PRIZE!!! Some of those easy, quick steps were several pages of forms and questionnaires. A few more of those easy, quick steps were to simply choose 2, out of a long list of offers, to complete! I easily and quickly found two alleged ‘free trial’ offers to complete so I would only be out a total of $4.95 before getting MY $1000 GIFT CARD! FREE MONEY! But then my heart sank, as the next easy, quick step was to complete only 9 of the next list of offers. I was running out of time, and credulity.
As raging alarms sounded Abort! Abort! Abort! I quickly canceled my free trials. I called up OnLingo and told them not to send me the French Language lessons, after all.
The nice gentleman there refunded my shipping and handling fee and made sure I understood in detail all of the amazing offers that were available to me that I was knowingly (and foolishly?) turning down. Within 5 minutes I received a text message about a $200 WalMart gift voucher waiting for me (another good thing I passed up), and a call from Eric at DebtSolutionsUSA, who was disappointed to learn that I only have school loan debt, which apparently they have no solutions for. Over the weekend our credit card was frozen due to my own suspicious activity.
I’m considering grounding myself from the internet indefinitely. And yet, there’s still a little part of me that truly believes I would have gotten that gift card in the end, it just wasn’t worth the $100-200 spent on various offers for loads of worthless crap that stood in the way. I guess I’ll never know.
To all of you: I'm really sorry about that.
Captivated by a similar message from one of my friends in my inbox, I took the bait and sold my friends list to the Best Buy devil. I saw the promise of “A $1000 Best Buy gift card to the first 20,000 fans!!!” and figured I hadn’t much to lose socially in the Facebook department, anyway.
So first I clicked the button signing myself up to be a fan.
And then I clicked the button that sent a message to everyone I’m connected with on Facebook.
And then I clicked the button that was supposed to take me to my prize.
But there were still a few easy, quick steps to take before getting my prize! My $1000 PRIZE!!! Some of those easy, quick steps were several pages of forms and questionnaires. A few more of those easy, quick steps were to simply choose 2, out of a long list of offers, to complete! I easily and quickly found two alleged ‘free trial’ offers to complete so I would only be out a total of $4.95 before getting MY $1000 GIFT CARD! FREE MONEY! But then my heart sank, as the next easy, quick step was to complete only 9 of the next list of offers. I was running out of time, and credulity.
As raging alarms sounded Abort! Abort! Abort! I quickly canceled my free trials. I called up OnLingo and told them not to send me the French Language lessons, after all.
The nice gentleman there refunded my shipping and handling fee and made sure I understood in detail all of the amazing offers that were available to me that I was knowingly (and foolishly?) turning down. Within 5 minutes I received a text message about a $200 WalMart gift voucher waiting for me (another good thing I passed up), and a call from Eric at DebtSolutionsUSA, who was disappointed to learn that I only have school loan debt, which apparently they have no solutions for. Over the weekend our credit card was frozen due to my own suspicious activity.
I’m considering grounding myself from the internet indefinitely. And yet, there’s still a little part of me that truly believes I would have gotten that gift card in the end, it just wasn’t worth the $100-200 spent on various offers for loads of worthless crap that stood in the way. I guess I’ll never know.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
A Blossoming Flower
Me: Hey, I think Miette's first tooth is poking through! But it's way over on the side in a weird place...
Jesse: Oh, great. Snaggle-tooth freak show, here we come.
Jesse: Oh, great. Snaggle-tooth freak show, here we come.
February
A few weeks ago, Miette woke up about 2 hours after we put her to bed.
She did NOT want to sleep, so we gave in and decided to play instead.
Valentine's Day!
About to take the train back from Seattle, but it was late so we went for a walk.
She wasn't all that excited about it.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes
Life is never dull around here. Miette continues to grow and learn new things every day. She's still spitting up a lot and is a pain during the night, but she's also rolling over (and over and over) and is obsessed with chewing on her toes and is getting more giggly and interactive. Today she rolled right into a table leg and got pretty angry about it.
Jesse is now working full time as a teacher with a hybrid-online charter school (I know: what?) as well as part time doing all the music at church. So, for everyone's sanity, I'll be leaving my job after this coming Saturday. This is a good thing overall, but I am sad to be finally saying good-bye to everyone there after almost 2 years.
Of course we just moved, so there are a lot of new things there that we are still adjusting to, and our personal family dynamic will be changing quite a bit, as well, as Jesse becomes much more work-focused and I pick up the slack in the home arena. But the money makes it worth it, right? Hopefully. I am somewhat excited to learn how to be a housewife extraordinaire, but mainly I'm a little apprehensive about our rapidly diverging roles. I did make a quiche for the first time last week, though, so I guess that's a good sign...?
Jesse is now working full time as a teacher with a hybrid-online charter school (I know: what?) as well as part time doing all the music at church. So, for everyone's sanity, I'll be leaving my job after this coming Saturday. This is a good thing overall, but I am sad to be finally saying good-bye to everyone there after almost 2 years.
Of course we just moved, so there are a lot of new things there that we are still adjusting to, and our personal family dynamic will be changing quite a bit, as well, as Jesse becomes much more work-focused and I pick up the slack in the home arena. But the money makes it worth it, right? Hopefully. I am somewhat excited to learn how to be a housewife extraordinaire, but mainly I'm a little apprehensive about our rapidly diverging roles. I did make a quiche for the first time last week, though, so I guess that's a good sign...?
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