Jellyn’s Collection of Curiosities

This is, by far, the funniest spam I have ever gotten. The sheer audacity of it!

From: “CHIEF OJO MADUEKWE” Add Mobile Alert
Subject: UN / ECOBANK REIMBURSMENT OF NIGERIA SCAMMED VICTIMS
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2008 04:50:05 -0700

NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT / ECOBANK
2007 SCAM VICTIMS REIMBURSEMENT PAYMENT CENTRE.
C/O THE OFFICE OF THE HONOURABLE MINISTER
FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS.

SCAMMED VICTIMS BENEFICIARIES.
REF/PAYMENTS CODE:06654.
AMOUNT $500,000 USD.

I WRITE TO BRING TO YOUR NOTICE THAT I AM THE NIGERIAN NEW FOREIGN AFFAIRS MINISTER AND AN OFFICIAL DELEGATE FROM THE UNITED NATIONS TO CENTRAL BANK OF NIGERIA TO PAY 100 NIGERIAN 419 SCAM VICTIMS $500,000 USD (FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS) EACH. YOU ARE LISTED AND APPROVED FOR THIS PAYMENT AS ONE OF THE BENEFICIARIES TO BE PAID THIS AMOUNT AS COMPENSATION.

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Rather than a list of resolutions, here is a list of 2008 goals.

In no particular order:

* Be able to recognize all 1945 Joyo kanji so I can read a manga in Japanese.
First step: Buy Remembering the Kanji by James Heisig because the library doesn’t have it.

* Read books 1-6 of Harry Potter in Spanish. (As I can’t find book 7 at the library)
First step: Borrow the Spanish Reader I found from the library.

* Read 250 books, at least 10% of which are nonfiction. Non-English books count double though.
First step: Start reading on Tuesday!

* Watch 12 movies in French without subtitles.
First step: Find a good movie in French to start with.

* Score 100 in the Clarion Submission game.
First step: Write a story.

* Be 1*0 pounds by December 31st. (Which means 5 pounds leeway for Christmas fudge. ;) )
First step: Find a class.

* Get a yellow belt in a martial art.
First step: Make some phone calls.

* Acquire tickets to Japan. (Note, not necessarily buy, and not necessarily for 2008.)
First step: ?????

* Make $100,000.
First step: Make $1,000 in non-wage income.

* Volunteer for an organization.
First step: See if Room to Read has anyone local to hook up with.

* Go to 3 cons.
First step: Pre-register for Readercon and Albacon.

* Learn shorthand.
First step: Pick up the library book on my floor and open it. :)

* Take a drawing class.
First step: Find a drawing class.

Edit: Fixed the categories for this post. And created a goals page.

I remember when Girl Scout cookies were $1.75 a box. And I swear there were more of them in a box as well. Now they’re $3.50, though not in all areas. Thought I’d do a bit of math.

Peanut Butter Patties (aka Tagalongs) | 15 in a box = 23.3333333 cents per cookie
Carmel DeLites (aka Samoas) | 15 in a box = 23.3333333 cents per cookie
Peanut Butter Sandwiches | 22 in a box = 15.909 cents per cookie

I’ll update when I get a chance to count the other package my parents sent me, or if someone gives me figures on the other varieties. Feel free to leave numbers in comments. I believe the best financial choice is either Thin Mints or the shortbread.

Check this blog entry 10 years from now and boggle at how cheap they used to be and how there used to be more than 5 per package!

Stephen Colbert mentioned the Scooter Libby book, The Apprentice, again. So if you’d like to read my review of it. Then read my review of Scooter Libby’s The Apprentice.

I saw the Oprah show on The Secret. The local libraries don’t have the DVDs yet. But one of them did get in the book. So you can now read my review of Rhonda Byrnes’ The Secret.

Epinions is doing a promotion this month with the potential to earn $100. So keep watching my sidebar for new reviews.

The answer, it turns out, is yes.

I have 14 pictures posted. 4 of them were posted near the end of last month. I earned $1.09 in January. $0.55 in December. $0.34 in November. For a total of $1.98.

You have to have 25$ to cash out. If it doubled every month, I could cash out in May. And every month thereafter. Granted, that’s not likely.

I should be more diligent about posting new pictures up. It takes less time than to write an Epinions review and they average 2-3 times as much as most of my Epinions reviews.

Every 3 hits gives me a penny, so go take a look at my jellyfish, bats, goats, and mutant carrots.

I am not employed by Domino’s and have no inside information. This is what I’ve learned from reading and participating. Repeat, this is unofficial information. What you do with it is your own business and I’m not advocating any particular course of action. If you want to play, you should read all the official legal information yourself and make sure you understand it.

Domino’s Pizza is running a promotion involving Ebay, though not actually affiliated with Ebay. It’s the Anything Goes Deal.

You sign up to participate. Then you check back every day for the puzzle. Solve the puzzle and it gives you a search term to use on Ebay to find the prizes. Each prize is available for $9.99. You have to be registered with Ebay and Paypal.

I signed up before, but this is the first time the prize and time sort of coincided to make me interested in really trying.

From 7:15pm to 10:15pm Eastern, they would be posting the puzzle within that time frame. You’d definitely better be doing something else while you’re refreshing, because they posted it after 10pm.

The question was something along the lines of “How many slices of pizza does each man, woman, and child in America eat on average in a year.” Which I found a little ambiguous. Was it asking the total slices consumed by all Americans in a year? Well, I figured the ‘each’ probably meant no. So I dug around for the answer.

The answer is 46. Well, isn’t that lovely? So I had to search for 46 or forty-six or forty six, and also hope they knew how to spell it.

I managed to hit upon a listing by typing ’46 -sword’. Lots of 46″ swords on Ebay. I found the listing, but by the time I clicked on it, it had closed. The search term was ’46 slices’.

So then I didn’t know if all 10 digital cameras that were being given away (sold) were in that one listing, or if it was only one of them. So I had to keep trying until the official closing time of 11pm or when the puzzle page told me they were all sold. I figured it was probably the same search term, but I wasn’t entirely certain.

I managed to find another listing at 11pm. I even got to click Buy It Now. But I was suspicious, because it didn’t look like the first one I’d seen. Was it bogus? I hemmed too long and a few seconds later when I clicked through to Paypal, it’d already been sold. In retrospect, I don’t think it was bogus.

I’ve won a Domino’s prize before with one of their Flash games. Free pizza and soda (just one time, not for a year). So I may try again. Or I may not.

I could help you out more with tips and things, but really, if I’m going to try again, I shouldn’t give away all the secrets!

One thing I do want to frown at Domino’s for is that when you click on their puzzle page, they make you sign into Ebay, but then you’re redirected to an unsecure site with that information. Are they insecurely transmitting your Ebay password? Are they storing it themselves? Makes one wonder.

Here’s a screen cap of a Domino’s Ebay listing. That’s the first one I found.

If you have questions, leave a comment. I might answer. :)

So I was on Epinions and for the first time I saw the graphic for a new sweepstakes. They’re giving away money every weekday, and quite a lot of it. You have to write a review for a product that has no reviews. Submit that and it’s one entry. So after poking around, I found no one had done the Naomi Novik books! Shokku. So, I did. You can read them here. Help me get that 5 cents apiece. And wish me luck on having my entries pulled for the cash prizes!

His Majesty’s Dragon
Throne of Jade
Black Powder War

So Eefoof posted the money totals for November. I put up 6 images and got 90 hits between them. It got me 34 cents. I started somewhere in the middle of the month though, so otherwise it would have been a bit more.

They also take video, audio, and flash. So if I were to make a simple little flash game or something, it might get me more hits.

So yes, it makes you money. Faster than writing an Epinion review of a book does.

With the caveat that I haven’t yet seen a check from them, because, well, it was only 34 cents.

I estimate that Eefoof will credit me 35 cents for November. We’ll see if I’m right. And how long it takes them to tell me.

That’s 90 hits on 6 images. One image was there less than a day in November though.

My head! I just checked my credit card and Strawberries charged me twice! I only wandered in there to kill time after my haircut. I ran across a deal on CD-R’s. With the sale and the rebate, it was 5$ for 50 CDs. Nice colorful ones. Decent deal. It took nearly 15 minutes at checkout to actually acquire the rebate. And now I find out he (or they) spent some of that 15 minutes charging me twice.

I need to stop buying things.

A couple days after Halloween, I was in the store to buy a card. This store chick who was hanging coupons pointed out that if I used a coupon, I could get three cards for the price of two. So, okay, I do that. Then I go to the self checkout and it doesn’t take the coupon. Call for help. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Give up. Go to regular checkout. The chick there scans it. It doesn’t scan. She punches the numbers in. Then, all seems fine. I mean, she didn’t say anything to me about it or anything. She seemed to be all diligent about it.

But when I get home, the coupon isn’t on there. So now I’ve bought 3 cards and actually paid for them when I’d only wanted 1!

Eventually went back and got my 1.99 back from them.

So then I was at CVS in the mall last week. I was there to buy shampoo, because the grocery store hadn’t had the cheap kind I wanted. But I also had Cold-Eeze in mind, because I’d used most of it when I had two colds last month. So, it was on sale. And then I walked by the Necco chocolate mint things. They’re usually like 99 cents, but they were on sale for 88 cents. At the checkout, I gave my card, but didn’t have to sign a slip because it was under 25$ or whatever. So I never looked at the receipt until later in the food court. Neither sale item was on there at sale price!

I intended to go back and argue, but then didn’t go back to the mall immediately. Then when I did, I hadn’t thought to bring the receipt. It’s probably too late now, as any sale signs that were up are probably no longer. And obviously not worth bus fare to get like 1.11 back from them.

I’ll just be annoyed at Shaw’s and CVS and tell the world to check your receipts before you leave the store.

So, by my calculations, my three images up at Eefoof have earned me 10 cents. Of course I won’t actually see any virtual money for at least two weeks. And unless I have enough to cash out, I won’t see any real money for even longer. However, 10 cents for a couple images is a lot better than 5 cents for a review (aka, Epinion).

I don’t want to post any personally identifying photos.

If you’ve got pictures of hot teen chicks (clothed), you can make out quite well. Um, not like that.

So check out my eefoof images. So far they’re just animals.

Maybe I’ll go for some walks and capture some squirrels.

I renamed my blog. Not the most brilliant title ever, but better than the last one.

Yahoo TV sucks, yet while there are alternatives, I haven’t found one I like. Let me know if you know of one. Basically the layout is all messed up. It only shows the first 2 hours instead of all 3 and sometimes doesn’t terminate a show, so it only actually shows one hour for that channel.

The new Yahoo maps sucks even more, but Mapquest doesn’t have our street. STILL.

I added the blog to Feedburner. See if it makes me more popular.

I’ve poked around at a few sites that like to pay you for written content. However, I don’t like the idea that they buy the rights to your content worldwide, in perpetuity, even if they are paying you 5-30$ for it. I dunno. I’ll think about it.

I’m less concerned about sharing blurry pictures of geese and closeups of jellyfish. Who else would pay for them?

So I found out about eefoof.com. You can submit images and video and make money. So rather like a blending of epinions and youtube. They’re still new, and you can tell. But I thought I’d give it a shot and see how likely it was to earn money from this.

So check out my skills of a photographer and look at my blurry geese. Give me hits, maybe I’ll make money. They seem to pay out once a month, so I’ll let you know.

What I probably really need is some teens with whipped cream. Or whips.