Footprints on the Moon » Internet

Not Always Right

Jennifer — Thu, 01 May 2008 19:17:19 +0000

Every once in awhile, when I’m stumbling around the internet, I come across a little website called Not Always Right. It plays on the old saying, “The customer is always right,” since any of us who have ever had to deal with people while working know that is not generally the case. People can go to this website and share actual conversations that they have had with customers that PROVE that the customer is NOT always right. Go check it out when you get the chance, there are some funny things posted over there.

For now though, I just had to share this one. I don’t know why, but when I read it I just cracked up!

(I’m a flight attendant, and was doing my pre-takeoff check in the cabin. A man stops me and gestures to the small digital camera sitting in the seat next to him.)

Passenger: “Is it ok if my camera is here for the flight?”

Me: “Sure, sir. That will be fine.”

Passenger: “But shouldn’t I put it in the overhead bin?”

Me: “It should be fine there, but if you’re worried about it falling on the floor during landing you could put it in the overhead bin.”

Passenger: “But after takeoff, won’t it start floating around the cabin?”

Me: “Well, sir, just hold on to it. Once we slingshot around the moon, it will be fine.”

Bwahahahahahaha!

The Izea Boards

Jennifer — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 21:37:10 +0000

Once upon a time, I found a website called PayPerPost. Shortly after that, I found their boards. It’s been a great place to meet bloggers, learn better blogging techniques and just generally network with people. (It’s also a great place to go and cry when I’ve managed to break my blog– there always seems to be someone who can come along and help me fix my whoops!) Not long ago, they decided to make a much needed change. They decided to revamp the boards.

The old PayPerPost boards worked well for just PPP, but they did little to reflect the fact that PPP was really just one company under the umbrella of parent company Izea, along with Zookoda, and SocialSpark to name a couple of the others. The new boards now reflect that Izea encompasses far more than just PayPerPost and allows users places to talk about issues or topics relating to each of the separate companies. But more than just the reorganization and face lift, I think the most important thing for me is that the boards feel different. That might be hard to understand if you haven’t ever been on the boards, or haven’t been in a long time, but there’s been a lmuch needed light heartedness there that had been missing for awhile on the old boards.

But don’t just take my word for it, come on and visit the boards. If you’ve been gone, I’d venture to say that now’s a pretty good time to come back. If you’ve never been a member, wait are you waiting for? Come join the party! Come on in, the water’s nice…

Win a $20,000 Home Makeover

Jennifer — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 19:36:17 +0000

You read that title right… win a $20,000 Home Makeover, from Renuzit TriScents. How awesome does that sound? Unfortunately, I don’t have a home which basically renders me ineligible, but I know that there are some of you who are homeowners and I’m sure you could find something to use the money for!

Do you have a pressing need in your house? Maybe your kitchen is woefully outdated, or the plumbing is original to the house. Maybe your carpets are in desperate need of replacing… you tell me! Actually, don’t tell me– tell the people at Renuzit. You can See the official rules here, but in a nutshell, what you are going to need to do is make a video or take pictures that show why you need a home makeover. So put your ancient kitchen and dilapidated bathroom on film, write a 250 essay explaining why you need your makeover and get yourself entered! What are you waiting for? Click here and Enter to win.

Unfortunately, since I rent an apartment I am not eligible for this contest, but I know several people who could benefit. Unless the fine people at Renuzit are willing to call a down payment on a house a home makeover? No? I didn’t think so… well, all of you who have houses that need some work, get moving! I would love to see one of you win this contest!

Win a Wii from Charter High Speed Internet

Jennifer — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 21:48:54 +0000

From the first time I played with a Wii, I’ve wanted one. Even before I hopped on board the Dave Ramsey plan, I just couldn’t justify the $250 price tag. Though, I have to admit, had it not been so hard to track one down in this town, I just might have worked a little harder at justifying! As it is, I didn’t purchase one, and my budget won’t even let me consider it anymore. That doesn’t stop me from looking for places to WIN one, however, so when I saw the offer at Charter High Speed it certainly got my attention.

The only catch is that you have to be in a Charter service area to be eligible to win because it’s a part of their auction to win high speed internet for life! Unfortunately, Charter is not currently offering service in my area, so I’m not eligible, but I hope you’ll check it out. It really is an exciting thing. They’re auctioning off High Speed Internet– For Life! The bidding starts at $10, and there’s no reserve. So if you win with a bid of $25, you WILL get their high speed internet for life at that price. That would be AWESOME! I currently pay $35 a month or so for my phone/DSL, but I would love to not only upgrade my internet access, but also never pay another penny to have it!

The auction starts on March 12th, but the pre-registration has started, and that’s where the Wii contest comes in. Pre-registering will enter you to win the Wii, which comes with absolutely everything you need. Click Here for a Chance to Win a Nintendo® Wii™!

If you win, you have to let me come play with you!

Does Lifelock Work?

Jennifer — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 16:29:54 +0000

The other day I was watching TV… well, that’s not exactly true. I was playing games on the internet while the TV was on in the background. There was a commercial that caught my attention though. A guy was on a sidewalk talking to people about his company while a truck rolled by in the background with his social security number emblazoned on it. I’m not sure I’d be willing to do something that drastic. One of my student loans uses my SSN as my account number, and I have argued with them about it in the past. When I had to send my first check, they wanted my account number written in the memo field. After scouring all of my information, I finally placed a phone call. “What’s my account number?” The lady on the other end of the phone cheerily informed me, “Oh! It’s your social security number!” I quickly informed her that I would not be writing my SSN on my check, and she says to me, “But you have to!” Well, sweetheart, you better come up with a better option because I’m not going to compile all of my sensitive information in one tidy envelope for the first person that wants it! She eventually conceded that I would be fine if I simply made sure that I included the stub from my statement with my check.

Apparently, if I’d have had an account with the company from the commercial, I wouldn’t have had to worry about it quite so much. That company is Lifelock, and the CEO is so confident that their system works that he’s the one who published his SSN on the internet, on television, and on the side of a truck. That’s a lot of confidence. Obviously, I had to find out HOW they propose to keep his identity safe.

It costs $10 a month, and as soon as you sign up, Lifelock will request fraud alerts on your behalf within 24 hours. This IS something that you can do yourself, but fraud alerts only last 90 days at a time. Lifelock will do the work for you to make sure your fraud alerts are renewed every 90 days. This means that any time anyone applies for credit in your name, the creditor will have to call you and verify your identity. If you’ve requested the credit, no problem, the application goes through, but if it’s someone else, the transaction gets stopped immediately.
Lifelock will also take the steps to get you off of junkmail lists, and credit card pre-approval offers. So you’ll have less junk clogging up your mailbox, and reduce your risk of someone plucking your information out of your mailbox and opening new lines of credit. You’ll also get copies of your credit reports mailed to you every 12 months. AND if your wallet is ever lost or stolen, they’ll help you contact the right people to cancel and replace all of the cards in your wallet, everything except your personal pictures and cash. If your identity is used by someone other than you while you are a customer of Lifelock, they’ll spend up to one million dollars to make it right.

That all sounds great, but there is just one question left in my mind– how many times has the fraud alert been activated on CEO Todd Davis’ account since he started broadcasting his SSN because someone out there decided to “just see what would happen”?

Free Invitations from Vista Print

Jennifer — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 18:16:06 +0000

When I think of Vista Print, I usually think of business cards. That’s what I have personally used them for in the past. When I graduated college, I ordered announcements online and literally the very next day, AU announced that they had made a mistake, and their commencement services were going to be at a different time than previously announced. Of course, the stipulation of the company I went through was that they’d only reprint or refund your money if the mistake was on their end. Somehow, AU’s mistake didn’t qualify for them, so I was off to look for a way to add the change in time to the envelopes while still managing to look somewhat professional. In other words, a piece of paper with a “whoops” on it was not what I had in mind. I ended up choosing a business card that had a stack of books on the side and entered all the relevant information to the change in time, and before I knew it, I had a professional looking addition to my graduation announcements, no harm done!

At the time, I didn’t realize that VistaPrint had anything other than business cards. But apparently, they fill all sort of printing needs– everything from personal checks, and customized invitations to save the date cards, and rubber stamps! Now, I don’t currently have a need for any invitations or personal checks, but I DO have a birthday coming up in six short months. I don’t know if I’ll have a party or not, but I’d like to… and they have an adorable froggy invitation available that I already have my eye on. I haven’t had a birthday party since my 18th birthday, and while it’s not the end of the world, I’d kind of like to make a bigger deal out of it this year. See, I’ll be turning 25, and to me, that’s a big birthday. Those of you who had to deal with turning a few digits older than that recently might not understand what I mean but for some reason 25 is a big number in my head. Kind of like, Hey you’re 25 now, congratulations, you’re officially an adult.

Anyways, I don’t know what I’ll do for the birthday… August is a bit away just yet, so I have some time to think about it, but in the meantime, I’m going to go sort through the invitation options. If you have a gathering a little closer than six months from now, and you haven’t gotten invitations yet, go check out VistaPrint. If you enter the code “BlogInvite10″ at checkout, you’ll get ten of those invitations for free. I like free!

Letters from Santa

Jennifer — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 13:47:11 +0000

Kids grow up too fast as it is, I think we all know that, but today I’m almost wishing Killian was a little bit older. Almost, because this little man is shooting up much faster than we’re all prepared for already. There is a website I’d like to keep bookmarked for a couple of years though, and it’s called Letters From Santa. They will send your child a personal letter from Santa with their name on it, 3 of the things that they’re wishing for, and 3 of the things they’ve accomplished this year! Parents can also include their own personalized P.S. in the letter.
Best of all, the letters are mailed from Santa Claus, Indiana (woohoo, Indiana is actually cool once a year!) so they get the special Christmas postmark available only from December 1st to the 24th. They’ve even got many different letters available, so you can get a letter from Santa for all the kids without having the same exact form letter with just the names changed. It certainly seems like they’ve got everything covered, and I can just imagine how excited the little kids would be to get a letter from Santa a few days before Christmas! Oh, and if anyone wants to send me a letter, I still believe in Santa.

Nice Bwinker!

Jennifer — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 12:36:55 +0000

more funny pictures

HAHA! Can you hear me laughing from wherever you are at?? Anyone who has ever ridden in a car I am driving knows that I am a yeller. I’m not an aggressive driver, but I yell at the other drivers. It makes me feel better. It amuses my passengers. I’ve been known to be like this cat. Though it’s usually me yelling “Nice turn signal, (expletive of choice)!”

My favorite, though, is all of the teenage drivers around here driving Daddy’s car, thinking that they really are hot stuff. They’ve got a Chrysler 300 accessory hanging from the rear view mirror so big, I’m sure they can’t possible see out the window. And don’t forget the three friends in the car goofing off, and the cell phone plastered to their ears. To this person I say: when I get a mile down the road, and I pass you because the cop has you pulled over, or you’ve run your car into the person in front of you… I bet you feel real cool now!

Great minds…

Jennifer — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 13:19:00 +0000

You know the saying, “Great minds think alike?” Well, what if the great mind is your own? Since I was up and about so early this morning, there was nothing on TV except for infomercial after infomercial, so I decided to put in a movie. I settled on How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, I haven’t watched it in awhile, and I LOVE this movie! It occurs to me then, that someone has asked me to link to a site about poker tables, so I think Hey! I’ll write about the dog peeing on all their poker tables!
Then I realized…. I already have. Ah well, it must be a good idea if I’ve thought of it twice!

Me, Morphed

Jennifer — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 01:34:53 +0000

I’ve been meaning to get around to this for awhile, and I figured since I’m home on a Friday night, just relaxing and avoiding the scary mess that is the state of my apartment… no time like the present! The folks over at Zoombli gave me the opportunity to test out their Morpheus Photo-Morpher software.
Of course, the first step was to pick two pictures to blend together. I decided to go with something I thought would be fairly easy, and chose two pictures of myself — one before I got my hair cut (from July, actually) and one with the newer, shorter hair. The Morpheus software walks you through the entire process, and it was very easy. All I had to do was upload my two pictures, and then add in dots to tell the software where my features were in each of the pictures. I put a dot on each of my eyes, the end of my nose, the corners of my mouth, my chin, and my forehead.
I previewed the morph, and then decided to slow it down so I could actually see the change. And not get sick from the pictures moving too fast. It was all very easy!! I wish I’d heard of this back when I was in high school– this would have been neat to use for a montage of pictures at the graduation open house! Check out the software when you get the chance, it’s really neat. But before you go, look at my morph below, and let me know– long hair or short?