Window Shopper

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You might have seen my quest for a new laptop. That is still on. However, I do have the computer I currently use which is more or less a Dell. Most of you will guess what I mean by “more or less”, right? For those who do not know, it means that this started out as a Dell but things have been added so it is no longer that brand completely anymore. I’m fine with that. This computer works pretty well for what it is. Not top of the line by any means but it does the job I ask of it.

But there are things I would love to see change too. I want to just completely upgrade which, I am sure, is going to take a new motherboard, CPU, the works. Until that happens, my computer is capable of a lot more memory than it has right now. I will be shooting for a memory stick or two in the near future. My computer can handle a gigabyte of memory but only has 384 meg. right now. Sad, isn’t it. But right now, it does handle the work I ask of it. So, I am as happy as I can be with it. Hoping it keeps on running for quite a while too!

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Every year, we see the ads in the paper for the county fair that starts sometime very soon. The kids love to go to it. I used to but these days I don’t really want to walk through all that noise and people. The rides used to be so much fun but that was years ago. The real reason I would go in the last few years is because of the exhibits and the great stuff you can get or sign up for. Every year they have these booths that promote products for you to try out. I love it when they have all those promotional products because you can at least see how they operate and how it might fit into your life.

I’ve gone to more county fairs and state fairs than I really want to admit to through the years. It used to be so exciting when I was still a teen. These days, it just seems to be too hot to go. But maybe this year we will venture out and check out all those products and services again. I do miss doing that. It was so much fun.

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This shouldn’t be a surprise to find out that when buying things online, there is a danger of getting over charged. However, this type of overcharging is really bad in that it doesn’t end. I discovered this in an article that said that when a person goes to buy something online, there may be a pop-up that will go away if you click it but it may cost you a bundle later. One woman clicked to get the pop-up to go away and ended up paying for months on her credit card.

On the other hand, the company that had those pop-ups said that she must have put in personal information for it to be that way. I suspect the lady knows how much info she put in, as in none. I have had an occasion when a pop-up came up that already had all my info added. That was because I had put that same info into the original page and it was copied out. I did spot that and removed it. I have no idea what I would have gotten into if it had remained when I clicked.

She stated that the window was offering a $10 off coupon for the next purchase. That does not seem like the same thing that she ended up with. On the other hand, the advertiser says that there are boxes and boxes to fill out before you have that charge. My guess is that it does have that but it was also filled in. Some of the pages that I go to have check boxes. Those boxes can already be marked when I get there. I have to uncheck them in order to get on with what I want.

This is a ploy by the advertiser to get more money from the person that is already purchasing something from them. Or it could be someone else who has a deal with that website owner. Which ever it is, it is underhanded and should be eliminated. I do not allow pop-ups to come onto my screen. I have an ad blocker. This is a great idea for those who do much shopping online. I found that it does a great job of taking care of such things. I see very few pop-ups anymore. In fact, I get a notice when one is trying to open. It is blocked. I feel much better about that.

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A few years ago, we had a really bad hot water heater leak that went all over the hall floor. It migrated into the back bathroom floor as well. We got it soaked up and dried and never thought another thing about it. Recently, a guest walked into the bathroom and the floor went down. Then, we all have had a turn at that. The floor is giving way. Bad news for us. For one thing, it means our bathroom, the one with the tub and shower, will be out of commission for a while. YUK! But it can also mean a bathroom do-over.

The carpet is a crappy color. I hate that carpet. And it will need to go. So will the hall carpet since it apparently is starting to rot. Oh boy, this is sounding kind of expensive. But the really great thing would be to replace the bathroom sink with a glass sink. Have you seen those? Very nice. They have some that are sort of like a fountain with cascading water into three different sink bowls. I don’t know right now. It will depend on what all has to be done first. Ah well. Fun while it lasted.

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A few months ago, we had a full refrigerator and full cupboards. Then a sort of money drought happened around the same time we were able to help someone have a place to stay. Do you know what happens when more food goes out of the fridge than goes in it? Big, raging holes of nothing are in the fridge. That’s what happens. No one is at fault, mind you. It’s just that way.

At the moment, I feel like the Old Mother Hubbard though I hope I ain’t that old. But the cupboards are certainly looking a tad more bare than usual. And now, the big question is….what happens when people know that the cupboards are getting bare and some of the things they usually have available no longer are available? I can tell you! Voracious appetite hits. When that happens, you get bad attitudes. ACK! You know what I think? People ought to get on Phentermine 37.5 mg because that would take care of voracious appetite syndrome. I do believe that’s what it is.

These more than sane people usually could care less about those things sitting in the fridge and the cupboards. Those items could sit there until they were out of date on the label. I am not kidding here. But let there be a few holes in the items in there and you get insanity!!! Okay, I am done hollering about it now. Oh, hey what about that cupcake that was in there? I want it!!! Wait! No!! NO!! Don’t take that! It’s MINE! Rats. It’s gone. Somebody got it first. Sigh.

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Going to the pump these days is bad enough, don’t you think? I have not heard of one person who is happy with the current gas prices. The greedy oil companies keep on pumping it out to us like we do not matter to them at all. And you cannot get them to even acknowledge that they are ripping us off. Congress does nothing about it. And NOW there is one more ripoff. Credit cards at the pump. HELP!

Have you been watching your receipts when you buy gas with a credit card? If not, you should. The credit card companies love to tack on a fee for use at the pump which they do…..but wait, it gets better..or worse….Now the gas stations are tacking on a fee for using the card. The price can be a lot higher than if you pay cash. WHAT? Yep. The price can be as high as *9* cents more, sometimes more than that. That was as high as I had seen it on the news today.

EDIT NOTE: As awful as the 9 cents might have sounded, it’s not compared to the 50 cents a gallon that some stations are charging simply for using a credit card instead of cash. If a person uses cash, they have to go inside where they can get ripped off by the prices of the goods in the store. There is no win here unless the person buys the gas with cash and refuses to buy anything else in the store.

It seems that the local gas station wants you to come inside to pay because if you don’t, you do not also buy other things. They have been losing money with the plastic. So, if you don’t pay with cash coming inside to do that, you can count on paying more at the pump. It’s sort of a penalty for having a credit card.

I call that a ripoff. It forces the customer to do things they did not want to do. On a purely physical note, if you need the exercise, go ahead and walk inside. Might do you some good. However, if you are just mad because they are making you do things you had no intention of doing, perhaps finding a new gas station to buy from might be in order. I do not believe that they all do this. But it looks like they do this in the bigger cities for certain.

We live in a rural area where we use a gas card from a well known retailer. We get a discount. But my husband watches to make certain we get that discount every time. If we don’t, the pump does not go on and he goes inside to find out why. In these times, you have to watch your every dollar going out. If you don’t, all of a sudden you are broke and it isn’t anywhere near the next paycheck time. We should know.

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I have loved Corvettes ever since I watched Route 66 back when I was a teen. Those guys had so much fun in their Corvette that I just felt I had to have one. That never happened but I still love the look of that car. I guess the one thing that made me understand it more was when a friend of mine took me to her Dad’s garage shop where he rebuilt cars and sold them. He really loved doing that.

Actually, I would still love to have a Corvette but I doubt that I would fit into the seat anymore. But I have noticed that people who love them do still want to restore the older ones and beef up the new ones.

Are you wanting to start from the bottom up and rebuild more or less from scratch like in this picture? You can check out the guys at Corvette accessories for body kits and much more to get your ‘vette on the road.

Maybe your baby is show ready but there’s this one little part that needs to be added to make it perfect. How about the boys at Corvette accessories? They can help you with your parts needs for that wonderful ride you have sitting in the garage waiting to get out there and go.

You just bought that dream car that you have always wanted sitting in front of your window so that all the neighbors can see that you have that certain flair for getting the best ride on the pavement. You just want to tweak it a little bit, give it that custom look you have been dreaming about all your life.

So, if you are serious about working on an older ‘vette or you want to get a newer one into great condition, give your brand new ‘vette a custom look people are going to envy, you should check out Corvette accessories.

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At one time, I did ask myself that question. Those were the good ol’ days. No, I’m kidding. All days are good for me. But when I asked myself that question it came with several others that I had to ask myself as well. The truth is that I have been to California when I drove a semi-truck. And if I were not already living here in rural Arkansas and loving where I live, I might just think about it again. For a few moments anyway.

What do you ask yourself when you want to move to another place? For instance, where would I want to live? And in what type of place? Every time I think about California, the first thing that comes to mind is that kid in The Karate Kid. He started out hating it there but liked it much better after the conflict was over. But I think he lived in Los Angeles, right? So, if you wanted to move there, would you start looking for apartments? Do you do this long before you go there to check it out? I would. Heck, I would start by looking up Los Angeles jobs and go from there. Hey, if you can’t find that, the rest would be pretty difficult to do, right?

To answer the question in the title, nope. I really do not think I would live there now. Rural life is just too good for me. Nope. Never met the Beverly Hillbillys.

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Some of you are not Americans so may not necessarily celebrate our holiday. But we must celebrate our freedom, such as it is today. And I have been celebrating my freedom to shop. But then, I do that anyway. I do love to shop. The problem is that I do not have the funds to do so. Guess that’s the same problem a lot of folks have right now. At some point, we need to see the brightest side of this we possibly can. Why? Because if we don’t, it takes the fun out of shopping. Then it becomes desperate shopping. I would hate that.

Yesterday, it was more or less desperate shopping for us. We had a recent drain on our supplies and needed to replenish. And now we have more month than money. WOW! That was so fast. Today, I sit here thinking about our situation and sometimes get a bit down about it. And then, I think that today is not the day to care about those things. Today is a happy day. Today we get to celebrate the beginning of our country. I do love my country even with all it’s problems, aches and pains. She is still a youngster. She hasn’t quite grown up yet but she is definitely working on it. We love her.

For those who love the American Flag or those who do not understand the American citizen, please take the time to read this post about our flag. Ya might just learn something about our American feelings. We are proud of our country and our flag.

So, HAPPY 4th OF JULY TO EVERYONE!!! Anyone out watching the fireworks tonight? We hear them but can’t see em. Too hot. Too buggy. And we are too used to staying inside for it. Yes, we are wimps. Yes, I have seen my share of fireworks before. I love watching them when I can.

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A while back, I noticed a deal called Entrecard which uses the idea of traffic generation by way of “dropping cards” on all those who have the Entrecard widget on their blogs. Thought it was a great idea so I signed up. At first, traffic really did increase. Actually, if I did everything I could do, traffic would still be higher than it currently is on this blog.

What’s the problem here? With this particular traffic generator, you have to take the time to drop up to 300 cards a day per blog signed up. You can drop zero too. The idea is to generate the traffic and eventually find new readers. What usually happens is that I get a quite a bit less traffic than I give out, that is, I drop the required number but get less than a third coming back to me. If that was all the problem, I sure wouldn’t be talking about it. That’s just a matter of finding people who want to be on the blog. No problem there.

No, the problem is more in the nature of how Entrecard has changed to suit the few…themselves. A dropper gets what they call “EC” or Entrecard Cash. You get a point for each drop you make. The EC add up. And things weren’t too bad before this radical change was made. When you had enough EC, you were able to buy advertising on the other blogs depending on how much EC you had on hand. The more you have, the more you can spend on some of the really top ranked blogs. The downside to that was that you could never get in to their list. It was always full. Yes, there was a cap.

Today, it’s a completely different situation. I believe it has gone from bad to worse. Now there is no cap. So the price of the more popular blogs can be quite high, over 8000 EC. Yep, there is a problem there. If you drop 300 EC each day, it will take you a mountain of time to save up enough to buy advertising for ONE DAY on those really expensive blogs. At this point, it’s important to take note of this. When you buy advertising, you do not get the payback exactly. Entrecard takes most of your profit for themselves. In the real world, the lion’s share would go to the one who advertises and gets their payback on it. In Entrecard world, they get the big payback and the blog owner gets the shaft. The EC that rightfully belongs to the blogger is actually going to gather EC for the Entrecard company. Is this nuts or what?

Folks, the money is virtual. What the heck is that about? When the company gathers the VIRTUAL EC, they then put it up for grabs. Of course, the people who want the EC have to pay for it with REAL cash. You can get 1,000 EC for $9.50 and 5,000 for a whopping $47.50. And what do you get when you spend them? One whole day of advertising on another blog. One day. And as I stated before, there are blogs that cost over 8,000 EC to advertise.

Any comments here? Does this look even remotely sane? People are paying almost $50 to acquire a few EC that you can get for free. Granted, you really have to work for those little buggers but they are free. The problem is that it takes forever to gather them. Then you really do not get value for your bucks….either way.

Entrecard is definitely not all that. I will keep it for information purposes but it’s doubtful that I will spend a lot of time on site anymore. Just not worth the incredible effort it takes. Sigh.

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