Buraddo/Blood (2009)

There are movies that I’ll hold off watching if my only option is getting it as a DVD rental.  Netflix has allowed me to watch a lot of movies through its streaming service that I might not have otherwise watched.  Blood looked interesting.  There was an attractive woman on the cover.  She’s a vampire.  I put this on my list, knowing that renting it on DVD would be a waste, but streaming might just work.

The movie starts in Japan, some unspecified time in the past.  A warrior is near death on a woman’s property.  The woman, Miyako, is a vampire and can make him one, too.  Cut closer to the present.  A young girl is brutally murdered.  Years pass and the statute of limitations is approaching.  Detective Hoshino is transferred to the cold-case division and is assigned the case.  He sets out to find answers, so he starts with the woman who owned the house where the victim had been a servant.

It turns out that it’s the same woman from the start of the movie.  She has a young assistant, Brigitte, who doesn‘t say much.  Miyako knows what’s going on, but can’t really just come out and say it.  She makes Hoshino into a vampire and tells him about the murderer, which complicates things.  He knows who did it, but can’t really give the family justice without sounding crazy.

As you might expect from a vampire-police movie, there is a fair amount of fighting.  We also have two very attractive women, one of which has a lot of screen time naked.  Admittedly, I was hoping for this.  Other than that, the movie wasn’t that good.  The plot and script were marginal.  The pacing was slow.  The nudity was great, but there wasn’t a lot of it.

For instance, it was said that vampires couldn’t truly die.  If you wound one, they can regenerate.  If they appear dead, they’ll come back.  Beheading isn’t really acknowledged.  Could a head grow a new body or reattach itself to the old one?  Hoshino does get his wish, but at a cost.  The ending seemed more like the ending you’d use if you know you have to end the movie, but can’t come up with a good way to do so.

At least I didn’t have to waste the DVD rental on this or even pay for it.  This isn’t the worst of movies, but is far from the best.  It does have potential, though.  I’m just happy I was able to get a review out of it.  I imagine one day, I’ll find a soft-core vampire movie with an all-female cast.  I may not be able to stop watching it.


IMDb page

Review Overflow

It seems that it's gotten a little more difficult to post reviews over at Epinions.  If the product is in the catalog, I can post it.  If not, there's no way to have it added to the database.  This means that I either have to wait for the product to be added or find someplace new to post the review.

I'm actually thinking of posting them here.  The only issue would be figuring out how.  I'd have to post the product name and all and have to worry about searchability.  I may do one or two just to see if it works out.  (I have been adding my reviews to the External Review section of the appropriate pages on IMDb.  This may help with search engines and hits.)

I'm also wondering if I should just use this blog or start a new one.  I haven't been using this one for much else and I don't know that I want to start a new blog for what intermittent reviews I'll be posting.  Is it better to have a new blog or to use an existing one?

Voting

I'm in line to vote. I've been here for about an hour. The problem is that we have two precincts, one of which is split in two. There are three machines and you can only use the machine for your area. If I was in one of the other two areas, I would be able to get in and out, but noooo...

At least I'll get to vote.

Wolf Camera Going Out of Business

I found out last week that Wolf Camera is closing.  Yes, I know retail jobs aren’t the best, but it’s still sad to see a former employer go out of business.  I had hoped to buy a new camera when my cash flow permitted it.  I may have to do it through Ritzcamera.com if they’re still available (they say they will be, under new management) or someplace else.  I don’t really have any loyalty to the site, as I worked in one of the stores, so it may be just as easy to get the camera somewhere else if I get around to buying one.

I knew when I left in May of 2009 that I wasn’t going to be rehired.  After a while, it became clear that I probably wouldn’t want to, as the store had a rotating lineup of manufacturers and sales incentives were either shrinking or disappearing.  I could tell that there wouldn’t be any room for me at any of the nearby stores.  I figured that the store would limp along for a while longer, so the closing came as one of those surprises that I saw coming. 

I’ll probably go back to the store in coming weeks to see how the store is doing.  From what it sounds like, the store will be open until everything is gone.  (From what I recall from my store’s liquidation, all the good stuff has probably already been sold.)  I just hope that everyone can find another job.

Of Fribiz and adf.ly

Again, I’ve lost track of posting time, especially with so little to post.

It looks like Fribiz did actually go under.  The site is no longer responding, and this was in the middle of an auction.  I sent an email to them using an address in the last message I got from them, but no response.  I figured something like this was going to happen.  They had one auction going at a time, and they were all these tablets.  It was impossible to get a response from them, it seemed, regardless of how you sent a message.

Also, I’m giving up on adf.ly.  It seems to be more trouble than it’s worth.  I was suspended from Yahoo! Answers and the only reason I can think of is that I used an adf.ly link in my references section.  I’ve been with the site for years now and I have yet to make more than $10.  I’ve removed the links and top banner from this blog, and I may go through and do the same for some other sites.  Whatever else there is, I’ll let sit.  I’m not going to go crazy for a few dollars.

Selling books

I actually got a check from Cash4books.net last week.  It was for $7, but it was off of a referral.  Apparently, someone found the link (I’m assuming through this site) and sold some books to them.

I have sold books to them before.  I’ll admit that it’s hard to find books to sell to them as they are very selective, but it’s easier than waiting seven days on eBay and hoping someone buys something.  You can also usually use eBay as a backup if necessary.

Selling books online is somewhat difficult, at least for cash.  This has also proven difficult in real life, as many used bookstores will only give credit.  Even then, there’s no promise that they’ll want any of your books.

Movies and CDs aren’t much easier.  Some sites and stores will take them, but often will only offer 50¢ each.  If you’re selling at a store, it’s often not worth the gas money.  Even if you sell them online, it may not be worth going to the nearest mailbox.

At this point, I’m hoping that you’re not expecting a solution.  I’m actually looking for suggestions, myself.  I don’t know that there is one.  After all, it’s supply and demand.  I used half.com for a while and at best, would sell one or two books per day and that was with an inventory of thousands of items.  If anyone knows of a site that buys lots of stuff or a place near Miami that’s worth visiting, I’d be interested in knowing about it.

ProTypers and Listia

I’ve been using ProTypers for a while now.  While I have cashed out a few times now, I’ve noticed a real lack of motivation to keep at it.  They’ve lowered the rates a few times and I’ve also noticed that it’s harder to get images to process.  I don’t know if more people are signing up or of they have lower demand for their services.  Either way, I only have two referrals and neither one seems to have kept up with it.  You need to have five referrals cash out before you can earn from referrals, so I’m not counting on that as an income source.

Also, it looks like Listia is allowing people to use points to buy things outright.  (I don’t know if I mentioned that before.)  Right now, I don’t have enough points to buy anything and I don’t know if I will any time soon.  I have to see if there is anything I can sell for more points.  (Or get a few more referrals.)

It looks like they have movies, electronics and gift cards among other things.  They’re things definitely worth saving up for.  I wonder how this will affect bidding if people are looking to do the same.  I can see people listing more things to get the points (meaning more competition) and fewer people willing to bid on stuff because they’re either saving up for an iPod or just bought an Amazon gift card.

If you’re thinking of signing up, but you can’t think of anything to list, I can recommend a few things.  The first two auctions I listed were gift codes that I got from Fribiz.  Since there was no physical card to mail, there was no need to spend money on postage.

Another similar idea is the codes you find for special promotions that you find in soda caps and candy wrappers.  I’ve found that a lot of times, I don’t use enough of the product to save up enough codes to get anything.  The down side with this one is that it’s hard to get a lot of points unless you list at least a half dozen codes together.  It’s worth a shot if you have them laying around, though.

For right now, it seems the easiest way to get money is to have a job.  That’s my best income right now.  If you have any suggestions, please let me know.

Fribiz Lives! and other things worth getting excited about

It looks like I was misinformed.  Fribiz isn’t shutting down.  (Yes, that’s the referral link and yes, I’m using an adf.ly interstitial link.)  They’ve been posting new auctions well past the date that they were supposed to be going offline.  I don’t know if they changed their minds or if I was reading something wrong, but I can’t say I mind.

In other news, a Where’s George app has been released.  It’s very basic, only letting you enter bills.  It doesn’t look like you can refresh at all, which I can’t say I mind.  It is a very early version.  My only issue is that it doesn’t always get the ZIP code right.  I haven’t tried entering a bill with it yet because of this.  I’m hoping it’s resolved in a later version.

Yes, it’s 99¢ and the only money I’m making off of it is the money I get from adf.ly when you follow the link.  It’s not so bad, I suppose.  I was getting these nag notices whenever I tried to enter a bill using Safari on my iPod Touch, so that alone was worth it.  I’m also supporting something that a lot of people were looking forward to.  It was definitely worth the download.

Another One Bites the Dust

I found out about a week ago that Fribiz will be closing.  (I'm not really sure why I'm putting the referral link in, either.)  Fribiz is supposed to be closing today, but I don’t know when it will actually go down, as they have several auctions going.  The site will probably close whenever they finish.  I also have no idea if anything will be replacing it.

I’m going to try to get whatever else I can on Fribiz.  If not, it’s no great loss.  I haven’t been using the site for a while now.  It was only because one of my referrals mentioned it that I knew about it.  At least I won a few items on the site, which is good.

There were two auctions, both gift codes, that I wasn’t able to use.  Fortunately, I was able to auction them off on another site, Listia.  I got points for the gift codes, but I was able to use the points to get something else I wanted.  (For those of you that have codes you don’t want, Listia is a great way to get rid of them.)

I was able to sell off a few items on eBay, although not for much.  For that reason, I decided to keep a USB pencil sharpener.  I figured that I wouldn’t get that much for it new, and I have a small need for one that stays attached to something, so I decided to try it.  At least I got a review of it on what’s now Yahoo! Voices.  (The referral link seems to be here.)  Worst case scenario, I may be able to auction it off on eBay as used.

In any event, I may look for some other site similar to Fribiz.  I don’t know how good it will be, but it’s worth a shot.

Driving

Note:  I found this as a draft.  I'm not sure if this will post when I wrote it or if it will show as my most recent post.  This looks like it was from a while ago.   Rather than let the post go to waste, I'm going to let it stand as is.

 

You have entered 56,575 Bills worth $163,083
Bills with hits: 4,554 Total hits: 5,164
Hit rate: 8.05% Slugging Percentage: 9.13% (total hits/total bills)
George Score: 1,185.77
Your rank (based on George Score) is #381 (out of 53,196 current users with a George Score. [99.3 Percentile])
Your State Rank in Florida is: 23 out of 7,119 [99.7]

I’ve been driving for a few weeks now, which is part of why I haven’t been writing as much. It’s odd having to do certain things like buy gas. (Which I am doing with cash, in case you’re wondering.) I haven’t been posting in either blog, even though I’ve been taking a lot of pictures. (Check out http://sixmegs.blogspot.com/.)

I haven’t noticed any real change in the distribution of my bills, but spending them at gas stations is something that will affect the distribution within the county in which they’re spent. Since I’ve bought gas within a few miles of my house, I would think that the northeast quadrant of Miami-Dade County will be the most affected. I just don’t know how.

Having a car has had me thinking differently. Theoretically, I could go on a short trip if I had two days off. I wouldn’t necessarily do this to pick up hits in new counties, but it is something that has crossed my mind. As of this writing, I have 53 of Florida’s 67 counties. It looks like there’s one county south of Orlando that I need, and that’s De Soto County. The only major city listed seems to be Arcadia and that barely warrants an entry in the AAA book. The only way I could see going there is on the way to Sarasota or something.

There are a few north of Orlando, like Union and Bradford. It looks like all of the counties with major destinations are taken though. I also don’t want to go too far north. If I did make up my mind to go somewhere, I’d like to be able to go there and get back no later than the next day. Saint Augustine, which is pretty close to those counties, would be almost a five-hour drive from where I live. If I left early enough, I could get there by lunchtime, but I’ve never really planned a trip like that and would have no idea where to go or what to do.

Granted, all of this is just me thinking about the counties I need. I definitely don’t want to waste the gas just to spend the bills. However, if I happened to be heading in a certain direction, I might try to stop in or near a county I need. This is just one of the things I’ve been thinking about since I started driving.

Trust issues

I’m officially considering ProTypers to be a little glitchy.   I had to clear my browser history and when I logged back in to the site, my balance dropped by about $1.50.  I sent a request to customer support, but the response was something about banned accounts and not dealing with reopening them on a per-request basis.  I said nothing of being banned.  I said that my account dropped from about $4 to about $2.50 and that there’s no evidence of my having been paid nor is there any explanation.  I put a comment in to this effect, which reopened the case.  I’m hoping that I’ll get a response about my question.

If I didn’t need the money, I wouldn’t mind so much.  The problem is that it’s fairly easy work.  I wouldn’t mind actually getting paid for it.  I’d like to recommend it to people, but I can’t do that if I keep having problems with my account.  First, they don’t cash me out on time.  Now money goes missing.  I’d like to cash out at $5, which I’d have to get by Monday.

I might be able to pull off $2.50 in one day if I keep at it, but that’s a lot of work for one day.  That would have to be at least 2,000 images.  (Even at the top pay of $1.35 per 1,000 images, that’s something like 1850 images.)  I’m hoping that I can get my money back tomorrow.  I don’t know that I want to have to go through that many images, especially when trust is an issue.

ProTypers update

I just wanted to say that I did finally get paid by ProTypers.  I didn’t get paid the full amount I should have, but I’m working at it again.  I want to see if they’ll pay out next time.  I have about another 90¢ to go.  I’m still not entirely sold on it yet.  I’ve gotten one referral that did only 16 images.  It may be a while before I can earn through referrals.

The App Trailers has allowed me to cash out twice.  It’s not that easy to make money unless you have a lot of people signing up under you.  On that note, I don’t like that people have to manually enter ’unableoscar’ for me to get credit.  The least they could do is let me choose my own username.

I’m still looking for programs, so if you know any, let me know.

ProTypers not Paying

I’ve actually stopped working on ProTypers for the moment. If you select PayPal as payment, as I did, you’re supposed to be paid every Monday, assuming you’ve reached the $3.00 threshold. They were supposed to pay me this past Monday, but they haven’t. I contacted them and they did reply, but they told me to make sure that my PayPal information was correct. (I know it’s correct as I’ve been paid before.) The only thing to do was to contact them with my username and password and they’d look into it.

This bothers me for two reasons. One: they don’t have a user name. They go by email address. Two: Why do they need my password? Shouldn’t they be asking for my email address? I’d like to know if anyone else is having this problem or if it’s something new.

What really gets me is that there’s no support email address. You have to submit a ticket and wait for an autoresponder. You then have to reply to that and wait 48 hours. The first time I did this, I had to respond three times only to be kicked out for not responding within 72 hours. Fortunately, I figured it out on my own.

In the initial response for this problem, they said that they understand that I need my money. It’s not that I need it, really. It’s just that I don’t feel like working just to have some imaginary dollar amount go up. If I’m to do this work, no matter how crappy they pay, I expect to be paid what they promise. With what I can do in a week, I could afford to go out to lunch. In my financial situation, that means something.

If I don’t get paid this Monday, I’m not going to hold out hope.

Working

To give you an idea of how well I’m doing at making money on the web, I started working at a part-time job. It pays $10 per hour, but I’m still looking for ways to make money online. Two things have come to my attention.

The first is ProTypers. They have you enter those funny-looking words and pay you up to $1.35 for every thousand images you do correctly. It doesn’t sound like much, but I was able to cash out my first week. I selected PayPal as a payment method, which allows for a $3 minimum payment. If you work for an hour or two per day, you should be able to reach that without referrals. I know this doesn’t sound like much, but it’s better than a lot of programs I’ve come across.

Speaking of referrals, it looks like five different referrals have to cash out before you start earning the ten percent you get off them. If you do sign up for this program, I’d kindly ask that you cash out at least once. (PayPal looks like the quickest option for this.) I have been paid by this program, so they do seem legitimate.

The other thing is something called App Trailers. One thing I don’t like about this is that you have to enter a code ’unableoscar’ for me to get credit for referring you. (This was randomly generated. If you sign up, let me know so I can tell if I got my points.) It is a good program. You get paid for watching trailers of apps, many of which are free. They have also paid by PayPal, but there are different options for cashing out like Amazon.

I’m still looking for new programs. If you find something that pays well, please let me know.

Make Money on the Web updated

I updated my MMOTW site. I have some new programs there to share. I'm still looking for ideas and suggestions, so if you have any to share, please do. (I was actually considering posting some job-search sites because that may be the easiest way to get steady income, but I don't think many of those places have referral programs.)

I did get an interview with Chipotle Mexican Grill in Aventura, but no word back on that. I'm still filling out at least applications per week including Bay Harbor Islands, who needed a toll collector. Every time I see an opening for a toll collector, I'm surprised. (Of course, they're independent of the state and not using SunPass.)

If you know anyone that's hiring in the Miami area, please let me know.

No such thing as a free lunch

I was looking at an old page for programs that I had signed up for to make money online. Most of the programs had either shut down or didn’t recognize my login, so I deleted most of them. That left basically PayPal, Search Cactus, Spider Metrix, Epinions and Cash Clicking. I added adf.ly and EasyHits4U, but I plan on adding a few more.

If you’ve visited the site only to see these links, don’t worry. I plan on updating the site. I’ll probably get rid of the table and just have paragraphs. I also plan on breaking it up into categories like traffic exchanges or survey sites. I do have a few other programs to refer. I’ll have to go through my bookmarks and adf.ly links to see what I have.

As I may have stated before, it’s hard to make money off of any of these programs. Even with referrals, you usually need several and few people ever stay active enough to make it worth it. This is why I’ve been handing in applications to any store that will give me one. (My brother and I went out yesterday looking for places.)

I’d really like something like seti@home that would pay me money for doing distributed processing. I remember having seen one that never really promised to pay anything.

What would be best is some sort of passive income. Adf.ly is good because I can place the links somewhere and not have to do much else. EasyHits4U isn’t as good since it requires me to do so much surfing to get such a small payout. It’s better for promoting other things.

I guess there really is no such thing as a free lunch.

Plug Boards

I’ve found something called a plug board. I’m sure this is nothing new, but for those that haven’t heard of them, plug boards are a way to let people ‘plug’ their sites. There’s a limit, such as maybe 10 sites and they can apparently be either text or images.

The service that I found, located here, seems to be pretty simple. You select the number of rows and columns. (Text can only be one row.) I don’t mind, as it gives me the opportunity to show several banners at once. This site shows what ten banners look like together. Here you can see what text looks like.

I’ve locked the banners so that only mine will ever show. This way, I can put them in site rotators and show several banners at once. I’ve left the text links open. I may even put the link on the side bar as a way of letting people advertise. I’ve been rotating both on EasyHits4U with some luck, but if the text links change too much, I may stop using that one.

At the very least, it does make it easier to refer people to things. I’ll have to see how it works out in the long run.

Making money on the web

It’s so hard to find a job that I’ve been looking for other ways to get money. The problem with a lot of the online money-making sites is that you really can’t make a lot of money unless you’re lucky or have a lot of referrals. This isn’t to say that they’re all scams. Some do actually come through. It’s just that it’s not always easy to get a lot of money.

Selling stuff on eBay seems to work. I’ll list 40 items or so and at least two will sell for the minimum bid each month. Trouble is that we’re talking about items for 99¢ each. I was listing them for so low because that’s what I had to do to get free listings. (eBay has since lifted that restriction, but is only giving me 50 free listings per month rather than 100.)

I tried a few affiliate programs, a few of which you may see on the right side of the page. Cash4books.net, for instance, pays $5 if you sell them some of your used books. I tried the service myself and it does pay. I got a check that I could actually deposit. So far, I’ve gotten one person to sign up and it seems that their books never arrived.

I’ve even tried online gambling at CentSports. It claims that since they’re giving you 10¢ of advertiser-sponsored money to gamble with, it’s legal. Since it’s not your money, you’re not risking anything. If you lose, you get another ten cents to try again. You can cash out at $20, but I’ve never made it this far. One of my referrals did, but he decided to try to make more and lost, so I don’t know if they actually pay out or not.

Yes, I’ve tried site rotators. EasyHits4U is a good one. It’s easy to use, but you can’t cash out. The best you can hope for is that someone signs up under you. I’ve gotten at least two referrals to CentSports, including the aforementioned on. I think I’ve even gotten a few bids on eBay.

I’ve tried one called SendMeHits.com with less than spectacular results. They have both manual and automatic rotation and you can sell credits back to the site for money. However, the site has proven somewhat glitchy. The site often redirects me to another page randomly. Sometimes, I can’t even stay on the login page long enough to put in my user name. I do have referrals and they do seem to use the site, so I don’t know if it’s just me.

I’ve even tried micro working at sites like MyEasyTask.com and microworkers.com. The more expensive ones tend to be harder to get and the cheaper ones are usually something I’ve already gotten. I’ve been able to use earnings to get people to sign up for other things with varying success.

I still haven’t given up hope that I’ll find a job. I’m still looking. It would just be easier if I had some idea of where to look.

Will work for money

I’m down to needing only two Florida counties on Where’s George: Gilchrist and Madison. I’ve had to let my membership to Friends of George lapse because I just can’t spare the money right now, which makes it harder to tell when I’ve gotten the hit that gives me a new county. Thus, I don’t have links to post.

It’s been hard to post stuff here because not having a job means not having money to do anything interesting. I’d post more, but I don’t think that the general public wants to hear how I spent most of the past month sitting at home looking for work or going to the mall to fill out applications. There are a few prospects that I’m hopeful about, but I have no idea how many people I’m competing against. All I can do is keep filling out applications.

I know that I can work, but it’s hard to prove that to someone, especially when all they have is an application or a résumé. If I’m given 40 hours every week, I’ll show up for all 40. I’d even take 20, especially considering that most places are only hiring part time. Working 20 hours per week is better than sitting around waiting for my unemployment to run out.

I wish I knew where to look. It gets frustrating when you fill out 20 or 30 applications and you know that most of the places aren’t even hiring. Even among those that are hiring, you have to figure that everyone and their pet Chihuahua has already applied there.

I can’t give up, though. I know that sooner or later, I’ll find a job. I can only hope that it’s sooner.

A long time coming

I’ve been kind of busy looking for work. That and not having much cash means that I haven’t had many interesting hits. Much of what I have is spread over a long period of time. One is an article on Apple not taking cash for the iPad. I’m actually surprised that it’s still up there.

There are also two bills that I entered several months apart, here and here, that came together. I don’t imagine that it happens too often. (Yes, it’s been so long that one of the bills got another hit.)

In the interesting comment department, this bill is from someone who thinks that the bill is defaced. I think that the idiot part is a bit much. I remember first entering bills on Where’s George, worrying that someone would confront me about it. While I never had someone insult me about it, I guess it’s much easier when you’re not doing it in person.

Then, there’s the person that held on to the bill for two years. I don’t mind having a sleeper like that, but why wait two years to enter it? I can only imagine that they got more Where’s George bills and realized that my bill wasn’t so special.

One last note is that Calhoun County fell, leaving me with four Florida counties. I don’t have a link as I only noticed yesterday. I have so few counties left that I don’t really expect it.