I’m sure that more experienced bloggers would tell me to handle myself with a little more dignity and class, but I can’t help it this is just crazy!

Sam2k.com is being linked to from the GREATEST TECH BLOG ON THE INTERNET - Engadget! ( Check it out!) I submitted a tip to them about Vista SP1 x64 being available for download and included a link back to my post on the subject. So now they’re using my screen snip and linking to my blog! Now, that post is being syndicated through rss feeds and even ended up on ZDNet! You really can’t imagine this feeling until you’ve felt it. Its awesome!

I’m still not getting any love from Digg, but I’ll survive. An hour in and already 400 unique visitors. Man that’s going to ruin my averages.

Bookmark to

Service Pack 1 for Vista Ultimate x64 is showing up on my windows update.  I’ll be installing it in the next few minutes to see if there are any drastic improvements.  On the whole, I’ve not found Vista to be incredibly buggy, but Windows Media Center has been an incredible pain with all its frequent crashes and blackouts.

UPDATE: I did get SP1 installed this morning. The install process took just under an hour and went off without a hitch except for the cursor being a little shaky when I tried to do the required restart. This however was not an issue once everything was back up and running. I’m not really sure if anything is different yet. Things could be running just a little bit more smoothly on the whole, but I can’t really say for sure at this point. Everything I use frequently still appears to be functioning so at least there aren’t any major headaches on that front.

Bookmark to

As you may have read previously, I’ve been working on freebie sites for about a month now.  Friday evening I finally got all the referrals for the first one I’ve been working on: YourFreeiPhone.com. Since then, I’ve been waiting on the approval process to finalize.  I had read on other sites that approval always takes 4 days so I  wasn’t too worried about the wait, but I was a little bit nervous due to the fact that one of my referrals had been banned a few hours after I submitted for approval causing me to have to find someone else.  Anyway, now I just have to wait for them to send me the moola (Paypal).  They pay out on Wednesday and Saturday, so hopefully I submitted my payment request in time for it to be processed and paid tomorrow.  Once that happens, I’ll post details about the process I used to Get A Free iPhone!

Bookmark to

I would venture that most Paypal users have never had a problem with the world’s largest online payment processor yet hell fire and brimstone seem to be flowing about its name on the plethora of hate sites out there. I’ve been using Paypal for just under 5 years now and had never had a problem until this past Saturday.

As you may have read on Sam2k previously, over the last month or so I have been working on those pesky “freebie” sites that promise the greatest and bestest gadgets in exchange for completing some kind of advertised offer and getting a certain number of other people to do the same. The approach that I have been using involves the payment of others to sign up using my referral link and complete an offer. This approach has been marvelously successful and I was able to apply for review of my account on one of the sites Friday evening. Soon after submitting, one of my referrals was banned for violating the sites ToS. Since I had paid this person specifically to provide credit to my account, I sent him an email requesting that he return the monies I had paid him. I didn’t really want to drag the affair out, so when he offered me $19 (less than what I had paid him) in recompense, I accecpted.

From there, it all went downhill. Apparently, as soon as he sent the $19 to my Paypal account, he closed his own account. This caused Paypal’s system to throw a fraudulent activity flag and place a temporary hold on the payment I had received. When I received the email notifying me of this hold, I had not yet learned that this scammer had closed his account. So, being very confused, I called Paypal to find out what the problem was. I spoke to a moderately helpful Jim in Resolutions who was nice but unable to provide me with much information. He told me that I should contact the other party and request that he call Paypal. I did this but my friendly neighborhood scammer declined. So, I called back this afternoon and spoke with Rick in Resolutions for about 5 minutes. Rick told me that for the $19 it wasn’t worth either of our time and effort so he would just resolve the dispute for me and told me that if upon further review the payment is still diputed that I can call back and request a courtesy credit to cover it. This was an excellent response that perfectly addressed both my problem and the economics of the situation. I applaud Rick’s handling of the matter and respect the fact that Paypal gives its specialists the power to resolve problems without dragging things out. This may actually be the quickest dispute resolution I’ve ever been a part of. All told, the matter was resolved in less than 48 hours and only a few of them traditional business hours.

With customer service like this, I don’t understand why Paypal has so many haters. Sure, it was an inconvenience to me but there was no harm and it only took about an hour of my time. The lesson to be learned here is that reasonable people receive reasonable treatment from companies that they have dealings with, even Paypal. If you ever find yourself in a dispute, stay calm, reasonable, and talk it out.

Bookmark to

I know I am!

You can take the FCC’s quiz on their horribly designed website at dtv.gov.  Seriously, I could design a better
website than that, and I suck at designing!

There are 13 questions, which is a really strange number for a quiz, about the DTV transition.  They are
all pretty easy so give it a shot so that all your pals can know just how cool you are.

Or, if you just want to look cool, you can download your deputy certificate here. Honestly, who else is going to know?

Bookmark to

This is kinda cool.  When I first started using Google Adsense a year or two ago, I was using a different online nickname.  Naturally, I used that nickname to sign up for a Google Account to use with Adsense.  Subsequently, I’ve started using Sam2k as my handle.  Yesterday, it occured to me that I should change my email address for Adsense from the old one to a new Google Account that better reflects my identity.  As I searched through the Adsense account settings, I discovered that an Adsense email could only be changed from a regular email to a Google Account email address with now way back. I was stuck!  Just now when I logged into Adsense to check my earnings for the day, I was prompted to update my Google Account if I wished as part of a sytematic cleanup on Google’s part.  This was exactly what I wanted to do in the first place!  And some of ya’ll out there thought Google couldn’t read minds…next you’ll be telling me that Google isn’t powered by pigeons.

Bookmark to

The Apple store is back and the update was indeed to add a new 16GB iPhone.  Saddly, this was not also a 3G data update. Apple also added a 32GB iPod Touch  Both the 16GB iPhone and the 32 GB iPod Touch will run $499 and are shipping now.

Bookmark to

1. It is Tuesday morning.
2. The Apple Store is down.

Based on this, many people are predicting that a new 16GB iPhone is going to be released today with a possible price point of $599.  I, for one, and I’m sure I’m not alone would rather have the “coming sometime in 2008″ 3G iPone.  I guess we’ll see what’s going on latter today.

Bookmark to

Wrong!  As it were, there are actually quite a few completely legitimate sites out there that offer you free stuff for signing up for stuff.  To be fair, there are also a gazillion sites out there that are no where near legitimate-they exist only to sell your private info and email addresses to advertisers.  In fact, I would argue that most of the “freebie” sites that you’ve run across in web advertisements and the like fall into this latter category.

 Now, I’ve not yet completed a freebie site yet and claimed a free price, but I’ve been dabbling in the industry for the past six months or so and have done enough research to find   some real legitimate freebie sites.  I’m just about finished with one of them and will probably be requesting my prize in the early half of this next week.  I’ll give full details about the site and how to get the freebies when that is all finished.

 Until then…

Bookmark to

To be perfectly honest, in the last six months I’ve done nothing if not completely ignore my internet “empire.”  In fact, I’m running kind of low on sites at the moment.  They are:

ProxAce 

• www.proxace.com
• I’m pretty sure I’ve sold ProxAce, but I’ve yet to be paid so the site is still in my posession.

SlipTheNet

•  www.slipthenet.com
• SlipTheNet is my newest proxy.  Its only about a week old but has already made $5 with Adsense and a few $ with Adversal.
• This morning I spent about $20 purchasing advertising on Y! Groups and the such so, we’ll see how that goes.

Webanac

•  www.webanac.com
• This is my second newest and soon to be oldest (after the completion of the ProxAce sale) site in my network.
• This free directory already has a little over 200 links but hasn’t made any money.  In fact, I doubt that it will provide very much revenue until it gets fairly well known in directory circles.

Lets see, anything else I’m forgetting?  Yes, if anyone is wondering, I’m still using a VPS from slhost.com and just last month reached my 2 year anniversary with them, so yay!

Bookmark to