Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto



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Archives for January 2007

Things that make me mad

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Thirteen Things that Make me Mad

1…. People who tell me what I can or can’t write …

2…. In the past week I’ve been told no less than three times that something I’ve written or posted shouldn’t be posted. Most of these things have happened on my Gardening blog of all places.

3…. One person told me why I shouldn’t do any posts for Loudlaunch, and gave me a long description of his problem with them.

4…. Another person blasted me on As the Garden Grows for saying that Toronto’s been warmer than normal in the last two months. Going so far as to tell me how wrong I was and calling me a stupid idiot. Right. I’ll take your words to heart and change my ways especially since you’ve gone so far as to insult my intelligence. Yeah sure.

5…. Then yesterday I was told that the snowman photo that I posted on my gardening blog might be offensive to some people.

6…. I didn’t really think of that photo as being offensive when I posted it. If anything I thought perhaps people might take more offense at the Wordless Wednesday Photo that I posted on this site because it deals with obesity and anorexia.

7…. People that have been reading my sites for a while, and people that actually know me – know that I go out of my way trying not to offend people or hurt others feelings. I do that because it’s my own feelings that often end up getting hurt far more often than most others. Plus, If I really tried to not write anything that would offend anyone I’d have to stop writing and posting pictures completely because just about everything has the possibility of offending someone somewhere.

8…. Bad drivers – people who change lanes or turn without signaling, cut you off, can’t park … you name it, bad drivers make me mad.

9…. People who park in front of my driveway – blocking it. It’s bad enough when it’s my elderly neighbors kids. At least they’re only there for 30 minutes or so and I know where to go to ask them to move, but when it’s strangers? Idiots!

10…. Packages that I can’t open. Have you ever bought something – maybe something small like a package of batteries or an accessory for your cell phone and you notice that the package is three times the size of what’s inside and coated in plastic that you can’t tear with your bare hands? You have to go and find your scissors in order to open it and sometimes the plastic is so thick that even your scissors have trouble cutting it open? Yeah, it’s those kinds of packages that make me mad.

11…. My neighbors and their loud Karaoke. Yes they are still at it and the singing hasn’t improved. Gag me!

12…. Websites with autoplay videos or music. Especially if I can’t find how to turn it off easily. Nothing like visiting a site and getting blasted with music.

13…. As I pointed out in yesterdays Wordless Wednesday I’m not using Mr. Linky anymore because people who take the time to visit my site and leave a link could also take the time to leave a short comment. Leaving a link and running off to the next site is rude.

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Learn how and why a city changed it’s name to half.com

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Do you remember hearing in the news, I think it was sometime last year or maybe in late 2005 that a city in Oregon had changed it’s name to Half.com? I do! I remember thinking- oh no, now there’s going to end up being a city in every State and Province throughout North America with a dot com name.

Well, the man who managed to talk the city of Halfway into changing it’s name to half.com is Mark Hughes, and I’m sure you’ll believe me when I tell you that he’s a professional speaker. He’s just written a book about how he managed to get the city to rename itself. The book also includes information about Buzzmarketing. Of course getting a city to change to a dot com name was a remarkable feat of Buzz marketing.

He has a remarkable track record in marketing and if you’d like to learn how to become successful, by using your own creative ideas I strongly suggest that you visit his site and also buy his new book.

Affiliate networks and customer service

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I’m really impressed with two companies that I’ve recently started working with as an affiliate. It’s not because of results yet. I haven’t been with either company any longer than a month or so. It’s because of the customer service.

I joined AzoogleAds in December. This site allows it’s affiliates to add banner, and text ads to their site for various companies. Most of the banners that you can add to your site pay you per click, and many also pay you a fee if they gain a new client when someone comes to them from your site.

When I signed up I was assigned a representative that I could contact by email or phone or IM if I ever had any questions. In fact I was told that he would look over my sites and suggest how to use AzoogleAds in the best way for my site.

I put one ad up on this site and then kind of forgot about AzoogleAds. It was close to Christmas time and New Years and life got busy with the holidays and family related activities. Well, sometime last week, maybe Tuesday, I got a phone call and it was my AzoogleAds rep calling to see if I needed any help with their service or if I had any questions. I didn’t at the time but I was very pleased to see that they had come through with exactly what they’d told me.

No other company that I’ve been affiliate for has ever taken the time to have someone contact me personally to see how I’m doing with their service. Ever.

Then, on Tuesday evening I was going through my email on my laptop. Cleaning up a few days worth that had accumulated there and I saw that I’d missed an email that had come in on January third. It was from Share Results, a company that I had signed up for when I decided to put up a banner ad for the Web Hosting company WingSix.

I believe that I’d only signed up with Share Results a week or so before the email came in and here they were writing to me to say that they’d looked over my site and that they’d liked it, saw that I was a nurse and asked if I was still working as a nurse, and then told me about an upcoming promotion that they think might suit my site.

I wrote back to them to reply to their questions and to let them know how pleased I was that they’d contacted me.

These are the only two companies that I’ve been an affiliate of, who’ve spontaneously contacted me. That’s fantastic customer service.

I wonder if it’s a coincidence that both companies are Canadian?

Is using mortgage broker or the banks mortgage specialist better?

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I have a question for any home owners who might read this. When you first went about securing a mortgage for your home how did you do it? Did you go through your bank and speak with the mortgage specialist on hand at the bank branch or did you use Mortgage Brokers? I’m trying to decide which way works better for the home owner.

When Chris and I bought our home we first started out talking with our banks but we didn’t really like the offers that they were giving to us. You see they can only offer whatever mortgage types that the bank they work for handles. We switched to a mortgage broker who’d been recommended to us by our real estate agent, who did not receive any payment from us for his services, and he was able to look through all of the offers with all the banks that have mortgage packages and he found us what I still believe to be the very best mortgage at that time.

Interest rates were really low 5 years ago, and the bank was offering us a mortgage at 5.1% I believe. When we went through our broker we got a mortgage with 0% interest for the first 6 months and then after that we only paid 1% interest for the longest time until the mortgage rates began climbing again. As of right now our mortgage rate is only 4.5% and that’s still a much better deal that what most people are offered.

So my vote is for talking with a mortgage broker when getting a new mortgage for your home. What do you think? What have your experiences been like compared to my own?

Who’s his therapist?

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Wordless Wednesday

Successful therapy?

anorexia

I don’t know why I found this photo funny.

Anorexia is after all a very serious condition and I don’t want to downplay that here, but obviously this man has a sense of humor if he’s wearing that t-shirt. His therapy for anorexia must have been extremely successful, perhaps the most successful therapy ever.

I don’t think I’m going to use Mr. Linky anymore. I’m tired of people, Wordless Wednesday and other meme participants coming by and leaving a link and no comment. I think it’s very rude.

Besides, with my recent Muser links (just below every post) you get a better link anyway since there is no rel no follow tag around the recent commenters link. Google and other search engines will actually follow that link and it will count to help give anyone who comments here a valid link and hopefully a slightly better page rank in the future. The people who’ve just been leaving a link on my Mr. Linky have been doing themselves (and me) a disservice by linking and running.

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