Tricia's Musings

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



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Lowest unique bid wins great prizes at Bid4prizes.com

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I just visited a site called Bid4prizes.com and I think you might really like it. All you have to do to play and possibly win Free gifts is to register on the site and start making bids on items that you would like to win.

They have lowest unique bid Sweepstake where the person who has the lowest bid for the item wins that prize. At this time they have a Scion XB vehicle and a 61″ HDTV set up for lowest bid auction.

The site looks fun and easy to use. It’s text based. You can enter bids for the various auctions using your mobile phone or by visiting the website. It’s easy. Why don’t you visit the site today. Perhaps you’ll be lucky and win a Cash prize, HDTV, Apple iPhone, the Scion, or even a designer bag. There’s a new winner each day. Check it out.





Wonder if our friend might get engaged?

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Last night, Chris brought one of our friends from work home with him for a visit. It wasn’t a surprise visit – we’d planned earlier in the week on Oliver coming over for dinner. It was nice to see our friend since I hadn’t seen him for a few months. Chris sees him pretty much daily at work, but since I haven’t been to work in a while I don’t think I’ve seen Oliver since before Christmas.

Our friend spent the evening telling us about his girlfriend, and how this is the first week when they’ve each had other obligations and can’t spend much time together. This is the first long term girlfriend that our friend has had in the time that we’ve known him so I can understand his excitement and where he’s coming from.

They’ve only been seeing each other for about four months but she’s already given him a promise ring of sorts. It’s a very nice silver ring with a center that spins. Now he wants to get a nice ring for her too.

Chris and I are both former jewelers. So we talked to him about what kind of ring he wants to get, and whether he wants to get something custom made or perhaps just find a nice already made ring for her. We still have jewelry connections so I think Chris might take him to some of the jewelry trades people we know this weekend or sometime next week and see what they can find.

Now, while our friend says he only wants to get his girlfriend a nice ring since she got him a ring I’m curious as to what type of ring he might get. I mean he called his ring a promise ring … perhaps it won’t be too long before they are looking for engagement rings? I’m just guessing, but it seems like it’s a serious relationship so I wouldn’t be surprised if they do end up getting engaged.

Having been a jeweler myself I guess it’s kind of ironic that I really don’t wear much jewelry. Isn’t it? I mean, I don’t even have an engagement ring! LOL That’s always been fine with me, but perhaps one day when our finances are better, maybe for a big anniversary I’ll talk Chris into getting me a nice diamond ring. Perhaps a nice white gold sapphire diamond ring? With a lovely brilliant cut diamond with D color? Oh yeah, that’d be nice. You see, my birthday is in September and my birthstone is a sapphire so why not combine the two?

The only problem with that is that my wedding band has emeralds in it. Hmmm perhaps I need to get either just a diamond ring or one that has a combination of diamonds and emeralds?

Even though I don’t wear much jewelry I guess the jeweler, and of course woman, in me still likes to look at fine jewelry.

If our friend does decide to get an engagement ring for his girlfriend someday, if we can’t help him ourselves I wouldn’t hesitate to send him to Abazias.com. Abazias Diamonds is a jewelery company that specializes in the sale of loose diamonds. I’ve looked over their selection and I must say that they have some fine diamonds to choose from. They also have a wonderful selection of engagement rings and other jewelery mounts that these fine diamonds could be set into. The prices are reasonable and the quality is superb. Visit the site yourself to see what I mean.

In the meantime we’ll just stick with helping our friend find a “promise” ring for his girlfriend.

How do you feel about recorded conversations?

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How do you feel when you’re calling an 800 number, or your cable or phone company and you get the line “This call may be recorded”?

Have you come to accept that many of your conversations with businesses that you might have dealt with for years are recorded? Or does it feel like an invasion of privacy every time you hear that familiar message?

Now I know, that when I call some 800 numbers that the message says that my conversation may be recorded for customer service and I assume quality assurance purposes. I guess that’s ok. If the company is monitoring employees to make sure that they are doing their jobs properly, and it helps make the service that I receive when I have to call the company even better, well then I guess that’s a good thing.

It makes me wonder sometimes though, if it’s not just to monitor employees and the customer service that the company is providing, what other ways could they use that information?

Do they keep a record of your phone call in their database? Could information that you give out while you are being recorded be used against you or harm you at some point?

By this I mean, what if their database got hacked and you gave your credit card number out while you were on the phone? Could that be a new way for thieves to steal your information or maybe even your identity?

Now that’s a scary thought isn’t it?

phonerecorder2.gif BrickHouse Security sells a number of Phone Recorder that can allow you to tape a phone call for your personal use – such as the telephone recorder that’s displayed to the left.

They also offer a number of products that can not only detect recording devices but block them from recording your conversation.

Now, I feel that I must have a certain level of trust when I talk to my Mortgage company or bank over the phone. Perhaps using a phone recorder to record important conversations with companies such as banks etc might be a good idea. It would certainly be helpful if I was trying to recall important information that they had given to me during the discussion.

However, I don’t feel that level of trust when I call a restaurant for take out or home delivery. Many restaurants have call centers and they record phone conversations. We give our credit card number out over the phone at least half the time when we call to have food delivered. Are their databases as secure as the banks? Probably not. Which is why, if I had a phone recorder that could detect and block the recording of telephone conversations I’d use it when I called places such as restaurants.

I suppose I’d also know when ever a recording device had been activated and I could decide call by call if I wanted to block the recording of my conversation.

What do you think about your telephone conversations being recorded both with and without your knowledge by some of these companies?

Would you be interested in a phone recorder device that would allow you to record conversations or block calls from being recorded?

Quality furniture collections at Greatpricedfurniture.com

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I was visiting GreatPricedfurniture.com and spent a few minutes looking over their site and the furnishings that they sell.

The site has 20 major sections that you can easily reach by clicking on the tab of your choice at the top of each page. The sections range from customer care, to a pages listing the online stores best sellers, new arrivals, items that are on sale, to the specific furniture sections – bedroom, children’s, baby furniture, kitchen, living room, dining room, home office, and art. There’s even a section on furniture tips.

The site is well designed, but it doesn’t look like your typical online store which usually has lots of thumbnails of their products within the major sections.

On Greatpricedfurniture.com when you visit a furniture section, take for example the baby furniture section, you are greeted by a few paragraphs describing the type of furniture that the online store sells, below the initial paragraphs you’ll find thumbnail pictures that will take you into sub-sections of the baby furniture section. The sub-sections for this area range from Baby bedroom sets, to changing tables or you could view all of the furniture items at once by clicking the last thumbnail.

I think this online store might be better served to have the sub-section thumbnails either above the descriptive paragraphs for the section or perhaps running along the left or right side of the page. That’s my opinion, but I know that when I’m shopping or browsing online I like to view examples of the products sooner rather than later.

Once you get into each subsection of the site you will find thumbnail photos of the products sold in that section. Once I clicked on Baby bedroom sets I discovered a page that had a photo of each of the baby furniture sets that Greatpricedfurniture sells, and from there I could click on a model that I liked to see a larger picture, read an in depth description of the product and then go on to order the item, or items in this case, at the bottom of the page.

One thing that I really liked about this site, is that once you have picked out an item that you want to possibly purchase or get more information on, if you scroll to the bottom of the page where it lists the prices for the items and variations of each item, a pop up picture of the item comes up when you hover over the link. So if you wanted to get a particular crib, but wanted it in a different color, you could see what it would look like in the color or wood type of your choosing when you hover over the link. A+ for that idea!

The front page has a nice picture of a bedroom set, and then below it there are descriptions of each section of the site, with thumbnails of select furniture items running along the right side of the page. I like that look. On the left side of the front page, a shopper visiting the site will find that they could shop for items by furniture category, manufacturer, or by furniture collections.

It’s a great site, well organized, easy to use, and full of information about the furniture items that they sell, plus it’s easy to find information related to the online store itself as well.

I think it just needs to be brightened up a bit with photos of the items in each main section near the top of the page in order to encourage shoppers to click on the sub-sections.

As for the furniture and furniture collections? It appears that this online store carries high quality furniture items. I love the many styles and lines of furniture that I’ve seen as I’ve browsed the site. The prices are quite reasonable for the quality and craftsmanship of the furniture as well.

I’d visit this site again, and I’ve bookmarked it in case I decided to redecorate sometime in the near future which of course is always a possibility with me since I love redecorating.

If you are shopping for furniture visit Greatpricedfurniture.com, you won’t be disappointed.

Use Quik-Find contextual ads to replace Adsense public service ads on your site

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I don’t use Google Adsense on this site, but I do use it on a number of our other blogs and websites. I do pretty well with Google Adsense, but sometimes I think I could be making more money if it showed ads that were even more relevant to my sites content.

I may have a solution that lets me combine Google Adsense and another form of advertising at the same time. You see, I was just visiting the Quik-Find.com: Web Search Engine Directory and I discovered that they have an advertising program called Quik-Find contextual ads.

You can use this new ad program to replace the public service ads that show up in your Google Adsense advertising area from time to time. You can also use it to block out your site competitors ads too. You might even find that you make more money using the Quik-Find Contextual Ads than you do with Google Adsense and decide to get rid of Google Adsense altogether.

One great thing about Quik Find’s contextual ads service is that, while it is contextual, you can still select what type of content gets advertised on your site. To get more information about this new advertising system please visit quik-find.com.

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