Author: Cupcakey

I shouldn’t even be up right now since I’ve got work tomorrow at 10:30am (or was it.. 10?) until 3:30pm. Though I’ve been having problems getting to sleep at a decent hour. Chalk it up to actually working on my site lately. But yes, you read right, I work tomorrow on Thanksgiving. It’s not too bad, considering we close at 3pm. I have a feeling that it’s going to be deadly slow tomorrow, considering our store has slow times of 12-3pm on non-holidays. The main reason for taking up the shift was because I wanted to get some time and a half, as well as some time away from my nutty family.

Don’t get me wrong, I like that I’m home for the holiday, but… damn the thought of having to deal with some family I don’t like, drives me batty. I know that as soon as I get home I’ll hear the “We missed you, mija” and various other statements. I’ll get stuck up there talking about why I left Houston the way I did, and what I’ve been up to since I last saw them. Hopefully I can sneak away after a while to talk to Mark, since he said he’d end up being upstairs most of the day.

Oh wait, you didn’t think I’d go one entry without mentioning him? Pfft, you must be crazy.

So I won’t bore you with the awesome details about my feelings, I’ll just list some site updates. I ended up finding a few new plug-ins that I’m now using at the site. If you look at the sidebar, you’ll notice I added a “Highlighted events” portion, which essentially, is just for my own knowledge. I’m just using it for my work schedule. Though it’s not available through subpages, I also added a Now Reading Library. I’ve only added a fraction of books I’ve read, and I’ve yet to add reviews and other minute details to it, but feel free to see what my reading habit looks like thus far. Rest assured I don’t have any hidden obsessions with tweeny gossip novels! 😛

Even though I requested to work on Thanksgiving (yes, CC is still open) I’m excited that I’m home for the holidays. Last year was really hard for Holidays–I didn’t come home for ANYTHING (nope, not for Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Years.) This year is very different for me at home too. After moving out and truly learning the value of a dollar, my expectations for Christmas presents aren’t going to be the same. I’m not even sure I’m going to ask anything from my parents, though I might just be a geek and ask them to order me a 1GB stick of PC3200 from Newegg.

What I’m excited about is that I won’t have to be alone for any of these holidays. I’m not looking forward to Thanksgiving because of certain family that will be up here. I just never cared for this person since I was younger after something this person had said to me. Ever since then I’ve dreaded the thought of this person being within a 50 foot radius. The other annoyances are meager so it won’t be too bad. I just don’t want to hear about my leaving Houston, or hear about how much I’ve changed (or how pudgey I’ve gotten since I was last living with my parents–I can’t help it that despite living off of Ramen noodles for most of 2005, I still somehow managed to gain weight.)

All around I think this year has definitely looked up. In January, I would’ve said that this was the worst possible year ever. And well, though I still agree that there’s been far too many negatives, there’s still far more positives that outweigh it all.

Saturday night was spent working until 6pm, and then going to see Happy Feet with Mark at the IMAX theater. It was definitely a great movie, and I’m really tempted to go see it again. There were a few minor annoyances towards the last thirty minutes of the movie, but not enough to alter my love for Ramon, the penguin voiced by Robin Williams (“Yeah, I heard an animal once do that, but then they rolled him over and he was dead.”)

Sunday was my day off, so I spent it sleeping it sans an alarm. It was great to wake up naturally at noon, instead of waking up by alarm. Pretty much spent the day laying around watching Philadelphia, and then tried to work on HFNET some but that failed horribly. After that I went over to Mark’s house later on in the evening and watched the new episode of ATHF, the Simpsons, and the War At Home. Not sure what time we ended up going to sleep, but I do know that much cuddling was had, and it was fantastic. Best way to fall asleep, that’s for sure.

The other day I was going through my RSS feeds at my pageflakes.com profile when I read a post that Jem had posted about ReviewMe. Curious about what it was about, I decided to take a look throughout the site to see if it’s similar to the other review-and-get-paid-sites, and was a bit enthused that it was slightly different (and maybe even better.)

First glance on the index page, and there’s not much of a description of Review Me at all. This is most likely because the site is built for both bloggers and advertisers. Since I’m not an advertiser, I obviously chose the ‘bloggers’ section, where I’m presented with four simple steps to getting started.

1. Submit your site for inclusion into our ReviewMe publisher network. Begin by creating a free account using the link below.
2. If approved, your site will enter our ReviewMe marketplace and clients will purchase reviews from you.
3. You decide to accept the review or not.
4. You will be paid $20.00 to $200.00 for each completed review that you post on your site.

The signup process was quick and easy. The only quirk I have with the form itself, is that the SSN is viewable, as opposed to being the usual “asterisks,” however the signup form is secure, so I wasn’t too worried about it.

After logging into the account, I’m taken to the the blogger control panel, which allows me to see new message items (eg: Reviews I’ve accepted, and how much time until they expire), what reviews I have waiting for me, as well as the various links to edit your profile, submit reviews and your blog (as well as managing them), you can also view your payments as well. During registration, you do not submit your blog then, so I went ahead and submitted my website, atourworst.org. It was immediately accepted to start receiving reviews.

You’re allowed to add 6 websites to receive reviews (when you’re a blogger.) However, sites may either be rejected or accepted, pending they have meet the qualifications. To be accepted into ReviewMe, a blog must meet a minimum number of citations, subscribers, and traffic.

All in all, so far I do like how everything seems to be set up. I also like that you’re not required, as a blogger, do write positive reviews. Granted, I’m not going to go out of my way to bash, but I like that I’m allowed to essentially write how I feel. I don’t use this review sites as a main source of income, but rather as a way to earn some side money here and there when I feel up to it.

This post is a paid review for ReviewMe. Right now I’m going to have to say that I’m going to stick with it, and see what else turns up, and when the 1st of December rolls around, I’ll see if I’ll get paid $20 for writing this review.

If you’ve already joined up for this site, or if you haven’t, please do share your thoughts on the website or even being paid to review.

Things are not looking good with my Ford ZX2 right now. It’s still in the shop, and for awhile they didn’t know the exact issue (aside from the transmission.) Found out the other day that the total is going to be over $2,000 since another $350 is being added to the total to fix the computer. I find it ironic that my car will be getting a brand spankin’ new computer before I do, but no hard feelings. Hopefully this piece of ass car will finally decide to not fuck up for another few years… or months.

Aside from my car woes, I’ve been working like a maniac this month, and it’s just barely the third week in. My paycheck from Friday was pretty meager, considering I was lacking about 25 hours from the fuck up of the MIT. However next week’s paycheck is going to have 80+ (I think) hours on it, but it’s frustrating knowing that it’s all going towards my car getting fixed. But you know what, I’ll just have to deal with it, and move on.

In other news, I’m trying to wait for a full day off (where I’m not spending it laying in bed until 4pm and then going out for dinner and movies with Mark!) so I can work on Holdfire Network. I need to stop procrastinating on the new design, so I can just get it up and be done with it. Business is picking up, and it’s the time for a lot of my annual clients from last year to either renew or leave their packages to run out. I’m hoping that a majority (okay, maybe 45%) will renew and stay with me, as they’ve never encountered any major issues, aside from billing changes when I switched from ClientExec to WHMCS.

Yesterday as I was cleaning out my Hello Kitty wallet, I looked at the movie ticket stubs from recent:
– Jackass 2
– Employee Of the Month
– The Prestige
– Borat
– Stranger Than Fiction

Normally I’m not big on going to the movies. Those five movies right there, surpassed the amount of movies I went to in 2005. Honestly, I think I only went to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire last year. I was just too poor and busy with work to go to the movies. I like going every weekend though, I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because I feel like “old times” where a date is set to do the same thing every weekend as a bit of a “thing.” Who knows, I’m probably just retarded.

I miss living in Louisville a little bit. For awhile Kelly, Ian, Ashley, myself and sometimes Chris would go play bingo on Thursdays. We didn’t do it a lot, but the times we went I had such a blast. Then fast forward to when I wasn’t with Chris, and on Tuesdays we’d go bowling. I need to do that.

Well, it’s been a week and a couple days since I’ve been carless. Though I’ve still had a vehicle to drive around with nonetheless, even though I’ve complained about it everyday–for the soul fact that it’s a huge ass Dodge caravan that could seat 20 or more people if I tried to. I should be getting my car back later today (even though I’ll be at work) or tomorrow, pending my dad picks it up for me. It’s going to cost $1900 and you bet your ass that every penny is going to come from me… eventually. Right now I’ve got enough to cover half of that, and still spare myself a few bucks to last me until next week’s paycheck. So while it’s really going to damper my checking account, at least it’ll be fixed.

After that my money will be saved for my new car’s down payment, and not new computer parks like I was originally saving for. That’ll be put on hold for Christmas gifts I suppose. Though I’m starting to lean towards a laptop instead of building a new desktop, and despite hating Dell beyond belief, I saw a new commerical for a laptop with *gasp* an AMD processor. Though I don’t think I’ll go that route, if i do, I’ll just go through Best Buy and get a bit of a discount off that and the PSP.

In other news, I’ve been working like crazy. Last week I worked almost a week straight, and had Sunday off. Though I was tempted to go in from 4-8:30pm, a nice bullshit close, to pick up some overtime, but the thought of working and not hanging out with Mark some more was enough to make me say no. This week I also work Mon-Sat. I picked up a Tuesday close from 5-10:30 for Robin, the MIT, and I’ll have 40 hours for next week. So! A nice 80 hour paycheck next week. That’s definitely going to help pay for my car’s trans.

Things are still going great in my life right now. Things with Mark are pretty awesome. Again, we’re not dating or anything, but how things are right now. I like it. ALOT. That’s all I’m really going to say about that right now. I need to head to Best Buy to buy a new router since my Linksys is on the verge of dying (that is if it isn’t technically dead already) and pick up a check from there (hopefully.)

Oh, also saw Stranger Than Fiction last night. It was a decent film, though I’m not sure if I’d pay to see it again. It was definitely a new style for Will Ferrel. Kind of reminded me of how Adam Sandler was in Spanglish–not his usual character.