My Life With IT

I’m in a dilemma. I have been asked to attend an interview that requires a daily commute of estimated 45 minutes (excluding waiting time) to travel from my home to work. It’s not confirmed yet but I do need to know if what I’m going to do is worth it. I’m getting nervous about the interview.

The good thing about this interview is that the scope would be what I’m familiar with and I get to continue using my skills. The worrisome thing is that I worry too much about it even though I’ve yet to attend the interview and see my potential boss. Crazy, right?

The only process I hate about finding new jobs is the interview. I get very nervous about it. I don’t know why. Maybe I’m afraid that I’d just embarrass myself, say the wrong things, ask stupid questions, etc. There’s no easy route to getting that job because they want the best candidate and I want the best job.

I’m really stuck and frustrated that I don’t know what’s wrong with my computer! This was what it showed me, the blue screen. The information wasn’t helpful either.

Technical information: STOP: 0×0000008E (0xC000005, 0×80550211, oxF7D33880, 0×00000000)

Error message: win32k.sys - Address BF8112B9 base at BF800000, DateStamp 43446a58

Error message: Ntfs.sys - Address F841D405 base at F83A4000, DateStamp 41107eea

So, how does such error code help me understand what’s wrong? Is it hardware or software problem?

Now, the system is disabled and gives me a long beep sound. It sounds like a hardware problem but I had changed the motherboard previously!

So far, I’m rather happy that my mailbox is no flooded with useless information after I have registered with EmailCashPro. I have earned 5 points even though no cash is seen yet. It’s supposed to be converted into cash during the 1st week of every month. It’s going to be April in a few days and I’ll see if there are any cents in my account.

There are a lot of other schemes which I have come across for the past few days and would like to try them out but the registration fee daunts me. There’s this site where I can type any documents and earn money from each assignment but I have to pay for registering. I can subscribe to the newsletter but I am no registered and neither am I able to see what sort of documents I would be typing. So if anyone does earn real money from it without any problems, I may consider registering for it.

My lack of a PayPal account seems to bug me. Recently, I’m caught up with earning some spare cash online. I’ve joined another in hopes that I will get recognized for my efforts. However, there are pros and cons of PayPal and I’m really wondering if it’s worth opening a simple account or Premier account.

What bugs me most is the article stated the terms and conditions of PayPal.

If you read their terms of service, you will find that it says, “PayPal reserves the right not to dispute a chargeback even if the seller has provided some evidence, particularly if PayPal believes the dispute is not likely to be successful.”

So, if I’m not satisfied, I can’t even get my refund? The unscrupulous reason given is stated below in the same article.

The reason PayPal discourages charge-backs so much is because the fewer charge-backs they place, the better interest rate they will get from the processing bank and thus will make more money for doing so. Even if your account has been stolen and unauthorized charges have been made against your account, too bad. In their terms of service, you agree to waive the right of filing charge-backs against unauthorized transactions.

So much for my confidence in attempting to create an account. However, I do want to get paid since this network only supports PayPal. I’m caught between a rock and a hard place.

I wrote about my skepticism on working from home a while back and have decided to try it out since the registration is free. Other sites I have seen is that I have to pay via PayPal or other electronic form of payment before I can register.

This service promotes getting paid for reading email. I’m now shamelessly plugging it here until it proves otherwise. If anyone of you have tried it and found it unreliable, do leave a comment here. It pays out in Singapore dollars so unless you don’t mind the exchange rate, you can click here. The payout via cheque has a S$1 administrative fees, what a pity, I don’t have PayPal but I’m not sure if PayPal can be secure. Maybe it is, if not, why would so many request via it?

Whenever we receive emails claiming that by forwarding it to a certain number of people, you will get free stuff after a few weeks. Now, this reminds me of those online surveys that state you can earn real money in a month and loads of it too. Just by working from home. How true are these “free” stuff? Let’s take a new email I had received from a friend who was asking on how to forward that email to the mass and the only person who is supposed to receive a CC can see the effort done. I’ll dissect the contents in that email here.

Dear All

Please pass on to all your friends and relatives the following mail from Sony Erricsson.

Sony Erricsson is giving away phones for free. Sony Erricsson is trying word-of-mouth advertising to introduce its product and the reward you receive for advertising for them is a free phone free of cost. To receive your free phone all you have to do is to send this email out to 8 people (for a free Sony Erricsson j200i) or 20 people (for a free Sony Erricsson k400i WAP).

Within 2 weeks you will receive a free phone. (They will contact you through your e-mail address).

Please mark a copy to:-
anna.swelam@sonyerricsson.com

Suspicious points noted:

1. Notice the spelling of Erricsson? It’s supposed to be Ericsson with a single “r”.
2. SE J200i is a very old model now. Just read the specifications here. Most likely, this phone can be found in 2nd hand shops.
3. There’s no such model as SE K400i. There’s K700i, K500i but no K400i.
4. Sony Ericsson is most likely to advertise via the newspapers and TV ads rather than word-of-mouth.
5. How many free such handphones, if they truly have, can they give out?
6. Even if this Miss Anna Swelam exists, she would be very busy trying to consolidate all the emails.
7. There is no contact number or address in the email given for queries.

The subject of the email was pretty clever too: Sony Erricsson - Promotion. Now, this would distract most of us from actually scrutinising the contents for their authentication. Free stuff plus promotion equals greed.

The only thing I see is good is that the consistent mis-spelling of Erricsson.

I read the ads in the newspapers today. Apparently, I can get paid to just do surveys from my home via the Internet. I just need to register and I get an assignment immediately. It’s so easy, right? No. I still have to pay to register and it’s said to be a one-time thing. How true is that? I can’t verify with anyone because it’s mentioned that quite a number of people have been scammed by such schemes. I haven’t heard of anyone who have been scammed by completing surveys or doing something else via PDAs.

It is very attractive to work from home without the need to travel and still earn money. The money is attractive from the sites but how true are they? The sample cheque does look suspicious to me. It didn’t feel real. The very short black-out name looks very suspicious too. Can a person’s name be that short?

I have a HP 5500 AIO printer. It’s a discontinued product. To think I use it once in a while. Usually printing since most people use emails to send documents instead of fax. There are times when the fax is a good function. It’s when information has to be sent to a person who doesn’t know how to use email and doesn’t have an Internet access.

It’s very unfortunate that I won’t be able to share all its functions in a network because it wasn’t built for it. I wish that consumers besides office consumers are able to make use of all the functions; scan and print, via the network. I do know that some are able to print via the network by using a network router that has a printer port or USB port.

If I can scan via the network, I would definitely be using the functions that I bought it for since I do have some things to scan and post. So, my wish is that for the coming IT related shows such as Sitex and PC Show, please, please, sell those AIO with network capable function. I’m sure the market for such printers is growing.

I’m still considering if AIO with laser printing is worth or not. I do know that for printing large volumes, laser printing is the way to go because the cost per page is a lot cheaper. The market is not ready I feel because we’re trying to reduce papers.