Pauls Rants & Revelations

OK. I take back what I said in the last post.

I went to an event this weekend. I was for the 3 Mountains Championship and I was going for the Archery champion spot. Now, from the out side observer, it would have seemed to you that I was anything but happy. I was either lugging around targets and tents and boxes in the rain, or I was standing in the rain shooting at said targets. Nothing that would look interesting, let alone fun.

But the truth is that I had a great time. Sure, it was raining pretty heavily the entire day from the moment I got there to the moment I left. Sure, I helped put up the range and take it down as well as striking the rest of the camp. Sure, I was soaked to the bone. But you know what, it was fun. I didn’t get the championship title; in fact, I think I came in last although there were no scores posted, just an announcement of who won, but that didn’t really matter to me.

I shot well I think and learned a few things from the competition. I also received a gift from the barony for being such a nice guy. No seriously, I was very chivalrous to the baron and baroness and they really liked that. All told, it was a good time and I can’t wait until next year.

Although, being the impatient type I will probably try for the Dragons Mist champions tourney in 2 weeks. Should be pretty cool but am not sure I will have the ability to go as funds are slim at the moment. Ill think about it anyways.

-Cheers

I am really quite irked about archery practice. Last night was all well and good; I shot decently and only broke one arrow. But it seems that the I am not getting any more accurate or proficient with my shooting. I know practices are supposed to do that for you but I don’t feel I am doing something right.

I listen to to everyone there and try to do what they say, but sometimes it just doesn’t help. Maybe I just need a proper set of arrows? Right now Im using a mixed set of 5 different types of arrows so that may be a contributor to my inaccuracy.

Maybe I just have to try harder. Champions is this weekend but I doubt that I will place very high as there are archers much better than me competing for the title of 3 Mountains Archery Champion (sounds impressive, doesn’t it).  Maybe everyone else will get sick and I will win by default?

No, thats a shitty way to win. I’ll take a loss if I know I did my best, but winning for nothing means exactly that.

Ill let you know how it turns out.

-Cheers

Yes. I am a beta tester now. Where do I find the time you ask? In between saving baby monkeys from rivers and DNA sequencing for cancer cures.

But in somewhat less seriousness, Logitech has accepted my as a beta tester and I even got my first thing to try out. Another one is on the way in a few weeks as well.

What is it you ask? Good question. Unfortunately, I cant answer that as I had to sign a non disclosure agreement. Here is the skinny of it:

I can say (loud and proud) that I am a Logitech tester; I cannot say what I’m testing. I can’t even tell you the purpose of the thing. Or what its compatible with. And I’m pretty sure I can’t even describe the color of it.

On the plus side, I get products 6 months before they are on shelves. I get to keep the products with no strings. All I have to do it answer some questions about it after a few weeks. Thats it.

That being said, why, do you now ask, why I would choose to do this? Well its quite simple; it makes me feel cool.

Yes, that right. Its make me feel cool. And don’t even make that face at me; you know you would totally do it too if offered.

But don’t be totally disheartened. I will eventually review it, but probably only after it shows up in your local Best Buy. Until then you will just have to suffer. Mwwahahhhhaaaaaaaaa.

-Cheers

Well, to be more clear, Payperpost Direct is, as the name suggests, a more direct method of paying bloggers to blog on their blog (say that 3 times fast).

For those who don’t know, PayPerPost is a great way to make money blogging. They pay your to do what you do anyway; review or write about services and products and give your opinion.

Anyways, Payperpost Direct is even better. Normally they charge a 35% fee for posts; as in the amount of money you get is 65% of what is paid by advertisers. This is far less than other companies charge but still too much in the opinion of the PPP folks. So they launched their Direct service which works thusly:

1. You put a badge on your site stating how much a review will cost on your blog
2. Someone clicks on the badge on your site, fills out the form and sends it
3. If you accept it, you just make the post and collect your money (less fees)

I say most of it because you get 90% of the revenue from it. PPP takes 10% for processing fees (half of which goes to Paypal for their fees) and that is it. So if you say a post on your site is $100, you get $90 of it. Pretty simple, huh?

This is better than most of the paid services I have seen in that their fees are less and their opps are a little more accurately targeted for your blogs content. That, and they are always coming out with better services at least once a month (sweet).

The Direct service can be compared to the services of Review Me; but instead of putting up a rather hideous badge and loosing up to half of your “advertised rate” you get more from PPP. This is good in that if you really only want to charge $50 for a review, you can just put in $55 with PPP Direct. Othewise, you would have to put in $100 with other services, which will only turn away customers.

If you havent heard of Payperpost before now, check them out. And if you are a Postie, definitely check out this service. I’m currently trying to gauge how much to charge for a review here, but its tough. I think $1000 is a fair price, but somehow, I can’t see myself getting may review that way.

Thoughts on prices are welcome in the comments. And if any of you use the Direct service, let me know how its going.

-Cheers

So I went on a deleting spree trying to save some space. Who would have thought that I would have to do that with a terabyte of storage space?

After going through everything and removing unused images (porn), movies (more porn), and old documents (lists of the porn I have), I found that I accidentally deleted a few really important files (not porn). I really needed them back so I went looking about at what I could find for file recovery.

I cam across this file recovery software by Active@ File Recovery. It of course promised to be able to recover my files. I downloaded it and was a little bummed that I could only recover a file if it was under 65k. Pretty much everything I lost was over that so I was slightly miffed at having to buy it upfront. Anyways, I tried it and it worked very well. I recovered the files and there wasn’t any corruption with them at all. It was just like when I had them (sweet). A really neat feature was the preview so you can check to make sure its the right file (super sweet).

The program itself was pretty much self explanatory and easy to use. Even thought I am a more savvy user than most normal people I still appreciate the ease of use of things. The standard version is about $30, but the professional version, which is $45, comes with partition recovery software which may be handy as I have a fair amount of partitioned drives. Either way the file recovery software is worth the price of it.

They have a file recover service they provide through the internet but I haven’t tried it yet as I have not had much luck with Active X lately. So if you are in a hurry you can try that out; if you do post a comment and let us know how it went.

Oh, and if you were wondering about the files I accidentally deleted, well… you can just keep wondering. That is my business.

-Cheers

Even if you dont consider yourself frugel, you know you won’t turn down a deal when you see it. I for one try to always get the best deal I can. Just recently I spotted a flaw in a book I wanted to buy and made a point of it; I got the book for half the price.

So when I come across a site like cubalaya, I can’t help but take a look at what kind of deals they have. Cubalaya is a great price comparison site that offers the user a great deal of deals and whats more, they offer the best deals around in your area. For example, I searched for the best deal on video iPods. It presented a list of deals for not only online retailers but also brick-and-mortar stores as well. I clicked on the Circuit City like and boom, I’m taken to the iPod on their site.

Its services like this that make me really glad that the internet was invented. Its one of the many great things that one can find use (in addition to most Google services and the hot-chick-of-the-day site) to make that hard earned dollar stretch a little bit more.

Now if only I could find the best deal on a self-chilling beer dispensing backpack. That would be killer if I could get that for half off.

-Cheers

Today, I am seeing 2 of my friends tie the knot. Its a special time; a time of reflection, a time of love; but mostly I’m going for the food. (not really, but the food will be good).

Ill add more after the ceremony and hopefully some pictures.

-Cheers

Update: The ceremony, the reception, everything was really good. There were a lot of the SCA folks there (which is fitting since my 2 friends are big in the SCA) as well as their family and such. The reception was good and the food was plentiful. The cake that another friend made was really, really great. It was a flour-less chocolate cake that was like eating a fudge brick (which was awesome).

I had to duck out early to go to the Starlight Parade with the family but that was awesome as well. Im glad my friends found each other and I hope they have a good long life together.

-Fin