If you read my last post about Kiva, you’ll know there was a shortage of loans due to the popularity of the charity. I made 4 new loans today which you can see on my lender page.

I’ll outline exactly what you’re donating with Kiva:

• You’re giving someone from a third world country the funds necessary to try to lift themselves out of poverty.
• You’re donating this money interest free.
• You’re also donating the risk of them defaulting on these loans. However, to date, Kiva.org’s repayment rate is 99.61%.

Don’t donate any money you’ll actually need back. I mainly chose loans with repayment periods of 6-8 months as I like to recycle the money to others as soon as possible.

I just got a call on my cell phone that woke me up from a company called Quality Resources. The lady on the other line said that they received my information from a “business partner” of theirs. At this point I’m extremely suspicious and I keep asking her who gave her my information and she kept dodging the question or answering with a vague one like “We got it from one of our business partners”.

She then decides to transfer me over the verification department. I have a feeling she just transferred me over to a guy that’s sitting right next to her. He informs me that I’ve already authorized a $1 charge to my credit card for a 30-day trial to Value Plus. They need to verify my address is so and so before they can send me my gas vouchers and brochures. He reads me my correct address and then I interject and ask how can I cancel my “membership”.

The number he gave me was 1-800-475-1942. I immediately hung up and called that number. The lady that answered informed me she couldn’t cancel my “membership” because I won’t be in the system until at least Monday. I’ve seen these types of “savings club” scams in the past before. Generally the vouchers are worthless and arrive right around when your trial ends.

What’s worse is the company will probably spread your CC information around to other scammers and I’ll get small charges every month which they hope I won’t notice. If I ever saw anyone that was involved with these con-artist companies on the street I’d probably go apeshit and shoot them (if I had a gun). Everyone’s gotta make a living, but these people contribute NOTHING to society.

If you get a call from anyone saying they’re from Quality Resources or Value Plus. Hang up. I will be calling these pricks back on Monday.

I’m not alone either: Google “scam ‘Value Plus’”

I surprised to find out how expensive Best Buy’s Geek Squad charges for their services. $249 for coming over and installing Windows ($129 if you haul your machine over to a Geek Squad location.). The price quoted doesn’t include the software either.

I’ve installed Windows a couple times and I cannot understand why anyone would be willing to pay that much to have it done. It’s a fairly straightforward process that pretty much does itself. Even if you were that clueless you should be able to find a friend or family member to do it for way less. I bet you 12 year old little Jimmy would do it for $20. I also wonder at which point you’re so clueless about how to use a digital camera you bought that you’d be willing to pay $159 for an hour’s “tutorial” on how to use it ($229 for two hours, discount!).

I know it’s a convenience thing and people would not rather deal with it themselves. The thing is, at these prices, you can easily grab a brand new laptop or desktop for a couple more hundred dollars than trying to fix something that’s probably outdated already.

Personally in my experiences with Best Buy employees, they’re sleezeball scum that don’t know much of anything besides how to hard sell a customer shit they don’t need. Maybe it’s just the Best Buys and Circuit Citys in my area that suck ass. Perhaps it’s due to the “quality” of the job pool in urban Jersey City. As you tell I hates Best Buy, Circuit City, and the like… but I’ll save that post for another day.

I’ve been inside a UPS facility before where they unload and load the trucks. The environment is incredibly harsh in that you’re constantly being yelled at to load or unload trucks faster and faster. To add you gotta play tetris with the boxes too and stack them efficiently. I can only imagine what it must be like during the holiday season. I was considering a part-time job with UPS once. That was my chance to see how things operate inside a UPS facility and halfway through the tour I just left… I wasn’t alone.

I found an interesting article on Kuro5hin related to package handling complete with tips on how to package your box properly to minimize the “handling” of UPS employees. Might be useful for the occasional ebayer.

For those unfamiliar with bank runs, they’re when people fear that a bank is insolvent and start to withdraw their deposits. Generally images of bank runs are associated with long lines outside bank branches.

“The jitters plaguing financial markets spread to the high street for the first time yesterday as thousands of panicking savers queued to withdraw millions of pounds from Northern Rock, Britain’s eighth-biggest bank.” – full story at Times Online

“Rope Ladder

The trick to climbing carnival rope ladders is to completely ignore the “rungs” and only use the outside ropes to climb on.

While applying equal pressure with your right foot and left arm, move your left foot and right arm at the same time. Then do the same thing with the opposite limbs — shimmying yourself up the ladder.

Do not move both hands or both feet at the same time – you will lose your balance. “

That’s one of the several tips for beating carnival games I found over at Blifaloo. Personally I’m not a fan of carnival games as by design they’re generally crooked profiting ventures.

Yes, the iFone is available for $159 from DealExtreme.

By now you’ve realized something is a bit off? Yep, the “iFone” is a clone of Apple’s iPhone. While I don’t intend on purchasing this anytime soon, it is kinda interesting how they were able to clone it in a short amount of time. The dual sim card feature allowing you to have two numbers active at the same time is quite cool though.

The font is kinda weird though eh? If anybody is planning on getting this, let me know!

Note: Apparently there are tons of versions of the CECT phone going around and the one DX sells says iFone on the back, unlike the one in this video which says iPhone on the back.

By default, your free cash balance in your Zecco account doesn’t earn any interest. You can easily sign up for the money market sweep by checking out this pdf file. I chose to e-mail my request to them.

They didn’t e-mail me or anything confirming the money market sweep request. I just logged into my account one day and looked at my account details… and there it was. Overall I’m extremely happy with Zecco and I’ll update with more of my experience there later on.