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Kindle book bought with Amazon GC balance (Mturk earnings... just slow and steady and it adds up nicely). "The Remains of the Day" by Kazuo Ishiguro. Just finished this yesterday. I liked it very much. This Kindle reader has been used everyday for years. It was a gift. Look at that Home button, I must've been rubbing the space around it while reading. The green Acase cover is becoming dirty too.

For a while there, I couldn't decide if I wanted to get Third Eye Blind's first CD or the "A Collection" CD or pick out individual songs. I re-listened to 3eb a month or so ago. Memories from college came flooding back and it was great. The band just came out at the time. A buddy handed me a tape of their first album and said, "You have to listen to this." I did and synapses in my brain rippled in a good way, it was amazing. Thanks, man. Anyway, I ended up choosing individual tracks because I might have outgrown most of the other songs. Bought "Wounded" and the last 3 tracks on the first album as well as "Jumper" which is just... no explanation needed. Happy days are here again. Dipped into my darlings' gifts fund for this. Their birthdays aren't for a few months yet so I can mturk a little harder until then to bring the balance back up.

oh, was so happy because my package from amazon.com arrived. compared to my past experiences with their expedited international shipping, in 2009 and 2010 , this latest purchase and philippines delivery was -- wow! timeline/details: * july 30, tuesday - ordered one cd-rom (game) sold by another seller but "fulfilled by amazon" with expedited international shipping. * august 6, tuesday - package delivered by dhl. hurrah! that's only five business days . excellent. the total expedited international delivery cost increased to include a separate "import fees deposit" of $4.18 -- this showed up during checkout. it was most probably added when they switched to dhl (i remember my previous packages went through a local receiving company). and this time, tracking was available: i knew when it left the states and when it arrived in manila; i knew that it was out for delivery as early as monday morning on august 5 but it was raining badly then so i assumed th

Been slow for mturk-ing. My preferred requesters haven't placed many hits up for the past 2 weeks - uncharacteristic compared to the previous months. Amazon's Mturk has been putting itself out there (they've got their own twitter, finally) and gathering more requesters. Still, there are many that are scammers - same story. [Sigh] Minefield. I have mentioned this before but, again, if you're doing mturk use the third-party forum, turker nation as a guide. As for my mturk rewards (gift certificate balance), it's down -- mostly used up last month when someone from the US said that they'll be coming to the PH for vacation. I went loco and shopped till my gc balance was single digit. I went for a few small things till I got my total purchases up (way over, actually) to get free shipping. Finally have the stuff on my wish-list. Nice.

goodies received! the last of my amazon (.com) purchases for the year (for me, that is) are finally here. luckily, my time on mturk has been rewarding even if i only get gift certs for it. bought these in june/july and have been gathering dust in my sister's house, waiting for anyone to visit the PH so we can ask them the kind favor of bringing these along. now, i can't thank them enough for saying yes. lovely stuff. will get on with "the hobbit" after i finish "the adventures of sherlock holmes" from proj. gutenberg. it's nice to be reading books again. excited to send presents to my darlings - my main reason for joining mturk. i've got nice stuff on amazon's gift organizer for them. so very excited.

pablo honey and the bends are here only 14 days with amazon [dot] com expedited international shipping - and that makes it 3 out of 3 oh giddy, giddy, giddy me :D it's going to be a long while 'til the next order amazon GC balance is now in the tens and under fingers crossed that good mturk hits turn up with none of those shite phishers and frauds

Frequent network timeouts messed up how fast I worked, was causing a headache - big time! It started last week and I did not want to bear it anymore! Finally decided to tweak router settings in hopes that the problem is stemming from there. I took a screen shot of the original mtu setting - for future reference - and went with lowering its value. After a few ping tests, I put in the value that's slightly higher (the amount plus 28, in fact) of what did not show up as fragmented. After restarting the machine, I braced myself. Decided to cool down so I left, washed my face, brushed my teeth, and came back. It's been over an hour since the "restart" and so far, so good. A couple of network timeouts on mturk but refreshing quickly fixed it. So it isn't totally fixed but it's drastically minimized and refreshing works fast. Unfortunately, some damage has been done since time-constrained hits on mturk that I've accepted were rendered "abandoned" becaus

Looking over my amazon GC balance, I'm considering the possibility of purchasing "friction, baby" by BTE before the year ends and yes, have it sent here to the Philippines. It is tempting but the $17.98 international expedited, shipping+handling charge does (and should) hold me back. Nonetheless, I don't have to worry about it not arriving here safe and sound because I know that it will arrive safe and sound -- based on first-hand experience . It's just that I don't think I'd have enough for Christmas this year if I do go ahead with it since I am only "mturking" on the side. Unfortunately, other mturkers on the third-party mturk forum have confirmed the same observations that I've been noticing that there is a growing number of iffy requesters there as of late. Thus, the call for further restraint and having a healthy dose of suspicion come into play. And as a result, there is lesser earnings for amazon gift certificates - in my case. On the

This is going to be a good, happy entry. And find news about our crippled Internet connection from the day before yesterday, below. So to keep this short and sweet, circumstances of this order were: Seller - Amazon (dotcom, obviously -- the country isn't included in the international "marketplace payments by amazon" so we can't order from other sellers on the site. Hopefully, the Philippines would be on that list soon.) Item - one music CD ("Closer" by Better Than Ezra, as you can see. It's enhanced too - with extras, nice.) Shipping - international expedited (shipping and handling is $17.98). I chose it even if the standard route just became available 'cause I did not want to wait very long and be anxious if it will even arrive and when. Reference: horror stories of pinoys who've waited months for deliveries. It's a potential "I told you so" so I didn't risk standard shipping. Delivery Time - shipped on July 31st and arrived

Woke up to lovely news -- my goodies are here! Of course, thanks to the gracious person who came back from his holiday and brought these with him. Bought "the diary..." (obviously, a used book) and keane's UTIS from amazon with my mturk earnings. But H&F, I'm not sure where it's from (no, I did not buy it but seeing it was a happy surprise indeed!) because I was expecting another record that I did buy. Short story about it is that the should-be cd broke and that ate would replace it. Apparently, ate bought the wrong record. Quite funny that I'm not upset about the mistake, really. Was planning to get H&F soon anyway so it's all good. So happy. [couldn't stop smiling, oh dear]

I put my glasses down to brush my teeth and wash my face. When I pick them up, I see red ants crawling along the frame. Apparently, I have sweet specs. Just shopped on amazon last month. Sent presents to my darlings who had their birthdays then. Bought an early present for myself too so I got to use their free-super-saver shipping on those purchases. I read rumors that amazon may pull the free shipping out... hopefully, it's all nonesense. I'm taking it slow on mturk now since I think that I won't be buying anything on amazon until Christmas - gifts for my darlings and what-not (maybe something for myself too). Quite excited to get what I've bought for moi next month though - that's when someone comes home from their holiday in the US. Been reading/lurking the mturk forum here nowadays. Such a good resource. I like that you see other turkers weed out bad/iffy requesters from the good ones, share experiences, etc.

Tucking in to this dry cake was not very pleasant. It looked fine but it was dry. The chocolate layer was tough. Not a good dessert, unfortunately. The cake wasn't from any store (or so I've been told) so I have no one to name guilty for this dry, dense course. A can of Coke helped it go down easy, though. Putting my mturk earnings into fine use last week, I placed orders for another book and a CD on Amazon. Apparently, the production of this particular CD has been discontinued so I was more than eager to place an order with a merchant who had it at a very good price. I can't wait to get these things which, I think, will be by the end of August when someone comes home from their holiday in America. My nieces' birthdays are coming up too. I find it difficult to shop for children. I've only NEVER given presents to other kids. If I did, it was just shelling out my share for a big present with my friends - I didn't take part in deciding what to buy with it. I guess

I've gone up a few points on my "transcription grader value" in CastingWords (one of Mturk's transcription requesters). That's good, though, I'm still hesitant about taking on their transcription jobs. As of this time, I've just accepted one (yup, just one!) 4-minute audio task there because I do not know what to expect -- it turned out well and I even received a bonus. It helps that I've been going to the mturk forum where other workers and even job requesters are talking and commenting a lot. Also, since my earnings there go straight to my Amazon gift certificate balance - being a non-US worker and all - I cannot go and spend all my time working there. But if I were, oh man, the $$ should be so sweet...! About this Amazon boo-boo that I did -- I knew that their mp3 downloads are exclusive to those in the US. I knew that and I still did this stupid thing and it cost me some. This is to remind me NOT TO DO THIS AGAIN unless they lift the restriction, o

My darling nieces received their Christmas presents from moi already -- last night! My sister called and said that the gifts arrived na . LOL Man, I was expecting them to get there in about a week but they arrived just three days after I ordered them! Cool! Anyway, it was so good to hear my 3 year-old niece saying, "Thank you, tita dada" and "Merry Christmas". Awww... it melts my heart. Obviously, she opened it already! Ate said that darling was all "Wow" and "pretty"! I got her a dressy top. :D My younger niece is still a baby so I would've loved to see my gift on her (got her a funky bib with skulls and bones!). Unfortunately, I was already in bed so we didn't get to video-chat. This is definitely one of the reasons why I love Amazon -- I'm able to send my darlings presents na without any muss and fuss with my Mturk earnings. :D

It's a good-looking dsc-w90 sony cybershot and I've yet to make effective use of it. Now that I've got a digicam, I don't know what to do! There wouldn't be a problem if I wanted to post photos of my darling nieces on here though. lol! So far, I've played around with its settings - nice options there. I've also noticed that I'll need to use a memory stick adaptor to upload shots. That is, there's no usb cable option??? I'm not sure about this yet. I've got the box but I didn't really notice if there's supposed to be a cable accessory with it - I had it put up somewhere (where my niece couldn't reach it - neither could I!) before I really took a good look at it. We are going out this weekend and I'll see if I can take shots worth talking about then. I've got someone hooked on mturk after they saw what I got out of it -- used books, kitchen container, usb flash disk (yeah! that's new!). It's great that I'm here i

Mturk has been my "when I get the chance" thing that I sporadically work on during this hiatus. And when I get more time here on the computer, I've been organizing tax reports that my friend's been sending me since I've been away. I've been using google docs on the latter that, by the way, takes a lot longer than if I were using MS office. Turking is hardly working since I've only been doing polls and image-moderating. Hey, there can only be so many days to go out and go galavanting on a many-months-long vacation. So to keep from getting too bored, turking is a good way to spend the little time when I do get to use the pc here. I did try writing pieces for my writing affiliate - I think I've only managed to send one article since this vacation started - and there's a notepad with some words on it here that I just couldn't get done. Needless to say, I don't (couldn't, is more like it) get to use the computer a whole lot here. Oh well, I

The Grimms book that I ordered on the 15th arrived today. I love the feeling that my mturk earnings are actually materializing. Anyway, the first story that I read was the Cinderella one - the original title's not this Disney name, it's Ashputtle - and oh was it gory! lol! There were toe-cutting and heel-slicing and eyes-pecking... ewww. lol! For a used book, it was in very good condition. It took about a week to get here from when it was shipped. It was shipped on the 16th, by the way. We went to out yesterday - just to the mall in Boca. Got two tops - actually one's a top and the other's a short dress but it could pass off as a top. So, here's the weird part -- I got to shop at the "kids section"! It would've been great to always shop in that size since prices are cheaper when it's the kids' section but most styles are hardly appropriate for my age. It just so happened that I saw a fairly mature-looking top by chance there and it only cost $1

I've just ordered another used book from amazon this evening. See, last week I ordered a complete-collection-brothers-grimm book (with all it's gory-glory! But I forget the title). That first seller contacted me right away and said that it had water damage and asked if I'd prefer a partial refund with the book or a full refund. Given the seller's description of the damage, I asked for the full return of my money. It was all of almost $7 of my penny-per-mturk-work so I got to have it all back! lol! Anyway, I received the full refund yesterday and I've again ordered the same book from another used book seller via amazon. I'll know by tomorrow of my order's status. The pc here is working fine now but it's very unlikely that I can remotely continue my transcription work with my affiliate though. I already figured that that would be the case. I can choose to dread the work that would be waiting when I return from this hiatus/vacation - but I don't. Well,

The book from amazon that I ordered I arrived less than two weeks later, they said. And I've been reading it too since I've been here on holiday. I will be ordering more books from now on... hehe. This used book is in good condition too. Nice. So far, I've been to the beach, church, Target, Albertson's, Macy's... Oh, yeah, and to the Filipino Independence day celebration north of here last weekend. It rained that day. It's been raining quite a bit this week during the afternoon. We've been told that we'd be going to do the more popular tourist spots soon - that's fine with me, it can wait. I'm trying to write more pieces for my writing affiliate - that doesn't care wherever you are - but I've had to sneak in to use the computer. Ergo, I've nothing done. It's because my little niece is a formidable foe when it comes to things she has been calling "mine" and that's almost everything in here. But she's so adorable a

It is a used book but the point is that I've actually reaped my turker reward again. It cost a penny and the shipping charge was $3.99, so that's $4.00 total. My mturk earnings was enough to cover it... those pennies added up well. lol! Again, I've sent it to a US address so it'll be delivered faster. I expect it to arrive soon. So excited. See, it's from "thriftbooks" that's a separate dealer who works via amazon so I don't know how long it'll arrive. They said to expect it between May 24th to June 12th. That's so much better than having to wait 4 to 12 weeks if I had opted to send it here. Also, what I've found out about amazon is that some independent dealers don't accept amazon gift certificates for purchases. For example, "The Body Shop" doesn't accept them. I tried to buy these towel exfoliants that I bought my mom last Christmas -- I wanted one for myself -- and when I got to the cart, it said that the dealer