Author: Snoskred

Happy Birthday Sephyroth

4 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

but6

My dearest and bestest friend in the universe, Sephyroth, has a birthday which was a great day for many years, until 2001 came along. Why 2001, I hear you ask. Well, his birthday happens to be September 11th. So after 2001 the birthday became a bit of a downer day for him instead of the happy occasion it ought to be..

So much so, that at some point I assigned him a totally different birthday. I forget what it was, I think it was sometime in April. I guarantee you he will pop up in the comments and paste in the actual emails or logs of our chat on this subject, because he saves these things foreverz. :)

But this year, it SHOULD BE be a very happy birthday, because September 11th happens to be the release date for a little movie I am super excited to see. It is called Triple 9, and it contains Norman Reedus – better known as Daryl from The Walking Dead – and Aaron Paul – better known as Jesse from Breaking Bad. Plus, a few other randoms, eg Kate Winslet, Woody Harrelson, Chiwetel Ejiofor..

Yo, best you be planning a cinema trip for your next birthday, Sephyroth.

Of course release dates can and do change, I’ll keep an eye on it.

Me personally, I don’t really do birthdays myself, nor do I tend to remember other peoples birthdays. I actually seem to remember other things, eg I have a friend whose birthday is the day after International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Yes, that is a thing and it gets mentioned around the web quite a bit in the lead up to the day, so it is like a little reminder for me.

Update –

Did you guys know that Sephy has a login for my blog? No? Well, now you do. And of course you can guess that Sephyroth happened to log in on Monday, for reasons but that is another post, and he saw this post scheduled and could not help but read it. He then forwarded me the email I sent him, and here tis.

Subject: Happy Non-Birthday

On Sep 11, 2011, at 5:49, Snoskred (snip) wrote:

As I cancelled your birthday and rescheduled it to Feb 18th, today is no longer your birthday, officially.

So Happy Birthday for next Feb 18th, instead. :)

Your new birthday is the anniversary of this –

1977 – The Space Shuttle Enterprise test vehicle is carried on its maiden “flight” on top of a Boeing 747.

It comes with a photo!

And this

1979 – Snow falls in the Sahara Desert in southern Algeria for the only time in recorded history.

Your new birthday is also the birthday of – 1968 – Molly Ringwald, American actress

It is also –

Christian Feast Day:
Colmán of Lindisfarne
Flavian of Constantinople
Simeon of Jerusalem (Western Christianity)
February 18 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
Independence Day, celebrates the independence of the Gambia from the United Kingdom in 1965.

Pls to note that on almost everyone’s birthday, something not awesome happened. EG on my birthday –

1896 – The deadliest tsunami in Japan’s history kills more than 22,000 people.

Had that happened in 1996, my birthday would be quite the bummer. :(

Anyway, happy Non-Birthday. And if you don’t like Feb 18th, pick another one, There’s 363 other days you could choose. :)

So, its night to me.. :)

Blog Friends, Sephyroth, things to remember

Food Obsessions – Potato & Egg

4 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

prep10

I love reading food blogs. Food blogs often make me hungry for very specific things and oftentimes these will be things I would need to go to a supermarket to recreate, so in general I’ll just bookmark a recipe to put on the next food plan..

In the past few weeks it seems like there has been a fried egg thing going on across the various food blogs. Somewhat unfortunately, I always have eggs in the house, so for lunches I went on a little fried egg spree.

Then one day, the stars aligned in the universe and I had a strange thought about adding an egg to that nights dinner as I was deeply craving a fried egg.. much deliciousness was the result. Now, I don’t know how I will ever eat this particular meal without one or more fried eggs on top.

prep9

Potato with bacon and onion has been in our meal rotation since I was a teenager, though my sister was usually the bacon and onion person and I would put on all kinds of exotic concoctions, from fresh cooked capsicum, mushroom and bacon, right up to bolognese sauce, chicken cacciatore or tuna mornay.

Recently we switched out onion for leek in almost every meal we use onion in. Trimmed leeks are available 2 in a packet from Aldi for $2.99 and we much prefer the flavour of leeks.

I still enjoy more exotic options on my potato and will usually add in things like mushroom at a minimum but the other half is all about simplicity and he loves bacon and leek.

If you have never made potato with toppings, here is my most recent recipe. :)

Potato with Bacon, Leek, Mushroom & Egg

I’m going to give you more than one way to do each step because that is how we roll here and I have prepared this a multitude of different ways.

Prepare The Potato –

prep3

My first choice would be – peel, chop and then boil the potatoes. You do lose some of the potato goodness this way.

My second choice would be – peel the potatoes first, roll them around in a little extra virgin olive oil, add a few herbs – Paprika is a must for me! – plus salt and pepper. Then bake potatoes in a roasting pan preferably one with a lid. This option mostly keeps the potato flavour and goodness within the potato. I do like to add a splash of white wine to this, as it will steam up when the pan gets hot and permeate through the potatoes for extra flavour.

My third choice would be – wrap potatoes in alfoil and bake. This definitely keeps all the goodness inside the potato however, if you do not like the skins you will have to remove them from a hot potato which is not optimal.

I’ve also done baked potatoes and then you open them up and take out the innards, mix the potato and fillings together and then stuff it back into the potato. This is fiddly and time consuming and to be honest, I am not a huge fan of potato skins. I would do this if we had people coming over and I wanted to make something relatively simple but special. But if stuffed potatoes is your preference, you’re eating it, so go to it and enjoy. :)

Prepare Your Toppings

prep7

First choice – chop bacon, mushrooms, onion/leek, add a tiny bit of butter to a a non stick frypan, fry toppings until cooked the way you would like them.

Second choice – chop bacon, mushrooms, onion/leek, add butter or margarine, cover, and microwave on medium heat until cooked to your preference – this usually takes approximately 3-4 minutes on 600w with my microwave

Third choice – chop bacon, mushrooms, onion/leek, in a saucepan put in some butter or margarine, half a teaspoon of garlic, add in the bacon, mushrooms & leek, stir about and allow to cook a little. Then add in 1/2 cup of white wine and an extra touch of butter, allow to simmer and cover the saucepan. Simmer for 5-10 minutes and it should be done.

Mash The Potatoes

prep5

Once the potatoes are cooked your way, add them to a bowl, add in a little butter and cheese, and smoosh them up some with a fork. We are not talking a perfect mash here, you want them a little chunky. Sprinkle a little cheese on top

Prepare Your Egg(s)

prep2

First choice – fry eggs in a frypan until they are cooked how you like them. Mine, I like to flip, but sunny side up would work too.

Second choice – poach your eggs in your egg cooker or poacher.

Third choice – soft boil the eggs. Peel eggs – this can be difficult with soft boiled eggs which is why this is a third choice.

Fourth choice – scramble the eggs. You can also add back in your bacon and leek with a little cheese. The only downside to this choice is – no gorgeous yolk to ooze into your potatoes.

Assemble Your Meal

prep6

Add your topping mixture to the potato mash, put the eggs on top, cut into the eggs with a knife and allow the yolk to ooze, and you are done.

It is time to eat!

Now bear in mind, you can take this recipe and make the ingredients your own. For protein you might prefer to use chicken, sliced beef, pulled pork. You might be out of bacon so you could use ham. You might have leftover turkey and so you might slice it and cook it in a frypan and then top with some cranberry sauce and you might use sweet potato or yam as your base. Some people like to put avocado, bacon and prawns or shrimp. You might want vegetarian bacon or no meat at all.

You might even want to use mashed cauliflower, broccoli, turnip, pumpkin, sweet potato, swede, baked mushrooms or even a combination of these instead of potato as the base. You might not want leek or onion – some people have a bad reaction to those.

You might have leftover pasta sauce which you can heat up and pour over some freshly cooked potatoes. As I mentioned above, I love to put chicken cacciatore or tuna mornay over potatoes.

The only limit is your imagination, ingredients on hand, and your preference of what flavours you prefer together.

Over to you!

What do you like to put over the top of potatoes? I’d love new ideas if you have any. :)

cooking, food, recipes, Snoskred hearts, yay

Some Fun Time

Leave a comment Posted on by Snoskred

lavender1

Recently here on the blog, we have seen a lot of very serious scam posts. However, I will like you to know that baiting the scammers can be a fun thing as well..

Today I have a blast from the past to share with you – please click through and read this blog post from October 2007 –

A Journey Along The Road To Stopping Online Scammers

I might consider doing this again – it has been a while since I’ve done much fun scambaiting stuff. ;)

funny, internet, looking back, scambaiting, Who Is Snoskred

Scam Jobs Update Cekicy Pty Ltd

2 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

eats1

There was another scam job posting today for Cekicy Group Pty Ltd and thus many people have arrived here searching for that company name.

This job is a work from home scam. You can read more about this kind of scam via SCAMwatch and more specifically fake cheque – check or bank draft – scams via my own post – Snoskred made 5 million dollars online this year!.

I listed some of the reasons why this job is a scam on yesterdays post which you can read here – Three more job scams – Cekicy Group PTY LTD, Healthfirst, Real Online Jobs. Also I have these posts re Manheimy PTY LTD and More About Manheimy Pty LTD..

I also have postings regarding the Car Wrap Scam which is very popular at the moment. Companies names like Rockstar and Pepsico are being used in an effort to legitimize these scams.

There was also this connectedsky scam. I did a more thorough breakdown of the connectedsky scam here.

Jobseeker Update

The team at Jobseeker have been in contact re yesterdays post and have advised they will be making this issue a high priority. For anyone at other websites who might be reading this, it is important to know the following fact –

Once you put some hurdles in their way, scammers will stop using your site as a place to advertise their scams. Other sites have been there and done this. However if you do not act quickly and decisively, these scammers will spread the word to their scammer friends and you will be inundated with scammer postings.

Reach Out –

You can contact me via email – or comment on this post. I strongly suggest you to do this if you have any questions. You do not have to use your real name but I do ask that you use a real email address so that I can reply to your question personally via email.

If you arrived here searching for companies or text in these scam job postings, it is important to know – you are not the only one who arrived here this way and you are not alone.

fake checks, Internet Safety, job scams, scam victims are not stupid, scams

Three More Scam Jobs

3 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

moon

Here are three more job scams – please note my reason for posting them is purely so that anyone searching for the company names can get this page in the search results and know right away the job is a scam. On average, over 100 people arrive at my website daily, having searched for names, text, email addresses, or phone numbers which are listed here..

Often times, this is the only site which contains these names *and* the fact that their job is a scam. Update – A lot of people are arriving here searching for Cekicy – cekicy pty ltd – Cekicy Group Pty Ltd which has posted yet another scam listing today.

I hope my regular readers do not mind these posts when they are posted – if they do, please remember that these posts are stopping people from being scammed by criminals. :)

First Scam Job –

Entry-Level Office Administrator Wanted – Earning $1000.00-$2500.00 per week.
Cekicy Group Pty Ltd
About the Role:

We have several openings available in this area earning $1000.00-$2500.00 per week.

We are seeking a candidate to fill join our team as an Office Administrator. You will be looking after inbound and outbound telephone calls, data entry and organising files both electronically and manually. You must be well spoken a you will be taking and looking after bookings. If you’re highly organised, we want you!

Minimum Qualifications:
High School diploma or GED.
1 year of clerical/data entry experience in a fast-paced environment.
Demonstrate attention to detail with excellent data entry, communication (interpersonal, telephone) and organization skills.
Ability to prioritize projects within a fast-paced, deadline-driven environment using tact and discretion.
Basic database usage.
Team player with good communication, data entry, organization and follow-through skills.
Ability to write and type grammatically correct database entries in English.
Intermediate Microsoft Word and Excel skills.
Experience using a corporate email system.
Basic Microsoft PowerPoint.
Candidate will be paid $50-$70 Per hour commensurate with experience and education.

So what points to this being a scam?

A quick rundown –

1. Entry level anything does not earn $1000 a week in Australia and certainly would never earn $2500.

2. You must be well spoken a you <-- a you? 3. High School diploma or GED <-- neither of these things are what you get in Australia. GED is from the US.

4. Candidate will be paid $50-$70 Per hour <-- the only time I have earned $50 an hour was triple time on a Sunday or public holiday pay. There simply is no job in Australia which is entry level that pays this kind of money.

Second scam job –

Data Entry Clerks Positions Available
Healthfirst
Preparing all sorts of source documents, identification and interpretation of data to be entered. Compiling, sorting and verifying data accuracy
. Minimum Qualifications:
High School diploma or GED.
1 year of clerical/data entry experience in a fast-paced environment.
Demonstrate attention to detail with excellent data entry, communication (interpersonal, telephone) and organization skills.
Ability to prioritize projects within a fast-paced, deadline-driven environment using tact and discretion.
Basic database usage.
Team player with good communication, data entry, organization and follow-through skills.
Ability to write and type grammatically correct database entries in English.
Intermediate Microsoft Word and Excel skills.
Experience using a corporate email system.
Basic Microsoft PowerPoint.
Candidate will be paid $50-$70 Per hour commensurate with experience and education.

This job ad minimum qualifications section is almost identical to the first one, just with a different job role, and a different company name.

And the third and final scam job –

Full Time Data Entry – Earn $50/Per Hour +
Real Online Jobs
We have several openings available in this area earning $1000.00-$2500.00 per week. We are seeking only honest, self-motivated people with a desire to work in the typing and data entry field.

This job requires you to have the ability to operate a keyboard or other data entry device to enter data into computer. Inputs alphabetic and numeric information from credit card applications onto an automated credit processing system, other clerical duties as required.

We are seeking only honest, self-motivated people with a desire to work in the typing and data entry field. Preferred applicants should be at least 18 years old with Internet access. Little experience is needed.

The ideal applicant will be well presented, highly organised and friendly, with excellent communication skills.

Daily duties will include but not be limited to: § Account management § Data entry § General admin duties Applicants must also have: § Accurate data entry skills § Proficiency in MS Office programs

This position is high paying and you will be paid WEEKLY via direct deposit, cheque, paypal or company provided debit card.

Jobseeker The Website –

Jobseeker has a serious problem here, and I just want to give them a heads up and some hopefully useful feedback – job sites need to be a very proactive in order to stamp out these scammers. :(

I’ve been reporting these fake jobs when I see them. It takes quite some time to get a reply – usually more than 4 days. In general these job postings remain open for too long. In order to frustrate the scammers, scam job postings need to be removed within 12 hours. In order to stop the scammers, these job postings should not be posted at all.

I’m not confident that Jobseeker understand that people WILL get scammed out of money thanks to their site posting these scam jobs. I would love to be reassured on this point.

Seek.com.au has been here and done this before, and they have an excellent warning on their site which you can read here – SEEK safely. It costs significant $$ to post an ad on Seek. And it *should* cost money to post a job ad anywhere. Legit employers will pay the $$. Fake employers will vanish.

Even when Jobseeker kill off a scam job posting so that nobody can apply for it, all the text still appears and they DO NOT put up a scam warning up for people. Here is an example.

I would strongly recommend to Jobseeker that they leave the company name and job title and replace the rest of the text with a scam warning. If they are not sure how to word this, they can ask me for help and I will draft something up for them.

By the time these scam job listings are removed, people will have applied – and I hope Jobseeker contacts those people who have applied with an email scam warning as well! This is hugely important and needs to be done.

I am also concerned that Jobseeker do not appear to have a scam warning anywhere on their website. I certainly cannot find one. If one is there, enlighten me as to where it is. It should be easy for everyone to see.

Please fix these things, and then I will sing your praises, Jobseeker.

Update – The team at Jobseeker have been in contact and have advised they will be making this issue a high priority. For anyone at other sites who might be reading this, it is important to know the following fact –

Once you put some hurdles in their way, scammers will stop using your site as a place to advertise their scams. Other sites have been there and done this. However if you do not act quickly and decisively, these scammers will spread the word to their scammer friends and you’ll be inundated.

Further Reading –

Scam Advice – Scam Warning Signs
Quick Scam Notice Re Manheimy PTY LTD
More About Manheimy PTY LTD
Snoskred made 5 MILLION DOLLARS online this year!
Snoskred on Fake Check Scams and Scambaiting

Scam Resources –

Is this email a scam? Ask the Scam-O-Matic
Scamwarners
Scam Victims United
Fraud Aid
SCAMwatch – Work from home scams

Reach Out –

You can contact me via email – or comment on this post. I especially encourage you to do this if you have any questions.

If you arrived here searching for companies or text in these scam job postings, it is important to know – you are not the only one who arrived here this way and you are not alone.

Annoyed Snoskred, fake checks, job scams, scam victims are not stupid, scams

30% Off @ Spotlight

2 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

jj1

So, yesterday, I was watching Judge Judy on Channel 10 at 3pm, as I sometimes do when it seems like the wait to 6pm double episodes of Judge Judy on Arena is too long to wait..

I should point out that I had my little cordless headset on, and I was actually in the kitchen trimming up 1kg of bacon which was purchased on the weekend. I guess that is more like listening to Judge Judy. I got 5 lovely packages of bacon bits, 1 package of bacon bits for dinner that night, and 2 packages of offcuts which we like to grill up in the oven till they are super crispy.

One of the downsides of not watching a lot of free to air tv is missing out on local ads. Sometimes they are not very interesting, but today I heard that Spotlight was having a 30% off sale. My little ears connected with my shopping brain, and the message I heard was THIS SALE SEEMS NICE!

I did some maths in my head, working out that 30% off takes $9 off a 29.95 candle. I should go to Spotlight and buy some Yankee Candles, I thought, as I drove to my 4pm appointment to see my amazing psychologist.

yc1

And a couple of hours later, I did go, because Spotlight were open till 8pm. They told me that in the ad too. I got a couple of the “medium” candles in Black Cherry and Vanilla Lime and 4 wax melts, 2 Mango Peach Salsa and 2 Pineapple Cilantro.

yc2

Apparently the 30% off is for Tuesday as well, in case you did not catch an ad and you want to go get yourself some Yankee Candle, or something else.. :)

Happy Snoskred, Home, shopping, yay

Meal Planning

3 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

mealplan2

This year, I’ve been using this great free meal planner found at #4 on this post – High Five for Getting Organized! – from kelly’s kinda crazy.

grocerylist

The meal planner comes with a grocery list – Above you see Carter – my trusty skeleton friend – holding it. I’m thinking from now on he will get to hold the grocery list each fortnight so if I need to add something he will remind me to add it when I walk past. :) Here is a closer view with this fortnights shopping on it.

grocerylist2

When I write my shopping list, I mentally walk around Aldi in my mind and I write things on the list in the order they appear in the store. Thank the deities, unlike Coles and Woolworths, Aldi rarely changes their floor plan. Both Coles and Woolworths have recently re-arranged their stores and now I can’t find anything in there. :(

I also sit down with my laptop and the shopping list and go through the Coles and Woolworths brochures and write down any items which are on special that we need to stock up on. I’ve been doing this for so long now that in general we never run out of things that we regularly use.

mealplan1

I’m loving the cute design of the meal planner. I used to do meal planning on my whiteboard which was not so pretty, nor could I take it with me to other rooms of the house which, on occasion especially when writing the shopping list, was mildly inconvenient. It also means I can keep copies of the old meal plans on the clipboard and review them when making the next meal plan. This way, I tend to notice meals we have not had for a while and add them back in.

Just be aware the file prints out an entire year worth of meal planning – you can choose to print just one or two pages at a time but you’d have to do it manually. I printed mine out at the start of the year and I’ll have enough to last until the end of this year..

This meal planner runs fortnightly and so we have been planning our menu fortnightly and shopping fortnightly as well, with just a quick stop at the shops on the second weekend if we need to pick up something fresh. Most of the time we don’t need to, because I am getting very good at planning meals which have the fresh ingredients closest to the shopping trip – and also very good at freezing things we need for later.

lenards1

This past weekend we made our regular trip to Lenards at Warrawong which is roughly an hour or so drive from here, depending which way you go. We took a little detour past Albion Park to catch a glimpse of the Grand Old Lady VH-OJA at the HARS museum. If it wasn’t too busy we would have stopped to get out and take some photos, but as expected the place was absolutely packed and we just drove past. So, my apologies, I have no pics of that for you.

I also have no pics of Chicken Young Lad who has served us on our past 3-4 trips and who is starting to remember that we are the Crazy Bulk Buying People. Even so, after each item he asks “Anything else today” and we’re all.. YEP, give us 4 of those and 8 of those.

Meat wise, we eat quite a bit of chicken in the house. When we lived in Adelaide we had a Lenards close by and we could drop in and pick up chicken on the same day we were going to cook it. We really grew to love their chicken and moving here we discovered two things –

1. It is super expensive to buy pre-prepared chicken here eg kievs & filos.

2. Even though it was super expensive to buy, none of the local options tasted anywhere near as good as the options from Lenards did.

So we make the trek to Warrawong every 8-12 weeks, and we stock up on our chicken, we bring it home, then we food-save it and freeze it. We have the Sunbeam Foodsaver. I’ve tried other methods in the past including freezer bags and ziploc bags and we find the foodsaver to be the better option.It ends up looking like this –

lenards2

The red chicken breasts that you see paired in the foodsaver packets with Chicken Kievs are the pocketed breast with baby spinach, dill, fetta and ricotta. They are my favourite – so tasty! I don’t mind a chicken kiev, either, but I deeply love these little red thingies.

We took every single chicken mini roast that they had prepared and we would have taken more if they had them out the back – sorry everyone else who wanted one. I normally pre-order but this time it did not happen, for a few non-interesting reasons. I foodsaved 6 roasters but we got 7 – one went into the fridge for tonights dinner, which looked like this –

chickenroaster

We also stopped in at Dan Murphys and bought enough cask wine for cooking to last the next 6 months or so. I use Banrock Station Cabernet Merlot and Sauvignon Blanc for cooking and they are routinely $5 or so more expensive locally so if I need them and we’re already up Shellharbour way, I like to stock up.

Last fortnight, I ran out of white cask wine and had to use red wine for our white sauce chicken, bacon and leek pasta. When you use red wine in white sauce, you end up with a delicate light purple sauce. Not that either of us minds that because it still tastes great, and I find the merlot has some interesting flavours which the sav blanc does not. I really do need to put my white sauce pasta recipe up here sometime soon. :)

If you enjoyed reading this, you might want to take a look at this post – some things I know for sure about grocery shopping.

None of the companies or products mentioned gave me anything or paid me to say this stuff, and of course if anyone did I would make that very clear right at the top of the post and it would not change my opinions on things – I call it as I see it.. :)

So, over to you..

Do you meal plan?

Carter, country life, food, get organised, Home, shopping

Isn’t It Ironic…

3 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

notnews

…that a website called news.com.au should contain so little actual news. Seriously? Your headline article is about a shopping fail? On a day when an Australian young person exploded themselves, killing 10 people in Iraq?

That news – and if you want to read about it, click here – does not even rate being in the top 4 stories listed on the site, instead, something about private detectives paid to have sex in order to bust illegal brothels, something about a pair of pants, and Maureen McCormick is evicted from a teevee show?

Well, the last one I am a little bit sad about because I did get sucked into watching the show and I loved watching Maureen on it, however this is the last week of the show so it isn’t that big a deal. It certainly is not headline news!

But it gets even worse. Check this out.

webgrab
Picture: web grab. Source – Snoskred – Life In The Country.

Web grab? Credit News Corp Australia? What the heck is up with that? So, we all can now go to any web site we like and grab a screenshot and then give credit to ourselves for taking it? I bet if I did that to a news.com.au photographer image, there would be threats of a lawsuit or something..

If the person who took the image happens upon this post, contact me with your name and I’ll give you *proper* credit.

I have long been thinking that news.com.au has jumped the shark and that it contained little news, but this is the day when I finally am giving up. I’m stating to you, out loud, that I intend to stop going there, foreverz.

Pretty please to hold me accountable on this statement. If I ever post here about news.com.au again, or link to a story on their site, I want you to slap me down hard in the comments section. SRSLY!

I don’t know how many more dress stories I can take, what with that blue or white dress last week, and now this. The only time I want to see clothes as a headline on a NEWS website would be if someone was killed by their outfit. A fashion site is a different story, of course.

So where can you get actual news now? Which sites do you go to?

Probably the only site I can think of is abc.net.au but if you have a decent news source, let me know. :)

Annoyed Snoskred, Aussie Culture, Fail Whale, In The News, Media