About Snoskred

Life In Fast Forward.

13 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

So. Once upon a time, I used to have a routine. I used to do things in some kind of order. I used to daily read over 170 blogs, plus comment on 20-50, write one major post on my blog per day plus the thought/song of the day plus respond to emails plus get loads of stuff done around the house.

Then, I had the crazy idea of hosting blogs for people. On average since the start of this year, I have created 6-7 blogs every week. There is a huge amount of work involved in the process of doing that. It isn’t just set it up, activate the plugins and away we go.

People tell me which blog template they want to use, and then I customise it for them. I create them a blog header. I answer all their questions – and they are not one or two questions, sometimes it can be up to 50-100 emails back and forth. And even though I have cut and paste answers to a lot of the stuff people ask me now, I haven’t had a chance to organise them in a way I can access them easily to paste to the next question asker.

Life has become a game of catch up – I can rarely plan things because I don’t know what is going to come to me as a surprise in my email. Or I might have a plan – like tomorrow, I would like to write all my thought of the days for March. But then I’ll wake up in the morning, turn on the computer, and someone will be having a crisis or a blog meltdown, and I have to figure it out for them.

Most of the time I love doing it, don’t get me wrong. But there are days when it gets old fast, when I want to politely suggest that people learn to search the net first and then ask me if they can’t find an answer – because that’s what I do. That’s mostly how I solve their problems – I’m not any kind of genius, I just type their problem into Google and see what comes to me as a surprise.

Don’t be offended by that, people that I host blogs for. Like I say most of the time I love helping you out, but you can imagine that if you solved one problem and were handed another by someone else, and that went on all morning when you had planned to write a month’s worth of blog posts and get shiznit done fast, you’d get frustrated too.

The service I offer is somewhat unique. You don’t get that from most other blog hosts. They install WordPress for you, and then you’re on your own – people have to sink or swim on their own. I get people swimming pretty quickly, and then they can always ask me if they have issues.

And let me not get into updating all these blogs. The recent upgrade that happened – 2.3.3 – the other half handles the upgrades and he did one file across all the blogs as soon as it was released, because that was security related. That took an hour.

When he went to do the other four files it  took the other half five hours. This is because people had been installing plugins other than what was in the package, and some of them did not react well to 2.3.3, and we had to work out why and then solve that. That’s his spare time – he works full time. So the more blogs I take on, the more time it takes him to upgrade them.
Recently I’ve been given some important volunteer roles in the local community here which will require more of my time and effort.  And I need to do housework. And it might be nice to occasionally get some time to write blog posts like I used to.

I feel the need to slow things down.. if we keep going at this rate, we’ll have double the amount of blogs in 2 months.

So I’ve made a difficult decision – I am limiting myself to one blog a week from now on. If you want me to host a blog for you at some time in the future, you’d better pop over to the blog and put in a contact form, so I can give you the dates when I can do it. If you can’t wait till I can do it, I won’t be able to help you. I’m sorry. :(

Apologies for any inconvenience, but I’d like to try and get some routine back. ;) And I’d like to put some posts here more often.

About Snoskred

Snoskred Update..

7 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

So just lately I haven’t had a lot of time for me. As I type this I am in the process of creating at least 5 blogs. And then theres the volunteer work in the community which I put my hand up for a while back. Not to mention the house work.

I do think it is very important to have some time that is just me time, time when I don’t check my email for an hour or so, time when I switch off and relax. I have a pretty strict routine on weekdays otherwise nothing gets done. I always take an hour at lunch time to sit and eat lunch and watch a show. It was The West Wing for a long time there but recently I got season one and two of NYPD Blue. I have been wanting to watch that show in order for a long time now.

I also have been taking some time out in the evenings to check out a few new shows which have turned up on a new channel we have here on Pay TV, a channel called Showcase. There is one show called Dexter. It is twisted but I kinda like it.

Tonight I did something very rare for me. I sat down for two and a half hours to watch a movie I had wanted to see for a long time. In fact I mentioned wanting to see it here on the blog in October of 2006. It was The Departed with Leonardo Di Caprio, Mark Wahlberg, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson and Martin Sheen, as well as many others. This movie did not disappoint. It was fantastic.

It was nice to have a short break from all the work but tomorrow it is get shiznit done fast day. I want to get a lot of work done. So I’m off to bed now. ;)

About Snoskred, movies

Blame It On The Whales.

8 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

Some of you have noticed that I have only been posting one post per day for the last few days. I’ve got the evil flu which the other half had a couple of weeks ago. I started feeling a bit unwell on Friday, had a terrible sleep on Saturday night but it was Sunday that brought the straw which put me flat on my back for the last 3 days. Sunday, a bush hike, and some happy hikers who told us we might see some whales.

Whales

And see whales we did, even though the winds were ferocious we were so captivated we could not leave and when we did leave we tried to chase the whales to the next high point, taking a 1km hike and turning it into about a 4km hike, some of it through terrifyingly tiny paths which made me freak out quite a bit. There seemed to be several different pods of whales and they were all doing a jumping out of the water. I have many more photos, but I do not have the energy right now. When I’m feeling better I promise to share.

baby echidna

We also found a baby Echidna. I have no idea why it was showing us its feet. Anyway I am not 100% better yet and really only managing short amounts of time out of bed. Apologies for not dropping by everyone’s blogs. As soon as I am better I’ll be by.

About Snoskred, photography

Where In The World Is Snoskred?

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Some of you may have noticed a distinct lack of Snoskred in the blogOsphere over the past few days. I apologise – I have over 1,000 unread posts in my Google Reader and I have about 24 hours to read them all so you might not get a comment from me on your posts this week. But why have I been missing in action?

The Other Half

For the last couple of months The Other Half has been getting a few colds and flu. This week he has the worst one yet. I have never seen him this sick actually and we’ve been together almost 9 years. Several nights this week he has had zero sleep and this also means I have had less sleep than usual even though he tried to sleep sitting upright in his recliner a couple of nights rather than the bed.

It’s Not All Bad

The good thing about his being sick this week has meant we have discovered the local doctors surgery. It is within a 5 minute walk (great if he is at work and I need to go there) and extremely acceptable – and it has a female doctor as well as a male doctor. I’ve got an appointment for next week to have a couple of moles looked at by the female doctor (yes I was inspired when I saw a post from someone who had them removed but I forget who now?) and The Other Half has been there twice this week. He has severe tonsilitis, he has had a terrible sinus, bad ears, fever and the sweats since Wednesday and there seems to be no end in sight even though he is taking antibiotics.

Parts Of It Are Very Bad

My routine has been thrown completely out of whack this week. No checklists completed. Only some daily tasks getting finished. Laundry and dishes are on the increase – I’ve washed the bedsheets and quilt cover daily. One very miserable person lurking around the house so unwell he doesn’t want to watch tv, read, use his computer or anything yet he can’t sleep, doesn’t feel like eating much. He’s mostly been trying to nap on the futon in his room. I keep checking on him, which is not good time management, but very necessary to make sure he’s ok.

Parts Of It Are Very Good

On Thursday it was like someone had given The Other Half a dose of speed or something. It may have been pure sleep deprivation. However for about two hours he was like an insane robot. Sephy and I had been talking about the possibility of moving the scam email blogs to WordPress and I had mentioned it to The Other Half. We have a domain which we’d bought for a scam warning website and we figured it would be worthwhile using and getting away from Blogger which had always caused us major problems. The Other Half set up the new blog for us and just as he finished it the burst of energy ran out, and he retreated to the couch for an afternoon of just falling asleep to be woken up again by not being able to breathe.

Since Then

The insane robot baton was passed over to me and Sephy. We have been working flat out to try and get this up and running by Monday at the latest. We have a lot of content which we need to put on the site as the “base” before we can open the doors, but as soon as we do I’ll let ya’all know so you can see it – and hopefully link to it, because it’s for a good cause.

Scam Emails?

The four sites we already have up and running are –

These sites get some serious traffic – up to 20,000 hits a month, and we’re only able to post approximately 50 scam emails a day. The new site will have upwards of 200 scam emails a day being posted. We won’t be putting any advertising onto the site but we would love to get a sponsor willing to pay the site costs. We may also need volunteers to answer the potentially large amount of contact me forms we may get.

Chicken Soup Time

I make a mean chicken and sweetcorn soup and I’m going to make another fresh one shortly. I’ll take pics and write up the recipe for one day next week. :)

Back Soon!

I will be back to my normal around the blogOsphere self soon. I mean, this flu can’t go on forever, right? RIGHT? Please tell me I’m right! I crave my routine..

About Snoskred, The Other Half

The Actors Studio Meme

11 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

1. What is your favorite word?

Friendly. My real life friends know that I use that word a lot, along with “everybody loves (insert something lovable here)”

2. What is your least favorite word?

Nuclear. Or, Nu-Cu-Lar as GWB mispronounces it.

3. What turns you on [creatively, spiritually or emotionally]?

Positivity

4. What turns you off?

Negativity

5. What sound or noise do you love?

I love the absence of sound – silence.

6. What sound or noise do you hate?

In Australia they call them the doof doof – subwoofers in someone else’s car. I don’t mind them inside my own car but I hate just hearing the bass with nothing else as a car drives past.

7. What is your favorite curse word? *

The word belongs to Cugat, who created a script for the baiting tool which uses this word an incredible amount of times. It is amazing to me that the scammers keep coming back for more when they keep being called this name over and over. I’ll have to put together some of the scammers reactions to it one day. I have to star it out, sorry about that ya’all. The word is F**knut. If someone annoys me, there is nothing better than saying “What a f**knut”.

8. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

I would love to be a scuba diver or a funeral director.

9. What profession would you not like to do?

I would hate to be a judge.

10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?

You gave it your best shot, well done. Thanks for playing.

See the post below for the questions and if you want to be tagged, you just were. ;) See?

Post a comment here to let me know where to find your post and I will link back to it in the wrap up on Sunday.

If you’re wondering where the Think Tank is, I took a week off this week – I’m feeling a bit burnt out with the techy stuff right now after the blog move.

Sephy posted one, which you can find here – Move Your Blogspot Blog To Your Own Domain With Ease – well worth a read for anyone on Blogger.

About Snoskred

Snoskred Answers Some Questions.

6 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

There’s been a recent rash of question asking and answering around the blogosphere. I put up my hand to be interviewed by Emily, and I got these questions. I changed the order around a bit, sorry Emily! ;)

1) How did you meet the Other Half?

Online, oddly enough. This was many years ago in the beginning of the internet. I got into online gaming – playing Quake. I went to a network game party one night. For those who don’t know network gaming requires you to take your computer along and they all get plugged into each other and then you play games against each other.

Back in those days the internet was too slow to play games over it, like people do these days. And there was my other half, who I knew virtually right away was my other half, strangely enough.

2) You read a lot of blogs regularly. How do you choose which ones to read, which ones to comment on, which ones to link to, etc.?

I read probably 95% of blog posts which arrive in my reader.

I would link to every blog post I read, if it was humanly possible. Sephy will tell you, I’m forever pasting links to blog posts to him in Skype. I have to make do with linking to every blog that I read in the sidebar, and then I have to be very picky about the posts I choose for the weekly wrap up, otherwise there would be 500 links and none would get clicked on.

So the bottom line for me with those weekly wrap up posts is – a post has to stand out, touch me in a major way, make me think, make me want to share it with other people, make me go “Oh, what a great idea” or “I’m going to do that” or “That’s brilliant!”.

Commenting is difficult these days. I don’t have as much time as I used to for it and I hate that, because I want to comment on probably 95% of the posts in my reader.

3) I (and I bet a lot of your readers) know nothing about NSW. What are five things someone who has never visited would be surprised to know about your home?

a. New South Wales = NSW

b. The capital of New South Wales is Sydney, which might be the most famous city in Australia, however it is not the *capital* city of Australia. The capital city of Australia is Canberra – which is completely surrounded by New South Wales. Nobody knows why or how this odd arrangement came to be. Well probably some people do but I’m not one of them.

c. I live on the South Coast of New South Wales. There is also a North Coast. All of these coasts are located on the East Coast of Australia. Yes, it is quite confusing!

d. New South Wales is home to the Funnel Web spider, which mostly lives within a 20km radius of Sydney itself. These spiders are able to stay alive underwater for up to 30 hours by trapping air under their hairs, or something. So I was told, but it was on a documentary tv channel so I am assuming it is true.

e. You can probably tell, I don’t know much about NSW. ;) That is because I grew up in Adelaide, South Australia. That’s about a 15-17 hour drive from here.

4) For those of us unfamiliar with Scambaiting, can you tell us how it works? And how are you able to get compensated for all your scambaiting efforts?

Scambaiting is really pretty simple. You email a scammer (from a safe email address like gmail which does not show your location to the scammer) pretending to be a real victim. You play along with their scam, pretending you are going to do what they want you to do.

You ask a lot of questions, you make a lot of promises, you let them begin to dream of the money you’re supposedly going to pay them. If you have the means you use Skype to receive calls from them, which costs them time and money. I don’t talk to them on the phone much anymore but they call me constantly.

When they’re hooked on the dream, you keep stringing them along as long as you can. I’ve known scammers who have been strung along for well over 12 months. You’re always just about to pay them the money – but there’s an emergency, there’s a problem, there’s another question they need to answer.

I like to make them fall in love with my characters – usually using photographs of models like Heidi Klum and Tyra Banks. As those characters I pretend to be a virginal, extremely rich, naive girl who is looking for her perfect man. My character might be a model just starting out, she might be a singer, she might be a minor celebrity, or she might have family money. The scammers think everyone in the USA is a millionaire, so they believe it.

When they have fallen in love, I like to take their heart and crush it into tiny little pieces, like they do to their victims. The girl might find out he is a scammer. She might find a man closer to home. She might be on her way to meeting them at the airport in their country and the plane somehow falls out of the sky. I make newspaper clippings (it’s easy and simple to do) which support the story. If my character dies, it turns out my character has left them money – and they have to jump through hoops to get it, fill in forms, take photographs, etc.

There is no compensation for it, sadly. It is like any hobby, you have to put a little money into it. I pay 30 euros a year for my Skype In number, I pay around $80AUD a year for my post office box. Both of those cause a lot of anger and frustration to the scammers, so to me it is worth it. ;)

5) How did you get into scambaiting?

A scammer was silly enough to send me an email asking to borrow my bank account, I googled and found one of the scambaiting websites and began to bait them. Soon after I started I found my “first husband” and within a month I was “engaged” to six scammers. It was sometimes difficult to keep the stories straight, and tell them apart when they called. Strangely, none of these relationships worked out!

Thanks for asking me the questions. If anyone wants to be interviewed by me, just leave a comment and ye shall receive 5 questions of various goodness. ;)

Emily is hosting the Hump Day Hmmm this week as well – the topic is – something you experienced that affected and affects you. Feel free to join in the Hump Days, they are an excellent way to blog, I find.

About Snoskred, Australia, scambaiting, The Other Half

Six Weird Things About Me.

7 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

I got tagged by Gigglewick – So this means you’re all tagged now – those of you reading this by RSS, get over here! ;)

I’m not sticking to the meme rules of tagging six people because on Thailand Gal we’ve been having quite a few discussions about the politics of tagging and there is no way I could pick just six people out of all the people I read to do this meme. Plus, I don’t like rules. :)

So, what I’m going to do instead is say, I would love to hear from anyone reading this with their six things, and in a couple of days I will create a post linking to all the people who took it up. Hopefully there will be a few of you. I would especially love to hear from people from the Australian or US blog communities, and anyone in my sidebar links. Post a comment here to let me know you’ve done the meme so I can keep track and link to you. ;)

And now, six weird things about me.

1. When I was a little kid, perhaps inspired by Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the elevator which could go anywhere, I had a dream one night. Basically there was a trapdoor in my bedroom floor which led to an elevator that could go anywhere in the world. There was also a bunch of rooms where you could put your hand on the door and say what would be inside the room. Typically, being only about 8 at the time, I believe I had a room full of little plastic balls that you could jump around in, a low gravity room where you could sort of fly.. things like that.

2. When I got to my teenage years, I had another dream where I could turn off shopping centre alarms and take whatever I wanted from the shops while nobody was there. Anything I picked up was magically replaced, because I didn’t want to steal things. :)

3. When I was old enough to date, I made a rule for myself that I’d never go out with a guy who had the same hair color as the last guy I was dating. So if I had been dating a blonde guy and another blonde guy asked me out, I couldn’t go. It actually worked fairly well for me. ;)

4. I once went on a date with this guy from the armed forces. He was gorgeous, blonde, and physically very attractive. Unfortunately this meant he was quite the airhead. He took me to see Terminator 2 and during the movie he leaned over and whispered sweet nothings in my ear – the sweet nothings involved the make, model, how many bullets the gun would hold and the capacity to do damage to people of every gun in the movie. There were a lot of guns in that movie. I think I managed two dates before I realised I couldn’t date someone this interested in guns and little else, regardless of how cute he was.

5. If you’ve upset me, pissed me off, or made me angry at you during your time of knowing me, chances are you’ve ended up on my island prison. I don’t really like to punish people but sometimes it has to be done. In my head, you are sent to an absolutely gorgeous tropical island, you have a 2km square patch of sand, rainforest, and reefs, with a beautiful house mostly with glass windows. There are 50ft glass walls around the 2km patch of land. You get left there alone. In my mind that is the worst punishment for anyone – to have to be completely alone. Some people would think it was no punishment at all – but to be in this beautiful place and have nobody to share it with? That’s my version of hell.

6. I am a plane geek. I love planes. I like to watch them. I find them fascinating. To see a Boeing 747 lifting off it can bring tears to my eyes, it is just so beautiful. I know this means you’ll all disown me now. ;( but I can’t lie to you.

So, I hope to hear from many of you. Memes are a great way to get to know more about people, and this one is fairly easy which I enjoyed. Thanks Gigglewick!

About Snoskred

I’m a bad daughter.

1 Comment Posted on by Snoskred

Yes, the final in the series of internet security will turn up sometime this week. I’m sorry but it’s been a crazy weekend in many ways. Including my parents buying new tv sets and cabinets and other oddness.

So when I was over there yesterday, I set some reminders on the Austar box for shows that would be on while I was there. For those from overseas, this is pay tv. You can basically go ahead a day or more and choose programs and when the programs are on it pops up a little reminder.

Mum complained about the little popups, saying “how many did you set?” Well at the time only two, but when she went back to the kitchen I proceeded to set popups for almost every show that was on over the next 2 days. She’s still getting them now, more than likely cursing my name.

Especially the ones I set for desperate housewives, a show she utterly despises. I set reminders for it on the normal channel as well as the +2 channel, so there were at least 4 for that show. ;)

About Snoskred, Bad Snoskred, family

Morning Surprise

3 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

This morning I arrived at my desk to find this..

deskdols1

A closer view for you.

dolls

What on earth is on my desk, I hear you asking. Well, that’s Robbie Williams and Mark Owen. Yes, I have two Take That dolls. They have been an object of hilarious fun around the various houses I have lived in for some years now. Anytime I would have a party, a good friend of mine would find where the dolls were, and re-arrange them, pants around ankles, in some compromising position. Often I would not spot it until days later but whenever I did see it the end result would be me laughing until I couldn’t stand up anymore.

I don’t know why they are on my desk this morning, perhaps the other half was going through boxes or something, because I had not seen them since we left Adelaide.. But I did happen to get a couple of DVD’s when we went shopping the other day, one is Robbie Williams And Through It All which I listened to on Friday when I was making a cheesecake and it was really wonderful, and Take That The Ultimate Tour Live In Manchester which is their comeback performance on DVD. This I have not watched yet but it’s only a matter of time..

And yes, I know Take That are lame. I am well aware. But they were my Beatles, so shut the fuck up, all right? ;)

About Snoskred, funny, music, Take That

Normally..

1 Comment Posted on by Snoskred

At Christmas, we used to drive from Adelaide to visit my parents in Tamworth, a good drive taking two days at least and it was over 1,600kms.

So this year it feels really not like Christmas at all, because we’re not going anywhere and my parents live a 2 minute walk down the street. And probably because we don’t have a tree, and we don’t have any presents for each other (though we did buy things for the parents), and we’re basically ignoring the whole thing this year except for food.

It makes me start to think about what Christmas really does mean. You all know I’m not religious, so this holiday should not even be appearing on my radar at all, realistically. What’s it all about? Retailers making money, I think. Which is not a bad thing in some ways, but to me it basically means absolutely nothing. This time next week the Hot Cross Buns will be on the shelves. And there, another celebration which should not appear on my radar.

So if it means something to you, Merry Christmas. If you’re like me, and you’re all blah humbug, Merry Blah Humbug, let’s all get sloshed, hey? ;)

But I did win $100 on the pokies today.. now that is something to celebrate. And over the past week, the other half has won a couple of hundred, and my *Dad* has won over 2k on the pokies – that’s $2,000.

What’s the secret to betting on the pokies, I hear you ask?

1. Have a set amount you’re willing to lose. $5, $10, $20, whatever you feel comfortable with. Dad likes to go with $50 but he’s loopy. These days I like $10.
2. Walk around until a machine speaks to you, don’t just play any old machine.
3. Always bet high. None of this one credit per line junk. I like 5 credits per line.
4. If you lose your amount, walk out. Don’t put more in.
5. If a machine is screaming at you once you’ve lost your dough, don’t play it!
6. Don’t be afraid to play a $1 machine just as long as you know it won’t last as long and once you do your dough, you’re done.

Today a $1 machine screamed at me, and I bet one .50 cent credit per line, so I was betting $2,50 per bet. On the second hit of the button, the machine went loopy and gave me $100 credit! YAY!

So when that happens, cash out, and if you want to put your $10 back in, feel free, keep the $90, and don’t put that in a machine whatever you do.

About Snoskred, Christmas, pokie machines