Wait a second, that's not right...

With the market going down the toilet and people losing their jobs at an alarming rate, many people are turning to the internet to supplement their income or get themselves a career change. For those who read my letter to the govt, I'm sure you can tell I'm unemployed now. So I have my resume posted on the usuals; Monster, Careerbuilder, Jobing.com, and I've gotten a few good ones that I'm pursuing and some that are not quite legit. Let's explore...

I'm not going to change anything from the email correspondence I received from the company; emphasis will be placed though.

Dear Troy,

Allow me introduce myself - I am Andrey Dubinin. I function as a hiring manager at One Box Advertising Company. I have located your candidature at www.monster.com. I am honored
to propose the following:

Type of job - Work from home W - 2.
Wages - $1500 - 2000 per month
Time for work - 2 - 3 hours a day (can be modified upon the request)
Mode of job - flexible


- We do not demand payment from you for anything
- This is not a MLM or a get rich quick scheme.
- This is a fee based job; you are paid based on performance.

One Box has been operating and actively thriving on the advertising market more than ten years.
Our activities primarily include trading ad campaigns both
to companies and individuals worldwide.

Currently we are employing Service Managers to aid to improve the marketing structure.

To obtain more information about our activities you can browse this URL: http://www.one-box.org

If you are interested, please leave your comments with your contact information at E MAIL manager@one-box.org and our agent will contact you in due course.

One Box Advertising
e mail: manager@one-box.org

Okay, so lets take a look, they want to offer me $1500-$2000 a month working 2-3 hours a day, they want me to make $33.33/hr working from home? Cool!

Red flag 2, they need to remind me that it's NOT a get rich quick scheme, which is good because 33 an hour isn't going to get anyone rich quick.

So I send the following:

Pardon me if I sound a little skeptical, your offer definitely sounds nice, but what does the job entail? Is it a sales job?

Most importantly, how am I making that money with that few amount of hours worked?

Reminder, nothing in this has been changed; so after that email gets sent, I was sure they would ignore me and move on to someone else, but alas, a week later I get this:

Dear Troy,


It is our pleasure to offer you employment with One Box in the position of Service Manager commencing on the terms set forth in the enclosed job description. Our organization offers various benefits to new employees which are described in the attachment to this letter.


If you would like to apply for this job offer, please follow these steps:


1. Read the JOB OFFER

2. Send me an e-mail containing these details:


I, your full name, consent to the job offer terms and desire to apply for this position.

DD-MM-YYYY


3. You will receive the application forms and documents within 24 hours.



If you have any questions about the job offer, terms or conditions, please do not hesitate to contact me directly, I will assist you with any step of the recruiting process. Thank you for your interest in our team.


Sincerely Yours,


Andrey Dubinin

HR manager

Wait a second, I ask you for information and you send me a form letter letting me know that if I have questions, I can ask you. How sweet.

Thanks Andrey,
I appreciate you getting back to me, but the email you sent didn't answer my questions, what would I be doing?

I was expecting to either receive nothing or another form letter like the one above, but I was surprised again.

I received an email that contained a word doc outlining the job duties which, of course, I will post here.

ABOUT US


One Box Advertising Inc. would like to offer you once in a life time opportunity. The attachment to this letter includes a job offer for a position within the ranks of One Box Advertising, a large thriving advertising company. Basically, we’re offering you the position of service manager – a wholesome part of the company itself – without the hassle of a desk job. This in no way means that you don’t have to be responsible for doing the job. However, it is a prime opportunity for

you to receive a wholesome salary for doing so.


DUTIES & JOB DESCRIPTION

In the long run, One Box Advertising is focused on buying, selling and exchanging online ad places, creating marketing plans for Internet-oriented projects and large clients. We’ve recently expanded our business activity to accepting orders from international customers and thus we offer you to become an important link in this new and progressively developing field. You will be in control of receiving orders, payments and transactions from our clients and investors. We are hiring new employees to this position because of local and international laws prohibiting direct orders and transactions from foreign parties. Doing so would require either opening local offices or hiring official sales representatives to handle all related duties. Every order will begin with the receiving an invoice and include a multi-step process to be carried out with utmost competence and diligence. Students, parents, self-employed people or even the unemployed: this is a chance for everyone with three hours and more of free time every day.


Note that acceptance of this offer would imply a very specific type of employment. You would become an at-will employee for the company, meaning that the employment can be terminated by either side at any time for any reason.


For your consideration below are the employee plans to choose from if you decide to accept this job offer. You may take your time to look through them and decide which one suits your interests and your capabilities the best.


Employee plan offer



1. Personal account plan. With this plan you will represent personal interests of our company on the territory of USA. With this plan you will work with our clients and partners, processing orders and performing simple online office duties. You will need to set up a personal checking account under your name for these purposes. You will receive a fixed 10% net from each cashed amount manually taken after each transaction.



2. Business account plan. With this plan you will represent our company’s business interests on the territory of USA. You will work with dedicated and personal clients only. You will process orders from our business clients and private investors. . You will need to set up a business account under your name for these purposes due to the high amount of every transaction. You will receive a fixed 15% net from each cashed amount manually taken after each transaction.

I will be accepting payments, in an account under *MY* name, and then forwarding the money to you. That doesn't sound illegal AT ALL!

What would you all recommend? It sure sounds like money laundering, but then again, I used to work for a Credit Card company, so I could be biased. Second of all, who would I even send it to? the freakin' FBI?

Dear Government, F You.

To Whom it may concern,

This month, 533,000 people were laid off, thats 533,000 people who are no longer bringing in any money for themselves or their families. Most of these people will be turning to their state's Department of Economic Security to file for Unemployment Benefits, after all, that's what this dept is for. Unfortunately, in just about every state, they cannot get thru to speak to anyone. Congratulations on passing meaningless legislation to CONTINUE unemployment benefits, but you know what? 533,000+ people wont be filing for continued benefits, we're trying to file for our first paycheck. Yeah, that whopping $240/wk may not be a ton of money, but that's better than nothing. How about instead of worrying about whether or not banks can continue to give loans to people who have no money, you help the people who genuinely need help. How about instead of making it impossible to speak with someone, you dont leave their file sitting there for 4 weeks while creditors need their money. How about instead of bailing out everyone else, lets bail out normal people.

In conclusion, Fuck you.

Politics Trumps Math, Everytime.

Watch this video before continuing, it's Barack Obama's campaign ad talking about tax breaks to the average American.



100 Million Americans get NO TAX RELIEF AT ALL!!!

Barack Obama pledges to give us 3 TIMES Nothing, unfortunately, last time I checked, that's still nothing.

I'm definitely no economist or even a math whiz, no poli-sci major, no lawyer, I'm just undecided average Joe. Sure, that ad hit hard when I first heard it, then I started thinking how much sense it didn't make.

Just throwing that out there.

And before everyone jumps on the "OMG Conservative Blogger!" Bandwagon, take a look at some of my other posts, I don't hate Obama, I hate politicians.

McCain's New Advertising Strategy

With only a few weeks left in the presidential election 2008, John McCain is falling behind in the polls, most people say it's due to his linking with unpopular President Bush, I personally think it's because he has his advertising all wrong. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you McCain's new strategy:

Psych!

The President of the United States of America is likely the last person you expect to pull a fast one on you. Ladies and gentlemen, I think that may have just happened. While I do believe more focus needs to be placed on our troops in Afghanistan, I think our pres just played a cruel joke on us.

Two days ago the news was all about how Bush wanted to lower the troop count in Iraq. This was met with great praise, "Finally, the President gets it!" you may be thinking. Not so fast, we're only taking out 8,000, which is great on paper until you realize that we have over 140,000 troops on the ground in Iraq and only 20,000 in Afghanistan. 5%, good job Bushie, I think you may have convinced.. well, no one. Why is it this image comes to mind right now?


Oh the faster this man is out of office the better.

The Great American Abortion Flip Flop

There has been some concern recently about Barack Obama's stance on abortion, is he for it, is he against it? Whats going on?

Well ladies and gentlemen, let me break it down for you, it's actually very simple.


Anti-Abortion:


Pro-Abortion:



There, debate solved.

Democrats... Geritol... Whats the difference?

It was recently reported that during an interview, John McCain stated that he wanted to make sure the best minds were in positions in the government, and went on to say that there will definitely be Democrats in his cabinet...

The problem was actually that McCain was confused and was actually stating that he will be taking plenty of vitamins to make sure his mind is sharp and that there will be plenty of Geritol in his medicine cabinet, poor old man is losing it.

Don't worry Mr. McCain, the home they are speaking of is not actually the White House... but at least there will be plenty of people there to help you..

344,000 Thousand Motivator!

Everyone loves watching a major news station make a fool of themselves, and everyone loves motivational posters, here... best of both worlds!

Fox: Republicans Have Lost 344m Voters!!

Holy Crap! Why is John McCain even trying, if you're out matched like this, you might as well just let Obama just walk right into the White House!

Last time I checked, 344,000 Thousand is 344,000,000 thats 344 Million voters!
Silly me, I thought we only had about 300 Million people, I guess that's why we have so many non registered voters, they used to be Republicans.

Here's the proof!



So... Come November, things are looking a little bleak for the McCain/Palin ticket.

Amateur Economics with Oil Prices

Because my day is generally pretty slow, I like to follow the economy via Yahoo Finance. The most common thing I like to follow is the price of crude oil, because damn it, I'm getting tired of gas prices, so I decided to do a little bit of math here to figure when gas prices will get down into range, ladies and gents, Amateur Economics:

(Disclaimer: My history with Economics is the course I took to graduate High School and then a Macro-Economic Principles class I took my second semester of college, so really, don't debate using the information you see here)

So without further adieu, here goes nothing:

Date	Price of Oil	Price of Gas	Percentage
4-Sep	75	2.94	3.920%
1-Jan	100	3.3	3.300%
10-Mar	110	3.33	3.027%
5-May	120	3.8	3.167%
25-May	130	4.15	3.192%
3-Jul	147	4.39	2.986%
20-Jul	130	4.24	3.262%
10-Aug	120	4.09	3.408%
1-Sep	110	3.8	3.455%
5-Sep	106	3.78	3.566%

From this math, I've concluded that the price of gas is usually around 3% the price of oil. The scary thing is the fact that the lower the price of oil is, there more the gas costs per $, when gas was at it's highest in July, it only made up of 2.9% the price of oil, but when gas gets lower it's more case in point Sep 2007, it made up just shy of 4% the cost of oil. Sure, there are plenty of extenuating circumstances that make this up, but it's something to watch. People are so pleased to see the price of gas go down, they may not realize that its actually THEN and not BEFORE, the oil companies are taking advantage of us. Imagine if it's always a flat 3%, never up, never down, the price of gas could be at 3.18 right now with $106 oil.

Sarah Palin, VPILF

Although it's not actually correct, she's more like a VPCILF, since she's only the candidate, VPILF sounds better. (I Pronounce it V-PILF, please correct me if I'm wrong). I decided to throw together some posters for the lovely couple in honor of their new role as presidential and vice presidencial candidates.





These were literally thrown together in 15 minutes between google searching for pics and randomly thinking of a tagline. I'll gladly accept any ideas, email me your tagline at 02sense@live.com, you can send the full picture or just the tagline and what you want it to look like and I'll eventually have a post of just submitted posters, enjoy.

Free Stuff!

I'm sure I'm not the only one who does this and I'd also bet that many other people have come across the same conclusion. I was browsing around Craigslist to see what was out there, and I happened upon the Free page for Phoenix. In the last 3 days, I've come across:

• Broken Refridgerator
• Fill Dirt
• A Box of Misc Shoes
• A broken 1960's Jukebox
• Glass Top Dining Table, End Table, and Coffee Table (Without Legs)
• Child's Sandbox, complete with sand.
• A bunch of 5 gallon buckets
• More Fill Dirt
• Used moving boxes
• Sets of Lost Keys, found at the Salt River, as well as about 20+ hubcaps
• 10 Gallons of Used Motor Oil
• Old Magazines
• 2100 sq ft of sod
• Top Soil and Fill Dirt
• 2 White Toilet Seats
• 13 tons of sand

So yeah, we're a strange bunch here in Phoenix, for those of you that haven't done it, I highly suggest you take a look at what your city is giving away on craigslist. Here in Phoenix, it seems we really like our fill dirt.

And The Winner for Best Corporate Spelling?

TARGET! Check out the sweet Todddler underwear!







I couldn't help but bust out my phone and take a shot, I hope you all enjoy.

Google's Really Outdone Themselves Now.

So I've done posts about crazy Google Adsense ads before, but here's an interesting one. After reading the post about Driving in Phoenix, did someone you know suddenly get arrested and needs a bail bond?


Low Cost Bail Bonds, right here baby!

Why does Google do this to me? I mean I put adsense here for targeted ads, so I can make some change blogging, and what do they do? Accuse my readers of being criminals in need of bail bonds, what exactly are jailed inmates doing browsing the web anyway? Obviously they arent in Phoenix in one of Sheriff Joe's jails.

If You Can't Drive It, Don't Buy It!

I will never understand this logic, I go to the car dealer to buy a new car, as I'm browsing the lot, I see this bad ass 2008 pickup. I tell the salesman that he needs to get me into that car, I've got good credit, lets get me on the road with this beast asap. As soon as I leave the lot I find out the car's too much to handle, so I'm stopping late, over/under accelerating, etc.

Unfortunately, I drove it off the lot, like a moron, so it's mine. No problem you're likely thinking, it just takes some time to get used to it, I'll be okay.

I have seen countless morons on the road who cant turn, cant stop, cant accelerate correctly, it's amazing. Does no one bother to take a test drive anymore? I'll be the first to admit my Yaris handled differently when I drove off the lot when I test drove it, but that's because it had the dealer's kill-switch installed, so when I drove it home it drove a lot smoother, but the handling was about the same.

I bring this up because I noticed some idiot driving around in his brand new Chevy Avalanche, assuming you can actually call it driving, basically swerving and not handling his vehicle very well, at all.

My first assumption in a situation like that is that the driver is likely drunk, but it was a monday afternoon and there were actually 3 people in the car, male driver, female passenger, and what seemed like a baby seat in the back, so this guy was likely driving his family somewhere for dinner or similar to that. Mind you, I don't live overly close to the city, we're a few miles north on the interstate, but it's fairly busy. They had recently added an on-ramp for one of the streets and its not very smoothe because of the construction and they have 2 way traffic in an area that will one day become a 1 way. Lets see the graph, shall we? (YAY MSPAINT!)

Bonehead and I are entering the freeway from point A with ultimate destination being point D (what you cannot see, is that point D forks, it will go straight and run along side the interstate, or become an on ramp, the B lane is designed for interstate traffic, whereas C is designed for people who want to drive alongside.) Now, as he drives around the turn to enter lane B, he gets into the lane about 3 hours too late, up until this point he was in lane C, when he notices that it's not going where he wants to go, gets into the correct lane and when reaching the turn, takes the turn so damn wide, almost ends up in the dirt somewhere below the text of this post.

I swear this guy had an Arizona lic plate, that wasn't FLT so no rental, so he should be used to this kind of insane traffic structure (see: How to Drive in Phoenix, if any confusion).

Misson Accomplished

So the other day, I posted a situation that has happened to me with most of my posts in regards to Reddit and how I seem to generate traffic, but never get any votes. I knew this would ruffle some feather, but I had no idea on how crazy it would get.

Based on strictly traffic levels, I would call that page a success, after all, everyone loves controversy. If you'll take a look on the right side of the page, as of 8/3, the page FYI: Reddit Hates Me, is now my 5th most popular page, based on traffic, and I've posted almost 50 posts in the last few months. I would like to thank reddit user AvantTarde for his scathing review, I can only assume people looked at his comment and thought, "Wow, what is so horrible on the other end of that link? I must read it" and the hits just kept coming for a good 24 hour period.

Also, I would like to thank fellow Phoenix blogger monkeychapps, In my post about how I manage to be the one blogger who never has one of those bazillion unique days from Stumbleupon, he suggested that I need to post something that is controversial, I think his exact words were hating french midgets or something of the like, but I took it to heart, and I tried to figure what I could write about and how I could link my blog into it.

This, ladies and gentlemen is why I love stumbleupon users. A page is never a bad train wreck on stumbleupon, if you vote it down, it is likely to mean something. When you're stumbling, the chance of getting complete garbage is relatively slim. Also, I'm willing to bet that most of the people who commented on the reddit page never actually viewed the page, so my traffic could have been a whole lot higher. In order for someone to say something about your page on stumbleupon, they need to be there. I don't need 500 thumbs up and 30,000 uniques to enjoy what I do.

So to you reddit users:

I'm not going to "fuck off and die", I will continue to post on this "shitty blog" whether you like it or not.

To everyone else, enjoy, be merry, and lets have some fun.

FYI: Reddit Hates Me

So I started experimenting with Reddit for my browsing and traffic generating needs. Love it for the browsing, unfortunately, the readers aren't too fond of my work.


Over 50% of the traffic to the Photo Dump page since it was posted until today has come from Reddit, yet on Reddit, the page itself had a score of 0. A freaking zero.

Don't worry Reddit, I still love you and will continue to browse you pages for all my web-browsing needs, but you bastards better vote this page up just to prove a point.

Inconsistent with Life.

Ok, so reading the above title, what do you assume?

If you google search it, it takes you to a bunch of junk about the Christian religion and how the death penalty is inconsistent with life... WTF?

The usage in this story is another of those wonderful trips the local Phoenix hospitals. (See:
Why Do All Hospitals Seem to Suck at Everything?) Now both my girl-friends parents are diabetic and they need to watch their blood sugar regularly to make sure everything is peachy. But recently her mother has been having problems with nausea, headaches, and just general nastiness. Unfortunately her primary care is out of the office so she decides to check in to the local hospital, when she gets there, she fills out a quick health questionnaire about her history and such, so one of the normal procedures for diabetics is that they will do a blood sugar test. The CNA walks in to get the test started and the machine reads 27.

"All set, thank you" says the assistant as shes walking out.

(Now for those who don't have to worry about taking these tests and subsequently don't know what the levels mean, first I envy you, second, I'll let you in on a little secret)

27 is EXTREMELY LOW, anything lower than a 50 is typically grounds to have you in a coma.

Obviously, this gal didn't quite know what she was looking at and nonchalantly walked back to the office to record her results as our patient is sitting in the room inquiring why her sugar is so low, possibly it's a mistake, you should definitely redo the test. All this falls of deaf ears, the assistant advised that the machine is correct and the doctor will see her soon. Eventually the doctor makes his way back into the room to re-test her and then her sugars came back much higher, around the 100 range, much more likely for a diabetic.

She explains her ordeal to the doc, who then replies with;

"That's why I needed to come back in and re-do the test, it must have been a mistake because those numbers are inconsistent with life"

Basically meaning that if that were true, she would be dead right then.

Oh lord I love hospitals.

Stats After 6 Months

So let's take a look, I've always complained about social media sites and how it never works out of them for me, so I'd like to share with you guys the way things break down for me. Let me know if I should be focusing my time elsewhere or what. Here's what we got:

1. reddit.com
2. stumbleupon.com
3. entrecard.com
4. (direct)
5. digg.com
6. google / organic
7. blogger.com
8. del.icio.us
9. mixx.com
10. monkeychapps.com
11. propeller.com

If you look to the right, you'll notice that all of my photo pages are on the top, there's a reason my photo pages are the highest for this blog, reddit likes photos, check this out:

Landing Page

1. /2008/06/google-thinks-i-have-problem.html
2. /2008/06/2-girls-1-cup-meets-warped-tour-2008.html
3. /2008/06/photo-dump.html

Part if it, I think, is just the fact that you can't explain your article in reddit like you can in Digg, or get it referred like you can in StumbleUpon, so that [PIC] tag will go a long way on a reddit post. So typically I judge my StumbleUpon traffic for more of an accurate gauge of how my posts are being received.

Landing Page

1. /2008/05/must-be-mental-handicap-part-2.html
2. /2008/05/in-phoenix-were-over-top.html
3. /2008/05/screwu-stumbleupon.html
4. /2008/05/how-to-drive-in-phoenix.html
5. /2008/06/photo-dump.html

It's almost night and day, also, stumbleupon is showing a lower bounce rate, for some pages as low as 30%, there were days where reddit was giving me bounce rates of over 95%.

Everyone loves looking at search engine traffic, and this page is no exception to the bizarre traffic rule, I've only had 3 that have shown up more than once, and here they are:

• how to be a good president x3
  
• driving to phoenix humor x2
  
• facts about the presidency x2

Here are the funnier ones that only popped up only once:

• rebate on fleshlight
• service pack 3 fucked up my computer
• fraudulent itunes charges to credit card (how the fu--?)
• 2 girls 1 cup (I'm impressed I actually pulled this one off)

Here's a nice one to freak out Microsoft, they always say IE has the highest user base on the net, the only problem is that most people who actually BROWSE the web, don't typically use IE, those people just check email and watch Youtube videos. Here's the browser breakdown for this site:

1. Firefox - 76.14
2. Internet Explorer - 16.84
3. Safari - 4.56
4. Opera - 1.62
5. Other - 0.45
6. Netscape - 0.16

If I Designed My Car...

The first thing I think of when I get in my car after it's been sitting in the afternoon Phoenix sun is this statement:

"The Designers sure aren't from around these parts now are they?"

I made a fairly cheap photoshop version of what my car should look like:


Photo credit originally goes to MSN Auto's, but it's the same make and model of my current car, so without further adieu, let the show begin.

1. The first and most obvious is the oven mitt placed snugly on the steering wheel. This will make summer driving in Phoenix a whole lot safer since people will be able to use their entire hand, instead of just their palms while driving.

2. Of course the air vents are going to be well placed in the car for optimum cooling, but also, it will have an auto setting that will make it so when the car is turned on it doesn't go straight to full blast(because this is what you had it set for when you were last in the car) and blow hot, scalding air right into your face and extremities.

3. Oh dear lord the chairs, this one is a gimme, any idiot who purchases a car with leather seats in Phoenix deserves anything the elements can throw at them, want your cajones stuck to a chair? you got it! through your pants? oh you've got that one as well my friend.

4. Now the fun part of Arizona summers is that around June 15th, we enter what we call Monsoon Season, which basically means that storms will gather and dump some rain on us every once in awhile. So unfortunately leaving a window cracked while at work is out because you don't know what day you will get the downpour since every day starts out clear and sunny. So what I suggest is a vent on the sides of every door that vent air in and out of the car, but have some sort of lip to keep it from getting rained in.

5. Everyone in Phoenix knows the value of a good window shade, but if you have a small car like a Yaris, good luck setting this thing up without causing yourself to need to run inside the building because you've now caused yourself to be late. What I say is that cars should come with an auto shade feature that you simply pull up from the base and then clip on your rear view mirrors, voila!

Not Shown: Find some way to make it so things you keep in your car storage areas don't become 17 million degrees, I cant even try to put on my sunglasses for at least 5 minutes, and good luck son if you're trying to pay with cash and your digging for coins in your drink holder. Say hello to second degree burns.