Another One Bites the Dust

I found out about a week ago that Fribiz will be closing.  (I'm not really sure why I'm putting the referral link in, either.)  Fribiz is supposed to be closing today, but I don’t know when it will actually go down, as they have several auctions going.  The site will probably close whenever they finish.  I also have no idea if anything will be replacing it.

I’m going to try to get whatever else I can on Fribiz.  If not, it’s no great loss.  I haven’t been using the site for a while now.  It was only because one of my referrals mentioned it that I knew about it.  At least I won a few items on the site, which is good.

There were two auctions, both gift codes, that I wasn’t able to use.  Fortunately, I was able to auction them off on another site, Listia.  I got points for the gift codes, but I was able to use the points to get something else I wanted.  (For those of you that have codes you don’t want, Listia is a great way to get rid of them.)

I was able to sell off a few items on eBay, although not for much.  For that reason, I decided to keep a USB pencil sharpener.  I figured that I wouldn’t get that much for it new, and I have a small need for one that stays attached to something, so I decided to try it.  At least I got a review of it on what’s now Yahoo! Voices.  (The referral link seems to be here.)  Worst case scenario, I may be able to auction it off on eBay as used.

In any event, I may look for some other site similar to Fribiz.  I don’t know how good it will be, but it’s worth a shot.

Driving

Note:  I found this as a draft.  I'm not sure if this will post when I wrote it or if it will show as my most recent post.  This looks like it was from a while ago.   Rather than let the post go to waste, I'm going to let it stand as is.

 

You have entered 56,575 Bills worth $163,083
Bills with hits: 4,554 Total hits: 5,164
Hit rate: 8.05% Slugging Percentage: 9.13% (total hits/total bills)
George Score: 1,185.77
Your rank (based on George Score) is #381 (out of 53,196 current users with a George Score. [99.3 Percentile])
Your State Rank in Florida is: 23 out of 7,119 [99.7]

I’ve been driving for a few weeks now, which is part of why I haven’t been writing as much. It’s odd having to do certain things like buy gas. (Which I am doing with cash, in case you’re wondering.) I haven’t been posting in either blog, even though I’ve been taking a lot of pictures. (Check out http://sixmegs.blogspot.com/.)

I haven’t noticed any real change in the distribution of my bills, but spending them at gas stations is something that will affect the distribution within the county in which they’re spent. Since I’ve bought gas within a few miles of my house, I would think that the northeast quadrant of Miami-Dade County will be the most affected. I just don’t know how.

Having a car has had me thinking differently. Theoretically, I could go on a short trip if I had two days off. I wouldn’t necessarily do this to pick up hits in new counties, but it is something that has crossed my mind. As of this writing, I have 53 of Florida’s 67 counties. It looks like there’s one county south of Orlando that I need, and that’s De Soto County. The only major city listed seems to be Arcadia and that barely warrants an entry in the AAA book. The only way I could see going there is on the way to Sarasota or something.

There are a few north of Orlando, like Union and Bradford. It looks like all of the counties with major destinations are taken though. I also don’t want to go too far north. If I did make up my mind to go somewhere, I’d like to be able to go there and get back no later than the next day. Saint Augustine, which is pretty close to those counties, would be almost a five-hour drive from where I live. If I left early enough, I could get there by lunchtime, but I’ve never really planned a trip like that and would have no idea where to go or what to do.

Granted, all of this is just me thinking about the counties I need. I definitely don’t want to waste the gas just to spend the bills. However, if I happened to be heading in a certain direction, I might try to stop in or near a county I need. This is just one of the things I’ve been thinking about since I started driving.

Trust issues

I’m officially considering ProTypers to be a little glitchy.   I had to clear my browser history and when I logged back in to the site, my balance dropped by about $1.50.  I sent a request to customer support, but the response was something about banned accounts and not dealing with reopening them on a per-request basis.  I said nothing of being banned.  I said that my account dropped from about $4 to about $2.50 and that there’s no evidence of my having been paid nor is there any explanation.  I put a comment in to this effect, which reopened the case.  I’m hoping that I’ll get a response about my question.

If I didn’t need the money, I wouldn’t mind so much.  The problem is that it’s fairly easy work.  I wouldn’t mind actually getting paid for it.  I’d like to recommend it to people, but I can’t do that if I keep having problems with my account.  First, they don’t cash me out on time.  Now money goes missing.  I’d like to cash out at $5, which I’d have to get by Monday.

I might be able to pull off $2.50 in one day if I keep at it, but that’s a lot of work for one day.  That would have to be at least 2,000 images.  (Even at the top pay of $1.35 per 1,000 images, that’s something like 1850 images.)  I’m hoping that I can get my money back tomorrow.  I don’t know that I want to have to go through that many images, especially when trust is an issue.