I first heard about this two days ago on the news.

First generation ipod nano’s have been recalled. First generation being between September 2005 — December 2006 (I think). Easiest way to tell if you have a first gen like myself, is that the front of your nano is plastic, not metal. I got mine for my birthday in 2006. They’re recalling the product after 5 years because there has been issues with the battery overheating and burning people in some circumstances.

So, go dig up your old nano and fill out an Apple Support request. They e-mailed me back within 48 hours.

From what I’ve read on Cnet, they’re replacing the first generation nano’s with another first gen nano with a new battery.

I don’t use my iPod that often, the battery never did last me that long when I went out on runs. But I’m not about to turn down a new battery! Can you believe that I haven’t added/deleted any of my music since I originally put it on my nano back in 2006? Oops!

I’ve had my iPad for a little over a week now. I mentioned last week I’d do a review about my iPad. So here we go…

There isn’t much to tell you in the manual, so thankfully my Bosses daughter knows a lot about Apple products so at work she explained to me what I had to do when I got home with my new device.

You have to have a computer with iTunes already installed, so that you can plug your iPad into your computer via USB, and then it sync’s it to your iPad. It doesn’t even have you be your iTunes, or your computer. Just someone’s. Because then you register your iPad immediately after. So that you can of course purchase, or download free apps.

We have wireless internet at home, but I bought a sim card (which came free when I went for the 3G purchase) in case I wanted to use the internet elsewhere. Where does the sim card go? Why is this so hard?

It looks like the only spot for it to go, is in here — but maybe I’m wrong. (I was right, lol)

Everything is so well thought out and neatly packaged with apple products. I thought that pin was a decoration. What, you don’t see it either? It’s that paper clip looking thing. What’s that for? That’s to push inside that tiny little hole in the ipad so the tiny sim card can go inside. Magical.

Oh!! Screen protectors are incredibly expensive! I suppose you don’t really need one. But I don’t like screens getting dirty, and I’d rather have a piece of plastic over top to clean it with so it doesn’t get all gnarly if I have oily finger tips. I paid $10 for one stinkin’ screen protector, and that was the cheapest one I could find at Best Buy, the others were $29, and $39!

What I didn’t read up upon before applying it onto my iPad was how much dust clings to the “sticky” (it’s not really sticky) part of the protector. We (again, my bosses daughter and I, lol)  spent a good half hour trying to get it to lay correctly, then only to have it bubble a bit. It was frustrating. I googled something along the lines of screen protector dusty and came across a site where people were explaining how you should be in a damp room where the dust settles nicely, like a shower-fresh bathroom for instance. Or tape. Scotch tape works just fine. Just a little hint for you guys.

My screen protector looks great now, by the way. Lots of finger prints but no bubbles!

A few things that bothered me with certain things regarding applications and changing things up was that I don’t really know how to change my wallpaper. I mean, I technically do — you just go into the wallpaper settings. But how do I get my own images?  I suppose it’s as easy as plugging my iPad back into my own PC computer and having images on my PC to load onto my iPad. Seems a bit weird.

I use the mail application to check my gmail account. What’s annoying to me is that I don’t think that my contacts have been linked, so when I type in “Mom” in the address bar, it doesn’t automatically fill out her e-mail address. I think I’ll have to do something about that.

Also, reading some news feeds on twitter had me a bit confused, especially when I clicked on a link. You don’t have to Click the “home” button …… to exit out, re-click on the twitter icon and go back that way. It’s super easy, you just swipe your finger over, the convo and it’s gone.

One two three, gone!

Overall, I think I’m becoming more comfortable with it therefor spending hours on it each time I come home from work. I’ve written tons of e-mails on it, with grammatical errors like “,!” instead of just “!”. I’m too lazy to hit backspace sometimes. I’ve downloaded free and bought some apps foir my iPad, but deleted a few free one’s since they were garbage. I use a few things on a regular basis like Diner Dash, Twitter, Reeder (for blogs that I subscribe to via Google RSS), Mail (of course), and wordpress! The only two that cost money was Reeder ($4.99), and Diner Dash ($4.99).

I’m also having fun in photo booth, lol.Anyway, I think it’s clearly a good investment piece for what I need it for. That’s it! That’s my first review on owning an Apple iPad for a whole 10 days. It’s a pretty neat thing.

If you follow me on Twitter, you know that yesterday I went to get my first oil change on my car. It was a long process, and I didn’t know whether they were taking their sweet time, or if they were busy. The last time I had my car in for maintenance was when I was checking it all out at Mazda before my Warranty was up. They ended up replacing the water pump, which was thankfully under warranty.

At first I said:

Because it’s true. The owner knows my name, and car. Same with the young guy who I think hits on every young woman he sees. But that’s neither here nor there.

After sitting there for more than 25 minutes I started getting impatient. Shouldn’t this take only 15 minutes? What are they doing?

They quoted me for $38-$44 for the oil change and filter. Except…

Yeah. Expensive is it not? They did do a thorough job and check all the fluids in my car and even the timing belt and mentioned that I should replace the transmission fluid before 60,000km’s. Which will end up costing me $225. Uhhh. I think I’ll price around, before I go ahead with this guy because that seems awfully high. Knock on wood so far, everything seems to be running and working properly. Unlike my parents previous car (a ford escort) which was such a lemon.

Maintaining a car > Fixing a car = expensive. Boy oh boy, but is it ever worth it.

Let me share a great little secret (or maybe not so secret) with you all. There are a number of ways you can make money online through blogging and even via twitter. There are tons more ways but I will talk about the programs that I have experienced with.

Paid blogging. There are a number of different paid blogging websites. For a Canadian like myself, I like signing up for these as they don’t require your SSN number like they do in the USA. Some sites I recommend you stay away from, however a few are really good and pay out on a regular basis and always have opportunities to choose from. I know a lot of people dislike reading blogs where you can tell that they’re not being sincere about a post, or having a paid blog post put up live on a website. If you haven’t noticed already, I have been blogging and getting paid for some posts ever since this spiffykerms.com has been in existence. Often times I earn enough monthly for my biweekly grocery budget. I don’t cash in my earnings into my  bank account, as I like to accumulate it to over $150 so I can withdrawal my funds from PayPal and not hit a service fee (I think it costs $.50 if you withdrawal funds under $149 or something). It’s the best way (for me) to make money online! A lot of paid blogging sites require your blog to be a few months old with an archive of posts in order to qualify for their paid blogging, and also a few advertisers also like to see bought/owned domains (so not freebies like blogspot.com / wordpress.com) websites.

Sponsored Tweeting. Sponsored tweets is a quick way to earn cash. Depending on your followers you can probably earn a lot of money. You can set your own price, but I let the system recommend my price for me and it was $0.95 per post. Often you get advertisers offering a ridiculously low amount say $0.02 per link. You can accept or reject any offer. You can get an e-mail notification when a sponsor has an opportunity for you to tweet a message for their company. Again, sponsored tweets makes you wait until you have earned $50 to cash out. It’s going to take me a while to build that up. But it’s kind of fun really, and it’s free money for me. So I don’t mind the wait. (Follow me on twitter!)

Selling ads on your site. Making money by selling ad spots on your blog is pretty sweet. You can set your own price and  — advertisers first contacted me asking if they could reserve a spot on my website. Honestly, until then I hadn’t thought about putting ads or links on my sidebar. You can do whatever you want really! When the advertiser contacted me, I offered her a package bundle of buying three months instead of paying me monthly for her text advertisement to stay up on my site.  Remember, people aren’t mind readers, if it’s not shown on your website they may not know to ask whether or not you accept paid advertisements on your blog.

I know Google Adsense is another way to earn a few bucks by having their ads coincide with what you blog about on your website. I have yet to figure out how it exactly works. Since my blog isn’t one topic related, I’m not sure that it would be successful on my blog.

Most sites make you wait until you have earned $50.00 to cash out into your PayPal account, which can take a number of frustrating months. Always spell check your posts and check for grammatical errors. Nothing speaks unprofessional like a blog posts with a lot of errors. Ew.

I recommend you sign up for a PayPal account, it’s how most all companies will pay you. It’s free, and very secure. It’s how I buy a lot of things online (like lululemon now accepts paypal, I shop on Etsy and Ebay with my PayPal account all the time). It’s so secure because if your item does not arrive, you can file a dispute claim through PayPal. It has happened to me before with an online store that I bought a hair straightener from! I ended up getting ALL of my money back, because I just threatened the company that I was going to file a dispute with PayPal.

Finally, I’d like to hear what you all think about earning pocket money (or even a fortune, if you’re lucky!) online. Do you unsubscribe from blogs that you know are being paid for a link or review (I never get paid for a review, but I do get paid for links) or do you not mind it and go with the flow? I’d really like to hear your honest opinions!

If you would like more information about what I blogged about today, feel free to ask me in the comments or even e-mail me personally at spiffykerms at gmail dot com

I decided on my way to work (yesterday) that I was going in a tad too early and since I forgot my keys and nobody would be there to let me in, I stopped into starbucks and got a decaf Mocha frap. I like that you can customize those now, because the espresso they usually use in the frap’s give me the most painful gut rot. This time? None at all!

The boyf and I went to starbucks over the weekend and noticed they had some cute matte mugs. I saw them at this other location and still had money on my gift card that I won on Jeanine‘s site back in the spring (still haven’t touched my Birthday card yet from Kelly. Yikes, guess I wasn’t kidding when I said I like to indulge once in a while.) Okay, so twice in one weekend.

So here are the pretty mugs, all set up for a model shot with my dollar store place mats. Looks fancy, hey? :) I have some cute dollar store bowls I should show you guys too. They’d go well with my mugs!

It hit 37º and went to 36º right as soon as I got my camera out. Clearly this picture was taken at 5:00pm and not a.m., but I was ridiculous enough to go out for a run in that weather with my running buddy! We did the same loop that I did just the other day. I could not get over the droplets of sweat that was on me after our run. Gross. But the running felt SO good.

Want to know something really random and super annoying? My shift key gets stuck down on this keyboard lately and it makes me angry. It’s taking forever to spell out certain letters than need to be capitalized, such as ‘I’.

Alright, back to the post…

Sandal tan!

Painted my nails last night because I haven’t gone for a pedi/mani in over a month. I’m not sure what I think of this blue, on my toes especially. I’m not a bold polish person. But it’s China Glaze — For Audrey. I bought it on Ebay for much cheaper than it sells in stores. Speaking of Ebay. I made a purchase last night and got Essie – Van D’Go (not my nails, image found on google) and OPI Drip Dry (which supposedly works wonderful).

Fingers were nice and nude colored, classic and the way I like it. I like it when someone else does them for me though, I’m a sloppy applier.

To get this perfect shade that I love so much I had to use two different polishes. Base coat was Elf and the top was Sally Hansen. I find that Sally Hansen polishes are fairly crap, and require multiple coats (like 6…) to reach the desired result. But putting a ‘base coat’ color on like Elf’s Fair Pink (for just a buck!) helps make the colors more achievable.

Colors on their photo shoot.

The shades.

Future Shop was having a Canada Day sale on their website for one day only. I ended up buying the Boyf and I (he picked them out for us) two mice.They arrived yesterday.

Mice Nerds.

Lululemon happened to have a sale on Saturday night. Maybe it was Friday. Either way, it was ridiculously good. On my runs, I either wear my Run: Empower Crops (I have two pairs and one pair are just too unbelievably tight on my stomach that I cannot stand to wear them on a run. But I can wear them working out), and my Run: Zoom Crops, which conveniently have a zippered pocket in the back. Well, they all went on sale — so I decided to get a second pair of Zoom’s for 50% off…. I told my running buddy about it too, and I purchased her a pair. They’re so comfortable. They haven’t arrived yet but I can’t wait!

I’m not sure why they’re shown mid-calf rise. But they just barely cover my knees.

The Lululemon sale is still on, check out your loot section!

Here’s a snap shot of them from the website. We bought them in black, I already have the ones shown. Maybe they’re coming out with a new color scheme which is why they have this ginormous sale? Hope so! I want some more loose fitting tanks like these (which I so bought a few months ago).

Oh, and a new product to review! Exciting!! Stay tuned for this one ;)

Have a good Chewsday! (Who says Too’sday? Anyone?)

What are some of your blogging pet peeves? Most of these topics I listed doesn’t bother me incredibly much, but it’s a fun way to subliminally get messages across to people, right? :)

• Long blog entries, especially if you don’t have a sense of humor or something interesting to say.
• Multiple blog entries with no photos! I’m a visual person. I love pictures! (Well, no gross eczema pictures please)
  
• Too many posts in one day. I knowww. It’s a pet peeve of mine, yet I do it as well!
• Huge blocks of text without any paragraphs. Please hit enter.
• I have a few sites that I love to comment on, but rarely do because of the security feature they have on their comments section. If I have to enter a code in order for my comment to get verified, I’ll rarely comment. If you’re worried about spam, there’s a feature on WordPress called Akismet Stats. It catches all your spam so you don’t have to use that double-comment feature.
• People who comment on giveaways and say they love your website or the giveaway that I’m doing. Yet they don’t comment if it’s not a giveaway! This is my hugest pet peeve of all. I get SO many commenters just on a contest, and they never visit back! How inconsiderate. I absolutely despise this one.
  
• Bloggers that just use their website to complain. I’ll probably not follow your blog because of this. I also really dislike bloggers calling other bloggers out. I ‘unfollow’ their blog right away when that sort of thing happens. I like happy, content people! :) Remember, if you don’t have anything nice to say don’t say it at all.
  
• US only giveaways. Waah! I’m Canadian, let us in on the goods!
• No “About Me” pages. Those are so informative, or just fun to read. Blogger profile or blogspot.com often doesn’t have this feature, which is incredibly annoying.
  
• Ignoring spell check. Grammar and punctuation doesn’t bother me all that much. But please learn the basics on how to spell definitely without an “a”, and use the correct your, you’re, it’s, its … etc.
• Partial feeds on Google RSS. I dislike clicking on websites to read the whole entry, I want to read the post faster through my e-mail. If I like what I read, I’ll visit your site then
  comment.

What sort of things annoy you? Minor or major! Comment below and let me know :)

I’m a stationary fanatic, and when I find an item that I love, I rarely use it for fear of “wearing it out” such as the Pilot G2 0.5m pen lol. DON’T LAUGH, I know some of you are just as crazy as I am about pens and other writing utensils. Trust me on this.

I ended up writing the Pilot pen company back in October about my favorite pen asking where they now sold it as I couldn’t find my favorite pen anymore, to buy a backup!!! CRISIS!

Here is my e-mail that I sent to them:

Hi there!

I’ve been rarely using my favorite pen: Pilot G2 (0.5mm) for a few years, for fear of it running out of ink. I picked up this pen from a store that sold them individually. Little did i know that it became my favorite one to use, because of how fine the tip is.

I’ve tried to purchase a back up for when I run out but I have been out of luck trying to find one whether it be a new pen or a refill. I can easily find the 0.7mm tips but I don’t want to purchase those.

I’m currently located in Waterloo, Ontario Canada and searched online at Staples Business Depot and have gone to various other office stationary supply stores only to not find the pen.

I haven’t been able to find them online either on your pilot website. Did Pilot stop making this sized pen? If you could direct me in the right direction I’d be thrilled! I clearly love this pen and am on the hunt until I find my backup. I can then use it everyday. Awesome.

Thanks for your time!

Their reply?

Dear Ms. *****,

Thank you for your recent E-mail message. We appreciate the opportunity to assist you.

Listed below is the Pilot subsidiary for your location.

You may contact Crestar Limited. Crestar Limited is a subsidiary of Pilot Pen in Canada.

Website:    www.crestar-limited.com Tel:        1-514-731-3808

Each Pilot Affiliate has a specific list of products available to them and the residents of their marketing area. They may not sell outside of their area, nor may they sell directly to consumers. Regrettably to say we are unable to provide assistance for these pens.

Once again, thank you for your interest in our products.

Sincerely,

Holly ******
Consumer Advisor

Ugh. Those people do not sell singles to a person who just wants one or two pens for a back up. I’m not looking for hundreds. So I stopped, and only used my pen like once a month, literally. I’m crazy, I know. But it’s my favoriteeee pen.  It’s super incredibly fine pointed and I can print like no other.

See? I mean, a regular pen can’t make me write like that. I only use this for writing on envelopes now, or special occasions.

I thought all hope was lost.

That is, until I was at a loss for what to search for next, on Ebay to buy. Since I’m a new user and all, it’s gotten terribly addicting. I searched for my Pilot G2 (0.5mm) and found a seller in HONG KONG and I purchased a package of 6 in the first few weeks of March.

The package of 6 pens arrived on March 31 just 12 business days to get to me from Hong Kong! I’m going to covet these pens with everything I’ve got. Nobody is allowed to ever use them. lol.

Who knew people like that existed? Pilot doesn’t sell the pens, but then there’s an Ebay seller, in Hong Kong no less, who sells them. It’s an incredible place, ebay.

They are all now, sitting pretty on my desk at work — replacing my second favorite (Uniball 207).

Don’t forget, you can now subscribe to my RSS feed!

Okay, so the RSS feed isn’t working entirely. If you subscribed to my site via RSS (in whole the six hours its been working), you’ll notice that it only shows the topic of my posts, and not the full blog post itself. Which is annoying in itself, as the whole purpose of having an RSS feed set up, is to read it through google reader or whatever else that you use.

So, for now it’ll just be titles (I suppose I should be coming up with much more catchy topics, to lure people in to click the title of the post to get re-directed again to my site.

Back-end work is frustrating, isn’t it? I actually wouldn’t know. I’m not the one doing it haha…

Oh. My rice crispy squares came out good.  I let them sit for two hours & then I cut them before I went to work. I hope they harden up around lunch time. I want to EEEEAT.

I remember being a teenager and logging into free sites to read a Slots guide on how to play black jack, and even poker. The only reason I wanted to learn online slots was because I knew I had a bad poker face in real life. I still to this day would lose my lot, especially since I would smile ear to ear if I had something good in my hands. Over at lonelyheartscasino you can play casino games online, too. Except with money — so be careful and only do it for enjoyment (if you have the money).

Have you ever gambled? I don’t think that I ever have to be honest, so if I can’t remember — that means that I probably haven’t. I know I’ve played poker before, but I don’t think there was any “chips” involved. We were basically playing as a drinking game when we we younger. And by younger I mean legal drinking age. I’m serious.

So apparently their site is a ratings guide to the best online casinos, poker rooms and gaming sites on the web. You know, it’s something to keep you occupied if you’re overflowing with cash, or just want to take a gamble and try out your luck online before you gather with your buddies and practice that poker face! Never know, you could win the jackpot.