Good Deals!

As a kid, I’ve had this fascination with languages of the world around me.

I once tried to take basic Spanish and French classes in the same year — I was in third grade. That act alone showed me an appreciation for people who have command of more than one language, because that year showed me how hard it is to learn a language solely by hearing it OR seeing it.

While checking my email accounts (goodness, I have many of them), I stumbled across a link where one can, for Free: Learn English with audio.
Given that English is my native language, I was inclined to toy around with the site, to see just how well it was done.

The home page is essentially bare, save for one Google AdWords box, and the flash object containing the flash cards (no pun intended), which I find to be a very good idea. Nothing says “Learn English” better than a gigantic flash ad for Verizon High Speed FiOS, right?

The Flash box on the page has five labels. Four languages are supported on a path to learn English: Spanish, French, Russian, and Hebrew. There is a standalone label that gives only the English, with no transliterations or translations of words to English, as well as the aforementioned language labels, whose contents come complete with a transliteration of the way the word sounds, as well as the audible enunciation of the words.

For example, I chose French.
For appliances, I see what we call a Stereo in English:
Stereo, sti’(r)io, chaîne stéréo
The first is the English spelling. The second is a transliteration of how we say it in English, and the last is the (familiar) French way of saying the same object. If I clicked on it, I’d hear the “sti’(r)io” as the enunciation.

It’s a pretty healthy way to teach the basics of words, though I admit, I don’t miss conjugating verbs with these cards (simply because I hated conjugating être in my French classes).

I can see how having a free resource to begin learning English as a Second Language from would be so useful.

[tags]ESL, English as a Second Language, Polyglot, Linguistics, Learn English, Contributors[/tags]

Well, I’ve been playing with my phone too much lately.

I’ve found that the TV channels on Sprint aren’t too bad, but the [adult swim] channel was miserable, at best. That channel leaves much to be desired, because it’s not showing any shows, but instead is showing 30 second to 1 minute shorts of content that can be watched on a television. To spend $4 a month on this would be an insult to me, really. (However, the $5 I’ve spent on the ATAKU channel was soooo worth it. Evangelion, hoooo~)

The software is a mixed bag, though.

AOL Instant Messenger’s not worth paying for on this phone:
The menus for the application are inconsistent — too much hunting around to get things done. There’s not enough visual cues in the software — I have to keep looking around to see if I’m in the text box.
The settings for the program are non-existent. I can’t tell the bloody thing to turn off the vibrator when it’s receiving a message. This causes the battery to drain faster than any other application on this phone (it’s actually neck and neck with watching Sprint TV).

The paid games on Sprint are mediocre, really, but they could be worse.

I’ve also spent some time looking at other sites, such as Zedge, GameJump, and Cellufun.
I’m finding free games to play for my phone, which are ad supported, but the ads’re not too bad.

Ah, time to go to work.

For those of you who are keeping track of my roadmap posted a little while back, you may have noticed one or two ‘complete’ flags listed.

I’ve gone and done a full update on that map to bring it up to speed here, so that you can see where I’ve gone, and where I’m going to go from there. Once I get the stability portion handled, then I can add other things that I feel that I need to get done to the list.

Right now, biggest priority is to get a vehicle, to make it easier to get to and from work.
I’m currently paying a coworker to get me back and forth on four days of the week, leaving me to my own devices on Mondays (usually a taxi).

When my schedule rotates next month, leaving me off on Sundays and Mondays, it may become easier with a bicycle, which I intend to purchase soon (unless I can find a car with what I *do* have saved).

I just need to see how this will pan out.

No time like the present to throw out an off-hand reference to Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, while talking about my phone.

As some of you may have noticed in a previous post, my phone was stolen while I was in a homeless shelter. I had a normal habit of placing my phone next to me in the bed while I’m charging it up, basically sleeping with it on the charger.
After about two months, someone decided it’d be fun to steal my old Samsung A640.

At first, when I went into a Sprint location (on Kennedy Blvd. and Himes Ave.), they not only didn’t want to work with me, but they also breached account privacy by not going through a proper validation step for the account. That is, they didn’t ask me to provide identification, AND they didn’t ask me for the account password to prove that I am who I say I am.
They simply turned off the phone, and didn’t bother working with me. They could have said, “Since you didn’t have the full insurance,” (another gripe for later), “the only way we can offer a discount on the price of the phone is by renewing your contract for two years.” That alone would’ve pacified me. No, the girl was rather rude in her portraying that I would have to pay full price on the phone, and there wasn’t really any other option.

I was seething mad after that in the first store, and didn’t trust that they had even done anything, so I went to another Sprint location in WestShore Plaza. I met a rather nice guy in there, and he was much more on top of things. He actually took an effort in validating who I was before confirming that the phone had been deactivated, and I hope that the higher muckity-mucks at Sprint know to reward him for that, since I ended up calling Sprint several days later.

I called Sprint on Monday morning to just close my account.
Since the cost of replacing the phone would be more than the cost of terminating the account early, I called in, and made my complaint about that one Sprint store, gave kudos to the other, and then asked for the cancellation department.

I get a rather nice gal on the other end in Cancellation (probably labeled ‘Saves’ internally, since she did her best on this call to keep me), and I explain to her just why I was cancelling my Sprint account (the privacy issue*, the fact that at this point the cost of early termination is lower than the cost of replacing my phone with a decent one from Sprint, and a bit about how the insurance plans were portrayed to me when I bought the phone, which all pulled things together in how I wanted to just cancel and get it over with).

She asked me to hold on, so she could relay the issue to a supervisor.
She and the supervisor basically apologized for the problem, and asked if I’d be willing to stay on with Sprint if I could get a discount on a replacement phone, since I also told them that I was considering coming in the next week anyway to try getting an upgrade to a better phone (read: they saw dollar signs there).

I listened to their terms and conditions on it, which they boiled down to actually (zOMG) make sense in a short period of time, while offering full information.

I was interested, so I accepted.

Sprint is mailing out the replacement phone, and all I need to do is go make a payment for it.
I won’t disclose the amount of the payment here, but I’ll say this much:

• It beats paying full price for this phone!
• It beats paying Sprint the cancellation fee, and then buying a prepaid phone or buying a MetroPCS phone (which I was reconsidering).

The week’s beginning to look a little better, especially with the phone replacement I’m getting:
I’ll be receiving a Samsung A900m to replace my old Samsung A640. (You can compare them side by side at phonescoop.com by following this sentence.)

I just need to bide my time now.

I was reading my email this morning, trying to ignore my instructor’s “musical” choices before 7 am, and I got this email from TigerDirect.com.

In the email, they mentioned that they received a really nice deal:
CA Anti-Virus 2007 with 2GB USB Flash Drive, free after rebate.
I was jaw-dropped when I saw that, because it’s just that nice of a deal.
Spend $50 to get the software and stick, then get that $50 back in rebates.

There are some limitations that apply (Sales Tax is charged if you’re in Florida, Illinois, or North Carolina), and shipping for the item by itself is a relatively modest amount. The offer ends on March 31st, so don’t let this slide past you.

Okay! Zookoda has granted me broadcast permissions, so I can now officially run that mailing list.

Right now, the confirmation pages are generic, because I don’t have a minute to actually put together a real page here on my site, so forgive me for that. However, it is a subscription based mailing list, that you must opt in to receive content.

It should mail out early on the mornings on Saturdays, so you’ll get a weekly drop of everything that I’ve said here.

Warning: Hotmail might choke on the email, since it’s UTF-8, and Hotmail seems to have issues with that, according to the guys at Zookoda.

Sign up, and let me know what you think.

I’ve always had this thing for crafts done by hand, beyond someone smearing colors on a piece of canvas, or someone else with an unbelievably expensive camera snapping images.

When I was very young, one of my older aunts (now deceased, sadly) had, instead of photos or paintings on her walls, wrought iron wall art. I would sit in a chair in her living room, just eying these pieces, letting my eyes follow the intricate shapes that the bent metal bore, because they were just interesting in their own right.

Wrought Iron goes very well on solid colored walls, to break up the monotony of that wall’s appearance. It also stands to be a conversation piece of its own right, as people — family, friends, and guests alike — might ask you where you found such beautiful craftsmanship.

I hope to have something like the Salinas Wrought Iron Candle Holder, once I get an apartment of my own. It would go great with my habit of using aromatic candles, thus bringing a little functionality into an otherwise purely artistic wall hanging.

[tags]Wrought Iron, Wall Art, Metal Crafting, Home Decoration[/tags]