A day off!

Tday, I have a day off from my exams (owing to the fact I don’t do Biology or Art).

Friday I have a tough day, with History and English Paper 2, so unfortunately there won’t be much relaxing going on today.

Today I just had Irish paper 1, which was ok, since it’s not really a difficult paper, but in terms of previous years, it was a difficult exam. Usually the comprehensions on the papers are topical and things teenagers would know about, but the stuff on this was pretty odd.

There was also a little too much time given to this paper, as literally everyone was finished early.

Also, I meant to post this earlier. On the first day of these exams I noticed there was no clock in the exam hall. So I ask one teacher and she tells me she’ll get one soon. A few minutes later I see her leave the hall and come back empty handed. This angered poor Mark who was taking a classy approach to these exams, as one of the main reasons for them is to practice time management, so with no way to tell the time in the fucking exam hall, this becomes unless you have mastered the sun’s progress as a method of telling the time. So I then ask another teacher. He comes back in a few minutes with a clock - and a cup of coffee of course.

The same thing happened in the exams we had in November, and I had to ask a teacher to get a clock then.

It’s not like this sort of thing keeps me up all night (not every night anyway) but jesus, if you teachers are going to rant and rave about preparing for our exams, for christ’s sake, do your end of the deal, and give us the few things we need. My maths test had some of us sharing log tables between two people. Surely it’s not hard to ensure there’s enough to supply us all with one (for the love of God, you’re the Maths department, ‘number of students > number of log tables’ is simply not a good equation!)

Used some variation of God’s name three times in that paragraph.

There was an interesting discussion on the radio this evening about whether or not the Irish language should be a compulsory subject in the Leaving Cert curriculum. Having enjoyed my previous radio experience, I wanted to ring up, since I could give a first hand opinion, and the complete lack of intelligence of the part of most callers was so irritating. Of course in the end I wussed out though and didn’t call, but this did make me want to listen to the radio more, so perhaps I’ll become a caller on there. I can’t decide whether I love or hate the old bags that ring up the stations, throwing out the old clichés in their raspy Dublin accents. You know the ones who counter any argument with, “Well I’ll tell you somethin’ ”

Anyway, I’m off to study.

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Manners Gentlemen

Lately I’m getting sick of dealing with idiots who conduct business with showing any sort of courtesy or manners.

Showing respect and being polite is something everyone should do anyway, but in business this will generally benefit you. Not just the politeness and courtesy, but also professionalism, as in using correct grammar and spelling when emailing a potential customer and things like that.

We see evidence of this everywhere. For example, shops. When you’re being served in a shop by some annoying little bastard it puts you off going to that place, whereas you’re more than happy returning to a shop where customers are always treated well.

I always try to be polite and respectful in business as possible. I don’t lie to increase my profits or sales, and generally this goes down well with any customers I’ve had.

Here’s an example I experienced two days ago which demonstrated the importance of courtesy and professionalism.

I needed to get a book for some research project in school. The book was difficult enough to find, particularly from a seller based in Ireland or the UK, and I didn’t want to wait weeks for shipping from America. So I went onto Abebooks.co.uk and found a few British sellers. I mailed three of them this message :

” “[Sekritz book title here]” book.

I’m in Ireland and need this book asap. I’m willing to pay extra for faster delivery if necessary. I’d also like to know if you would accept paypal as payment rather than Credit Card? I could manage credit card if needed but it wouldn’t be preferable at all.

Cheers,

Mark. “

One of the sellers didn’t reply at all. Another seller sent this exact response, which was so damn irritating.

“pay normal and we will send out first today
fran”

All lower case letters (from a book seller for christ’s sake!) and no greeting. And pay “normal” ?! I understand what she meant but I think Paypal is a fairly”normal” method of payment, so I think it’d have been better to ask me to pay by credit card. The general shittyness of this response left me very reluctant to deal with this seller.

Soon enough I got a third reply, and this was much more what I expected. Here’s the reply :

“Hi Mark

Thank you for your enquiry. I have had the book taken out of storage this morning for weighing and it is nearly 2Kg which does add to the cost. Your options are as follows

ROYAL MAIL AIRMAIL - No guarantees at all! £17.85

COURIER NON GUARANTEED SERVICE - Usually 2-5 days but not guaranteed and not recommended as may not be faster than Airmail if you are unlucky £24.99

COURIER NEXT DAY GUARANTEED - This service is guaranteed for delivery by the end of the next working day £44.49

Only the final service is guaranteed in any way at all. The problem is that collection MUST be booked by 10.00 a.m. this morning for delivery by the end of tomorrow. If we miss that cut off time they will collect on Friday and deliver on Monday

Please telephone me urgently if you require this service booked today. My landline number is set out below and I am sure you know how to adjust it for calling to the mainland. We can sort out payment after we have it booked but Paypal is not a problem

Best wishes

Alex“

This was followed by all his contact details and website. I replied telling him my choice and asked him a few questions, and he promptly replied answering every single one. I told him to send the paypal bill and all that. He had the book ready for shipment before I’d even confirmed the payment. After we agreed our deal and everything had been done, I commented on his professionalism and thanked him for the great transaction, and told him I’d be checking him out first if I need to order any more books online. His response was prompt, polite and professional, (3 p’s?) and for that he got my business and potentially future business from me.

I’ve actually often seen seller’s on Digital Point lose customers simply from being rude in some way.

Treat customers well, and conduct yourself professionally and you give yourself a much better chance of being successful, and earning some cash. Look at any of the big guys in online marketing, and you’d struggle to find an example of them being rude (without good reason anyway!).

Being polite and helpful has earned me some good contacts who I’m always willing to help out and they’re always willing to do the same. Remember when my ebook was stolen? Read that post and see how those contacts of mine all came on to tear that thief to shreds with me. Would I have gotten that sort of help if I hadn’t established good ties? I think not mes amis.

So while I’m talking about being courteous and treating customers well, I’ll let you guys know how to get my new ebook at the discount price of $7, on this thread. Post on there or give me a shout if you wish to purchase.

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Digital Point forums are going down the drain

That’s right, I’m sorry to say that Digital Point forums are really turning to shit. Lately the place is just becoming a haven for cheap bastards with poorly spoken english to gather and “post”. The place is simply full of people selling and reselling the same shit, most of which they probably don’t even have resale rights to (read about my experiences on this in this link).

There just seems to be so little quality material around DP. A friend of mine, William Montanaro, showed me a great example of just how shitty DP has gotten. William’s a great writer, and wrote a 75 page Traffic Superbook ebook that was retailing at $47, which was actually a great price for the wealth of information contained in there. He offered this to the punters on Digital Point as the discount price of $20, and got just one sale on there I think. Now website traffic is the thing everyone should want to improve on, because you need traffic before you can do anything with a site. Get traffic and then start working on profit.

But of course, a long term investment isn’t what DP users want. William then wrote another ebook targetting the DP market, and made himself a decent bit of cash. The ebook this time? A few pages about a little method he found that earns a bit of quick cash if you constantly put work into. Now it was a good book and all, but the fact that this sold more copies than his other traffic ebook showed the interests of Digital Point users.

I’m getting more and more pissed off at people on there speaking awful broken english and even trying to scam people. The place has gotten so full of idiots. Ever wondered why you rarely see the major players in internet marketing on there?

Unfortunately for me, it’s so active, even if a lot of those active users are irritating, so it’s a handy place to see webmaster news and make money here and there. Be careful in looking for work on there though, you’ll be on slave labour rates if you plan on writing or designing for money.

Even worse, the moderators on there lately have really lost the plot. Infractions and bans are being handed out for the stupidest things, if they’re breaking a new rule on a technicality or something. Too often lately I’m seeing failure to use common sense on the part of mods.

Recently a very popular poster on there, Samantha, was banned, which was pretty disgraceful since she was always catching scammers and alerting the mods, and generally doing good work for the forum. See her post about the whole thing here. Guys I strongly recommend checking out her site, you’ll be shocked that the mods banned who must have been the hottest girl on the entire forum. Then have a look at the thread where people asked why she’d been banned, which is here. Cleverly she changed around some images she had linked to during her time on DP, and wrote messages to the mods via those, for example, the images below.

You gotta love that bitchiness.

I myself have gotten infractions for silly things in my time, I even posted about one a while back, have a look here for more info in that.

Overall I’m logging onto DP more out of habit than anything else lately. I sincerely hope I find a new place to spend my time and conduct business, but it’ll be hard to find somewhere quite as active.

It also seems like the ways of making money are quite limited. Everyone just seems to do the same things - Proxies, Flipping Sites, Writing an ebook (then flipping the ebook’s site), and of course, blogs. Not that there’s anything wrong with these methods, but I would love to find a unique idea, that could work long term and bring regular passive income rather than just something to make a quick buck.

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The Thievin’ Bahstids!

There’s a valuable lesson to be learned in this post - People are bastards. Bastard coated bastards with bastard filling.

Allow me to explain. I’ve had a total of 3 different people steal my ebook and try to sell it as their own work. This pisses me off no end, and truly makes me want to get my revenge on these people who dare leech off my hard work to earn a few sly dollars.

The first guy who did this did it when I was still running my ebook site, and getting sales. He was some Indian guy who tried changing a few words here and there from my ebook. All images were the same (including the random screenshot I’d taken for no real reason, other than aesthetics) and 90% of text was my exact words. So I basically went crazy at the guy, who was trying to sell it on the same forum as I was. His thread got ruined by me and a few friends. He then tried changing his ebook to get himself off the hook, but of course I was smart enough to save the original copy to my hard-drive. The guy was so irritatingly stupid. A week later he tried again and I pwned him, and where is he now? Banned. Justice.

Then last week, I had two different guys trying something similar. Only idiots try this sort of thing, because only idiots can’t make a few dollars online, and only idiots would think they would get away with this kind of blatant thievery.

The first one of these was clearly not a native english speaker, so this worried me when I saw him selling an english ebook. I didn’t want to wait to find out if it was a copy of mine, so I paid him his $5 price and bought a copy of the ebook. See the thread here. A lot of people were interested, so it’s a good thing I got in so early, but others people did ask him if he meant my site, which shows the ebook and site are pretty well known, which is good. he He responded saying he’d never seen that site before. Alas, this was a lie.

So this guy sends me a message with a ton of text in it as the “ebook”. Poor form. So I read it and realise it’s my ebook, and the guy has executed this so so poorly. Here’s my reply on the thread :

“You just sold me a copy of my own ebook where you tried to change the words but basically just made it less coherant. You’re a dick.
You didn’t even put the thing into an ebook, you copied my text and put it into a PM to sell.
I’m getting so sick of thieves like you.
Look at this guy’s english and grammar, does he look like someone who could write a decent ebook?
Stop selling this stolen material immediately, and refund me the money I paid for this. I don’t really enjoy paying someone else to send me my own work.
[I then edited it to include this next bit also]
Man you’re also such a damn idiot. In my ebook I had links to certain sites, and you copied the text but didn’t even link it. So you have parts saying “click here” and there’s nothing!
This guide is a shit ripoff of getfrontpage.com, and you have no rights to resell the material, so I strongly advise that you stop immediately, before trouble arises.”

Necessarily harsh. He replies with :

“i didnt copied your work, your work is similar to my work.
Also, if u say it is similar to your work, then I will sell different methods.
thanks”

And we get some classic Walsho ownage in my reply :

“Similar to my work?! You are such a tool.
You didn’t even change the bit of my book where I refer back to my website, which is a giveaway since you don’t even have a fucking website.
Your idiocy is beyond comprehension.”

Idiocy beyond comprehension, not bad eh? One guy commented after that post, saying :

“Sorry mods, but had to say this:
Ambhad you got PWNT, quit trying to defend yourself. He caught you there, don’t try taking the quick road to riches.“

The thread was then locked, and the guy got banned for either this reason, or acting the bollocks somewhere else.

But we’re not done yet folks, we’ve one more guy to laugh at. And this guy’s the best. You can read this one at this link, and I strongly advise you to read through the thread yourself, as it’s simply priceless. Things started to go wrong for this guy when people began to ask him if he wrote the ebook himself, and then one kind member of the forum messaged me asking if I had given him resell rights. Obviously I hadn’t, so I asked for the download link that he was selling. This proved that the guy was selling my exact ebook, using a fucking rapidshare link. My name still on it, my website, everything. The exact file. He was obviously too much of a an idiot to even know how to change it a tiny bit.

I posted asking if if was my ebook, and he replied quite rudely, and tried to reassure everyone that there was no resell rights issue. So once I discovered that he was infact selling my ebook, I went to town.

“You absolute bastard, you stole my ebook. You didn’t change a single thing about my book, still has my name, my links, everything. You have absolutely no rights to do this.
Don’t dare sell another copy, theiving scum.
This ebook is stolen from www.getfrontpage.com“

And dear readers, I hope you’re ready for the most retarded response you will ever find. Usually when this happens the person puts up a weak defence, or just disappears completely. Here’s what this guy replied when he’d been caught.

“oh really? “

I mean, what the hell is that?! From this post onwards, everyone just raped this guy. I had a few of my online friends looking and helping out with the rapage. So in reply to his pitiful response, I posted :

“That’s the best defense case I’ve ever heard in my life.
Seriously, have you considered a career as a lawyer? “

Jason then posted the hilarious and appropriate image in reply to his defence :

The thread then just turned into a bit of chaos, with me and a few mates on there completely taking the piss and posting hilarious and insulting comments. A few people remarked that it was “thread of the year” and one guy submitted a screenshot that resulted from the whole thing to Digg, which you can check out here. It was really hilarious, the group of us who know each other joining up and taking this guy down. The thread had a lot of people viewing it too, so I’d say a lot of people enjoyed it. The guy hasn’t been banned, but he won’t be trying shit like that again.

Anyway, I’d like to thank Jason, William, Sean and Mongey for all having my back, and they all convieniently have blogs for me to link to as a thanks! Yours truly actually bought Mongey his first domain name as an early Christmas present, so give his brand new blog some traffic Thanks to any strangers who also joined in the fun on the thread, but since I don’t know them I’m too lazy to find out their names and link to their sites.

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Leaving the job

Lately with the pressures of school and exams, and having to balance them with online work and socialising, having even just a part time job is hindering me a lot. That and the fact that I freakin’ hate the job, working in a damn shop, serving idiots all day long, helping idiots all day long. Then lock up the place, and apologise to the idiots who come knocking after you’ve closed, because you won’t let them in. Some people are beyond belief. They’ll come knocking on the door of a locked shop, begging me to let them in so they can buy something utterly unnecessary. Sorry love, I want to go home, you had all damn day to buy your crap. Then repeat next week.

I’d much rather stay in on a Sunday and relax, or nurse a hangover in the comfort of my own home rather than tolerate customers all day. So, I’ve decided I’m going to give up working, at least until next summer. I make a bit online to sustain me, and I’ll get money elsewhere too (yes that’s right, the parentals). I’d like to be gone before Christmas, so I can totally relax over the break.

I won’t miss the place or the work at all to be honest, how could I miss such unrewarding crap? There’s a few people there that I like, but I’ll see most of them around anyway, and for those that I won’t, well, there’s always the social networking sites

So sometime this week I plan to go and inform my boss of my decision, and take the first step on the road to being unemployed. I’m so damn excited about having a weekend without the thought of work looming over my head.

I intended to have great plans (with timetables and diagrams n’ all!) up on here tonight, but of course, having to work gave me very little time. Tomorrow my main aim is to sort out some of the issues with this blog, such as the links and contact pages, and that sort of thing. As well as that, I’d like to pull in a few more sales of my ebook, which has actually done well enough over this weekend, but there’ll be a post on that coming soon.

Also, I encourage you to check out the sexy new theme William Montanaro has gotten on his blog. I tell you, if that new theme was a woman, I’d love to take her out for a nice meal and back to my place for coffee. Congratulations to him on that.

Another Monday morning tomorrow, let the fun begin

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Ten daily annoyances

Lately a few different things have been annoying me, and they’re the little everyday experiences that happen to everyone now and again. Here’s my top 10 latest annoyances :

1. When you’re trying to eat a slice of pizza and the cheese doesn’t break off properly and burns your chin or just stretches out endlessly.

2. When you walk into a room and forget why you went there

3. When people are taking ages at the ATM machine. What could they possibly be doing that takes so long?

4.When you go bed earlier with the intention of getting an early night and then not being able to sleep.

5. When you have a missed call on your phone from a private/withheld number.

6. Waiting at the damn bus stop for ages, when everyone else’s bus seems to be coming every minute.

7. When you find yourself somewhere surrounded by other people’s screaming children.

8. When you put your hand under a table and find someone else’s old chewing gum stuck there

9. When everyone else’s line in a shop is moving so much faster than yours.

10. When you get into the shower and it’s freezing on your poor naked body

Who hasn’t experienced these things at some point?

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“OMG I totally failed that test!”

Time for a good ol’ rant me thinks.

There were a few things that consistently annoyed me during the exams this week. I hate how people feel the need to lie so damn much over some stupid things. We all know that conversation before an exam, where you ask the mindless drone next to you if he or she studied. “OMG lyk noez!” is the general response you get. 90% of the time, this is a lie. Even when I got asked, I’d tell the questioner that I did a little bit, because that was the truth. Despite spending a lot of my study time doing more important things such as beboing and blogging, I always did a little bit of study. I actually gain a lot of respect for a person who tells me that they actually did a good bit of study for a test, because it’s simply not the usual answer you hear. Of course I know there are times when people are telling the truth when they say they didn’t study.

Then the same person who said they didn’t study will write furiously for two hours in the exam hall, putting their hand up on two different occasions for another exam booklet to write in, and on one occasion even asking for some graph paper and doing calculations on a calculator, despite the fact that’s it’s an english exam.

And what do they say at the end? “Oh I like, so failed that!”

Fortunately, I’ve noticed a lot of people have quit this stupid behaviour in their later years, and are being honest more often, but the rest of you, please, admit to being a nerd and be proud of doing well as a result.

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A power cut? In this day and age?!

Damn you ESB (the Irish electricity provider to those who don’t know). From 6pm today until after 11pm my electricity was gone. This meant not only could I not do my website I wanted to do earlier, I couldn’t even use the time away from my laptop to study well, because I had to do it in candlelight!

Very very frustrating. The power went at the time when everyone needs it most. 6pm, making dinner and getting home from work etc. Then to come back this late, when most people are going to bed anyway. I know it’s not too often that the power goes down, but it should be like that. We’re paying for a service for which it’s a necessity that it’s always on. We rely on the electricity, which is why we pay so much for it. If there was some routine maintenance going on or something, then surely they would have known in advance and could have let us know. If we were told in advance that the power would be off from whatever time until whenever, then fine, at least we know and can prepare, and if maintenance has to be done then there’s nothing we can complain about. But five hours without notice of no electricity? Boo hiss boo.

Also, while I’m ranting. Yesterday I rang Dixons (electronic shop) and asked about the iPod I want to buy. The guy told me there was none in stock, but an order came in that day, so chances are there’s a few in that, but it’s not up yet, so ring back tomorrow. I imagine that order would have come in that morning, and surely I’m not the only person waiting on something from it, so why the hell isn’t it put up immediately?

Anyway, I ring back today. And get told that they have none in stock, but an order came in yesterday but it’s not up yet, so ring back tomorrow. For fuck’s sake! I want my damn iPod, and I want it now. Now if they manage to go to the clearly strenuous effort of opening the damn order and doing their job by tomorrow, I’ll get it then, and get stuck in Friday afternoon rushes

Rant over, you bunch of bastards.

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Maynooth Lectures

Last night I was at NUIM for some lectures about college courses and the jobs you can get afterwards. Well I should have been.

The story was that each person went to two lectures, one at 7.30 and one at 8.30. My first one was Information Technology and Computers.

I thought this was absolutely awful and completely useless. Firstly there weren’t many there, which I was surprised. Then, of those who were there, I’d say about 50% of them were scumbags who were in that room because A) they couldn’t find the room they were meant to be in so just rambled in and hoped for the best or B) They think they can do computers because they love going on bebo.

Of course some people there seemed to know what was going on, but so many scumbags there (half of whom were arriving late) really annoyed me. Sorry buddy, I think you’re looking for advanced knackerism down the hall there.

The talk itself was just by these two women who work in IT Alliance. I got absolutely nothing out of it. It was basically them talking utter shite about their company then giving stories about how different employees had come to work there. I was under the impression that this lecture would have been a nuetral broad view of the course and what to do with it, not a recruiting effort from some company.

Next up for me was Sales and Marketing, which was pretty packed, and should have been held in one of the lecture rooms instead of the shitty classroom we were thrown into. The guy talking to us was actually very very good. It seemed he hadn’t done anything of the sort before, as he asked a few times if how he was going about it was okay with us, and generally looking for a response more than most lecturers seem to do.

But he was experienced in his field. He was a genuine salesman/marketer who was doing pretty well. He had a pretty interesting backstory too. He was dyslexic (which let me forgive the 3 or so spelling/grammar errors I’d spotted in his powerpoint presentation!) and joined the army at fourteen after forging his birth cert. I also liked the classy suit he had on.

He taught me a few things, and reiterated a few things I’d learned from my online work, so I knew he wasn’t a bullshitter. I think everyone came out of that agreeing that it was a worthwhile talk and we’d learned something.

Also, with the salary sums I saw in there, I’m really considering a career in sales/marketing, so he really did a good job.

Apologies for the language of this post, but some of the stuff at the start really did annoy me (thus, I’ve filed this under “Ranting” also).

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Accepting rant ideas.

I feel like a good ol’ rant. Haven’t had one in so long. I think there’s only 3 of my rants on this blog, and they’re the best posts on the whole site I reckon. So although I have all the hatred I need for a good rant, I can’t seem to think of a particular subject to focus this hatred on.

Help me rant folks, I need to rant.

This post made me realise how odd the word rant is.

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