February has been an interesting month. I didn’t do so much work-wise that I was anticipating, though I did finish up a couple projects for various nonprofit organizations both domestic and foreign. I haven’t felt like blogging much, whether nattering about my personal stuffs or professional doings.
I cleaned up most of the fraud-related stuff that occurred at the beginning of the month; I have confirmation from my bank, iTunes, and Paypal that yes, I am not responsible for these charges from iTunes. I still have $300 overdrawn on my bank account, because refunds are slow in coming. I did finally get the bank to cancel the overdraft fees associated with the fraudulent purchases. And after it happened the second time (after I had changed my password everywhere to something horrifyingly difficult and long to decipher), I removed all financial information linking the aforementioned three websites. I’m confident that Paypal and my bank are reasonably secure, insofar as they are not responsible for the sanctity of my password or my electronic devices.
But iTunes… I no longer trust them, their security protocols or their ability to weed out fraudulent apps in their own store. How can you not be aware of exactly every activity of every i-Device and every account? It’s on their servers, surely they have fail-safes and safeguards for such. Apparently not. I’ve seen hundreds of written accounts of other people swindled out of money thanks to the iTunes Store. The apple is rotten, folks.
I’ve been filling my time with personal activities: watching and listening to podcasts relating to writing, crafts, and electronics; playing with other personal websites relating to interests I feel strongly about; writing; cooking; and cleaning the clutter out of my habitat and my daily life. My former friend J was once trying to articulate the varying moods he had, sometimes playing video games and involving himself with online activities, and sometimes writing or creating game stuff. I mentioned something about output vs. input, which he adopted into his own vernacular.
I have most definitely been on an input kick. That doesn’t mean that my output has stopped altogether; I have just felt like focusing on just one thing at a time, rather than spreading my interests and activities as far and wide as I’m prone to doing. I love to juggle, I never get bored of one thing for very long before something else comes along that amuses me or captures my attention to the exclusion of all else. I guess that Mercury is direct and not retrograde just now. In fact… *looks at astrology stuffs* Oh yeah. As that is my ruling planet, I am definitely prone to that planet’s meanderings, especially when I fall out of discipline and let my mood take me where it will.
Anyway, I felt like poking in here for a moment. Next month looks to be an interesting one as well. At the forefront, the promise of car repairs in the immediate future?? We’ll see. The rest of life is going along pretty well, hubby and I are still disgustingly close, we’re setting our eyes on moving, and I just picked up a new job position that could very much be a profitable one. Gotta love volunteering on ventures. We’ll see where that gets me. In the meantime, there are fresh new listings to paruse regarding my usual schtick of freelance and volunteerism.
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Oh yeah, one thing I wanted to mention: gamification. I think it’d be really fun (ha) and profitable to get some training for that going; with as many Facebook apps and socially engaging websites I have been and will be involved in, this might be a really good skillset to have. It seems to be huge this year, and I love finding ways of making menial or necessary stuff fun.
Another thing, I have a recent new favorite blog that I thought you might like: Unf* Your Habitat (warning: f-bombs flung freely there). It’s almost gamifying in its straightforward kick-butt attitude about the crap you should be doing anyway. Do something that improves your environment, and celebrate the hell out of it. On one hand, it’s disturbing that society has apparently stooped to such a level that we must be praised for doing what we’re supposed to; on the other hand, it’s awesome to become aware of personal habits, and to improve them. So, there.
