phonezoo . . . . any information?

So I was at work the other day and I kept hearing different ringtones through the wall.  I realized my boss was enjoying selecting some new ringtones. I asked him about it later and he told me about a site, http://www.phonezoo.com/Welcome.do. Apparently you can get (some) free ringtones from them. I also did a “phonezoo scam” search, because I’m sorry, if it sounds too good to be true . . .it usually is. I’m thinking it must be some kind of phishing thing or you get slammed with $12/month charges for crap you never wanted. Nothing bad came up . . . So now I’m wondering if anyone else has had any experience with them or heard anything about them. Free ringtones . . . doesn’t sound right. It would be nice, but . . I’m skeptical. I’d like to know a little more from other users before I decided to try it out.

no comments

1/2 asleep I am. (sounds like yoda speak), which I guess is suiting since I’m driving up to visit Jonny D. He likes to do his Yoda impressions often. Got home around 3:00 a.m. last night, showering and winding down took another 30 – 40 minutes or so, then I passed out from exhaustion. Wanted to keep sleeping and catch up from the sleep I’ve been missing for the past couple of days, but something woke me up.

So, I’ve been checking out my stats a little more often on my blog, since it seems I’ve been generating some traffic with my post about fanboxmail and questionit. Which I hope has been helpful in stopping the spread of it. I did my research on it and I hope you all are too. My readers have jumped, but no one leaves any comments. I’m still new to the whole blogging thing, damn near virginal, so I’m not sure how it all works, if comments are a common occurence. but I’m really curious to see who you readers are.

You’re still impossibly beautiful . . .

 . . .first thing in the morning.

Sometimes, men say the right things. He (Alex V) just texted this to me. Gives me warm fuzzzies.

We spent last night at Bin 18 on Brickell eating tapas and a couple glasses of wine (Pino Noir). His highschool friend joined us. After this we were supposed to head up to Ft Lauderdale to visit a friend of his for drinks at, The Poor House. Nearing midnight we got in the car to leave for Ft L, backed out of the space and disocvered a flat tire. About 30 minutes later a few phone calls to the rental car agency, a couple of extended arm camera photos, mini foot massages and flat tire acquirment speculation, our roadside assitance came to our rescue. We were on our way to the  Hertz airport (MIA) office to exchange the lovely Kia Spectra with it’s freshly attached spare tire for a new vehicle. He was given another Kia, which upon inspection had stains and we were back again at the counter where we told Jorge (counter guy) our discovery and that we would like another car. He began to inform us that most of their cars have stains, when he stopped about 2/3 into the sentence realizing the blunder he was indeed about to state. Another trip up to the second floor and an inspection of the Ford Escape we were designated, we were on our way. the Escape only has about 2,500 miles and the brakes sounded horrible and not the most responsive. Seriously how bad do people beat these cars up. Also, where do these auto rental companies get their cars from.

France may outlaw inciting thinness

It’s about time. I have never really had a weight issue, but it does run in my family. I have watched mothers, fathers, sisters, etc. struggle and applaud France’s forward thinking in regards to their newly adopted bill. I am including the article (quoted from the AP) for anyone to read.

By DEVORAH LAUTER, Associated Press Writer
PARIS – The French parliament’s lower house adopted a groundbreaking bill Tuesday that would make it illegal for anyone — including fashion magazines, advertisers and Web sites — to publicly incite extreme thinness.

The National Assembly approved the bill in a series of votes Tuesday, after the legislation won unanimous support from the ruling conservative UMP party. It goes to the Senate in the coming weeks.

Fashion industry experts said that, if passed, the law would be the strongest of its kind anywhere. Leaders in French couture are opposed to the idea of legal boundaries on beauty standards.

The bill was the latest and strongest of measures proposed after the 2006 anorexia-linked death of a Brazilian model prompted efforts throughout the international fashion industry to address the repercussions of using ultra-thin models.

Conservative lawmaker Valery Boyer, author of the law, argued that encouraging anorexia or severe weight loss should be punishable in court.

Doctors and psychologists treating patients with anorexia nervosa — a disorder characterized by an abnormal fear of becoming overweight — welcomed the government’s efforts to fight self-inflicted starvation, but warned that its link with media images remains hazy.

French lawmakers and fashion industry members signed a nonbinding charter last week on promoting healthier body images. Spain in 2007 banned ultra-thin models from catwalks.

But Boyer said such measures did not go far enough.

Her bill has mainly brought focus to pro-anorexic Web sites that give advice on how to eat an apple a day — and nothing else.

But Boyer insisted in her speech to lawmakers Tuesday that the legislation was much broader and could, in theory, be used against many facets of the fashion industry.

It would give judges the power to imprison and fine offenders up to $47,000 if found guilty of “inciting others to deprive themselves of food” to an “excessive” degree, Boyer said in a telephone interview before the parliamentary session.

Judges could also sanction those responsible for a magazine photo of a model whose “excessive thinness … altered her health,” she said.

Boyer said she was focusing on women’s health, though the bill applies to models of both sexes. The French Health Ministry says most of the 30,000 to 40,000 people with anorexia in France are women.

Didier Grumbach, president of the influential French Federation of Couture, said he was not aware how broad the proposed legislation was, and made no secret of his strong disapproval of such a sweeping measure.

“Never will we accept in our profession that a judge decides if a young girl is skinny or not skinny,” he said. “That doesn’t exist in the world, and it will certainly not exist in France.”

Marleen S. Williams, a psychology professor at Brigham Young University in Utah who researches the media’s effect on anorexic women, said it was nearly impossible to prove that the media causes eating disorders.

Williams said studies show fewer eating disorders in “cultures that value full-bodied women.” Yet with the new French legal initiative, she fears, “you’re putting your finger in one hole in the dike, but there are other holes, and it’s much more complex than that.”

___

Associated Press writer Emmanuel Georges-Picot in Paris contributed to this report.

fun with widgets

okay, slightly frustrating, but I figured it out. Before today, I pretty much didn’t even know what a widget was. Now, I have a new widget, it’s the sonific song thing on the right side of my blog. Kinda cool, enjoying the novelty of it. I made 2 playlists. I’ll probably switch them around from time to time. Some of the widgets I can’t figure out, so  . . . .I don’t use them. I tried the map one, but it’s not working out quite I wanted. I’ll play around with that one another day. My widget research took me into the world of widgets and I dscovered that you can find them anywher and copy & paste the info for new widgets in the “text” widget option of the blog widgets. Problem, each time I try to do this, it doesn’t work, or when I view my blog page I see the actual text of the code or when I go back to view the text, half of it has disappeared. So I guess I need to do some more figuring out. Also now I seem to be getting some popups from the sonific thing which is kind of annoying! I was on the foodnetork site  and trying to copy & paste a recipe and each time I tried to select “copy” a sonific/wordpress popup showed up. Sonific – what’s going on? I thought your widget was pretty cool, I hope I’m not disappointed.

Alex V landed last night. He’s in from L.A. Should be coming by tonight. I wanted to borrow Alex K’s, Jeff Dunham (comedian, hilarious) DVD to show him, but Alex K is being a little emotionally fickle and I just didn’t feel like dealing with it. He saw on his computer that I was looking at California rentals/roomies and I guess it kind of really struck him that yes I am going to move and I’m not going to stay here for him, no matter how much he tries to convince me. And he did/does try to convince me. . . he was in tears. I felt bad, but I’ve been nothing but honest with him. It is his choice if he wants to accept it or not. He called me on Thursday night and I was at dinner with my mom, I answered and told him I was at dinner and I’d call him back. He called obsessively, more that evening and I just didn’t feel like talking with him so I didn’t answer. I was finally getting some of my stuff done and enjoying the alone time when he wasn’t around. Around 11 p.m, the dog goes crazy barking and guess who just happened to stop by. I don’t live close to him and usually it’s  an inconvenience to him to come out here unless he’s feeling guilty badly about something.

The day before I had fallen asleep at his place and when I woke up I found him reading my texts and reviewing my call logplaying the game, Bricks on my phone, which of course he vehemently denied and said he only wanted to play the game. I do believe he was checking up on me and it kind of wigged me out.  I told him he couldn’t just stop by as I live with someone (and frankly I don’t like it). He began to question me a little about who I had dinner with etc. not convinced that yes it was actually my mother, (getting a little sick of this shit, he’s not in the position to be doing this).It was finally confirmed to me that yes he had indeed been reading my texts when he through one of my client’s name’s out at me, but used the wrong reference. My client and I text each other for appointments. There were some recent texts about appt times that I could/couldn’t make. He (Alex K) misinterpreted them and thought they secret meetings or dates or something, and casually through them out there as “I know you have guy friends, so did you have dinner with your friend (name)?”  Busted! ( I haven’t yet let him know I’m onto him and his little lie about only playing Bricks on my phone, I was just waiting for him to give himself enough rope to hang himself with).

He had the next day off as did I, but I didn’t want to spend all of it with him, I had plans for the afternoon and evening. He was somewhat distraught over the fact and kept trying to convince me to come see him when I was done. The more I said no, the more he tried. He called me a few times Friday night and I did not answer. I was enjoying myself and my time away from him. It felt lighter. A little after midnight, I had already arrived home for the night, I heard a car drive by, that I think was his, haven’t had the chance to ask him about it. He called the next day while I was at work, I answered and told him I couldn’t talk (true, I was at work). I called him when I left, he made sure to let me know he was on his way out (at 12:30 a.m.). I told him to have fun and we’d talk later. It’s really been a lighter feeling being in less communication with him. It’s true I will take partial blame as we are “friends” and I should not spend as much time at his place with him and as much time with him as we do. These few days and less phone calls have started to really kick in . . . .and it’s good.

faceboxmail is Baaad

So I’ve received a couple of emails in the past few weeks from someone I don’t know. It seems innocuous enough. It asks me to click on a link. Nope!! Not falling for that one. Yesterday I received an IM from someone I don’t know, but something seemed familiar about the name, like a déjà vu. Don’t know who the person is and since in the last 6 months or so, Yahoo IM seems to be slipping a little and letting spam IMs in, I figure eh, it’s another one of those, except there’s no link attached to it like the others, and it seems to actually be a personal IM, mentioning I always seem to be busy. (Ok, well this is true, but not a shot in the dark either) This morning I check my email and lo and behold . . . there’s that funny email I’ve received a couple of times prior and now I know why the déjà vu. It is from questionit## @ “fanboxmail”. It tells me someone has asked me a question that I still have not answered. This someone has the same name as this strange IMmer. Hmm . . .starting to put things together now (and this is before coffee/tea). So now that I have established some connection, I decide to google it and see what I can find. Spam and Phishing pop up like crazy. I come across a blog entry from the UK. He’s received it too. It has crossed the pond.

So I’m not going to give you all the blah, blah, blah that I found, you can google it for yourself, but I am putting out a warning for anyone reading me. Don’t click on it, send it straight to your spam folders!

he blew me a kiss and waved goodbye . . .

P is off and on her way to San Francisco. She left this morning. I went to her house for a little get together to say goodbye, last night. Organic cheese, wine, salad, pasta, etc. . . yummy, just the way I like it. I had planned to attend a fundraiser for the Gables RFL and then go to her house, but my hair appointment (the  shampoo girl junior stylist ran overtime) so I headed straight to P’s. I invited Bryan D and he came and met me there. He was pretty outnumbered, it was mostly us girl’s, but I think he had an ok time. There were two little boys that kind of attached to him, he seems good with kids. (admirable Darwinian quality). Since it seemed like a perfect time to mention that I was moving to Cali also, the subject came up along with all the other California talk with P’s moving there. So it’s out there now, I hope he understood that I can’t get serious about anyone with this on my imminent horizon. He was pretty informative on parts of CA, including San Diego and a little about Los Angeles, my two destination considerations. I also met a friend of P’s who is possibly planning on moving back out to L.A. in August, I got her number. She mentioned a roommate thing, which would be awesome. But can I wait till August? A little after 11 we all headed out so P could get some sleep. He filled in the “you’re friends are nice, I had a good time” verbal requirements. We kissed (innocent enough, on the lips) good bye.  We were driving the same route (partially) back home (different cars), as we came to where he turned off, he looked at me blew me a kiss and waved goodbye.

I spent a good part of yesteray online, trying to get quotes for those moving/storage box/pod/relocube companies. I looked at the 2 most popular the SAM and POD, which also turns out to be the most overpriced expensive companies. ABF, GoSmartMove and Broadway Express are looking like more reasonable options. I have been researching them and trying to find as many reviews as possible about them, so as not to get screwed, which appears to be too frequent in the moving business. I wish I could be more like P and just say whatever doesn’t fit in the car, doesn’t go, but I have too much stuff, too many clothes, a lot of kitchen stuff and a small amount of furniture, plus my most precious cargo that will take up some room, my dog. Hopefully I’ll have found someone to drive with me also, which will take up some additional room.