The gift card is a $1000 Visa Gift Card I got for doing 4 measly offers on TrustedRewards.com. I finished and was confirmed to ship on August 17 of 2007. It’s been nearly a year in wait. For the most part, the majority of freebie gifts I’ve received took at most six months. This one takes the cake.
My wife will be happy – since I’m giving the gift card to her – nice guy that I am. But in actuality she owes me about $150 or so since she had to dip into my last $500 gift card for her camping trip. She was hoping to have her $1k before the trip – didn’t pan out like that.
I still have a number of games to pick up through the end of the year; Rockband 2, Fable 2, Fallout 3, Gears of War 2, Guitar Hero 4 (wow…lots of numbers after the game titles). That should wipe out my stash.
I also have some cash coming in from a web design/programming gig I recently did but that’ll go toward some birthday gifts and a 500gb hard drive I just bought as well as my drum kit (thinking of picking up another drum pad). We’ll see.
But I’m glad this gift card finally shipped! Should have it by early next week – maybe even this Saturday.
[UPDATE]
Received it today; Aug 2, 08 in the form of two $500 American Express Gift Cards.
]]>Now I can get/pre-order all the great games coming out this year for the 360; Ninja Gaiden 2, Fallout 3, Gears of War 2, Fable 2, Guitar Hero 4, Mercenaries 2 (maybe), Unreal Tournament 3, etc.. the list is long. Just about every month through the end of the year has a great game coming out.
Now only if they’d get around to shipping my $1k Visa from YourTopBrands.com which is going on 9mo+!
]]>Our first stop was Wal-Mart (because I get a 10% discount) and they were completely tapped of DS’s. I did manage to pickup Burnout: Paradise and managed to get a Wireless 360 Controller for $40 (regularly $50) since they had it on a locked peg for the wired ones so I convinced them to sell it to me at that price. I also picked up a Hanna Montana guitar for McKennah.
Next stop; GameStop. They had a trade-up deal for a new DS if you trade in your GameBoy SP or old-style DS; $100. Stuck out there – nothing in stock. Hop in the car and head over to GameCrazy – bubkiss there too! Back in to the blizzard and hop in the car and trek over to Target. SCORE! Only color was cobalt blue but the boys were so excited that they were in stock that they didn’t care – they just wanted it. They were screaming and jumping up and down so much that before we even asked for help the clerk was there – funny. I also remembered to ask for Devil May Cry 4; good thing I did because it game with a $10 Target gift card. So now with the DS’s in hand, we head back to GameStop and pick up a game for each. By this time I’ve nearly blown the whole $500, so I had to call the card and check balance; $42.33. Phew, just enough for them to get a game. Parker got Drawn Together and Jonah got Spectrobes. I said that when I got my next card they could pick out another game – Jonah was leaning toward Lego’s: The Complete Saga and Parker wanted a Mario game.
What’s in store for the next $500? I’m thinking – Ninja Gaiden II, Army of Two, Shivering Isles, new shoes? Who knows.
]]>I’m still waiting on a $1k Visa gift card and another $500 AmEx gift card. Shouldn’t be too much longer.
[UPDATE: Received it on 2.14]
]]>I’ve been a Bloglines user for quite a while. It was my browser’s home page. It’s were I started on the web every time. I like how it works and looks. I didn’t have to install anything – it was just available.
I tried NewsGator’s web based RSS service once or twice; it just never felt right for some reason. So I stuck with Bloglines. I knew of FeedDemon from Nick Bradbury (the author); I use his TopStyle CSS editor for my web development needs – so in following that product I also heard of FeedDemon. At the time it was a purchased program. I just couldn’t figure out why anyone would want to pay for a RSS reader with so many free options on market. Sure it has some offline features and other customizable do-dad’s…but what’s the big deal?
So then came the announcement that FeedDemon was being offered for free. I downloaded and gave it a shot. It allowed me to connect directly to Bloglines (nice), import or access my Bloglines subscriptions (very nice). It has several reading options and layouts, pre-fetching of feed content and pod-casts, alerts of feed updates, and if you want, convert your subscriptions to FeedDemon/NewsGator. If you do convert your subscriptions your feeds will be synced between FeedDemon and the web based interface. Pretty dang cool.
For a while I just used it to connect to Bloglines, but after a while I figured I’d just convert my feeds and go FeedDemon whole-hog. So far so good. I have it installed at work and at home. I love the interface, the features and functionality. I may just leave Bloglines for good. We’ll see. Thanks Nick and NewsGator!
]]>For while now my car’s a/c fan has only worked on high. Wasn’t that big of a deal during summer and fall, but now that winter is on us it’s become a pain. Lately it hasn’t even been working; blowing or producing heat. If first made a call to my extended car warranty company, but low an behold, it’s expired. Great! So I made a call to my local Chrysler shop to get it in for an estimate; Aside from the issue I gave them they noticed cracked belts, leaking transmission fluid, and low coolant (a reason I wasn’t getting heat). I said let’s do it all. They managed to finish by Monday night which was good since I needed it to go back to work Tuesday. The bill? Over $1000. Yeah. Merry Christmas! There goes my bonus and part of our flexible spending. Grrr!
Just received Mass Effect from yourfree360games.com. I’ve only played through one mission so far. I’ll be able to dive into it more over Christmas vacation that starts Dec 19th. I just love the presentation. As most reviews point out, the menu/inventory system take a bit to get used to and figure out. I also love the film grain effect they applied; makes it more movie-like. Most people don’t appear to like the effect though – it’s nice that you can turn it off or on.
I received my Halo 3 Legendary package from Jake Ludington over vacation and it’s too cool. I didn’t know the helmet was that large. I’ll look great in my office once I get some shelves up. The best part is that we now have 2 copies of Halo 3 (just like Halo 2) and the boys and I can can play co-op between our two boxes.
Grrrr! This is just frustrating. Over the weekend the boys Xbox started to show corrupted colors (mostly a yellow hue) across everything. I tried three different AV cables (between standard and high-def) and between two TVs with no change. So I call into MS and they’re shipping a coffin (aka pre-paid shipping box) to have it repaired. The boys aren’t too happy about being without a box but it’s not that bad. This is repair/replacement number 2 on their box.
One of my 360 game controllers is dead as well. But here’s the hitch; in order for me to get it repaired, I need to write into Microsoft to have them move my two year extended warranty from my original Xbox 360 to my replacement. I thought that’d be automatic if your box was replaced, but apparently not. What puzzles me is that you can’t do this over the phone. Oh sure, you can call and purchase the warranty, but you can transfer it. Stupid. Good thing I have 4 controllers.
]]>I just received an email from Jake stating that I’m the lucky winner! Saaaaaaaweeeet!
I’ll post pictures once I get it in my hands!
I love winning stuff and this is one hell of a thing to win. Thanks Jake!
]]>I’ve updated the Freebie Tracker to reflect the latest gifts and to remove the Zune from Club.Live.com as they now have a stupid rule that you can only receive one hardware and one software item per address and I’ve already received one of each so the likelihood of getting that Zune is slim-to-none. No biggie (I have two).
Now it’s a waiting game for the big gift cards. From what I gathered via email with Brandarama is that that even though they have a “target ship range” of 6-8 weeks, they stated that they’re seeing a delay of 6-8; so it’s more like 14-16 weeks. Man I hope get at least one before Christmas. The first to arrive would be the $1000 one as I wrapped that up mid August. Keeping the fingers crossed!
]]>The last dangling items can be found on my Freebie Tracker. Mostly some video games and $2000 in gift cards from some Brandarama sites.
I also noticed that I got a $5 bump over at FusionCash.com when one of my referrals cashed out. Sweet! If you sign up, you’ll get a $5 bump just for signing up and if any one signs under you you’ll earn some scratch as well. There are a ton of 100% free offers, email clicks, site sign-ups, etc… When I started FusionCash, I managed to rack up about $50 in about two days of clicking. Just have an extra email address handy.
Another similar site is Inbox Dollars and I’ve been slowly building up some cash there. Mainly just clicking on emails and doing surveys. It’s actually pretty fun and easy.
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