Holy Moly, Apple does return and refund iPhone apps!!

I am THE biggest stickler for value:money (ratio), and firmly believe in “You get what you pay for.” Upon recommendation, I forked over cash for Beejive –an IM application, when iPhone OS 3.0 was released; mainly for the push function. (Push is notification of new activity, even when the application is closed).

Long story short, Beejive is still extremely buggy and utterly useless. i.e. super crashy, couldn’t log on with mutiple accounts, server errors galore…I just had all sorts of issues with it.

I felt ripped off.

$10 bucks for an iPhone app is HELLA money in my book. For 10bucks, I can get four iced espressos at Starbucks, eight bags of Swedish Fish, 9 soft serves from McDonald’s, or nine 99cent iPhone apps, etc., etc., you get the picture right? So I spent a few days complaining on Twitter about how much Beejive sucks.

On Saturday, I couldn’t take Beejive’s suckiness anymore so I Tweeted: “Dear Beejive, I would like a refund.”

I assumed iPhone application returns and or refunds were near impossible…iTunes and Apple’s site are clustermesses and for the life of me, I could not figure out how to request a refund. Seriously, try “Search” on both, it works but seriously needs help. People were sharing their personal nightmare experiences with Apple refunds, and Sean even got locked out of his iTunes account.

It looked like a refund wasn’t happening…until FriendFeeders Drew and Kisha linked me to two successful refund stories. I followed the directions and requested refunds for (1) Beejive and (2) Chocolatier –a game I purchased by “accident”. ;) hehehe.

These are the steps I followed to request a refund:

1. Open iTunes
2. Log on to your account
3. Go to purchase history
4. Report a problem
5. Fill out form with reason for refund (nicely)
6. Wait

Apple resolved my issues with a quick turn around time, hassle free, and was really really nice about it, too. And I am not going to lie, it shocked the crap out of me! …It may have helped I was clear and concise: “Beejive is not working out for me because x and x. Therefore, I would like x.” Manners and politeness can be advantageous, too. :)

At any rate, thank you, once again, to the wonderful FriendFeed and Twitter communities for helping me out and offering advice, as well as sharing your own personal experiences. Though it is hard to respond to every single @reply and comment, I read every single one of them and appreciate the insight you guys provide. :)

Reason no. 98273948379823 Social Networks RULE.

*if you are interested, there is discussion on apps and personal experiences with Beejive here. Beejive sucked for me, but there are many who experience no issues.
**Apple’s iTunes help web form’s direct link is here.

…but beyond the memories of my mom, to me, Michael Jackson has always been more than the King of Pop.

You see, my growth chart is synonymous with his discography.
A huge piece of me is all things MJ.

So his songs have always meant more than the magic formula for instant success.
MJ’s creativity, showmanship, plus talents, more than pure entertainment and his accomplishments, far beyond just a mark in history.

His existence was…and is still a part of me; his death highly personal.

I do not expect anyone to comprehend or even begin to understand how or what I feel. Nor am I asking you to feel the same way I do towards Michael Jackson.

But I am asking all of you to please respect my wishes of keeping jokes, judgments, and negative comments about MJ far away from me for a very long time.

To insult him, is like insulting me.

If you think I am overreacting, remember, that as much as you think you may know me, you do not. Like I said, MJ is highly personal and the whys are for me to know and for you to find out if I choose to share. :)

Thank you in advance for your respect.

Simple: you will be Googleable*.

Take it a step further, and you can potentially turn your Facebook into your business card…or personal website…or where you send your family and friends to keep up with your life. The possibilities are endless.

One of the best things about Facebook is consolidating a lot of your web stuff into one place. You can do it from your wall by clicking “Settings”. Then the sites available for importing will pull up: i.e. YouTube, Flickr, Yelp, etc. like this: (points below)

So instead of directing people all over the web, just point them to your Facebook page for a one stop shop. Awesome.

But the most important thing to know, are your privacy settings**.
If you don’t want people to see your activities, set your privacy!! (Settings -> Privacy Settings -> Profile) I only allow tagged photos and videos to be seen by my eyes only — don’t want incriminating stuff floating around the web. ;)

I’m super excited because I know all the crap my peers had to go through in order to generate traffic to their various sites. We have it so frickin’ easy, it makes me respect the Internet OGs even more. Chris, Dave, and Scoble, I’m looking at you guys!

You better believe I am drinking Facebook’s Google Juice.
Frankly, I’ll be chugging it down!

* Expanded discussion on how you will be “Googleable” on my Facebook.
** Nick also has a DOPE write-up about privacy: “10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know.“

Remember hickeys? I do.

I’ve had two hickeys my whole entire life and both were pretty unpleasant experiences. The first, I was around 14ish (I think) and happy to finally be included in the hickey club. All the cool kids were in that club, so I felt cool too…until I realized how much effort was required to hide the damn thing. It hit me early on, that outside of school hickeys were just big, purple, markings faaaar from cool and well…simply gross. I stopped talking to the guy who gave it to me and made it clear to those who came after him, if they dared even attempted leaving a hickey, I’d drop kick them in the head.

The second, was in my early 20s.
I was going on an all girl Vegas trip and my bf at that time left the biggest, meanest, purplest, most disgusting hickey on my left neckline a day before the trip. I remember the shock of being so caught off guard. We were in our 20s. Who leaves hickeys? WHO? …and (really) blurted out of irritation: WTF am I? A frickin’ fire hydrant? Don’t mark your territory like an EFin dog! before kicking him to the curb. As much as I liked him, insecurity* = do. not. want, and  to this day, he still thinks I am a nut-job who broke up with him over a hickey (not confirmed).

So in my mind, hickeys are GROSS.

Nowadays, hickeys have stepped its game up and gone digital. It’s allllll about subtly marking territories on Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, et al., by leaving detailed wall posts spilling personal business for all to see, or uploading and tagging photos of the two of you. The various ways people leave digital bits is pretty hilarious and telling. All I know is, digital or not, hickeys = DO NOT WANT.

That said, dating is now a lot easier, thanks to social networking sites. Filtering potentials is so much easier. I can tell a lot about another person just by their Facebook or Myspace pages. If a guy I just met had digital hickeys all over their pages, I would definitely run the other way.

Reason no. 897928374 I really really love the Internet. ;)

*Just in case he’s reading this, he wasn’t all that insecure. We were together during my peak partying years. I was working a 9-5, bartending for fun at clubs on the weekend, and partying when I wasn’t working or bartending… so I understand. But as wild as I came off, I never did anything to make anyone be insecure.

Enough is enough.

I Tweeted the article on Bay Area summer schools getting cut and the response was well, let me put it this way. All I heard were crickets chirping at the tumbleweeds rolling across my monitor.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t fault anyone for their silences. I mean, how do you respond to something like that? I don’t know either, but sometimes, I can’t help but to wonder: do we (our nation) even care?

Pardon the profanity, but our country is in deep shit. Our educational system – the foundation of this country, is an utter failure.

• San Jose Unified cuts their summer school from 4 weeks to 12 days this year to save money.
• Seattle School system cut their after school programs.
• “Currently 6,000 of the nation’s 95,000 schools are labeled as needing corrective action or restructuring because they have fallen short of testing targets under the federal law. via The SF K Files.
• There are schools in the US that asks parents to equip. their kids with basic supplies ie: toilet paper.
• Detroit has shut down their school libraries for a semester, for example, when there was enough (private) funding to pay $41 million to their NFL draft pick.

…and those are only a few examples from people I correspond with. Google “budget cuts education” and the number of news articles that pull up are ridiculous.

These budget cuts are unacceptable.

Especially, since I learned the United States is tied for first place with Switzerland for annual spending per student on its public schools*. I don’t know about you, but “not enough funding” sounds like a load of crap to me.

How is our failed educational system ok?

Well, it is not. Something MUST be done.

…I just don’t know what (yet).
But enough is enough.

*via Wikipedia and OECD
**Further discussion on my Facebook and FriendFeed.

According to my parents, I almost institutionalized them with my non-stop questions.

You know, the normal kid questions i.e. Why can’t I chew gum that’s been spit-up? Why don’t people eat the crust (sandwiches)? Why is my face so flat? (all questions I’ve asked, btw), so naturally, “Why?” was the initial word that would come out of mouth for a loooong time.

Several years ago, I noticed most “Why” questions lead to “How” questions.

For example:
“Crap. X and x, now xyz!”, followed by “WHY”s. Why did this happen? Why would it happen? Why couldn’t we prevent it? …and more often times than not, followed by finger pointing, blame, and focusing on what went wrong and frankly, talking in circles.

Once the dust (and panic) settles, we move on to solutions:

• How did this happen?
• How can we properly execute this?
• How can we effectively communicate this?
• How could we have prevented it?
• How can we ensure this never happens again?

By consciously asking more “How” instead of “Why”s right off the bat, I’ve reached solutions more efficiently and quicker …or simply: my life became a trillion times easier.

Since my how question method, emails have been drastically cut down, there are faster turn-arounds, almost always on schedule, etc., etc., because you see, the “how” is often buried in the “why”s.

So for my peers that read this (if you guys still do…I haven’t been updating) – try it, and let me know if I’m load of crap. :)
Image courtesy of Natalie Dee…god I LOVE her!

I have the absolute worst taste in men.

Lumping the men I dig into the “douchebag” category is a bit harsh, since they do not look like the common douchebags. i.e. greasy hair, designer clothes wearin, name dropping, flashy car driving, guido-ish, Myspacing…douchebags. The douchebags I am attracted to, are undercover douchebags.

Ok, you’re probably confused but check this out. So today, a very good friend of mine shed some perspective.
According to him:

“douche bags are CHARMING & confident — they come at you with unexpected sh*t cuz they’re born playas. That’s what’s attractive, a guy who knows he’s got game and isn’t afraid to take a risk, be bold, etc.

Most dudes don’t know how to take all that magnetic sh*t and package it into a something that doesn’t get all douchey. A guy has to have some swagger to be a strong dude, but he becomes a douche when he believes too much in the swagger, right? And he doesn’t realize that a little humility every now and then will make the girl swoon. He doesn’t realize that throwing some nobility, or thoughtfulness, into the mix will make him something much greater than a lady-killer. Like, if you remember some shit a girl said, and run it back to her later, holy crap. I took that little trick — of listening well — and made it part of who I am.

Lastly, a douche’s worst downfall is that he’s super selfish.

Holy crap, the man is on point!!
Then, he (my friend), closed the message with:

“etc etc. It takes one to know one ;) Clearly I have douchey propensities. The love of a good woman set me straight when I hit college, she showed me that my shenanigans weren’t cutting it. But if he’s not trained early, a dude won’t ever get straight.”

Now that is hot.
He is real, honest, tells it like it is, and knows himself. Le sigh.

Now that I know this, I need to apply.
First step? Putting myself on blast to (hopefully) avoid future mistakes.

So Mona. Focus. And watch for these characteristics:

• Thoughtfulness (or lack thereof)
• Nobility (or lack thereof)
• Seflishness

Perspective is wonderful.
But everything, is easier said than done. ha! ;)

So we are discussing best sandwiches on FriendFeed and Twitter. I suddenly remembered baloney. Since I hadn’t thought about baloney in YEARS, it was like I discovered it for the first time — again.

Conclusion: American bologna is just plain wrong.
ESPECIALLY Oscar Mayer’s version
Check this out:

(image borrowed from oscar mayer’s site)

Look at the very first ingredient!!
Mechanically separated chicken and pork

WTF?

Now I am no tree hugging-KFC-boycotting-throwing crap at celebrities animal activist but “mechanically separated” animal parts made my imagination kick off.

The only thing i could picture was this:

and chickens and pigs are run through some contraption like this:

Well have no fear, my fellow animal lovers!
Turns out it’s WORSE.

Assistance from my best friend Google enabled identifying this mysterious substance!

IT’S A FRICKIN PASTE!

Now i’m insanely curious as to how it’s made.
Oscar Mayer should YouTube the making of this said ‘paste’.
Maybe I should prompt them with a letter. Who’s with me?

NOTE: I DO NOT ADVOCATE VIOLENCE OR TORTURE IN ANY SHAPE OR FORM. THE FARM ANIMALS USED FOR EDIBLE PURPOSES ARE CALLED “STOCK” MEANING THEY ARE SPECIFICALLY BORN AND BRED FOR ONE PURPOSE ONLY. TO BE EATEN. I AM ALSO NOT A FARMER AND DO NOT PRACTICE THE METHODS ABOVE. SO PLEASE REFRAIN FROM REPORTING ME TO PETA.

AND TO THE FOLKS WHO HAVE ANY ISSUES WITH WILD ANIMALS DYING (EVEN IN THEIR NATURAL HABITATS) DO NOT SEND COMPLAINT LETTERS. PLEASE WATCH “THE LION KING”. IT DEMONSTRATES THE CIRCLE OF LIFE IN ANIMATED FORM.

Thank you and have a nice day.

Is this satire?
If not, there is something wrong with him.
Why would anyone apologize for being successful?

What a loser.
No wonder he FAILed.

OMG how true is this?
Thanks, Yashin!