Make money with trivia!

wow, what a cool idea.  These new FREE trivia apps are all the rage.  It all started when I was down in Dallas for a hack-a-thon and I learned about this app called HQ Trivia.  Have you tried this yet?  The concept is simple... they ask 12 multiple choice questions with 3 options each... if you answer correctly you move on to the next question.  If you get all 12 correct, you split the prize with all the winners.
HQ has had prizes of $300,000.00, $100,000.00, $50,000.00 and more... every Sunday at 8PM CST the prize is at least $25,000.00 (one thing to note... the Sunday game is typically 15 questions instead of 12)

You should play too. Use my code ‘mattssmith’ to sign up

There is another trivia app that is pretty cool too... its called the Cash Show... same basic way to make money, except they start giving out money at the sixth question!  How about that!

I'm playing Cash Show! Come and play with me! Enter my invitation code and both of us can get an "Extra Life" in game! https://share.tuanguwen.com/live_us/invitation/En?chars=UU9EZW

Missed Jury Duty Scam - Be Alert

Today I received a call from 636-212-0453 at approximately 11:20 AM.  The person on the other end claimed to be Deputy Officer Chris Stevens.  He claimed to be a desk officer due to leg injury and told me he was calling up to 70+ people who had missed their Jury Duty court dates.  He claimed I had been mailed a letter and missed my Jury Duty court date of April 18th 2016 in court room 3B at 1:00PM.  He said that I had two citations because of this and mentioned something about a warrant for my arrest.

• SRU0077-24 - STA - Failure To Appear
• SRU0036-64 - COC - Contempt Of Court

He mentioned I had a new court date on May 2nd in court room 3B at 1:00PM in which I needed to attend to explain why I missed my first court room appearance.  He then said I needed to purchase an insurance bond to guarantee I show up to court.  He said they would not accept any payment over the phone for security reasons, and that I needed to purchase an electronic bond that could only be redeemed at the court house for security purposes.  He said I needed to drive to a merchant that sold these bonds immediately, and that if I hung up the phone, it would cause my case to be in a "non compliant" state, and I could be arrested on site.  He also mentioned if I got into a routine traffic stop, or fender bender etc, that he could talk to the officer to let them know I was OK to proceed directly to the merchant to purchase an insurance bond.  He proceeded to look up a merchant and the

merchant he gave me was in the town my house is in, but not the town I work in... and he seemed disappointed when I told him I was at work, but he insisted that I still needed to

drive to the merchant to pick up one of these electronic bonds while I was on the phone with him. He said the honorable Judge would provide statement for my employer to let them know why I had to leave work.  I told him my phone was running low on battery ( it was at 11% ) and he recommended I stop at a gas station to pick up a car charger.  He said the court house would fully reimburse me for the car charger.

The kicker was then how much these electronic bonds were going to cost me.  He did mention the fine for the citations could be up to $1,000.00 and/or 12 months in jail.  I asked how much the insurance bonds were going to be and he said they were required to be paid for in cash.  And the only merchant that sells them, was a local grocery store in the town I live in.   He said the bond would be $980 for the first citation.. at which I exclaimed, $980! Who carries that kind of cash on them... he said I could stop by my financial institution to pick up the money as long as I stayed on the line with him.  Then I asked how much the second citation would be, and he said, "only $100.00"... and I said, "ONLY $100... THAT IS A LOT OF MONEY!"  

I mentioned my battery was still getting low on my phone and he must of thought I was beginning to be too skeptical, because he transferred me to his supposed superior officer... who claimed to be Lieutenant Zach Miller who quickly proceeded to give me his badge number of "7311" and explained the security of the insurance bond again... how I would be reimbursed at the court house in full for the bond the date of my court date.  He asked if I had any additional questions and assured me that this was the real deal.  

After all this, I finally realized that this was not real... this was a scam, a fake... completely not true.  They had transferred me back to "Deputy" Chris Stevens, and I told him he was fake, and that it wasn't real.  He proceeded to tell me that I have now put my case in non compliant state, and that he would send officers to arrest me on site, that I should put away all weapons, knifes, and sharp objects in preparation for my arrest.  I proceeded to hang up.

I felt violated and wished I would of trusted my gut instinct earlier on in the conversation to end it earlier... I wasted about 30-40 min. of my day talking to these bozo's.  

I confirmed with the sherif department and the local court house that this was in fact a true scam.  I post this here so that others can know about this scam.  Please don't fall for this type of scam, and use your gut instincts... trust your intuition... if it feels wrong, it probably is.  I'm still not 100% sure the end game these people had... were they planning to mug me at the grocey store?  Would they have requested the full number of the "insurance bond" ( guessing it would be a pre-paid credit card ) that they could then use to make online purchases with?

How to Quickly Peel a Boiled Egg in a Glass of Water

This is pretty awesome!  Check it out...

Ryobi 18v Batteries and Chargers

The most interesting and informative site I found is located here:

• http://toolboyworld.com/eBay/Ryobi_Batteries.htm - Great site that talks about power and compares different models of the 18v batteries.  This is also where I learned for fact what I already suspected.  the Lithium Ion batteries require a dual-chemistry charger, and cannot be charged with the NiCad charger, but you can charge the NiCad batteries with the dual-chemistry charger.

My NiCad batteries for my Ryobi tools have started to fade... one basically doesn't hold a charge at all.  This has put me in the market for new battery replacements.

I'm trying to get a similar price to this deal posted on slickdeals.net - http://slickdeals.net/f/4749842-18V-Ryobi-ONE-Lithium-Ion-Battery-2-pack-69-Home-Depot-B-M
But wondering if I can find a combo deal that includes a charger, as I'll need the new charger for the Lithium Ion batteries.

AllChurches.com 2.0 Released

AllChurches.com has finally release the latest and greatest version of the largest directory of Churches online. This new version makes it faster and easier to update your Churches information. It also comes equipped with twitter and facebook integration which will help explode your Churches growth. Please take a moment to check out this great new version of the largest Church directory online and update your Churches information today! All can be done free! Enjoy!


WebSite: AllChurches.com
Twitter Account: @allchurches
Facebook App: apps.facebook.com/allchurches

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What is up with these no sender no subject emails in iPhone mail app?

Any ideas why I get these? They mess up my unread count too... I think it's a bug in iOS4.

Found some issues with iOS4 so far... other than that, GREAT!

Apple's iOS4 upgrade went pretty smooth... I did have to upgrade iTunes first, which made it take slightly longer, but other than that...not too bad. Here are a few bugs I've noticed so far...

1. NEW - NO SIGNAL with my 3GS iphone on iOS4 at and around my house... AT&T claims it's because I upgraded to iOS4... at work though I get full 3G signal with no issues.... seems more like an AT&T problem than an iOS4 problem. :(

2. Update: This is now working... must of been some strange scenario... Videos can no longer be trimmed / clipped with a 3GS iPhone. Is this their way of trying to force you to get an iPhone 4 with iMovie? UPDATE 2: Actually, there is a minimum size you can trim the video to when it is in landscape mode... if I rotate to portrait mode, I can trim further... not a huge fan of that, but at least there's a work around.

3. The camera roll is not getting updated after taking pictures / videos with camera unless entering from within the camera itself.

4. Some websites that request to use my location immediately cause safari t crash. (mainly m.stlouisgasprices.com at the moment) Update: This seems to be sporadic, but still happens quite often.

Let me know if you've found any additional issues and I will update my post

UPDATE: First Crash in a long while just happened while using iOS4...was listening to Pandora in the background flipping between apps... went into the Mail app and was reading my email.. then tried to open up the next email and everything froze. Had to hold down the power button and the home button to restart.

upgraded my iPhone OS to 3.1.3 with no issues

All looks good to me. It took about 15 minutes to do connected to iTunes on my home PC this morning. First downloads the update and then installs it on the iPhone. I wasn't having any troubles with 3.1.2 myself, but I always like to have the latest and greatest version. Post comments below if you've found any new hidden features of 3.1.3 OS for the iPhone. Thanks! Screen shot of the listed fixes shown below:

New domain and updated to be mobile friendly

Hey everyone... I recently bought a new domain for my CraigsList Search Helper website. You can find it at http://clshelper.com/ and be sure to try it on your mobile browsers. Let me know if you have any issues. Here's a screen shot of it on the iPhone. Enjoy!!