Swarling Black Mable » Twin Cities

F1 Overnight Challenge from Sierra Bravo Returns

blainegarrett — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 14:47:41 +0000

Last year March, I participated in the F1 Overnight web challenge, a 24 hour+ programming comepetition to benefit Minnesota non-profits hosted by Sierra Bravo. My team had the pleasure of working with REDA (Riverview Economic Development Association). It was a lot of fun and I am looking forward to doing it again this year. Registration opened over the weekend for the event to be held February 28th. My team is the Polymorphin Power Rangers, lead by Jon once again. My profile is up here. I am the green ranger. hehe

Here is the testimonial from Brian of REDA… quite entertaining and gives a good idea of Brian’s energy and how appreciative of what we did!

Flickr Photo Pool from last year too:

Cancelling HUDFORECLOSED.NET and AP9* Bargain Homes ( Bargain Network )

blainegarrett — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:17:51 +0000

I’m posting this quickly for anyone out there in Internets land that might have gotten sucked into either of these offers.

I am pretty sure the HUDFORECLOSED.NET is that company advertised to death on 93x here in the Twin Cities where the girl is telling her friend how she bought a house for less than she pays per month in rent. AP9* is a scammy operation that apparently runs a whole network of sites (The Bargain Network) that you are often tricked into signing up for after making a purchase at a legitimate site who has some devious partnerships. There are some complaints on these companies here, here, and here.

I got sucked in last May when I was looking at buying a house and was enticed by their “Free Trial” which turned into $40 per month charges each. I got busy with the house buying process and also forgot to cancel the accounts once I was aware of the charges. I did try to cancel in Sept when first discovering the charges, but got the run around. I decided to try again on lunch today.

I don’t know if they are the same company, but they had separate means of cancelling their accounts.

How to cancel your HUDFORECLOSED.NET or HUDFORECLOSED.COM account :

Go to HUDFORECLOSED.COM
Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on “Cancel Account”. This is a popup so make sure you can see it. Otherwise, you can try to directly go to http://www.hudforeclosed.com/cancel.do
Enter the email address and telephone number you signed up with and click “Cancel Membership”
You should receive a confirmation screen and a confirmation email at the email address on file.
Awesome, no more bills for this site however, you will have access to the site until the end of the billing cycle.

I also found a phone number buried in their site : 1-800-422-6021 that might help if the web cancellation doesn’t work or you don’t even remember signing up.

How to cancel your AP9* Bargain Homes, AP9*ATHOMEREWARDS+, AP9*SAVINGSMART.COM account

I did this over the phone. You will need to call 1800-333-1915. However, in their site FAQs, they also list 1-800-788-5648 as the number for cancelling. All they needed was my phone number I signed up with and my name. I wasn’t even on hold for very long.

Anywho, I hope that helps some people who may have gotten sucked into these things and want to get out. While googling for this same info, it seemed like a lot of people were trying, but couldn’t figure out how, which is why I am posting this. I wish FF had a site review type plugin to show feedback on domains you are at. Civic Duty Man – up up and away.

DIMmedia at Hair Police, Uptown Minneapolis

blainegarrett — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 06:15:47 +0000

At our last planning meeting, DIM Media (Charles, Joe, etc) set some future goals – one of which was to try to do a public event every month. This hasn’t been too far fetched since we had our work up at 2nd Moon all summer with an opening for my work in May, Red Hot Art in June, 2 Shelter gigs in Sept, a Shelter gig in Oct, and Shadow and Sound in Nov. However, to further this goal, we need to persue more gigs.

Wednesday, Charlie and I met up with someone from Hair Police to talk about having our work up there in January. They found us through Myspace and really liked our work. It should be pretty rad. They need to approve everything with the owners but it sounds like there will be a reception and music and the whole nine yards. Sweet. Hair Police is sort of a big deal and this should be a cool opportunity for us. So stay tuned for more info on this and other DIMMedia outings!