Thursday, February 4, 2010

big google brother

Here's hoping that blogger doesn't afflict me with the weird and endless formatting problems I got yesterday!

Did a Catalan test today to see what level I have.  She so very kindly put me at the 'Cataloparlant' level.  That is Catalan speakers!!!!!!  Well, that was a nice little gift!  I am at the very lowest level of Cataloparlant, but I'll take that to be sure!  I'm now going to be signed up for an on-line Catalan class!!!!  Yahoo!!!!  Finally I will start to improve again!

I have to start on Spanish now.

I did want to ask if this has happened to anyone else.

Yesterday I got junk mail from Google.  It was mailed from France, but written in Spanish (OH NO!  The freaky formatting is coming back!).  It offered me 75 Euros prepaid if I bought google word ads for my site!

Now, first of all, this is not exactly the site with the most traffic in the Barcelona area....so I cannot imagine how I got the nudge.....but what really freaks me out is that it was sent to my name and my home address.

OK, I know that google is as close to omnipotent as it gets these days, but still.....a little obviously big brother-ish, don't you think?

Anyone else out there getting spied on?

Freaky.

7 comments:

Beth said...

Spied on? Not that I know of but then if it was a good spy, I shouldn't know.
Did we have to give our names and home addresses when we signed up with blogspot? (Google/Blogspot - one and the same.)

Congrats on the "Cataoparlant" level!

Vancouver Isle Doug said...

No spying here, that I know of. Then again if 'they' were spying, and good at it, I wouldn't know, would I? OY!

We are thinking of learning Spanish too! We want to visit Spain some day and would like to be able to understand a few things. We are looking at Rosetta Stone. Thoughts?

oreneta said...

Doug,
Never tried Rosetta stone, but the rice is quite high. There are a fair number of on-line resources, some of which are quite excellent and free or very cheap. One is Spanish Pod, which I have used and liked: http://spanishpod.com/ also at Open Culture (just google that one) they have a page of free language lessons, here:http://www.openculture.com/free_spanish_lessons. Rosetta stone comes in at nearly 700 bucks, for that price you can do a whole lot of the spanish pod, which includes grammar and find some classes at the local Spanish association. I will grant that Spanish speaking folks are probably fairly thin on the ground where you are, there is bound to be someone who could help you or who is offering some classes.

Just seems a whole lot of cash to drop on something you haven't tried out yet.

You asked! Hope it goes well.

O

oreneta said...

Beth, no I did not give my name and address when I signed up. Chuck wants to talk to you, he keeps leaning his head on the keyboard and typing. Maybe I should stop deleting his imput. Now he's stopped. Sorry.

Hula Girl at Heart said...

Hmmm. No issues like that here. However, I have had some crazy posting issues related to formatting.

Oh, and congratulations!

swenglishexpat said...

Congratulations! ¿Y ahora tienes que estudiar español también? ¡Buena suerte! (Just showing off a bit, I used to know Spanish once upon a time.)
But how on earth did Google get hold of your address? That's scary!

oreneta said...

Formatting can be such a cow, no?

Thanks...

Swenglish....si si si... I assume that the google got the mailing address from the phone company. The thing that really spooked me out what that it was addressed to me, and you know what? The bill is in the man's name.

Weird and creepy.