1997 Grey Cup logoThe year was 1997 and Edmonton was hosting the Grey Cup. After finishing first in the West, Edmonton fans expected their team to be in the big dance. Unfortunately Rider Pride won out and Saskatchewan faced off against Toronto, ultimately losing the game by twenty-three points.
This moment has current significance both on, and off the field.
Sunday marks Saskatchewan’s return to the Grey Cup since that day in Edmonton. Although ten years ago I was not really into CFL, I was becoming familiar with the internet. The timeline is a few months off, but I always associated the moment the Gursky’s bought an internet compatible computer with the Grey Cup in Edmonton.
This blogs tag line, ‘Breaking ground since 1997′ comes from that magical month where I first logged online. There were families in Millet that were online before us, and many more from Edmonton, but I got online and hit the ground running.
MyPoints – LogoI was out there exploring everything the web had to offer, and stumbled across a site called MyPoints. I was a member for a lot of sites over the years but I stuck with this one the longest.
The premise was that you would gain points if you looked at an affiliates website, clicked on promotional items or completed surveys. You earn enough points and you could redeem those for gift certificates and other promotional items.
The other ways of earning points was to buy products through the MyPoints site. Since I lacked a credit card, or a need to buy anything online, I depended on the five points here and there I would receive with the newsletters.
Ten years later and I was still earning a minimal amount of points. Although a decades worth of emails adds up. To date I have 8,101 points, that works out to a lot of emails over that time.
The only thing that kept me going to my canada.com email address was MyPoints so I figured I would close my canada.com accounts and spend whatever points I had collected with an affiliate of MyPoints.
Most of the offers were for American brick and mortar stores, or if they had an online presence they were stores that would charge extra to ship their products to Canada.
iTunes LogoEnter Apple to the rescue and an excuse to buy more music online. The $50 gift card will go a long way, especially if there are a few albums I cannot find through other means.
There is a six to eight week delivery time on the card, so when it arrives I will have forgotten about it and it will be like a surprise. Maybe I will let you all know how I spent the money and if it was a worthy purchase or not.
I have 851 points left over in my account and cannot spend it on anything, so I may donate a majority of them to Red Cross and close the account down. I hope that by discontinuing my service with MyPoints I will right karma somehow and Saskatchewan will win the Grey Cup tomorrow.
The internet works in mysterious ways.
Update: Three post backs within hours of writing this post? They are legitimate in the eyes of the spam filter I have installed but it is odd. I will keep an eye on this…
