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Hello Again, Little CPR Call Blocker! Good-bye NoMoRobo!

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Hoorah! The new CPR v5000 Call Blocker I ordered to replace the one that got thrown out after the Cox dude told me the one I had wouldn’t work with Cox’s infuriating modem IS HERE! Thank you, Amazon!

When Cox forced its customers to abandon the old, steadfastly reliable copper lines, I already had a CPR Call Blocker installed on my landline phone. It was wonderful. Because it WORKED. I asked the Cox tech to install it on the damned space-gobbling, dust-collecting modem he deposited on my desk, and he said Cox wouldn’t touch anything that wasn’t Cox equipment. Besides, it wouldn’t work.

Right.

Subtext: “We get paid by phone scammers to let them blitz you with advertising and scams, and you can be darned sure we ain’t about to aid and abet your efforts to thwart the bastards.”

However, Cox was making a service called NoMoRobo available to its new VoiP customers. I’d heard good things about it and so figured signing up with that should address the problem of robocalls and live scam artists. Because I had no idea how to attach the little Call Blocker device to the damned modem (sometimes connections can be kinda tricky), I just tossed it out, figuring NoMoRobo would do the job.

Not

So

Much

NoMoRobo is a complete bust. Here’s why:

To block a call from a phone number, NoMoRobo has to let the first jangle ring through. This is how it identifies fake phone numbers. Unlike the CPR 5000, it apparently has no preprogrammed numbers; thus the 5000 numbers blocked by the CPR  device just come right through. And it seems unable to identify VoIP/IP rogue diallers, leaving you vulnerable to an expensive scam.

The first-ring feature is a deal-killer for me. It doesn’t matter whether this is a new number nuisanceaferizing you. Even numbers that are blocked are allowed to jangle you up once.

Sorry, but I don’t find the sound of a phone jangling to be conducive to work that requires my full, uninterrupted attention.

Then we have the problem that you can’t signal NoMoRobo that a number is bad with a push of a button. Ohhhhh no. You have to go online to their Website and fill out a freaking form!!!!!! You have to retrieve the offending number from your phone’s memory, report the caller’s name, say what time the call occurred…all of which adds the insult of time suck to the injury of phone scamming.

And as hoop-jumps go, it’s pointless: the robocallers simply generate new numbers, potentially dialing you from every telephone number in your exchange. Or, for that matter, in any exchange.

And we have the added problem that when NoMoRobo fails to recognize a call as pestiferous (which is often), it just lets the phone ring and ring, till your voicemail picks up. At which time the creeps fill up your voicemail with their hustle.

I get upwards of a dozen pest calls a day. Today they started at 8 a.m. sharp; sometimes they start around 6:30 or 7 in the morning. They often run through till 8 or 9 or even 10 at night.

With the CPR call blocker, you simply press the “Talk” button and then, if you’re on a wireless extension, press #2; if you’re at your desk where the device is sitting, you don’t even have to pick up. Just press the big red “BLOCK” button.

The highly satisfying big red BLOCK button….

If you miss that boat, then simply click your phone’s callback button and as soon as the number starts to ring, hit that “Block” button.

The thing has been plugged in for less than an hour, and it already has three numbers in its bank of blocked callers.

Adventures in Dental Science

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One fiasco after another. Old age is definitely no land for the young…

For quite some time, I’ve had a broken tooth, one of the forward molars. We haven’t been able to tell which one, because of the several crowns back there and because it was cracked, not actually busted. The dentist X-rayed that side of the mouth several times and could not find the crack. And I could not tell which of the two surviving upper molars emitted an electric shock of pain when I bit down just right…on just about anything.

Finally, however, the thing split apart. That hurt quite a bit. But interestingly, when the chip fell out a day or two later, the pain stopped altogether. Who’d’ve thunk it?

At any rate, all this meant the tooth had to be pulled. Dentist sent me to an endodontist, who proposed to dig it out, implant a “post” (which far as I can tell is basically a titanium screw).

However, when I told the endodontist about the supposed MRSA infection, he flew into a panic and said he couldn’t do the procedure.

What was I supposed to do about the broken tooth? He shrugged. Finally he suggested that I get a second nasal swab, and said if it was clear he would proceed.

Sooo…I had to trek out to the Mayo — halfway to Payson from my house — to get someone to stick a Q-tip up my nose. Again.

Astonishingly, the Mayo sent word that the MRSA test was negative. So the endodontist relented and scheduled a procedure for last Friday.

Naturally, I came down with a cold on Sunday. Never, EVER fails!

The cold is rather mild and the tooth situation was rather urgent, so we decided to go ahead with it. This meant I got to spend something over an hour on my back in the dentist’s chair, gagging on goop oozing down the back of my throat.

Ugh!!!!!

While it was uncomfortable — mostly because of the cold — the procedure was not painful. It was actually pretty interesting. His office has equipment that allows them to make 3-D X-rays of your teeth, which is amazing. And the amount of work and skill required to perform the trick of extracting a tooth in several pieces really is amazing.

So at any rate, the tooth is out. He insisted that I take a week-long course of clindamycin by way of fending off any potential infection. He remained concerned about the potential for MRSA, but resistant bugs or not, apparently dosing you with antibiotics is S.O.P.

Yes. Well. Unfortunately these days I’m allergic to just about every drug out there. And if a drug has a weird side effect that afflicts one in a million users, invariably I am number 1,000,000. At the risk of repeating myself: Never fails.

Clindamycin has a number of dire side effects. One of them is a skin thing that is incurable and causes your hide to fall off. Another is C. difficile overgrowth.

Right.

SDXB’s former wife died of a C. difficile infection. She died laying on her living room floor, where she was found by a neighbor about two days later.

Naturally, while I was at the endodontist’s having my gum sliced apart and the tooth wrenched out, the Mayo’s clinician Mona called on the phone asking me to call back to talk about that MRSA test. Naturally, by the time I got home it was after 5 p.m. and they were closed. So naturally, I get to worry about that all weekend.

Cripes. Let’s just hope all she wanted to say was that “negative” in your chart means “negative.”

Believing I would surely be in terrible pain, the endodontist handed me a prescription for oxycodone.

Besides the fact that I don’t take addictive drugs on principal, when I get it home I find it’s mixed with acetaminophen. I’m allergic to acetaminophen. It’s an NSAID. Interestingly, I’m allergic to all NSAIDS.

Luckily, I apparently don’t register pain the way normal people do. Probably because my menses were so excruciating, other pain seems negligible by comparison and tends not to bother me. Although the site where he’d extracted the tooth was sore, it certainly wasn’t enough to send me flying off the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Got to sleep with no problem (so exhausted a jackhammer could have been going in the backyard and it wouldn’t have kept me awake).

Next morning I gaze into the mirror and find my face is swollen, which was not surprising. Then I developed a black-and-blue spot that makes me look like someone socked me in the face. Loveleeee. Both of these are normal, as it develops. But I sure could do without them.

Last night a member of the choir committee called to ask where the heck I’ve been and was I coming back. Of course, I’ve missed several times: last Sunday, and then again Wednesday evening. And yesterday morning: we have a concert this afternoon, which I’m also going to miss because I’m not rehearsed. I’ll be surprised, really, if he lets me sing this morning, since I wasn’t at rehearsal for today’s service.

And in fact, I’m still feeling pretty wrung out, so think I will just go over, drop off my choir folder & hymnal, grab my robes to bring them home to launder and store over the summer, and call it a day.

Or not. We have the annual end-of-season choir party tonight. My friend urged me to come to it. We shall see: by evening I am just wrung out, and by 5:30 p.m. I surely will not be the life of anything like a party. So that’s depressing. But I’ve just been too sick to think about it.

And so away, off to swallow another horsepill and toss some food in the blender. Whee!

Chewing Up the Tax Refund

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Ohhhh man…has a lot transpired between the time I jotted in that post title this morning and the time I staggered back to the computer this evening!

So bright but not too early this morning, the endodontist and I were scheduled to meet at his office, so he could pull out the busted tooth and screw in a post on which, at some as-yet-unscheduled date, to attach a fake replacement tooth. This project would cost about $3,000 — almost all of this year’s tax refund.

When I arrived at his office and was placed in his massaging (!) chair, I mentioned to his assistant that they probably should know I was diagnosed, some months ago, with a MRSA infection. This, I noted, was supposedly treated but I’ve never had a follow-up culture to confirm that.

Well. That bit of intelligence set the man’s hair to standing on end. Long story short: the guy announced that my dermatologists didn’t know what they were talking about, that they could not possibly have treated the colonization properly, and he would not perform the scheduled work. He said his concern was not only that the surgical wound could get infected with antibiotic-resistant staphylococci, but that he and his assistant would be exposed to it.

I suggested that I could go either to the Mayo or back to the dermatologist to get a second nasal swab cultured. He said he preferred the Mayo, so now I have an appointment tomorrow to traipse out to the far east side for that — a two-hour round trip.

So I was passing pissed, because the tooth had been hurting quite a bit. Couple days ago, it actually fractured all the way through. and was now falling apart, a slab of the thing trying to work its way loose from the base. While I’m not pleased at yet another surgical procedure, I surely was anxious to get it over with.

When I reported to the Mayo’s PA that the dentist had remarked he figured I would infect him and his sidekicks with the dread pathogen, she said “not if he was following the standard rules” for surgery. And we might add, she sounded mighty sarcastic. Hmmm….

Well. Some hours pass, during which I wonder how I would cope with the pain of the exposed nerve getting jolted at every turn. Along about the middle of the afternoon, I serve up a bowl of soup.

While I’m eating that, plink! The broken sliver falls out!

Oh…shit! think I. This is going to make things many orders of magnitude worse. If that exposed nerve hurt every time I bit down on the tooth while it was fully sheathed in enamel (albeit cracked enamel), what will it do now that it’s sitting there stark naked?

Yes. Well. The answer to that is… Nothing.

As soon as that loose piece of enamel lifted itself away, the freaking pain stopped!

The sharp electrical jolts ceased altogether. It feels like there’s a hollow space on the grinding surface of the molar and a razor-sharp edge along the backside. There appears to be no decay. The front surface, the part that’s visible when you smile, looks undamaged and normal. The part that’s broken away does not go below the gumline.

Y’know what I think?

I think the tooth could be filled or possibly crowned, and that would fix the problem.

The repair would cost several hundreds of dollars…but it wouldn’t absorb my entire effing tax return.

So I have a call in to the dentist — naturally this deconstruction event happened right at 5 p.m. And…if he doesn’t agree that the tooth can be fixed, I’m getting a second opinion.

Why, for godsake, have I become sooo cynical about the avatars of the medical profession in this country? I’ll tellya why: it’s because about half the time I’m right. These people have to make a living. And to do it — and pay their employees and their office rent and their utilities and whatnot — they blow up every minor ailment into a case of the Black Plague. And often as not, they downplay conditions that show any sign of being expensively time-consuming matters. There’s a sweet spot in there where a nice profit is to be made…and that’s where they exploit you.

That’s unkind. Of course. Possibly a more generous view of the matter is that these folks are only human. And what they do involves a lot of informed (more or less) judgment and a little outright guesswork. So of course they make mistakes. Nevertheless, dentistry is becoming notorious for overtreatment — yea verily, here’s an article that claims if 50% of a broken tooth remains, it can be fixed with bonded restoration. I think if the good Dr. D doesn’t agree with that, we’ll be getting a second opinion…

 

The Scaredest Moment…

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I love the Quora site as a source of writing exercises. The site’s modus operandi is to throw out questions and ask people to respond with little essays.

Because they open the questions to everyone who signs up, of course this MO generates a spectacular amount of stupid trolling from real or de facto eight-year-olds. Some people never do grow up. 😀

However, every now and again someone poses a query that functions handsomely as a writing prompt. One such was this:

What Was Your Most Frightening Moment?

There’s something wrong with me, I guess, that causes me not to get scared until after the fact. It’s ever been thus…the first time I understood that was what happened occurred when the driver of a steam roller almost ran me down as he was flattening asphalt in an alley behind our house. I managed to jump onto a fence and haul myself out of the way, feeling the thing brush my clothes. Not scared till a few minutes later, after I realized how close to death I’d come. I was a little kid: 8 or 10 years old.

Adrenaline makes my world slow down. One day I was driving in to my first job from a suburb. At the time, you had to drive several miles across a country road through cotton and onion fields. A dumb kid, I was flying low across this two-lane road, driving a ’67 Ford Fairlane, one of the most dangerous pieces of junk ever conceived by an American carmaker. From the right, some farm worker ambles onto the road — he doesn’t see me coming and now he’s smack in front of me and I’m going 60 miles an hour. Or more.

I slam on the brakes. In those days there was no such thing as anti-lock brakes. Or adequate seat belts. Or air bags. Or any other such debris. And I’m a kid, remember: a dumb one, at that. I don’t know any better than to tromp the brake pedal to the floor.

The car actually JUMPS into the air. No Joke! It leaps into the air and comes down in the oncoming lane, its wheels presumably still spinning at 60 miles an hour. I look up and there’s a car in the oncoming lane, flying straight at me, a horrified look on its all-too-visible driver’s face.

At this point a series of thoughts goes through my mind.

The clown who pulled out in front of me is now in the lane that my car leapt out of. He’s moving right beside me, fast as he can go because of course he figures he’s about to get smashed, too. The choices are three:

• Pull my car back into my lane and broadside the guy beside me.
• Pull left onto the left-hand shoulder and pray the guy in the oncoming car doesn’t also try to pull off the road.
• Head-on the guy in the oncoming lane.

Literally, I’m thinking this stuff through: it’s weird how clearly you can think and how fast you can think, given a large enough dose of adrenaline.

I decide on option (b): Pull off the road to the left. At 60 miles an hour.

Well, probably a little slower than that, because of course I have slammed on the brakes at one point…to little avail. The car is probably moving at about 40 to 50 mph at this point.

Incredibly, the dirt on the shoulder was hard enough that the car’s wheels didn’t sink into it.

Incredibly, the guy in the oncoming lane didn’t think fast enough to pull his car to his right, onto the same shoulder.

Incredibly, my car did not careen into the irrigation ditch beside the road.

Incredibly, my car did not spin out.

There’s only one explanation: God was on my side that morning. And on those other two guys’ side.

No, I was not scared at any time while this antic was occurring. Only after the other two cars sailed off and I caught my breath did a moment of terror arrive. I managed to make it to a gas station at the intersection of the country lane and a freeway, where I had to stop, go inside, and sit for a good half-hour or 45 minutes before I could get back in the car and proceed to work.

Not a bad little squib, eh?

Et vous? What was your most terrifying moment?

Dog Joy!

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What a wonderful morning!

I thought I was supposed to be down at the church office shortly after dawn cracked, to stand in for one of the volunteer receptionists. So I arrive, plug in the computer (having brought 27 pages of client copy to while away the time), and settle in.

Shortly, in pops the Boss Volunteer.

“Hey! You’re supposed to be here this afternoon. I’m on this morning.”

😀

Well. Ahem. Naturally I suggest that if she wants the morning off, I’d be happy to switch. (“Happy” being a highly qualified term in this context.) What a shame: she has to pick up the grandchild shortly after 12:30.

Out the door like a rocket!

Arrive back at the Funny Farm to find the dog moping under the toilet in the back bathroom. (Don’t ask: I have no clue why the dog thinks the cubby under the toilet amounts to a dog den.) At the words let’s go for a doggy walk, she shoots out of the bathroom and flies to the front door

Out the door like two rockets!

It’s still cool enough to manage a mile-and-a-half circuit of the ’Hood.  It’s a strangely lovely little enclave of affluence, despite being bordered on two sides by drug-ridden slums.

Over in Lower Richistan, one house harbors a huge, beautiful jacaranda tree, now in full, brilliant blue bloom. It is the most gorgeous tree you could ever hope to see.

Across the lane into Upper Richistan, an elderly lady lives in a big old sprawling mansion of a ranch house on about an acre of land, which she keeps up like a park. Her property is meticulously, spectacularly groomed. Most days when we pass there, her yard service, whose proprietors dub themselves “Paradise Ponds and Gardens,” are there puttering around. They must visit almost every day. The place reflects it, too.

Other shacks there are less ostentatiously landscaped but equally tidy — they don’t require a gardener’s daily attention, but nevertheless they’re expensively mown and trimmed.

As usual, we run into morons. Honestly…it’s hard to understand how some people ever learn to tie their shoelaces….

First one is putzing up Feeder Street NW, evidently in no hurry. The hound and I are stopped on the sidewalk, under the stop sign that clearly says traffic crossing Feeder is to cede the right of way. We wait for him to go by.

But no. Ohhh, nooooo! He’s polite. And the little dog is so cute he’s driven to feel even more polite. He stops his car. I wait for him to go by. He waves his paw at me, a sappy grin on his face: go ahead go ahead!

I hate that. I just hate it when some idiot thinks he’s doing me a favor by stopping in the right of way and frantically motioning to proceed in front of him — illegally. What the hell is the matter with people?

Does he really think that my standing there for three whole seconds while his car passes by is THAT big an inconvenience to me? Does he seriously believe he’s doing me some great favor with this silly trick? Does he truly not grasp the concept that urging someone to cross a road illegally puts that person at risk?

God, but people are stupid.

This particular brand of stupidity irritates me most radically because I once got T-boned when some idiot stopped, waved me across in front of him (and the as-yet unnoticed guy tooling along in the lane to his left…), and I took him up on it. With my infant son in the car. In that case, we had two idiots in collaboration: him and me.

So we make a loop through the forested lanes. On the homeward leg, toward our low-rent tract, we encounter a woman with a large furry dog in tow. She is not paying the slightest bit of attention to anything that’s going on around her. She holds a phone up to her ear. From the phone blares a stream of dopey-sounding music. She is, in a word, entranced…

Not caring to discuss the time of day with her barely-under-control dog, I cross the road so as to put some distance between us and the oblivious woman and her not-at-all oblivious beast.

It notices. It lunges at Ruby, growling and barking.

Recovering from nearly being jerked off her feet, the Blithe Soul coos, “Ohhhh, what a cute little dog!”

“Uhm… Uh huh.”

“Grrrrrrrr ARF ARF ROARRRRRgrrrrrrrrrrrr”

“He’s really friendly. I usually let him off the leash so they can play!”

holy shit! “Please don’t!”

I dodge across Feeder Street Northwest, hoping some driver in a ball-busting hurry will come blasting between us. Fortunately, she’s too interested in the racket coming out of her toy to pursue the idea.

At any rate, it was a beautiful morning (and remains a beautiful day). The little dog was beside herself with doggy joy to come out from under the toilet and circumambulate the neighborhood. That was a very, very happy dog.

Human, too.

I realized that I was secretly (not so secretly, maybe) relieved not to have to sit here all morning, editing a client’s copy while nothing much happened in the office.

Indeed, a small revelation dawned:

What do I want to do in retirement? What do I most want to do with the small portion of time remaining to me?

I’ll tell you what I wanna do.

♦ I want to loaf.

• I do not want to work.
• I do not want to master some hobby.
• I do not want to participate in volunteer efforts.
• I do not want to lobby for some worthy political candidate.
• I do not want to travel.

♦ All I want to do is loaf.

♦ That is, I wish to do as little as possible. Nothing, preferably.

♦ Nothing is plenty enough to keep me busy.

• Today, for example, I need to traipse up to Home Depot to pick up a bag or two of potting soil, therewith to plant some new chard and refresh a number of other plants.  While there, I probably should get a basil plant to replace the one that’s expiring of old age.
• Or maybe go by AJ’s and spend too much money on something good to eat.
• Or take the dog for another walk.
• Or just anything that does not require the expenditure of anything resembling mental or physical energy.

Loafing. The highest and best use of one’s time.

Phone-dango!

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So… I’m in the Costco thinking about replacing my houseful of phones, the current system evincing signs of advanced age. All the batteries are running down, so every time I turn around I pick up another dead handset. And lo! There on the shelf at the Costco is this elegant Panasonic model. It’s an elaborate lash-up, very much like mine only updated for the 21st century. Not only does it include 87 gerjillion (well…four) wireless handsets plus the required answering machine, this thing includes a call-blocking feature similar to the much-missed CPR Call Blocker.

I threw my CPR Call Blocker out after Cox barged in and forced its customers to switch to VoIP, having been told it wouldn’t work with Cox’s accursed modem. Cox, however, now offers NoMoRobo, supposedly the be-all and end-all for nuisance call blocking.

Not so much. The CPR Call Blocker 5000 cut the nuisance calls to at most one or two a day, but more typically to none.

NoMoRobo? Holy sh!t, what a nuisance! It takes the robocall nuisance and multiplies the aggravation by a factor of about 10. It does not block robocalls, because the robocallers automatically generate thousands, hundreds of thousands, and ultimately (one presumes) millions of fake phone numbers. They target your area code and phone exchange, or one close to where you live, so that incoming calls appear to be coming from someone in your neighborhood. The kids’ school, perhaps. Your neighbor across the street. Your pharmacy, telling you a prescription is ready. WhatEVER. Pick up the phone, and you get a scam.

The deal here with NoMoRobo is that it can not be programmed to block all calls in a given area code. None of my friends, acquaintances, or business contacts have the same exchange as mine. This means that any call incoming from this exchange is, by definition, a scam and nothing but a scam.

I get between six and twelve such calls every day, starting around seven in the morning and running through till nine at night.

To block spam calls, you have to go to NoMoRobo’s website, type in the offending phone number, describe the circumstances, and send the squib. This turns an ordinary nuisance into a time-consuming nuisance. And it’s pointless: the scammers don’t care that you blocked thus-and-such a combination of figures…their machines are constantly generating new combinations.

Even when NoMoRobo blocks a number, it lets the first ring jangle you up! So…yeah. That’s real helfpul, isn’t it? When you’re trying to focus on something — or hell, trying to take a nap! — the god damned phone jerks you away from what you’re doing, even if it’s a blocked call!

Most of the calls, however, are not blocked, because the spoofers generate many, many more calling numbers than NoMoRobo can catch.

At one point, I suggested to their alleged customer service that they should allow users to block entire area codes. They said ohhh no! That can’t be done!

Well, it sure as hell can be done, because the CPR Call Blocker does exactly that. It can be programmed to block calls from whole countries, to say nothing of local exchanges.  So either NoMoRobo’s developers don’t want to be bothered with making their system do that, or their customer service people are not altogether forthcoming.

At any rate, when I saw this fancy Panasonic wonder-phone, I thought hot dang! Kill two birds with one stone: replace the aging Uniden phones and get a built-in call blocker!

So I grab it off the shelf.

Having become ever-so-much-more wary over time, though, before opening the box and setting up this complicated marvel, I looked up the user reviews on Amazon. And then on Costco’s website.

Not so good.

A lot of people on both sites complained of poor sound quality. This seems to be a nigh unto universal issue. Also roundly hated: poor customer service and incomprehensible instructions. Ten percent of Amazon reviewers pan it with one (!) star. Interestingly, the rate is about the same over at the Costco site.

At Amazon, I figure when one-star ratings add up to more than 9%, that ain’t a happy sign.

For 8 bucks, I could buy four rechargeable phone batteries supposedly approved by Uniden. So I ordered up eight of the things, for a total of about $18 including tax…a far cry from $108 for a complicated phone system that may or may not work.

So I decided to replace the batteries in the existing handsets and hope for the best. If that doesn’t work, Uniden sells the handsets alone: it’s still cheaper to replace a few of those than to buy a whole new Panasonic system.

Apparently, if I’d just waited until the steam stopped shooting out of my ears after the Cox fiasco, I could in fact have attached my old CPR Call Blocker to Cox’s accursed modem. But I can’t find the thing now, so I guess I must have tossed it in a rage. That would be pretty typical.

It’ll cost another hundred bucks to get a new one. But at this point I’m thinking…let’s see if these new batteries hold a charge. If they do, fine: invest in a new CPR 5000, call their excellent customer service on the phone, and get them to coach me through connecting it to Cox’s accursed modem. Et voilà! Say good-bye to the NoMoRobo joke.

Schlepped the unopened Panasonic back to Costco this morning; received a fistful of money back on the card.

Now I’m going to think about this for a few days and, if I can confirm that the CPR 5000 will work, with the hated new Cox equipment, then I’ll just bite the bullet and buy another one. I know their customer service will coach me through connecting the thing to the complicated junk Cox cluttered my desk with — at least, I think they will. They post a phone number at Amazon, which I’ll call tomorrow to see if they’ll agree to do so.

Failing that?

Well, frankly, I think the only alternative is to disconnect the land line. Replace it with an iPhone for actual calling and texting, and several charged-up but un-connected cheap clamshells for dialing 911 in a pinch.