The new call-blocking gadget keeps two lists for you: one is of calls that you’ve blocked, and the other is incoming phone calls. The way mine is set up now, I can check the incoming calls and, if I don’t recognize a number, just press a button to block it henceforth.
This is handy, because it allows me to manually filter calls before consigning numbers to limbo.
So the other day, here comes a phone from a local area code, indicating the suburbs in the West Valley. Well, I know a lot of people in the West Valley, and this number looks vaguely like the number of one of the Camptown Races writers, a guy named Gil. Could be: Gil would like to form a writer’s group and said he would call when he got his act that much together.
I decide to call the number, lest I accidentally blacklist a real human being.
The guy who answers the phone sounds just like Gil! His voice has the same kind of raspy texture and he speaks in the same vocal range. I’m a little disoriented because for a second or two I think I’m talking to Gil, and he’s a little disoriented because for a second or two he thinks he’s talking to someone he should know. Doesn’t take long for us to figure out, though, that we’ve never heard of each other before.
I ask if he called my number, and he says no, BUT…the police and a CenturyLink representative are right now at his house. The guy has been getting a hundred calls a day from robocall pests. Yes, that’s 100. One hundred calls per day.
I express my sympathies, apologize for adding to the burden, and mention that I bought a device from Amazon that seems to block most of the nuisances — without mentioning the brand, for fear he’d think I was trying to sell him something. He was so upset he didn’t seem to register what I was saying.
The bastards had spoofed his number — most robocalls that appear to come from your area code are spoofed. That’s another source of trouble, because enraged consumers who track those numbers down are likely to call you up and tell you how the cow ate the cabbage. Once I did call some character whose business came up on my caller ID, only to learn from him that I was not the first to complain that he’d been trying to sell godonlyknows what.
If you google “100 robocalls a day,” you discover this phenomenon is not unheard of. Time-Warner Cable deliberately harassed a woman in New York, trying to collect a debt owed by a prior user of the phone number — TWC ended up paying out $229,000 for the privilege. One woman — coincidentally in Arizona — had her phone lines shut down when SOBs called her 100 times an hour, according to Consumer’s Union, which also reports the sleazes called a woman’s daughter, spoofing the woman’s phone number, and started blitzing both numbers every 15 minutes.
This morning it’s raining magnificently…again. Storm after storm has hit California and bounced over the Sierras into Arizona. Hallelujah, brothers and sisters!
Haven’t seen rain like this in many years. Matter of fact…we haven’t see much rain, period, in years. Or at least so it seems. The reservoirs are now filled up, so the general low-level hysteria about the water situation will settle down a bit.
That’s probably not a good thing: a few rainstorms will not make a decades-old drought go away. This kind of weather would need to go on and on, to be a permanent fixture the way it was when I was a girl here. Back in the primeval period, we had rain like this every winter, come February, and it also rained in the summer time. In August, thunderstorms would roll in about 4 in the afternoon. They’d break the heat, dropping temps from the low hundreds to the mid- or low 80s. A 115-degree day was almost unheard-of; today they’re commonplace.
Too damn many people with too damn little care for the world around them. Oh well. That world is gone now. It won’t be back, at least not in our lifetimes. So might as well forget about it.
Meanwhile, with a flood pouring off the roof, I ran outside with buckets and plastic trash cans by way of gathering water for the plants that live indoors or under the eaves. When it rains this much, I tend to forget that about half the outdoor potted plants aren’t eligible for rainfall. 🙂
Already poured one scrub-bucketful of fresh rainwater on the calla lily, which was mightily peeved at not getting rained on in the last storms. Will scoop up a fair amount more for the rose bush on the east side, which probably will need to be transplanted into a bigger pot before the weather starts to get warm. The rest can go on the ficus, the potted palm, and the indoor greenery.
All of which provides a fine work-avoidance gambit.
But I must hurry. I have 15,000 more words to read between now and the day I have to show up (again!) for effing jury duty. That’s to read. Then I have to go back over the current chunk of 30,000 words and check — as fast as I can! — the edits I’ve made. Some stuff is going to get missed, partly because the job is mind-numbing and partly because it’s just too much to get through in under a week.
Can you believe it? Hauled down to the courthouse to waste another day (at least!) AGAIN! Every time I turn around, I get another summons. Usually it starts with the county. Then I get one from the city courts. Then I get another from the feds.
At least the federal courts are reasonably well organized. When you get down to the federal courthouse, you are already impaneled on a jury and you go straight to the judge’s courtroom for voir-dire.
At the county, you have to show up at 8 a.m. — if you don’t appear on time, they count that as not showing up at all and you can be charged with a crime. Then they park you in a waiting room where you sit. And sit. And sit. And sit. And sit. All day long. If you’re lucky, they may let you go around 4 p.m., but you’re told to expect to be there until 5:00.
They may haul you into a courtroom to be interviewed, but usually you’ll be discarded. Then, with any luck, you can go home. But maybe not. You may have to go back to the waiting room and sit.
It used to be that you had to sit there and listen to damned televisions blatting at you, since apparently the majority of Americans are comforted and soothed by the sound of TV sets blathering away. If you’ve brought the work that you can’t afford not to be doing, well…tough.
Now at least they have a quiet room — or they did, the last time I was there. Using it entails getting your computer past the security guards, an iffy proposition. So far I’ve managed to get in without having my work confiscated. But the paranoia grows more acute with each passing day. So we’ll see what happens when I try to carry my laptop in there next week.
To complicate matters, they’ve moved the parking about a half-mile or so from the courthouse. So you’re supposed to find the parking structure (not easy in the mess that is downtown Phoenix — it’s a maze of one-way streets) and then hop a shuttle to the courthouse. Later, after the rain lets up, I’m going to drive downtown and try to find both the structure and the courthouse. Otherwise, trying to locate it at 7:30 in the morning will be a horror show.
You know, I wouldn’t mind being called if, like the feds, the county and the city could get their act together and not waste my time. But I really hate having a day ripped out of my schedule with no compensation and no consideration whatsoever.
One of my friends was called up. She was a political science Ph.D., and so powerfully opinionated that (believe it or not!) she made me look like an avatar of even-handed open-mindedness. Being who and what she was, she was thrilled to serve.
She was impaneled for a civil case. The judge told the selected jurors that he expected the case to last about three days and asked if that would be a hardship for anyone.
You understand: she had two jobs. One was an adjunct teaching position at the Great Desert University. When you’re adjunct, if you don’t show up, you don’t get paid. There are no substitute teachers for courses taught by adjuncts, so your students lose out on the coursework for which they are paying through the schnozz. But three days, she figured she could finesse. So she made no objection.
The trial went on for over three weeks!
She lost three weeks worth of pay. She had to pay a friend, out of pocket, to cover her course, and even then her students had fallen way behind by the time she got back to work.
Teaching is not considered important enough that a judge will excuse you from jury duty. Interestingly, though, seeing to it that people pay their taxes on time is: my accountant friend has repeatedly gotten himself excused by stating, correctly, that he had to prepare clients’ tax returns on time.
One thing I did learn, by accident, is that if you ask to have your “service” rescheduled and you can finagle them to schedule you on the day before Christmas, you’re likely to get completely out of it. What happens is that lawyers do not want to show up at the courthouse on the day before a major holiday. So try to wangle an appointment right up against a Christmas, New Year’s, or the Fourth of July, and although you may have to show up, you’ll be sent home quickly.
Welp, enough with the ranting. Unfortunately, I’ve got to get to work!
Sure looks snazzy in the picture, doesn’t it? Looks like a regular gas stovetop, in miniature. Amazon wants $53 for this thing, a bargain compared to Costco’s $200 offering, which (admittedly!) does have a stand to hold it at waist height but which has only a couple of burners that don’t look very efficient.
This morning I was reminded that I’d like to have a propane camp stove that will boil water and fry or stew foods, come the apocalypse. This one has a lot of bad reviews — 18%, unfortunately — so I’m still looking (any recommends, dear readers??). But I definitely want to get something with a stove-like burner to use outside.
And how did I happen to be reminded? Well, once again the damned Cox wireless connection went down. So as usual I shut down the computers, unplugged the router and modem, left the system off for half an hour, replugged, and rebooted. Since this happened right about the crack of dawn, the house was kind of cold, so while I was waiting for Cox to recover itself, I went to turn on the heat for a few minutes by way of warming the place up to 63 or 65 degrees.
And lo! The damned Nest thermostat was OFF-LINE.
Yeah. If your router is off, your nifty computerized thermostat is off. So…let’s think about that. Even if your electric service is intact, if your Internet connection goes down, you can’t run your heat or — far more crucially in lovely uptown Arizona — your air conditioning.
Holy sh!t.
If you’ve been paying even the slightest bit of attention, you’re aware that the U.S. Internet is highly vulnerable to attack from Unfriendlies. So much so that an extended regional or nationwide outage is probably inevitable. A serious attack could disable the Internet not for days but for weeks…possibly as long as three months. The same is true of the electrical grid.
We can all imagine the chaos an extended interruption of service would cause nationally and locally. But it’s worth considering exactly what it would mean to you, personally, in your home.
If you couldn’t even turn on the heat or the air-conditioning — even if the electric grid was operating — you would be in deep trouble.
A major attack on the country’s infrastructure — even a part of it, given our present near-100% dependence on computer technology — would mean you couldn’t turn on your stove, your heater or air conditioner, or your water heater. Gas stoves today operate with an electric sparker system, and so your gas stove would not run without electric power. You might not even be able to get potable water out of the tap — or any water. You would not be able to buy gas for your car, because gas pumps run on electricity and computers. You wouldn’t be able to buy groceries and medicines, because retailers’ cash registers are computers running on electricity.
It sounds like crazy Prepper thinking…but between you’n’me, I think it’s probably wise to be prepared, at least minimally, for an extended outage of these services. That’s even if you don’t live on the San Andreas Fault or deep in Tornado Alley.
Today we all live on a fault line.
My best friend in graduate school came from the Salinas area, where her parents were still living when the last major earthquake hit central California. Her mom was here visiting at the time, but her dad had stayed home. Fortunately, Elmer was a camping and fishing enthusiast. So he had a lot of gear on hand. And he had a camper that was equipped with a propane stove and refrigerator.
All the power went down and stayed down for some time. Roads in and out of town were wrecked — no one could get in or out for several days. Elmer kept the entire neighborhood going with the supplies he had, meant to keep him in comfort for a week or two when he was out in the sticks. He was able to boil water and prepare food for the neighbors’ small kids with the propane stoves he had on hand. He became, to put it mildly, the hero of the day.
So…what would be minimal preparation for an extended Internet or electric outage?
•Water — enough to last until the government or Red Cross can truck water into the area •Source of heat for cooking •Source of light, battery or propane operated •Supply of foods that do not have to be refrigerated •Supply of pet food, as necessary •Source of living quarters heat, if it’s very cold outside, or plenty of warm clothing and blankets •At least one 5-gallon jerry can of gasoline •A generous stash of propane, stored safely •Stash of prescription meds, if you can get them, and stash of OTC nostrums •First-aid kit
That’s really not very much — nothing unreasonable for most of us to keep on hand.
“Source of heat for cooking” means a device with at least one burner that gets hot enough to boil water. You may have access to water, but it may not be safe to drink without boiling. If your stove doesn’t work, you’ve got a problem.
I have 18,000 gallons of water in my pool, so assuming I have a camp stove and plenty of propane, I could get by for quite a long while in the event of a water shortage.
Foods that can be stored without refrigeration include dried rice and beans. These need to be soaked in water and cooked for a fair amount of time: hence, propane and water.
A generator would be good…but generators don’t run on air. Whether to drive or to run your house, you’d need gasoline. And gas is not something that can be stored and forgotten: you need to empty the jerry can into your car now and again and drive back up to the gas station to refill your supply
I’m keeping all my propane tanks full at all times, and am thinking I’ll buy another one. At this time I have three; four would last for quite a while.
While the grill works well for most kinds of dry cooking — roasting, baking, and grilling — it’s not designed for boiling water. Using it to boil water or cook rice or beans would waste a lot of fuel. That’s why I think I should have a functioning camp stove.
As for keeping warm at night? Dog. There’s a reason for the “two-dog night” saying. A dog’s normal body temperature is 102.5 degrees. Put the critter on your bed at night, and it’ll warm you up just like an electric blanket.
The ultimate heat source…
I personally am beginning to believe that within the next four to eight years, we will see serious civil unrest in this country. The time may come when we cannot safely leave our homes or neighborhoods for any length of time…or at all.
Which is the longer shot — cyberattack or civil war? I don’t know. They both seem like long shots. But who would have imagined Americans would elect a President who wants to shut down the free press, who imagines he can build a Berlin Wall from Sea to Shining Sea, who lies as freely as he breathes, who cultivates divisiveness, and who evinces clear signs of mental illness?
Whether you think it’s going to happen or not, it may be wise to be prepared. Helle’s Belles, none of us thinks the house is going to burn down or we’re going to croak over tomorrow. But we all carry insurance…just in case.
Today is “Switch Sunday” down at the local house of worship. The proprietors like to dedicate one 11 a.m. hour a month to a full-blown High Church service, complete with incense, bells, and the professional Chamber Choir pulling out the stops. We amateur singers, then, are asked to accompany the more avant-garde (relatively) 8 a.m. service.
Though I think this is a neat thing to do and, of course, since I volunteered to sing with this choir will naturally show up…erkl! In the Pore Pore Pitiful Me Department, I could do without having to arise at the crack of dawn and start banging around.
Which is silly, because I’m usually awake by 5:30 a.m.
Awake. But not banging.
The hours between 7 and about 9 or 10 a.m. are my most productive, and so I could justify my whinginess by pointing out that work goes on seven days a week and another 30,000 words are sitting on my computer waiting to be edited.
But really. You can’t knock off ONE morning?
🙂
Just now I’m waiting for this coconut oil stuff I got from Costco to soak into my hair. We’re told you can use the stuff much as you would use olive oil: as a magical-mystery poultice to revive your dried-out split ends.
We shall see.
If I must go around smelling like a culinary product, I guess I’d rather smell like coconut than olive oil. Both are pretty distinctive. Coconut at least smells kinda sweet.
Which would you rather be: a walking salad bowl or a walking Mounds bar?
The neighbors across the street, speaking of working on Sunday, have hired a backhoe and are out there stripping off the decrepit desert landscaping they inherited. That house has always been a bit on the sad side; at least its exterior has.
It was run down when I moved in, but discreetly so. Then a jerk bought it, turned it into a rental, and moved to New York. That’s when we got Queer John and his roommate. I always enjoyed QJ: crazy as a loon, but sweetly crazy.
QJ got pursued to ground by the cops, who somehow convinced themselves that it took the occupants of three squad cars, a paddy wagon, and two motorcycles to bring the little fellow down. Cops scare easily, apparently…
After QJ disappeared, the house was occupied, probably as a rental, by some very weird people. Eventually they moved out and the Bug Guy and his woman moved in. They were a very nice couple: quiet and harmless and apparently not given to behavior that attracted the attention of the policia.
None of these occupants did anything to improve the landscaping. Somebody, presumably the landlord, hired a lawn service to beat back the weeds, but that was it.
Now at last the house is owned by a family — an actual family, with kids and all! — and they’re starting to fix the place up, a little at a time.
It looks like they’re about to do the yard! Hallelujah, brothers and sisters!
Some of the young people are putting in lawns. I can’t afford a lawn — apparently most of the old guard can’t, either, because the ’hood looks like Sun City with all the gravel on the ground.
But wait’ll they see the bills! I took out the lawns when my water bill got to be higher than the summer electric bill…and that didn’t even count the cost of having somebody come and mow it.
With a young man in the house, though, I suppose you don’t have to hire a lawn dude (not until he gets sick of mowing, I suppose, or until the boy children get past their teenage years…). And no doubt when you have two salaries coming in, you can afford to dump treated city water on the ground. Me, I have a moral objection to both issues: treating groundwater and surface water until an infant can drink it, only to pour it onto the dirt; and paying a stupid amount of cash every month for the privilege.
Well, the hair has been soaking for the past half hour or so. Supposedly I can now wash the gunk out (assuming it will wash out…it has the consistency of candle wax), and we shall see if it indeed leaves you with fine, flowing, unfrizzy locks.
So I’m on my home from the Costco up on the I-17, eastbound toward the ‘hood on GangBanger Parkway. To amuse myself while driving up the concrete riverbottom and through the dreary low-end commercial districts, I’ve been counting the panhandlers. Four on the way up there. Seven on the way back.
At the corner of Conduit of Blight Boulevard and Gangbanger Parkway, I spot a fellow who clearly has just jumped off the train at the end of the line, where the bums, nodders, tweakers, and panhandlers are required to get off.
He’d be a handsome sort of fellow, tall and wiry with a beard just going to gray, if only you could catch him long enough to bathe him and break him of his meth habit. Oh well.
He’s pushing a wheelchair toward the stoplight, at a fast pace. Not wanting to miss the signal, he breaks into a run (a near-athletic run) and tears into the crosswalk, zipping along behind the wheelchair, which is loaded with a cooler and his “Disabled Vet” beggar’s sign.
Undoubtedly coming from or going to his favorite spot to take up his panhandling position! 😀
Pore, pore, pitiful me!How much do you suppose a man can earn, posing as pitiful on a street corner?
Ah, Linda…how we miss ye!
Also in the Department of Ludicrousness, I’m on my way out the door, headed for said Costco Run, and as I pull out of the driveway, what should come stumbling up the street but two tough-looking broads (pace, honored feminist friends! If it’s OK to call a sh!thead a sh!thead, it’s OK to call a broad a broad).
At first glance they look like idle teenagers, but closer up, not so much: they’re in their late 20s or early 30s, and they’ve got some serious roadwear on them. They watch me pull out of the garage, and as I head up the street they come to a stop in front of my house, where they loiter.
I go up the road, watching this in my rear-view mirror. Turn around in the neighbor’s driveway, come back, go back in the garage, close the garage door, and go inside to wait for them to leave.
Only…they don’t leave. Now they sit down on the curb in front of the house, one of them with her head between her legs looking very tweakish and the other on her cell phone.
Shee-ut. I need to get my errands done. My son is soon to be on his way over to drop off Charley the Golden Retriever for some dog-sitting, and I would like to be finished with these tedious chores so as to be here to greet him and the Honored Dog. Plus, believe it or not, I have things to do this afternoon.
I wait. They stick around.
Finally, I call WonderAccountant, who lives & works across the street and whose office window looks directly out onto my front yard, and ask if she would keep an eye on the Funny Farm for an hour, whilst I run to the Costco. She reports that she can see the laydeez. She agrees to glance up from her Tax Prep now and again to check on the shack.
An hour later, I get back. She has watched. She has e-mailed:
The curbsitters were evidently representing a window replacement company called Kasich?? Or something like that. One came to my door and the other one went to Terry’s door. I saw them both walk down towards 16th avenue again together.
