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Update: CRP V5000 Call Blocker

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Okay, so last Friday I enjoyed several Epic Fails . Ranking high among them: After I attached the new CRP V5000 call blocker, first call that came in was from my son, who blocks Caller ID so that what I see is “unknown name, unknown number.”

Naturally, I punch BLOCK CALL on the fancy new CRP V5000 Call Blocker. And before i put the phone headset down, i think o.h. s.h.!.t.

Call the kid back, ask him to call me. Yes. His number — his unknown number — is now blocked. The instructions for the little machine, which are highly minimalist in nature, do not explain how to unblock an unknown number.

Sh!t Hell and Damn. So I unplug the nifty little machine and endure the usual six to ten nuisance calls per day, starting at 7:00 a.m., on Saturday and Sunday.

This morning I call the CRP V5000 maker’s customer service line and…get this! A HUMAN BEING ANSWERS!

Holy mackerel. I haven’t encountered an actual living being on the other end of a customer service number in as long as I can remember.

When I recover from my swoon, I describe the issue. It takes the gent about 20 seconds to explain, in words intelligible to elderly female PhDs, how to fix it. Forthwith, M’hijito’s phone number (which, it develops, is visible from within the gadget — so much for your caller ID over-ride, Young Dude!) is unblocked.

So the device is now plugged in (again) and recruited for service. It’s after 3:00 p.m., and I haven’t received one (1) nuisance call since the little guy was reconnected.

Within a few days, we will know whether this interesting doodad works. How can I say how much I hope it does work!

I’m not replacing the endless voicemail/advertising message until we see whether the V5000 cuts the number of pest messages. But I have drafted a nice, brief outgoing voicemail with which to replace the yakathon (robocalls automatically hang up after about 30 or 40 seconds of recorded jabber…but then, so do potential new clients). Along about the middle of the week, with any luck, that will go online.

Call Blocker: IT’S HERE!

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Think of that: here’s a post that never got published. When did I write it? Thursday or Friday. ‘Yere ’tis: more to come…

So Amazon delivered the CPR V5000 call blocker gadget practically overnight. Some guy in a white truck threw it over the front wall onto the concrete sidewalk. It doesn’t seem to be broken, though.

By the time it arrived, a little before 11:30, two nuisance scammers had already jangled the phone — one at 7:30 in the morning. So as you can imagine, I surely do hope this thing works and the bastards don’t find a way around it.

Nothing could be easier to set up. You just unplug your phone at the base, snap the plug into the V5000’s jack, and then connect the V5000 to the phone with a conveniently short cable that comes with.  And…now we’ll see how well it works.

The defunct TeleZapper device was still connected to the phone. It’s been useless for a long time: the telemarketing crooks quickly found a way to defeat TeleZapper. So I tossed that in the trash.

What a tangle of wires! Out the door with those: This new doodad doesn’t have to be connected to an electric outlet. It’s just the phone cable and the connection, effectively placing the V5000 in series with the phone. So that tidies up a mess I had to hide by velcroing it, in a great wad, to the back of the cabinet where the phone sits.

Five thousand known solicitors’ and spoofed numbers are already programmed into the thing. So, in theory, just plugging it in should cut down the frequency of calls from the git-go. Then as you get nuisance calls, you just push a button (or punch #2 from a cordless extension) to add the numbers to the device’s capacious  list.

In theory, you’re supposed to plug it into the phone that’s directly connected to the phone company’s incoming line. I’m not sure which one that is. The Cox guy put the filter in the middle bedroom, which is where the Uniden base unit resides. So I’m guessing this will work. But it would make more sense to believe the main line is coming into the office, where the computer and the modem live. The phones run on a Cox cable, not on the old-fashioned phone line, and I believe that cable runs along the outside of the house into the office phone outlet.

The problem is, said outlet is underneath and behind a table that’s too heavy for me to move. Getting to that connection is extravagantly difficult, involving a great deal of floor-crawling and contortions.

So, because the filter is in the middle room — which, I vaguely recall, was the reason the phone set had to go there instead of on my desk — I decided to try that first.

From what some commenters say, the thing will work from any phone jack. If it’s unhappy, what will happen is it will allow one ring to get through before it kicks in. In that case, you’re supposed to…oh…you know…follow instructions and plug it into the cable company’s incoming jack.

But that shouldn’t be as difficult as I feared, since you don’t have to climb under the table: all you have to do is unplug one phone and plug in the gadget.

God, how I hope this thing works. I’m so sick of being called once every couple of hours all day long, starting at seven in the morning!

Enough, already!

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Already!

One outrage after another:

Five-year-old child “detained” at airport, separated from his mother.

U.S. commando killed in Trump’s first anti-terrorism effort.

Trump’s impromptu orders may set the country back 70 years.

Even intransigent right-wing Republicans oppose Trump.

Trump chums up to Saudi Arabs, Abu Dhabi (need I remind you that I grew up in Saudi Arabia, I know something about the Saudi mentality, and I noticed — as you should have by now — that the Twin Towers attack was staffed by and funded by Saudis?)

Trumpites unrepentant about leaving Jews out of Holocaust statement (the mind boggles!)

Starbucks pledges to hire 10,000 refugees over next five years.

Tim Cook says Apple wouldn’t exist without immigration.

Politics “trump” science (the real kind, not the woo-woo kind)

Trump’s immigrant ban already harming scientists.

Trump’s immigrant ban fvcks over artists.

Markets fall in the wake of Trump travel ban, weak GDP.

Yes, and how many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky? —Bob Dylan

TO THE BARRICADES, BROTHERS AND SISTERS!

DAMMIT, WRITE TO YOUR CONGRESSMEN. PICK UP A SIGN. GET OUT THERE IN THE STREETS AND MAKE YOUR VOICES HEARD.

This demented megalomaniac is going to destroy our country. That’s not a “maybe.” That’s not an “if.” That’s an is going to.

It’s got to stop before we all go down the drain. The only people who can stop it are Republican representatives sitting in Washington, D.C.  Turn on the light switch for them! Demand that they take action to stop the ruination of America and the true values of our founding fathers. We did not elect another George III.

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Brief Recovery Phase

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Still in extended day-of-rest mode after finally finishing off the large academic anthology plus a last-minute math paper. Tina is busily rewriting her resumé and trying to write a convincing statement about why she wants to go to law school. It seems like a slam-dunk to me…her background is just the thing to entice a law-school selection committee. To say nothing of a law firm’s hiring committee.

Despite feeling like hibernation would be the best course just now, I finished off a couple of small bidness-related matters while loafing around, fooling with Facebook, cruising the Internet, and playing computer games.

Did manage to prune an overgrown rose, a project I’ve put off interminably. The climbing roses look OK, probably because they’ve had so much water over the winter…and for a change I didn’t neglect them quite so shamelessly last summer.

Still need to spray bugicide all over the west side, another project that I’m having a hard time forcing myself to do.

Last year, I learned from a Home Depot guy who claimed to have been an arborist that a particular bug spray, if applied as a soak to the ground around an infested paloverde, actually will make a dent in the supposedly invincible paloverde beetle population. So I applied it in the spring, but then was too damn lazy (and cheap: the stuff is mightily expensive!) to apply it in mid-summer, when I should’ve.

Nevertheless, only about half as many monster beetles emerged than came up in the prior year’s crop. That was impressive.

So I figured January would be a good time to apply another layer of the stuff…especially now, while the ground is very damp. Didn’t get around to it today…so MUST do that tomorrow.

How do you like the current draft of the upcoming book’s cover?

Still trying to make the background gradient work a little better…because i are a english major, i are not a artist, getting it more or less right involves endless trial and error. But I did contrive to get the spine copy and logo in place, rewrite the back cover copy (which, as we scribble, I see contains yet another goddamn error), and realize that I probably could widen the cover 1 image enough for it to run all the way over the bleed margin without distorting the cover lines. Much. Hm. That’s for the next draft.

The damn image wants to snap to grid, even though I’ve turned off that function. And…I think I’ve overestimated the width of the righthand bleed margin, so I could in theory not run it all the way to the edge of the PPt slide without risk to the subtitle’s cover lines. Maybe. Maybe not.

Nor do I feel especially thrilled about the Cover 4 copy, anyway. It’s too verbose. Later. Figure that out later…

My e-book designer seems to have tabled the ePub/Kindle version of this thing, so it looks like either I’m going to have to find another formatter who has the skills to handle illustrations in ebooks — not an easy trick — or I’m going to have to learn to do it myself.

In the course of thrashing around over that, I discovered the updated iBook Author, an Apple program designed for creating fairly elaborate formats — including illustrations — for publication on iTunes. As it develops, more recent versions will convert the finished product to ePub and will carry over fairly simple illustration, such as diagrams and simple figures, without much distortion. It looks like it wouldn’t be too hard to learn. There’d be a learning curve, a protein to which I’ve developed an allergy of late, but it doesn’t look insurmountable.

Unfortunately, I’d have to update to OSX 11. I don’t even know if this little computer would run OSX 11, nor do I know whether Wyrd will run on it. Newer versions of OSX will not run MS Office unless — in some cases — Office was already installed at the time the program was upgraded.

If I upgrade and the new operating system trashes my Word and Excel programs, I am screwed. As in royally screwed: it will put me out of business. We rely on Word’s “track changes” function, which does not translate to the Apple ecoystem.

My only choice, if I want to stay in business, would than be to buy a new PC from Costco, where I can get a copy of Office on disk (thereby obviating the need to do all my work and my client’s work in Microsoft’s cloud, which I do not want to do and will not do).

Really, I should do that anyway, so as to get ahold of that Office program while it still can be had on disk. If it still can be had. And really, I do need to switch back to the PC.

It’s just that I don’t want to. And I dread it. Can’t even say how much I dread having to relearn Microsoft’s horrible operating system and fight the constant onslaught of malware with the dreadful, system-clogging antivirus software and cope with the cheesy hardware that’s “old” after about three years. Ugh, ugh, and triple-ugh. But since sooner or later Apple is going to upgrade me out of business, no doubt it’s foolish to continue much longer without a PC.

Anyway, given that the PC purchase can’t be put off much longer and at least one of these two Macs needs its operating system updated anyway, I might as well buy and learn iBook Author and the ancillary programs you have to buy to run beside it. That way I could not only do my own eBook formatting, in theory I could do it for clients, too. And I could produce bookoids in iBook format, which can be pretty darned classy.

I see that iTunes has some blandishments for first-time uploaders. I never did load the Fire-Rider volumes or the cookbook to Barnes & Noble or to iTunes, mostly because I don’t have ePub versions. Supposedly they exist, but my friend has never sent them over. It would be fairly easy to create iBook versions of the novel. The cookbook, not so much. But…if I could extract the ePubs from the formatting dude, it can be imported into iBook Author. For that matter, supposedly things can be imported from a decently formatted Word file…but there’s a wind I’ve heard blow before. 😀

Well, it’s nearly 10 p.m. I’m hungry. And tired. And so, away!

Blocking the Scammers

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Enough! I finally decided to get off my duff and do something about the interminable telemarketing robocalling scammers. They’ve taken now to calling as early as 7 in the morning and as late as 8:30 at night. It’s not unusual to get half a dozen nuisance calls in a day. The National Do-Not-Call list does exactly nothing to discourage them, and Cox, the least obnoxious of the phone companies locally, flat refuses to provide the most effective telemarketing blocker, NoMoRobo — because, we’re told, telecom companies claim their old copper lines aren’t up to the task. (Never mind that most landline users now get our phone service through the cable.)

The strategy I chose is far from the most economical. If you want to keep a household phone system that allows you to have a wireless extension in every room, the cheapest way is to switch from landline to VoIP.

Here in Phoenix, Ooma offers a VoIP service that supports NoMoRobo, apparently for no extra charge. This allows you to cancel Cox’s phone service, leaving you only with the cost of the Internet connection, saving about $30 a month. Without the phone in the “package,” of course, Cox can be relied upon to jack up the cost of the Internet service — they never miss a beat, you can be sure. So your saving would be less than the present cost of the phone system. Ooma is only a few dollars a month — because it’s an Internet connection, not a telephone service, you escape the outrageous taxes and fees, which in our parts cost more than phone connection itself.

I decided not to cancel my landline, antiquated though the technology is, for several reasons:

• A landline phone plugged directly into a telephone jack will work even when the electricity is out, and even when Cox’s Internet connection is down. VoIP will not.

Yeah, I know: use your cell phone. Well, I have one clamshell phone that I often forget to recharge…what happens when the power is out, an emergency is in progress, and the damn cell phone (assuming I can find it in the dark) is dead?

• After studying the Ooma sites and the Ooma reviews, it looks to me like setting up a VoIP connection with one of their boxes is “simple” only to The Young and The Techie. You can put money on it — a lot of money — that when I try to make the thing work, I will fvck it up. It then will be days before I can lure my son over here to get it to work, and without a doubt I’ll lose the phone number emblazoned all over my business cards and stationery. These are not likelihoods: they’re givens.

• I suspect the sound quality falls short of the quality a hard-wired system delivers. Even fans of Ooma — which is said to be one of the better programs — call it “echoey.” Do I really want to be talking with clients on an echoing line?

• In theory, the 911 operators can find you if you dial from a land line. Remains to be seen if that’s true. Last time I called 911, I was choking and couldn’t speak. When I couldn’t get any words out, the 911 operator hung up on me. But…the theory is there. Theoretically…

The largest of these considerations is that when I say I’m all learning-curved out, I’m not kidding. I’m so averse to having to take a college course to re-learn the use of a tool I’ve used comfortably for decades, I’m actually willing to pay for the privilege of not having fart around with that.

So I just plunked down a hundred bucks to buy a British-made device called the CPR V5000 Call Blocker. It’s pretty much plug and play, from what I can tell. There are some circumstances in which it may require some jiggering, but apparently they don’t apply to my system.

The thing comes with 5000 known telemarketing phone numbers already blocked. So from the moment you plug it in, you reduce the deluge of calls. Then you just push a button (or #2, from an extension) to block a pest caller when he dials you. Before long, few or none get through.

You can block entire area codes. There are a couple of area codes from which nothing but phone solicitations are sent; block those area codes, and you block every call coming from within that code. Some 1,833 customers have given this gadget an average rating of 4.5 stars. At Amazon, the maker has patiently and fully explained dozens of consumer questions — if you read through them, you get a clue to how to deal with all the issues people ask about — and the company also has live customer service reps who are reportedly competent.

Its nearest competitor, twenty bucks less at Amazon, has racked up just 11 customer reviews, averaging only 4 stars. Since many producers pay people to write reviews, it’s best to discount the 5-star reviews — with so few reviews, doing so would probably drop the average rating. And its sales copy is not written in idiomatic English — they couldn’t even bother to hire a native speaker to pitch their device.

This doodad is supposed to arrive tomorrow. I can’t wait!

New Plumbers…wooHOO!

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So yesterday I lucked in to not one but TWO new plumbers, both highly recommended by people who should know. The one who returned my call first got my business: he came over and in short order unclogged the problem bathtub drain. Bill? $59.

That was one heckuva lot less than expected.

That guy surfaced on Yelp, where he has way, way more raves than anyone could possibly generate by bribing and begging one’s friends, customers, and Fiverr contractors to post there. The other man is beloved of WonderAccountant, her family, and her friends. He called later and made an excellent impression over the phone.

The first guy mostly does roto-rooting and drain clean-out, though he will do some plumbing chores. The second is a PLUMBER plumber: he installs and repairs pipes and fixtures. And, he allows, he doesn’t do much drain cleaning, largely because he doesn’t like to haul equipment up onto roofs.

My all-time favorite plumber dude feels the same about cleaning out drains. But the problem is, sometimes that’s the kind of plumbing help you need. And the problem with that is, fave plumber dude is one of those people who hates to tell people NO to their faces. So instead what he’ll do is say he’s involved in something or driving, and he’ll call you back when he returns to the shop.

Somehow, he never gets back to the shop. Like Poor Old Charlie on the MTA….

Alas, I’ve grown tired of decoding that message and have decided to hire WonderAccountant’s guy for serious plumbing jobs and the drain guy for plugs and plogs.

Besides the fact that I’ve been living with several faucets that I hate for the past 13 years, since I moved into the house, there is about to be some serious plumbing work in this place. Drain Dude says that he couldn’t retrieve the doodad that fell into the bathtub drain, and the next time it plugs up, we may have to pull out the bathtub, take out the drain, and rebuild it. Charming.

On Other Fronts…

Yesterday also saw the completion of a number of other projects: Finished the latest math paper and shipped it off to the client along with a statement. Calculated a statement for editing 14 scholarly papers, based on the varying difficulty of the respective papers, and sent that to the anthology’s editor. Calculated how much we would have earned had we charged by the word instead of by the page; reported thereon to bidness partner. Wrote a post for Plain & Simple Press. Entered budgeting data. Filed paper filed paper filed paper filed paper…. Paid bills. Tried to write a post for LinkedIn but gave up after LinkedIn crashed the damn thing, apparently erasing everything I’d written. I hoped it didn’t somehow publish it, because it wasn’t finished and of course it wasn’t even faintly proofread.

LinkedIn has revamped its site, making it difficult to navigate and difficult to use. This morning I found the errant post, which had crashed when I tried to insert a jpeg in the post. Apparently you are NOT allowed to insert images in your “articles,” except for the one you put in the banner. You can enter “multimedia” — figuring out how will take more time than I care to kill when I’m this busy. Why fix it, dear LinkedIn, if it ain’t broke?

All but two important tasks ultimately got done yesterday. Those are still hanging fire. I have to leave in half an hour to meet a client-become-friend for lunch; on the way home have to stop at Safeway and the credit union, meaning it will mid- to late-afternoon by the time I drag back in the door.

And…having just posted that LinkedIn article, I’m now running late for the luncheon appointment. So, away!