Coffee heat rising

Angst

Another lovely day in beautiful Arizona…

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So I thought I’d found the problem with MacMail, but that was wrong. It now appears that Apple’s elaborate data storage thing backs up all your mail, all your data files, all your everything. Apparently you get a huge but finite amount of space on this server. And…after the six or seven years I’ve been using the current Mac computers, it’s about full!

Everything you think you’re deleting apparently is not really getting deleted. All that junk mail, all those old emails, all those clients’ involved complicated academic papers, all those Excel files, all those notes you wrote to yourself….apparently they’re immortal!

Man, i yam all tech’d out!

This morning I traipsed wayyyy to hell & gone back out to Arrowhead Mall AGAIN, this time to take a ballyhooed class in the iPhone.

Do they have a dedicated space where you can listen to the tutor talk?

You had to ask? Seriously?

So there you are in the middle of the (very busy!)  store, one entire wall of which is open to the two-story-high ECHOEY concrete mall. The Apple tech is hollering to make herself heard, but you can’t hear her well enough to follow her because she’s zipping right along and she assumes you know something of what she’s talking about

The other issue is…this lady (or her boss) is NOT a teacher. The poor thing had NO clue how to organize content for a class or how to conduct a class. She was doing the best she could, which was charming and all, but at least for me, she wasn’t at all helping one to understand how to use the damn device.

The more I watched her, the angrier I got, thinkin’ I just wasted an hour of my time and a quarter-tank of $4.47/gallon gas driving out here.

Got up and left.

Stalking back out toward the Macy’s exit, I happened past a T-Mobile store.

Asked the guys in there, who had nothin’ much to do, if they could advise on how to learn to use the iPhone.

Sure! said they: YouTube! Do a YouTube search for “how to use the iPhone” and enter your model.  They’ve got instructions for every model, and their stuff is great.

I’m going DUH! Why TF didn’t I think of that?????

So it was out the door, feeling at once frustrated, put-upon, and stupid.

Cruising eastward, ever eastward through the endless fields of eave-to-eave plaster and concrete houses… Interesting. Really, they’re not so different from the houses in our less sprawling North Central tracts: just newer, closer together, and…more. Ever-so-much more of them.

What’s neat about them is that commerce is tucked in around them cleverly, so that no matter where your tract happens to be, you’re practically within walking distance of restaurants, grocery stores, doctors’ offices, auto repair shops, SOME kinda shopping.

Pump more gas. Continue eastward, ever eastward.

Arrive home. Snab the mail out of the box. And discover…

An IRATE message from Cox saying I haven’t paid in two months and I owe more than $250 and they’re gonna shut off my phone and internet service.

Say WHAT?

I thought the CU was supposed to be autopaying that!

Get on the phone: persuade Cox to call off the hounds.

Back in the car. Drive back up to northwest Phoenix. Charge into the credit union, which I’d just passed about a half-hour earlier. Discuss. Discover that no, we’re not auto-paying Cox, because I don’t trust Cox, which I consider to be a nest of crooks.

Drive home. Get Cox back on the phone. Charge $250 on my debit card. Pissed.

CU guy suggested setting Cox payments to be autopaid on a debit card. Done, even though this sounds like a sterling bad idea.

Four in the afternoon, virtually nothing of any value has been accomplished, and I yam whipped!

Let’s see if this works….

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Here we are in Computer Hell. Everything in sight is crashing, malfunctioning, and running amok. Got a trip to the Apple store scheduled; had THE world’s most adorable Geek Squad dude show up and labor mightily. Wackiness continues.

Dinnertime is here, and the Old Bat has recourse to Bogle’s Best,.

LOL! Actually, that was supposed to be absurd, but the truth is — hang onto your hat — Bogle’s astonishingly cheap Cabernet Sauvignon is actually a damned respectable drinkin’ wine.

Tastes just fine and doesn’t seem to clash with much.

Except with Reality. Which, we might add, fits me well: apparently I clash with today’s Reality! 😀

The techno-frustration level exceeds Reality. In fact, at this very moment, a thought occurs to me:

Given the password to my Blogging empire and whatever secret codes are needed to operate the iPhone my son kindly gave me, y’know…in reality…or in Unreality….I would not need anything more than an iPhone.

Maybe I could do without owning and operating a laptop or a desktop?

Because as a past employee of the Great Desert University and of the Maricopa County Community Colleges, for-freakin’-FREE I can use their computer labs. Truth to tell, I don’t NEED to access all the horrors from my house or from my own (failing) computers. I could run over to GDU or to the closest community college, take a seat, and ensconce myself in my whole Computer Empire.

God’s truth is…it may not be necessary for me to own laptop at all. Especially since, far’s I can tell, the iPhone contraption IS a computer.

Why the f*ck am I torturing myself with this connectivity horror show? Why don’t I move the three-ring horror show over to the nearest community college or over to GDU?

Added benefit of moving the online empire away from the Funny Farm: it would force me to meet other human beings!

Truly. the roof has rotted away and is falling in on Funny’s blogging empire. I can’t get online to my email. I can’t print stuff in any rational way. I can’t…I can’t…I can’t…well, yeah: I CAN’T STAND ANOTHER MINUTE OF THIS techno-horror show!

It’s two in the afternoon, and just now I’m excruciatingly exhausted after hours of struggling with this computer horror and that computer horror, with gmail and Macmail and things I can’t even remember as the timer beeps to tell me lunch/dinner is ready. Please, please, dear God: take me back to the 19th century!

What’s a little American Civil War compared to what’s going on in the Ukraine, hm?

Shee-ut. Was Abraham Lincoln our protean Vladimir Putin?

‘Tis an article for the New York Review of Books…

MacHassle

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Okay, so this morning I have to traipse — again — to the far west side, to the Apple store at Arrowhead Mall, there to take a course in how to use the iPhone. My son gave me this thing months ago but, being no fool, refuses to try to teach me to use it. So it has set, brickish, on my desk for month after expensive month.

Yes. I do have service for it.

No. I do not know how to use that service.

Nor, entre nous, to I especially want know. Ohhhh goodie! Another intrusive device that effing solicitors can use to interrupt what little peace and quiet we have left.

But it’s now clear you can NOT do without a cell phone of some kind. And since I already have Apple computers, I guess it behooves me to use Apple’s phones.

Not that I’m likely to continue using MacComputers much longer. The fact that you can’t get adequate service for these devices from Apple tends to discourage….especially when Best Buy will send a guy out to your house tout suite if you have an expensive contract with them. Especially when getting service from Apple entails driving halfway to San Diego or halfway to Payson, trying to explain to explain what’s wrong without the salesman/tech dude/whateverheis being able to see what’s happening or being able to ensure that it’s not a connectivity issue, leaving the device there for days, then having to schlep across the city to retrieve it, schlep back across the city to get it home, and then try to reconnect it to power and modem and godknowswhat, all by your untechie little self.

The Best Buy techs do know how to fiddle with Apple products, it’s true. But PCs present a number of advantages, not the least of which is that MS Word on a PC does a far, far more professional job of word processing.

Apple’s Pages word processor…ugh! What a piece of junk. The damn thing double-spaces between paragraphs, forgodsake. Well, actually, it spaces-and-a-half between grafs.

No. You cannot submit that to a scholarly journal.

No. You cannot format a manuscript for a typesetter with any such stupid gaffe in it.

I haven’t even tried to use their spreadsheet software. Why, when Excel does the job just fine?

The prospect of trudging across the city again this morning does NOT appeal. It’s a 45-minute drive out to Arrowhead Mall. Admittedly, Arrowhead has its appeals — it’s a very nice mall. But…but…I should drive 45 minutes through lunatic traffic for window-shopping?

Well, it’s almost 9:40. Better wrap this up and start driving…driving…driving…

MacNever-Never-Land

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In the horror story department, we’re in full “Creature from the Black Lagoon” mode!

Spent the entire afternoon at the Arrowhead Mall Apple store, halfway to San Diego. There, they tried to persuade me that I need a new MacBook. Could be, but I think not. The problem is, newer Apple computers don’t run MS Word and Excel! While Apple has supposedly equivalent programs, these are fine for hobbyists but they don’t rise to a professional level. There’s no way in Hell I can use Pages to edit an academic paper! (or any other kind of document for publication, come to think of it…)

Told the guy I would check with my financial adviser about pulling three grand(!!!!!!!) out of savings.

After traipsing across the Valley and about being persuaded that I need to buy a new MacBook, along about 3 in the morning, when I started drafting this little rant, I was SO exhausted physically and mentally I could recall almost nothing about that little adventure.

Because Google has three accounts – CE Desk, FaM, and Camptown Ladies – it’s extremely difficult to find a “sent” email, because it’s difficult to find the accounts and difficult to get into them. I haven’t used these accounts in years, don’t know the passwords, and this whole damn thing is driving me crazy. If the Macbook goes down, thereby losing memory of the passwords, I am screwed. screwed, gescrewed.

Meanwhile, MacMail — the program I use for ALL my email shenanigans, went down. It would only send and receive emails from its “Archive” folder. (Archive???????)

After reboots from both computers, it seemed to be working…provisionally, sorta.

I also think I failed to call Best Buy and cancel purchase of a new PC. But the truth is, I’m now soooo tired and so confused and so upset that I don’t know that I DID go through with buying one. Think not…but… About all I could recall was that they were supposed to send a tech out here. I paid for a BB service contract but at first was frustrated in trying to get someone to come out.

The password hassles get worse and worse. I simply can NOT remember the bottomless pile of different, ever-changing passwords, and right now I can’t even recall how to find the 23-page list of the damn things. Here, too: more than one copy of it. I find one dated 2021 but it doesn’t seem to have yesterday’s inventions.

Gmail FAM says my Apple ID password has been changed. But I don’t know what it’s been changed TO. I can’t find a note in the TWENTY-THREE PAGES of goddamn passwords. So I went over to https://iforgot.apple.com/password/verify/appleid to try to reset forgotten password, and it says vickyhay@mac.com is not my Apple ID: “vickyhay@mac.com is not valid.” Well…what is, then?*

Now I find a scribbled note that says the Apple ID p/w is, appropriately enough, [even more redacted] 22. This gem is dated April 8 and stapled to a summary of concerns about the peripheral neuropathy that I wrote for MayoDoc.

gaaahhh! We’re not in Kansas anymore, that’s for sure.

***

Awake in the wee hours: worrying, harassed.

The printer goes down. After much thrashing, I get it fixed. Along about 1:40 AM, the test emails I sent to MacMail about 25 minutes before  come through to vickyhay@mac.com. Why? If emptying out MacMail’s diverse inboxes worked, why did it take so long for a message to come across? It did come from vickyhay@mac.com. Could the issue be solved????

Well. If so, it’s solved in the weirdest of all possible ways. incoming mails arrived in the mailbox called “ARCHIVE.” Why? Is all incoming being redirected to Archive? Why?

After traipsing across the Valley and about being persuaded that I need to buy a new MacBook, I am SO exhausted physically and mentally I can recall almost nothing about that little adventure.

Bear in mind: Apple closed its centrally located store, leaving one open in North Scottsdale, and one open in the depths of Southern California Redux, on the far west side. My house is equidistant between these stores: 14 miles from one and 15 miles from the other. So each trip to the damn Apple store consumes THIRTY MILES’ WORTH of $4.67/gallon gasoline!

Surely I didn’t say I WOULD buy a new $3,000 machine? I think I said I would check with Financial Dude about drawing down the money, and believe I did send him an email to that effect. But of course, since the email system doesn’t work, I can’t confirm that to be true.

Because Google has three accounts – CE Desk, FaM, and Camptown Ladies – it’s extremely difficult to find a “sent” email, because it’s difficult to find the accounts and difficult to get into them. I haven’t used these accounts in years, don’t know the passwords, and this whole damn thing is driving me crazy. If the Macbook goes down, thereby losing memory of the passwords, I am ge-screwed.

By the light of the setting moon, I also think I failed to call Best Buy and cancel purchase of a new PC. But the truth is, I don’t know that I DID buy one. I think they were supposed to send a tech out here. I paid for a BB service contract but think I was frustrated in trying to get someone to come out.

*****

Just went to https://iforgot.apple.com/password/verify/appleid to try to reset forgotten password, and it says vickyhay@mac.com is not my Apple ID: “vickyhay@mac.com is not valid.” Well…what is, then?*

*1:47 a.m. Now I find a scribbled note on a typewritten list of concerns that says the apple ID password is [redacted] for all devices. It’s dated April 8 and stapled to a summary of concerns about the PN that I wrote for Dr. Fields.

Now, reminded of this, I bestir myself to look at the case around the keyboard and find [redacted] is the password for all devices as of 4/14/22.

See what I mean about fading memory. Folks. April 14 was YESTERDAY!

Less than 24 hours later, I not only could not remember the new password, I did not even register that I’d taped it to the top of the freakin computer keyboard!!!!!!!

Now, at 1:40 AM, the test emails I sent to MacMail about 25 minutes ago have come through to vickyhay@mac.com. Why? If emptying out MacMail’s diverse inboxes worked, why did it take so long for a message to come across? It did come from vickyhay@mac.com. Could the issue be solved????

These incoming mails arrived in the mailbox called “ARCHIVE.” Why? Is all incoming being redirected to Archive? Why?

*****

What a horror show.

I think I’m gonna give this fiasco a week or two to clear up. If the mess is not untangled and cleaned up by about the end of the first week of May, then I’m just going to dump EVERYTHING and start completely over, probably with PC’s.

At least a PC is cheaper to replace than a Mac, and there are more PC gurus out there than MacWhateverThey’reCutelyCalled.

Don’t think I’ve described the scam artists who got ahold of me, talked me into buying a refurbished used MacBook (the problem doesn’t seem to be a hardware issue, you understand…so this is FAST talk that worked on a CONFUSED old lady). I bought the computer from some outfit on the far, far, far west side (surely more than halfway to San Diego), and on the way home picked up (as advised) a new printer at Best Buy.

Luckily for me, within a few hours I realized that hardware was NOT at issue here. So returned the overpriced used MacBook, but decided to keep the printer. Bought a service plan from Best Buy.

Cox Dude is now on his way over here. One theory is that the problem is the modem, not either of the computers. If that’s true, maybe replacing the modem will solve the problem.

That, I believe, is wishful thinking. I believe the problem is the MacBook or the combined iMac and MacBook.

Welp…we shall soon see!

Scam-a-Rama!

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Welp, the scammers are frolicking about in force. Must be the spring weather that calls them out from under the fridge…

The past three or four weeks, my email inbox has been hit with scam after scam — four of them in just the past ten days or so.

The Scam of the Day tells me my McAfee antivirus subscription has expired and I must hurry right up and send money now.

😀

McAfee? McAfee? We don’t got no steenking McAfee!

All of my fancy electronic doodads are Apple products. Apple provides a very fine antivirus program called MalwareBytes. It’s free, and Apple updates it whenever Apple feels like updating…without you having to mess with it.

LOL! Yes, when I used PCs, I did use McAfee. Because my employer, the Great Desert University used McAfee, and I did whatever the IT dudes advised. But no, I do not now and never have had it installed on the Macinoid devices.

But…

But…thought I…maybe it comes with the iPhone, that fine device that I have yet to learn how to use. Hm…..

Like a MacBook, the iPhone displays a list of applications. No sign of McAfee in there. But just in case…

Just in case, this morning I cruised in to the T-Mobile store, the better to pester my handsome young friends in there.

Cute Dude of the Day looked puzzled when I asked him if we could tell whether McAfee is now or ever has been installed on the i-Gadget. Uhmmm….McAfee doesn’t GET installed on iPhones, quoth he. We check the applications anyway: nope. No McAfeeoid programs.

So…yeah. This is THIRD scamming email I’ve received in as many weeks. So far none of them has tried to persuade me that my son has been kidnapped by ransom-demanding Ukrainians. But I’m sure that one will be along soon.

The first one pretended to come from Amazon — cleverly, for (as you know) it is virtually impossible to get ahold of a live human being at Amazon. It was trying to extract money for the privilege of posting my books for sale on Amazon, and they apparently did have real data from my Amazon seller’s account.

Amazon, as you know, short-changes customers (and sellers) on customer service every which way from Sunday. I finally gave up trying to get a CSR who spoke English and appeared to be a living being, and just took all my products off Amazon.

Don’t forget, BTW, that you can read some of them for free right here at FaM, just by clicking on the linked images in the right-hand sidebar.

At any rate, I dunno why the bastards have suddenly decided to blitz me with scams. Probably it has to do with my age: as we all learn from the ad blitz that comes from AARP the instant we turn 65, marketing hustlers can buy mailing lists that are compiled by age. And they know that old bats are peculiarly vulnerable to email and telephone scams.

Whatever. Be aware, and do know that these people can and do acquire a great deal of private information about you: much more than you might imagine possible. Because they know key details, they sound convincingly like a vendor that you do business with. Any time someone asks you for money or personal information — even someone claiming to represent a business you know — proceed with caution. Or better yet: don’t proceed at all.

Never a Dull Moment

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Certainly not at 1:00 in the morning… The wind is howling up quite the storm. The Soleri bell in back is jangling madly. Tbe corgi is unnerved. Haven’t peered out to see what’s going on, but figure the pool will be filled with debris by dawn.

Fortunately for me (but not for him…), Pool Dude is slated to show up shortly after dawn. He’ll have quite the mess to clean up.

Just now life is tending toward mess, national and international events aside. Even if the wind weren’t wailing, I wouldn’t be able to sleep. Developed a cyst thing in my eye. Besides being damned creepy, it itches and it burns enough to keep Dracula himself awake all day. And me all night…

The aged eye doctor I found (the guy must be 85 if he’s a day…maybe older than that!) insists that it probably will go away. Sources I’ve found say you can treat it with steroid eye drops, but he declines to prescribe anything other than over-the-counter eye drops, which do (as far as I can see) little or nothing. So I suppose in a day or so I’m going to have to brave the bureaucracy at the Mayo and try to get my doc out there to refer me to one of their specialists.

Shee-ut! Like I have nothing else to do but spend two hours driving back and forth to northeast Scottsdale.

Speaking of the which, yesterday I traipsed out to the Apple store at the wildly fancy Kierland Commons, whence Apple’s corporate (un)wisdom sent its formerly centrally-located store. They give lessons on how to use the iPhone, it develops. So I made an appointment and then drove and drove and drove and drove and drove and…etc., arriving in Scottsdale right on time: 10 a.m., as they opened,

Except…not.

They didn’t open.

Their servers were down, said they. So they sent everybody who was standing around outside away!

It’s a 45-minute drive out there! So I wasted 90 minutes and a quarter-tank of gas schlepping to Scottsdale for nothing! And I still have no clue how to use the miracle iPhone…

“Wanna make another appointment?” say I to the young woman engaged in shooing away customers, She does, after all, have an iPad in her nicely manicured paw.

“We can’t! Because the servers are down!”  Never heard of a pencil and a pad of paper, I guess. 😀

Back to the car, via Restoration Hardware, where I spotted a sofa and chair that would be perfect for my son were the price anywhere near what someone other than Steve Jobs could afford.

Out in the parking lot I find a black guy standing by a car now parked right next to mine.

He is cute. Very, very cute.

He looks impatient, and he also looks a little nervous about the old white broad spotting him as he lurks near her car.

“You look like a man who’s waiting for his wife!” say I.

“That’s right!” He laughs. We chat.

Born 30 years too late. {sigh}

Eventually I climb in the Dog Chariot and cruise off down Greenway Road, whence I came.

Outward bound, I’d spotted a housing tract on the north side of Greenway: 1970s and 80s mass-produced houses. Curious, I dodge into the place and drive around.

It’s actually quite a pleasant neighborhood, very similar to the ’Hood. Matter of fact, I spot one house made of cinderblock that looks for all the world like it’s the same model as the Funny Farm. Most of the places, though, are considerably more fancy-looking. I wonder what houses cost there (though I can imagine)  but can’t find any “for sale signs,” so never do get a line on that. Back at the Funny Farm, though, I do find some listings posted on the Web.

  • Holee mackerel:lookit this thing! It’s in the general area…a million dollars for a house the size of mine, elbow-to-elbow with the neighbors! Auuughhhh! Thanks, I’ll take my pet burglars…
  • eeeeek! For 2/3 of a million bucks: this is 270 square feet smaller than my house, same kind of slump-block construction. Fake stove. Home Depot kitchen cabinets. No pool. Only three bedrooms. And…huh…that’s odd. It actually looks like the pool might have been filled in. Jeez…did a kid drown there?

Meanwhile, the eye cyst is getting very much on the old lady’s nerves, and I’ve been told Aged Eye Doc went into the hospital to have surgery on a knee.

When I get home, I call Young Dr. Kildare’s office to try to get a referral to another ophthalmologist. I cannot get past the telephone runaround. After “If yada yada yada, press nine,” I hang up in a rage.

I try to reach the eyeglass place: they’re not open. (They’re never open. Is the place a front for a cocaine operation or what????)

Now I decide to drive to Costco, which has a very good and very busy optometry department, and ask for a referral to an ophthalmologist that they know. And buy a few groceries while I’m at it. Okay: acquire a list of names, buy a few pieces of junk, drive home.

These supposed eye docs comprise a list of guys working for some chain eye-care outfit. Oh well: any port in a storm.

Calling one number, I get a lady on the phone who is a complete, blithering MORON. I cannot make her understand that I need to see a doctor promptly because I have a lump growing in my eye and it HURTS. Finally I lose my temper at her impregnable barrier of brainless obtuseness and hang up.

What to do, what to do??????

Call Aged Eye Doc’s place, hoping his staff will be there. And yea verily! Get his appointment lady. Ask if they could please refer me to one of Eye Doc’s colleagues, because this thing is not getting better (as he had hoped it would) but instead is getting bigger and worse.

Incredibly, she says he’s in the office for short periods and will see me TOMORROW MORNING!!!

Whaaaaaa???!!!?

I say But he just had surgery on his knee! 

She says Yeah, he did, but he’s coming in to the office for a couple of hours a day. 

I say He’s a man of steel! 

She laughs and makes an appointment for 10 ayem. Thank the heavens!!!!!

So I show up at that duly appointed hour this morning. He proposes to do nothing about it. Says the alternative to waiting and watching and hoping the eyedrops help is surgery. He’s in no hurry to do surgery. I mention that I learned that steroid eyedrops are often used on these things. He demurs.

Well, at least he’s not knife-happy. Surgery on an eye does not sound like a good thing.

It’s now 2:00 in the morning, as we scribble. The wind died down for…oh, about five minutes. Now it’s wailing around again. “Gusting,” I suppose that is.

The dog is asleep. Wish I were, too…