Coffee heat rising

Angst

Watch Out: Covid-related malware

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As usual, bad actors are taking advantage of a crisis to take advantage of you. MarketWatch, one of my favorite financial sites, warns that hackers are playing on the present coronavirus hysteria to trick users and infect their computers.

Most annoyingly, the popular Covid-tracking map from Johns Hopkins University has been targeted by hackers imitating the site and trying to get users to download software. The real Johns Hopkins map does not ask you to download any programs! View the map only from the Johns Hopkins site or from the one operated by ArcGIS Trust Center.

The respective URLs for these sites are as follows:

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html?mod=article_inline
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6?mod=article_inline

And (in case you’re forgotten), remember never to download an attachment in an email from a source you do not know. A number of fake emails are on the float, as we scribble:

  • One pretending to be from the CDC, inviting you to click on links for information about the virus
  • RTF files emanating from hackers in China that exploit MS Word
  • Lures to fake and look-alike websites

None of this stuff is anything new; it’s the same old BS, only coronavirus-themed. Be alert, and don’t get suckered in.

A Strategy for the Plague?

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Don’t be deceived: I have none. Neither, far as I can tell, does anyone else, other than recommending that people follow what should already be routine sanitary practices.

The coronavirus has arrived in the Valley of the We-Do-Mean-Sun. Nine cases have been reported in the state, five of them in Pinal County, which is just up the road.  One wretch spent time in two crowded nightclubs and 80 people in the state have been tested for the disease. Entertainment venues are closing, and the Democratic debate slated to take place here will have no live audience in attendance. And, always happy to share, we sent two positive cases on a plane from Phoenix to Toronto. In Massachusetts, 72 of the state’s 90 cases occurred in people who had attended a Biogen corporate meeting.

None of this would get me very exercised, except for the fact that I’ve been so sick so often in the past few months. And that I still have an infection where the orthodontist stuck that post that probably will have to be surgically removed. Honestly: I just do not want to see the inside of an ER room again! Not for a long, long while.

And at age 75, I’m smack in the middle of the group most at risk of serious outcome from this fine disease. No doubt made more so from having been weakened by the late series of epizootics and unhealing dental surgery.

Sooo…. Given my proclivity to catch every bug that comes along, I’m thinking maybe I should step out of choir (and concomitantly, church) for the duration of this epidemic. Or epic flap, whatever it really is.  One epidemiologist suggests we avoid gatherings and face-to-face meetings. There’s a limit to how practical that is. But…it would seem that if you don’t have to be at a gathering, maybe you shouldn’t be.

I will say, one year I got splendidly sick when one of my fellow singers plopped herself down behind me and spent two hours coughing at the back of my head and neck. So…yeah. Choir is potentially a sink of contagion. And this is one particular contagion I’d like not to partake of.

Tomorrow I have to go staff the church’s front desk for four hours. Cannot even begin to imagine how I can gracefully get out of that…

Fortunately, though, I scored a couple more canisters of Lysol wet kitchen counter wipes, supposedly disinfecting. My plan is to take some of those in and wipe down the desk and the phone, plus have some to wipe my hands every time I think of it. Not as perfect as putting light-years of distance between oneself and the bug. But one heckuva lot better than nothing.

In the same vein, I laid off the cleaning lady, who was supposed to come by today. I’d already scored the 80 cash dollahs needed to pay her, and offered to give it to her when she’s over in our parts at WonderAccountant’s place. She declined. So this means when she comes back I’ll have to find some gift for her, maybe a Costco or Walmart cash card. That is a figure-it-out for another day.

Cleaning Lady begone, because she now has a LOT of cleaning customers, so she’s rooting around in sheets, bathrooms, and kitchens of many unknown folk. Plus she has a middle-school-aged daughter who will enjoy the predictable exposure to every bug that comes along, and most certainly will bring this one home to Mom and Dad. Since I’m fully capable of pushing a vacuum cleaner around, that’s a risk we can forego for the nonce.

Speaking of the which, the penicillin (recently determined not to be one of my many drug allergies) the orthodontist prescribed seems to have beaten back the infection around the dental post but not completely killed it off. It still aches, and the gum still feels odd near the damaged socket. Dollars to donuts, that will have to be removed…to the tune of an expensive and sterling unpleasant procedure.

The next appointment I have with him isn’t until the 18th; but this penicillin runs out tomorrow. I can NOT get past his front office staff, because I can’t make the woman understand what the concern is — i.e., I do not want to let an infection grow for a week if the penicillin didn’t kill it all off, nor do I want to promote resistance to the penicillin by stopping for a few days and then starting up again. I don’t know whether the woman is too uneducated to understand the issue — highly likely, given the quality of Arizona’s public schools and colleges — or whether objectively there’s nothing to worry about.

But…I did just get through to my regular dentist. He’s going out of town tomorrow, so they want me to show up in his precincts in…about an hour and 45 minutes. Yeah. Schlep through the rain over streets infested by lunatic drivers who don’t know how to drive in rain, and do it right this minute.

And so…away!

Panic à Costco?

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Went over to the Costco on the I-17 this morning to stock up on some products the store here in the po’ folks’ part of town doesn’t carry. Amazingly, for example, you can’t buy a chunk of blue cheese here in the low-rent district. But the store up north has a very nice Bel Gioso blue that’s wonderful. They also have a propane dispenser, the only Costco in town that does.

It’s always wise to plan one’s trips to that place propitiously. So a bit before noon on Friday morning I figured the store wouldn’t be too crowded. Hit the Albertson’s first, then hit the freeway, where a couple of those lighted message signs informed us that a construction worker had been killed. So got off the freeway to avoid a traffic jam and got to the store the back way.

Not too crowded? Hah! The Coronavirus Panic run on grocery and hardware stores has begun.

The place was jammed.

But it was weird. Normally Costco customers are exuberantly oblivious of their fellow grocery-cart pushers. And a lot of noise goes on and people are happily rolling toward whatever doodad they think they can’t live without. Not so today. Not that people weren’t talking and kids weren’t carrying on…it was that they were strangely quiet. And bizarrely polite — people would motion you ahead instead of cutting you off to get there first.

I got one of the last packages of toilet paper. People were buying a lot more TP than paper towels, but the paper towels were also going fast. And I nabbed the second-to-last package of boned chicken thighs. Drumsticks were gone. One of the butchers told us they were out of chicken and wouldn’t get more in until the first of the week.

It really was just…kind of a weird experience

Anyway, if you haven’t already done so, now may be the time to make a provisions run. If Costco is any measure, it looked like paper goods (especially TP!) and easily cooked or grilled meats were going fast. In these parts you can’t buy hand wipes, but countertop wipes by Lysol will work as well or (probably) better.

Don’t forget to keep the gas tank topped up, too.

…And I’m complaining…WHY?

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Ever have one of those moments when you find yourself wondering “Why am I whining about _[fill in the blank_“?

Coming nigh to the close of another full day of batting from pillar to post — doggy walk, grocery run, Home Depot run, Lowe’s run, Best Buy run, electric supply store run, bird feed project, mess pick-up, correspondence catch-up, real estate surveillance check, feast cooking, raccoon tracking, and on and on and endlessly on — I find myself wondering…why the hell do I worry about the chronic insomnia that rousts me around 2 or 3 every morning, when in fact during the day I DON’T FEEL TIRED?

In fact, I feel quite peppy all day: no sense of insomniac fatigue or crankiness.

Maybe — could it be? — just maybe going to bed around 9 or 10 p.m., waking up at 2 or 3 (= 5 hours’ sleep), loafing in the dark until 4 or 5 a.m., then falling back to sleep and waking up around 6 or 7 a.m. (= 5 + 2 hours sleep, for a total of 7 hours) is perfectly reasonable? The upshot is around seven hours’ of sleep, despite a two- or three-hour hiatus. Seven hours is thought to be normal and healthy for the agèd human. What is the difference whether you sleep 7 hours straight from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m., or 7 hours off and on between around 9 p.m. and around 7 a.m.?

Seems to me if you feel fine the next day, all day, there really is no difference.

How many other things do we whine about when…really…they make no difference?

  • The homicidal traffic and our fellow moronic drivers? If we get from point A to point B without killing each other, does it really make any difference?
  • Our crazy relatives whose political opinion pigheadedly differs from our enlightened wisdom: this makes a difference how?
  • The gas price at the QT was 22 cents higher than at the Costco, where we had to drive an extra 7 miles (14 miles round-trip) to avail ourselves of the bargain: this changed our lives how?
  • The city raises its monthly trash collection bill by $2.46: our lives are destroyed by this to what extent?

Huh. Think o’ that.

What’s your favorite whinge?

And the Evening Not to Be Outdone by the Day…

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So I come rolling in to the ‘Hood from choir along about 9:30 p.m. and see, buzzing over the southwestern precincts, a low-flying and very angry-looking cop helicopter. He’s in hot pursuit of someone, apparently fleeing down Conduit of Blight Boulevard. But he’s not alone. To the north and also to the west, another cop copter is hovering over my old house, scanning the intersection of Conduit of Blight and Gangbanger’s Way.

By the time I get the car stashed in the garage and the pooch out in the side yard to pee, the dragonfly to the south is circling Conduit of Blight and Main Drag South, and the one to the north is over the crummy apartments and the senior-citizen trailer park above Gangbanger’s. Wring out the dog to the lovely serenade of buzzing helicopter engines, fly back inside, and lock the doors.

🙂

Welcome home!

It’s never boring around this place.

How Much Time, Lord…

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…is freaking wasted wrestling with computer software?

This afternoon, in one tiny household in the middle of one faceless city parked in the middle of a far-flung desert: three hours. That’s this afternoon alone.

I’ve lost track of the number of hours I’ve spent on the phone with Apple Support, to say nothing of the number of hours consumed by driving back and forth to Apple stores, by trying to figure out a problem by myself, by reconstructing lost data…ohhhh good grief.

Seriously: the Apple Support folks are a godsend. Without them, by now I would have picked up a number of expensive gadgets and thrown them across the room, to collide at a high velocity with a wall.

Which, one might speculate, would be counterproductive.

These computers we all have, all the manifold devices most of us tote around with us: they’re wonderful devices. They allow us to perform feats of data entry and calculation that would have consumed our lives had we tried to do them with a typewriter or an adding machine or a spreadsheet. This is because they do these tasks at outrageous speed, with little need for thought from the user.

So….why does riding herd on the damn things still consume our lives?

It is Saturday evening. A weekend. Remember those? Do you remember them as “free times”? I sure do: once upon a time you didn’t spend your weekends working.

Today I was on the phone with Apple from 3 in the afternoon until 6 — three hours — trying to figure out why Apple’s iCloud keeps nagging me that something is wrong. Wrong? Wrong with a password, we surmise. Between me and the two excellent gents I worked with, we changed my passwords at least three times, in three different venues. Finally we got online and got iCloud to accept the result…only to find that iCloud decided to quit sending my email to my computers.

The second of said gents, gazing upon the little mystery through a direct connection to my computer, quietly performed a bit of prestidigitation and…zap! Undid whatever was done and disappeared both the conundrum and the endlessly nagging, pointless messages.

In the course of this, I lost track of what we were doing, became hopelessly confused, thought I had lost the new passwords, discovered they were not lost after all, and then realized…waitaminit…these passwords we’re using that are now magically working? They’re the same damn passwords we started out with! And yea verily, they’re still all different.

That’s right. We spent three hours farting around and ended up right where we were at the outset. Only with the software inexplicably working.

For the nonce. We’ll see what it’s doing by the break of day.

Here’s what I think about this:

Yes. The 21st century’s astonishing technology does speed our work miraculously. Makes it easier to perform, by far. Makes our product look far more professional than most of us used to be able to produce with a typewriter and a photocopier and a calculator. BUT….no savings in work time ensues.

Vast numbers of hours may be saved in the performance of routine and mind-numbing tasks. But do we use that saved time in worthwhile pursuits like watching soap operas and shopping for underwear? Nooooo….

Hell, no! Any and all free time is devoured by learning new and unnecessary changes in the software and hardware, by trying to keep the software running, and by figuring out and fixing whateverthefuck is wrong when the damn things go down. In fact, I’d venture to say most of us spend more time working, when you add in the time required to learn, relearn, and re-relearn the endlessly morphing technology and in keeping it running, than we ever did at work with our antediluvian tools.

So confusing and baffling are these ubiquitous devices that even the experts get confused. Two of them, over the past few weeks, have told me that the reason for the mysterious nuisance messages from iCloud was that the passwords on my two Mac computers are different. The key, they felt, lay in syncing passwords. Ideally, I gathered, the same password should be used for both computers. And possibly it should be used for iCloud, too.

After all that wrestling to make this happen, after finding a gigantic glowing golden FAIL at the end of that rainbow, this evening the guy who answered the phone at Apple said…well…noooo… The computers’ passwords do not have to be the same.

Make up your minds, guys!

This one, it appears, was right. We ended up with different passwords for the MacBook, the aging iMac, and iCloud…and with the click of a couple of buttons on his ends, he magically disappeared the iCloud problem.

What the problem ultimately was, I have no clue. Nor do I want to have a clue.

THIS is not what I got a Ph.D. in English literature and history for…