Angst | Funny about Money

Do you ever get over…

September 17, 2017 by funny

…childhood abuse?

And if you’re not fully human, do you ever learn to pass?

Ah well. I guess if you haven’t learned to cope by the time you’re 72, you’re not going to.

Equifax Damage Control

September 11, 2017September 11, 2017 by funny

Topmost on the list of today’s chores: Call the accursed credit bureaus over the latest identity theft caper at Equifax. Fortunately, after previous exploits, I have phone numbers that go to humans.

Usually. Experian, first on the call list, has a special number to ask about the Equifax fiasco. They’re saying wait times are up to 30 minutes. And of course, they have loud, annoying Muzak to keep you alert and make your head hurt worse.

But in less than 30 minutes — by far — a living creature picked up the phone, one who sounded like she had a fair number of IQ points between the ears.

She said it’s an option to change one’s PIN, but clearly she had been coached not to dispense advice. But it seems pretty obvious that anyone who busted into your account is going to have your PIN and also will have all the information needed to change the PIN. So instead of adding that kind of hassle, possibly to no avail, I put a 90-day fraud alert on the account.

This seems to be the path of least resistance, for two reasons:

a) It means than ANY time anyone tries to create a new credit or bank account, you get a phone call to that effect; and
b) Experian shares the fraud warning with the other credit bureaus, meaning you don’t have to kill time in other punch-a-button phone mazes.

Since a fraud alert will let you know if anyone tries to use your information to acquire credit in your name, and since I already have a “freeze” on all my credit bureau accounts thanks to the vast Maricopa County Community College District hack, I think I’m going to let it go at that. Rather, I mean, than spending half the day navigating telephone punch-a-button mazes. It might be good to change bank account numbers again, but that is SUCH a huge hassle…it probably would be better to simply access credit union accounts online about once a week and check for any unauthorized transactions.

Understand: frequent bank account checks will have to become a permanent habit for everyone. Hackers know better than to use stolen information right away. They’ll often wait a year or more, by way of getting around various inconvenient alerts and hassles you’ve set up to foil them. Since these devices foil you, too, after awhile you’re likely to let them lapse.

The type of fraud alert that is shared among all three companies lasts only 90 days. You can get a seven-year fraud alert, but to do so you have to jump through hoops at all three companies, and you have to show that you’ve actually been a victim of an identity theft using your private information. Whether you can renew the 90-day thing or not, I cannot tell.

Another permanent habit: get used to filing your income tax returns at the earliest possible moment. One handy use for your stolen data is to file fraudulent tax returns in your name claiming large refunds — meaning you get no refund until you jump through hoop after hoop after migraine-building hoop to prove it wasn’t you.

Now…to find out how to sign on to a class action suit against those craven morons… Olson & Daines, an Oregon law firm, is already organizing one. You can go here to notify them that you’d like to join the class action. And if there’s ever been an event that demonstrates loud and clear why class action suits are valuable and should never be curtailed, this one is it. Equifax knew this hack was going on from May through July; they knew about it long enough for their top executives to get their money out of the firm’s stocks before the news hit the public media.

Without your permission, they collect data on you that is none of anyone’s business but yours — spying on you, really. Though this data, gathered in one place, renders you extremely vulnerable, they do nothing to encrypt it, and so naturally sooner or later some hacker steals it. Now you are screwed and the worst that happens to them is that their stock loses a few points…after their executives have pulled their money out.

With the government defanged — and if the right wing has anything to say about it, permanently enjoined from regulating business models like this — citizens have very little recourse other than through legal action.

Ain’t life in the 21st century grand?

Someone’s Baby Girl…

August 15, 2017August 14, 2017 by funny

There’s a woman, young or old is hard to tell. She’s skinny, maybe even athletic-looking, neatly dressed in shorts and a nondescript top, her smooth ebony complexion ageless. She could be 25 and looks 40, or maybe 40 and looks 25.

At a glance, you sense she’s a panhandler. Yet maybe not. She doesn’t have that ragged look of people who sleep in the rough. She looks decently fed and healthy and clean. Middle-class, you’d think, if you met her at a bus stop and she said nothing to you.

But she is a panhandler. She works the Safeway shopping center in North Central Phoenix, at the intersection of Glendale and Seventh Street. They must have chased her way from the grocery store, because she haunts the little strip mall down by the restaurants and miscellaneous vendors. You’ll never see her in front of the Safeway, but you’ll often find her in front of the pizzeria or the deli or the Leslie’s Pool store. She walks around as though she were going somewhere, but it never takes long to see she isn’t going anywhere: just back and forth.

Today when I dropped by Leslie’s to pick up the newly repaired pool cleaner, she pounced as I came out of the store.

“Scuse me, ma’am, can I ask you…”

“I’m sorry, I don’t carry money with me.” (This happens to be true: I never carry cash, and of late I’ve stopped carrying a purse at all…for exactly this reason.)

“Oh, I don’t want any money, I just…”

Heard that line before. “No, I’m sorry. I can’t help you.”

She trails me across the parking lot.

“But please, I just want…”

“NO!”

By now I’m at the car and need to toss the gadget into it and get in myself. I’m a little concerned that she’ll accost me at that point or try to get into the car, but experience suggests the fastest way out is the best way out.

She subsides and wanders away before I shut the door on her pitch.

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen her perform this maneuver. I don’t know what she’s hitting people up for, but whatever it is, the chase-and-beg strategy is a routine.

Still. It’s haunting. Poor little thing. She was somebody’s baby girl. What the hell happened to her that she’s hitting up strangers in a parking lot, day in and day out?

What can be done?

Why? Because endlessly annoying Facebook will not pick up the image you want to illustrate your post. It wants to pick up the banner image, which, if it’s generically the same day after day, quickly bores readers or makes them think today’s post is a repeat of yesterday’s. So the only way to force FB to use an image that has anything to do with your post is to change the banner image to fit the subject of the day. That means today’s banner image (a historic photo of four Nazis, for example) bears no relation whatsoever to the topic of yesterday’s post (ruminations on power outages, for example). So annoying.

Here’s an idea…

August 15, 2017August 13, 2017 by funny

Let’s shut off the power while the Fatlady is painting walls!

Rain makes Salt River Project shut down. Doesn’t take much rain, either. It’s just sprinkling here, although there may have been a little blow during the night: the BBQ cover was on the ground this morning, allowing the Merry Goddess to soak the Q’s inner workings.

What a sense of humor that Goddess has…

Power went off about 5:30 a.m., following a noticeable surge. This created a nice opportunity for me to observe that the kitchen flashlight needed new batteries, and now I have to buy a raft more D-cells. The camp lantern I bought a couple years ago comes in mighty handy during these events: it really does light up a whole room.

I love it when the power is out: the neighborhood is SO quiet! You’re not aware of how much background noise hums and bumps and clanks along, all the time, until it stops.

Fortunately the rain has brought the exterior temp down to 80 degrees. So even with the lights back on, we’re giving the air-conditioner a rest.

And of course, these little power outages remind me, as usual, that I haven’t followed much of the advice I’ve emitted about preparing for an emergency. I’m not even very well prepared for an extended electric outage, to say nothing of {gulp} what could happen.

Chortle! It’s easy enough to laugh off the possibilities:

Yes, the fault along the Mexican border has, in the relatively recent past, unleashed an earthquake powerful enough to level block construction even as far north as lovely Uptown Phoenix.
Yes, dangerous nut cases have been emboldened by the take-over of our government by extremist elements and yup, yesterday they showed exactly what they’d like to do to those of us they don’t like.
Yes, we have an incompetent and almost certainly corrupt fool in the White House, one whose stupidity puts not just the US but the entire effing world in real danger.
Yes, we have an aging infrastructure that breaks down in a light sprinkle and is capable of shutting down an entire metropolitan area.
Yes, an asteroid could hit us tomorrow.

But none of those things feels real enough to push one to bestir oneself out of one’s inertia.

I still haven’t bought a decent camp stove. The ones I’ve seen at the outdoor megamarts are made in China and are clear & present junk. I’m thinking that what may be needed is a couple of the little hiker’s stoves that SDXB favors for his back-country (and motel…) excursions. There are quite a few of them on Amazon, though I’m going to ask him to take me out to the BX, where I can get one without having to pay tax on it.

Interestingly, they also make little camp stoves that run on wood or charcoal. It would be a nuisance to light, but I’m not sure you can get these small stoves to connect to a regular propane tank. Having to track down those dinky little fuel canisters would be as much of a pain in the neck as getting wood or charcoal to light. And in a real crisis that extends for any length of time, those little butane canisters might be impossible to find.

The wood-burning things are cheap, and there’s a stack of firewood in the backyard that goes halfway to the top of the block wall. On the other hand…I don’t have a hatchet and don’t feel like learning to use one. Hm. Better get over that quirk, I guess.

So, consider: if a Korean bomb hit Los Angeles and you lived west of the Rockies (but not in the immediate area of L.A., what would happen?

Here’s an amusing online calculator that can give you a clue. If you’re not at ground zero, you probably will survive…but not without considerable, uhm, hassle, shall we say… In the Phoenix area, if a bomb the size that Kim’s guys are capable of building struck dead center in the downtown, the serious devastation wouldn’t even reach up to the northern area of North Central. If you were indoors and your structure didn’t collapse, you’d have a shot at sheltering in place. You’d need some plywood or something to seal up the windows that undoubtedly would blow out…but…well, WTF.

If, as is more likely, the worse Kim could do is hit L.A., the fallout plume would largely miss the Phoenix area. Los Angeles is north of here, and the prevailing wind flows northeast. The radioactive fallout would head straight across the Mohave and up to Las Vegas.

In that case, such a strike would be largely survivable for Phoenicians…if you were adequately prepared.

Much of our food is trucked in from Los Angeles. Thus food stocks in grocery stores would quickly be depleted — probably within a day, as panicky residents made runs on markets. For that reason it would be important to have nonperishable items such as rice, beans, and canned goods stocked in…enough to last a couple of weeks, at the least, but better, enough to last at a month. Preferably two.

Water comes in from the Colorado River and to a lesser extent from ground water. Central Arizona Project has stockpiled enough water to serve the Phoenix area for about a year; it’s stored underground. This was to stave off a drought, but if Colorado River water were contaminated, it could be used for a short time.

Electricity is generated by a nuclear power plant here in the Valley, by a coal-fired plant on the Navajo and by dams on the Colorado. While there could be some interruption or rationing of power, I think that would be the least of one’s worries.

Gasoline is piped in from California and Texas. Prices would soar and gas would be in short supply if Texas were the only source. So it would be wise to have a few spare cans of gas on hand.

And now, my friends, let’s consider a real threat that few of us notice or even know about: the extremist, fascist right wing. It reared its ghastly head in Charlottesville yesterday. It’s always been here, this little Grendel, but it’s been quiescent in the swamp for the past few decades. Now that the political climate looks favorable, this ugly creature climbs out of the murky water and makes itself visible.

It would be a mistake to underestimate the number of armed extremist nut cases who are loose on the land…and an even bigger mistake to underestimate the number of armed criminals who would join them in the event of a seriously catastrophic emergency. If your home were stocked with food, fuel, and functioning tools, your home would instantly become a target for these two elements.

You need to be armed and you need to have enough ammunition on hand to last until order can be restored. That could be anywhere from a few days to a few months, depending on where you are and what community resources exist in your area. If you don’t know how to use them, you need to go to the nearest range, take some safety lessons, and practice.

So it goes.

Meanwhile, back to the paint job…

Banner image of the day, 8/13/2017

Beside Myself…

August 16, 2017July 29, 2017 by funny

M’hijito is stuck in Show Low, and Charley the Golden Retriever is dying. He may already be dead as I write this. My son is beside himself with agony and I’m beside myself with sorrow and worry for him.

He drove up to the high country, taking the dog with him, to go camping and fishing on the Rez. At Show Low a wide spot in the road north of Payson, he stopped to take a rest and let Charley stretch his legs. When he got him out of the car, Charley tumbled out onto the ground and he discovered the dog couldn’t walk or even stand.

Charley hates riding in the back of M’hijito’s new car. He didn’t like riding in the old car, which was a sedan, but for reasons no one has been able to figure out, he simply loathes the Ford Escape, and he gets stressed whenever he’s made to ride any distance in it. M’hijito thought his panting and carrying on was a manifestation of the usual stress, and when he saw the state the dog was in, he thought Charley was having a stress attack.

He called me on his cell. I advised him to take the dog to a vet and looked up the main vet in Show Low, who has a 4.5-star consumer rating, interestingly enough. He rushed the dog over there, where he was told the problem was heat prostration.

The dog’s temperature was 107 degrees!

As they were trying to cool Charley off, they were blaming my son — the vet evidently thought he’d left the dog locked in the car and gone off.

That is absurd. My son dotes on that dog and would never do any such thing. Charley was in the back of an SUV with the air-conditioning going the whole time. I called Chuck the Wonder-Mechanic and asked if it was possible that the back of a Ford Escape could get hot enough to harm an animal if the vents in back were nonfunctional. He said he didn’t think so: because the front seats are separate, like captain’s chairs, enough cool air from the front vents would blow between and under the seats to keep the dog from overheating.

At any rate, now M’hijito blames himself.

The vet said Charley would probably not live until this morning, but if he does live until today, he will probably die in agony sometime during the day. In that case, he suggested, it was best to put the dog down.

I’m quite sure my son would never have left that dog in a hot car: that would be utterly against his nature. And though I expect the back of an SUV could get warm, I’d be surprised if it would reach the level of “hot” — as in 107 degrees. Once you’re up the hill above Black Canyon City, the climate cools significantly, so even if the AC system were not working, if it was reasonably cool in front it shouldn’t have been dangerously hot in back.

A little research shows that dogs can suffer vestibular strokes or heart attacks, which would elicit symptoms similar to Charley’s…except for the 107-degree temperature. That says the animal was overheated and is definitely life-threatening. More research shows that about 50% of dogs afflicted with heat stroke survive, if they receive care soon enough. Of course, we don’t know how long Charley was in this condition: my son had been on the road four or five hours by the time he discovered it, and an hour of that time was spent stopped dead by road construction. Maybe the car could have heated up that much if it wasn’t moving forward — I understand the construction is in the Salt River Canyon, which would be a couple hours outside of Show Low.

And still more research reveals that the longer a dog stays in a veterinary hospital, the more likely it is to survive. Although…that’s deceptive.

One study of 42 dogs that presented with heatstroke found that patients that died from the condition did so within 24 hours after development of signs. Those that were able to survive longer than 48 hours lived.¹¹ In the same study, all of the dogs that were hospitalized longer than 72 hours survived, despite evidence of multiorgan involvement.

The thing is…if most heat stroke victims die within the first day, then the ones who survive are more likely to live anyway. So to say that 100% of dogs hospitalized longer than 72 hours survive is only to say that dogs who manage to get through 72 hours alive are not going to die of the heat stroke.

The key to survival, though, is rapid treatment: cooling the dog’s body temperature back to normal as quickly as possible. But…if this happened to him while they were stuck in the construction mess, Charley would have been suffering that life-threatening elevated temperature for a two or more hours before M’hijto discovered it.

M’hijito wants to bring the dog back down into Phoenix today. But that will entail getting someone to help him. I offered to drive up there, but the thing is, if he’s going to be in the back of the vehicle tending to the dog, we would have one (1) driver to get two cars down the hill.

His friends are in Payson. He’s talked to them and apparently they’re willing to come meet him and help him get the dog back into the city. His father and the new wife have also said they’ll go up there.

However, given the business about the survival rate, I’ve suggested he should leave the dog there, without interrupting the IV and oxygen for an afternoon. He could drive down and pick me up, and we could then turn around and drive right back up the Rim. Today is Saturday: his vet will be closed by the time he can get back into town. So bringing Charley down today will mean risking his life further.

It’s a terrible situation.

MacBankruptcy…

July 10, 2017 by funny

So the decision is just about made: Buy a new Mac. This will lead to MacBankruptcy, I expect. Oh, well.

The MacBook is barely limping along. By an amazing luck of the draw, I hooked up with an exceptionally accomplished and determined Apple support advisor. We’ve been going back and forth for a week or ten days. We’ll think we’ve got it fixed and then…well…not so much. Right now everything is fixed, as far as we know, except for the random crashes that occur for no visible reason. (Such as the one that just occurred when I tried to upload an image to this post…)

After much discussion with The Son, I’ve about decided that a new MacBook, despite its several disadvantages, has fewer drawbacks than a new PC.

Price: Stratospheric. However, the present machine has been around since 2008. The thing is 8½ years old. Probably the only reason it’s acting like it’s on its last legs is the software update, not the hardware. One would probably go through two PC’s — maybe three — for the cost of one MacBook.

Hassle Factor: Vast. Office 2016, the last Microsoft update that is not in the Cloud (which I wish to avoid at all costs), does not play well with the current Mac operating system, cutely named Sierra. This means I will have to subscribe to Office 365, which represents a permanent royal screwing. Over time, you end up paying way, way, WAY more for the privilege of using Word and Excel than you would if you paid a couple hundred bucks for a new Office suite right now. On the other hand, sooner or later I’d probably have to subscribe to the damn thing anyway. And nothing could be more hassle than daily migrating between one operating system and another.

Been there, done that. Don’t wanna do it again.

Customer Support: The formerly excellent service at the Apple store has been downgraded to to “sucks.” However, the phone support is outstanding. If that continues to be true, it’ll be worth the extra cost. Customer service for a PC? Nonexistent.

Downtime: Nil, if I make the buy now. God only knows how long I’ll be spavining my back in front of the desktop if I wait until the Macbook crashes in flames.

Potential Sidestream Benefits: Pages will run on the newest version of Sierra. Pages operates as a layout program. Yes. Good. Not only that, but Pages will convert direct to ePub. Extremely good. Presumably Office 365 will never have to be re-downloaded and re-screwed-around with. One hesitates to say “it will just work,” because evidently nothing “just works.” But it could be slightly less hassle-filled.

So there it is. Makes sense. In a digital, 21st-century sorta way.