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Annals of the Floored & Flabbergasted

Dear-Sir-You-Cur of the day…

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Sprouts Corporate Headquarters
5455 E High St Ste 111
Phoenix, AZ 85054

Dear Sirs and Mesdames:

Here’s a suggestion for you: Why not hire cashiers who possess basic civility and ordinary politeness? Surely these are not SUCH rare commodities that you can’t find any minimum-wage workers who possess them.

This noon I dropped by the Sprouts at Northern & 19tth Avenue, here in lovely uptown Phoenix, hoping to buy some ingredients to make food for my little dog and to make lunch for myself. Found the stuff for the dog food…and found a cashier who…well…I wouldn’t treat a dog the way she treated me. Among the several things I set on her conveyer belt was a package from your deli cabinet department labeled “Penne Pasta NRE Chicken.”

What, I asked — politely enough, I thought — is “NRE” chicken?

She gave me a disgusted glare that suggested she thought I had an IQ in the negative numbers, and grunted “I dunno.”

“Well, EFF you very much, too, dear,” thought I. Because I was pretty nonplussed (to say nothing of hungry!), I bought it anyway — if I’d had my wits about me I would have said “if you don’t know what you’re selling, then don’t sell it — I ain’t buying it.”

I’m sorry that your employees think I’m white trash and that they can treat me accordingly. They’re probably right in their assessment of my roots (though my net worth is something in excess of 1.5 million bucks just now…). But even when you think people are WT, nice folks don’t make that line of thought obvious. Merchants who wish to keep selling to members of the public teach their employees to keep their scorn under control.

Please, please, PLEASE rest assured: I will NEVER go into that Sprouts again. I probably will never shop at the Sprouts at 7th and Osborn, which is an infinitely better store. Nor am I likely ever to shop at the Sprouts at 16th Street & Glendale or the Sprouts at Thunderbird and 43rd, both of which I’m given to patronizing as I drive between destinations.

Done. Finished. Kaput with Sprouts.

oh…the “NRE chicken?” Whatever it is, it’s almost devoid of flavor. Another good reason not to shop there again, hm?

Yrs truly, [Etc.]

 

A-n-n-n-n-d….Another Day in Computer Hell

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The Macbook still is running amok, though the ancient iMac seems to be working fine.

I’m told my Apple ID password has been “updated.” I did NOT reset it. If it’s been changed, I have no idea what it has been changed to.

I’m still getting into DropBox and iCloud. But…

Incoming emails are going into the “Archive” folder. Sent emails appear to go out as multiple copies — in one case, 15 or 16 of them! — though it’s unclear whether more than one copy reaches a recipient. Asked one recipient if he had received a pile of copies, and he said he did not.

Messages that I’ve sent to others are landing in “Archive,” too.

So…I retrench by going over to Funny about Money’s G-mail account. Some messages do seem to be getting through. At least one ended up in The Copyeditor’s Desk’s G-mail account — and no, I did not misaddress it.

Sent messages show up in MacMail’s “Archive” folder, not in “Sent.”

An email sent from the Funny about Money G-mail account arrived with a return address for The Copyeditor’s Desk. No, I did not send it from the CED G-mail account.

An email sent from the Funny about Money gmail account arrives in “Archive.” It does not appear in “Inbox.”

An email sent to myself from MacMail lands in the “Junk” folder. MacMail will not let me mark it “not junk.” Manually moving it out of “Junk” to inbox causes it to jump back into “Junk.”

Nothing I do seems to fix any of these problems. How can I count the ways I am fed up? 

The plan now is to jump Apple’s ship. This will entail an involved, brain-banging process.

  • First I’ll have to save as much data as possible to disk or to DropBox. This will be a trick, because for years the Macbook has refused to back up to an external drive.
  • Then I’ll need to trot over to Best Buy and score a PC, preferably as a laptop with Microsoft Office installed. (Mostly I use the big iMac desktop as a TV.) Get their techs to figure out how to access Dropbox and iCloud if possible and how to access MacMail (apparently this can be done, strangely enough).
  • Relearn the use of MS Office, which I quit using years ago. This will entail spending some unholy amount of time at GDU’s or at the community college’s computer commons, pestering staff to help me figure out how to use newer versions of the software.
  • Call Best Buy’s Geek Squad back in to attach the new laptop to the modem, which the Cox tech apparently up-gescrewed when he fiddled with it, fixing nothing.
  • Trouble-shoot God only knows how many new nightmares that this process necessarily will cause.
  • Eventually (I hope: not now!!) replace the iMac.

With any luck, by next week I can begin to migrate the Web Empire over into the PC environment.

It’s sad. I’ve loved my Apple computers, and I use them every day. But Apple has made it clear that the company does NOT want to deal with the likes of me. They’ve done everything they can do — purposefully or not — to make it hard for twerps like me to deal with them.

  • They moved their place of business out of the North Central district, closing the Biltmore store and leaving only the Arrowhead and the Kierland Commons store — each about 15 miles from the central part of Phoenix, through heavy, obnoxious traffic.
  • They do not have tech service that will come to your place of business or home to address issues (they never have offered any such thing, that I can recall).
  • An Apple store is a madhouse. How their employees retain their sanity (if they do) is a mystery.
  • If they suggest anything, it’s not remotely helpful. Apparently Apple repairs are expected to be a DIY adventure. Given the quality of their “class” on using the iPhone, they apparently don’t give a damn whether you ever do figure out how to use their devices effectively.

Meanwhile, Best Buy has staff who will come to your home, who are highly knowledgeable, and who can actually fix the current problem. These guys will explain what they think you need to know, so that by the time you’ve finished an exchange with them, you at least have some idea of what to do.

It’s hard to imagine how they stay in business. As one friend remarked, their customer-service behavior suggests that Apple has dedicated itself pretty much to the telephone business. Desktop and laptop computers are now a sideline — evidently one that they’d like to dispense with.

In my case, they’re gonna get their wish.

Just about Brave-New-Worlded Out…

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Wow! Just deleted what must have been two or three thousand emails from the old Google Mail account, going back to 2013.

My Apple Mail account has died, apparently worked to death by too many old messages sitting in its memory. Or something. If that’s the only problem, we’re in luck. But it’s probably not…  Because in reality the number of back messages sitting there is not out of the ordinary. Exactly…there ARE too many, but the issue is apparently with iCloud, a storage system — not with MacMail.

G-mail forwards to MacMail, so if you send a message to funny-about-money@gmail dot com, it clones itself at my private email address. This G-mail trait would explain at least some of the tons of spam at MacMail…and if old, old, and older emails have been piling up in iCloud the same as they’ve piled up in Gmail, it’s NO WONDER the system has hung.

MacMail is also telling me “Login Failed.” Dunno what it wants me to do about that. Probably some password either no longer works or is now wrong. The Password Conundrum gets exponentially worse when you reach a certain age, and it does appear that I’ve arrived there. I can barely remember my name, much less dozens of passwords, most of which have to be changed every time you turn around.

Apple has arranged for a tech to call me this afternoon. I rather doubt this exchange will be helpful. Even though the Apple folks can share your computer screen on theirs, half the time I don’t understand what they’re doing. So though I can do it while they’re online and guiding me through the endless hoop-jumps, the instant they disconnect I can’t figure it out anymore.

At any rate, I think the G-mail address that’s still functional is for Funny about Money. As I recall, I had several gmail accounts…I may have one in my name or something close to it. How to find it and get into it, though, escapes me. A

Hmmm… If I’m reading this one strange feature in iCloud right, apparently iCloud doesn’t delete email messages that you mark as “delete.” Lo & behold…here’s a button that says “Erase Deleted Items.” It doesn’t say that until you right-click on it…how the heck would you know you were supposed to right-click on these things?

What it means, though, is all those hours I’ve spent during the past couple of days clicking “delete” on junkmail and out-of-date stuff have been…so much wasted effort, where our problem is concerned. At any rate, speaking of wasted effort, right-clicking and deleting does nothing to get rid of the symbol that seems to say MacMail is full and you can’t use it anymore.

Boyoboy am I sick of the technohassles. And I really dislike G-mail, which is weirdly tricky to use. Just now the composing pane (is that “pain”?) has scootched over to the far righthand side of the screen. NOTHING will make it re-center. But meanwhile some things will totally disappear the message pane, resulting in a time-sucking roundabout search for it.

Yesterday was consumed, pretty much, by traipsing back out to the West Valley to return the unneeded refurbished MacBook the predatory “repair” guy persuaded me to buy, and then running into the Apple store to try to arrange some help with an Apple “Genius.” It would have helped a whole lot if they’d agree to make an appointment with a live human being, face to face. But that ain’t happening. They’ll have someone call me on the phone this afternoon.

§ § §

The west side is definitely Anaheim East, no question of it. You never saw such masses of humanity in your life…unless you’ve visited California’s Disneyland, smack in the middle of the real Anaheim. Mile on mile on mile on mile of ticky-tacky stick-and-Styrofoam houses, jammed together roof-to-roof. How a look-alike lean-to is an improvement over an apartment escapes me.

Seriously: for what you’d pay for one of those little boxes, you could buy or rent a VERY nice apartment in Scottsdale or Phoenix. And get someone else to take care of the pool and the lawns and the desert landscaping and the roof and air-conditioner and the painting and the plumbing…

Lots and lots of stuff going on in those parts, though. There’s a big stadium out there. The Seattle Mariners practice there. I passed an ice rink(!!!!). We used to have a couple of those in town, but they’re gone now…what fun it was, ice-skating! And there’s more shopping than Carter has oats. In fact…I was surprised and a little shocked to realize how close the independent Apple store that’s been trying to sell me a used computer is to Arrowhead Mall, where the actual official Apple store resides — it’s only a few blocks away.

Drove across on the surface streets this time. The other day when I took the freeway…well…

To start with, my objection to the freeway route is that, though you get there without having to stop at many lights, it takes you MILES out of your way: it goes wayyyyy up north, and then loops wayyyyy back down to Thunderbird. If you drive straight across on T’hunderbird, you save many miles of wear & tear on your car. And if you know the secret to driving on the surface streets here (i.e., drive about five mph over the limit…) you hardly ever stop at a light.

Then there’s the fact that the damn roads are constantly under construction here. If you get stuck in construction on the freeway, there’s no escape. You just sit there and c-r-r-r-a-a-a-w-w-l along until you finally get out of the traffic jam. If you’re on the surface roads (and if you know what you’re doing), it’s pretty easy to weasel your way around building sites and wrecks.

And there are Phoenix’s hordes of homicidal drivers. My GOD people are stupid here! The other day when I did come back into town via the freeway, I passed a brand-new wrecky-poo on the right side of the road. The guy had somehow flown off over the shoulder, across another 20 feet of dirt and gravel, sailed THROUGH a chain-link fence (bashing down a steel post in the process), skidded across more dirt and gravel, and crashed into a 12- or 14-foot-high block wall, coming to rest upside down.

Not bad, eh? You have to admit, it takes real skill to pull off a trick like that.

Got off the freeway and cruised, out of curiosity, through the corpse of the defunct Metrocenter Mall, once (when it was newly built) the largest shopping mall in the nation. lt really IS a ghost now: just eerie driving around in there! Stores and restaurants that we used to frequent: boarded up. Parking lots vacant. One semi-truck driver and I knew this little short-cut as a way around a near-stationary slab of freeway traffic…his truck and my car were the only vehicles in there.

Well, till you get to the Walmart store that has taken up residence on the south side. That is now the ONLY business — or anything else — open on that huge property, except for a Petco way up on the north side. Oh, and the silly amusement park ride on the east side, next to the freeway.

Eerie!!

I dunno. I suppose that if that property isn’t significantly improved (they’re workin’ on it…sorta), it might be wise to move out of the North Central area. There certainly is a lot more going on in other parts of the Valley. Many fewer bums out in the Arrowhead area. Noisier. More hectic. But definitely not moribund and definitely not at risk from accursed political construction projects like the damned lightrail and brain-banging reverse lanes on the main drags. My son doesn’t want me to move — why he cares escapes me. But it puts the eefus on decamping to Prescott.

Better get up, fix a pot of coffee, and scrounge something to eat. And so, awawwyyy!

 

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…

Real Estate: California Territory

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So SDXB and I went over to the hillside neighborhood I “discovered” below the hiking trails at North Mountain. The trails themselves have become counterproductive for exercise walks, partly because they’re so damn crowded — especially with morons charging past you huffing and puffing their germs into your face — and partly because it’s just not that safe to take Ruby the Corgi up there. Same reason: morons (they bring their own out-of-control dogs), plus rattlesnakes, cactus thorns, and sharp rocks.

“Discover” isn’t exactly the term for it, because we both have had friends who lived in that neighborhood, over the years. But the two things I found of interest were a) the paved (!!) sidewalks and roads that curve up and down and around and b) the houses that look like they were constructed by the same builder who installed the houses here in the ’Hood. SDXB agreed that they were alarmingly like our places…and also that the relative quiet of the neighborhood was striking, as was the absence of derelicts and other sketchy types.

Basically, the houses are much the same as the ones here, only in a safer, quieter area. With nice gentle grades to walk Ruby (and me) on. And of course a steep mountain trail out back, for the purpose of getting some serious exercise.

So when I got back I googled real estate in that zip code. HOLY maquerel! In the first place, nothing’s for sale in there just now., In the second place, Zestimated prices for houses similar to ours are breathtaking! Here’s a shack for sale just to the west of the neighborhood, certainly not a better area and arguably not as desirable:  YIPES!

Okay okay, 5 bedrooms IS a little much.

But almost 700 grand for a tract house that faces on Thunderbird Road, one of the Valley’s mainest of main drags and a major commuter road???  Give…me…a…BREAK!  (aaanndd…btw, how happy ARE you that you don’t have to clean those shiny marble floors?) And the pool where passing golfers can peer at you as you’re splashing around or enjoying a cocktail at poolside — no skinny-dipping for the likes of you!

So I go to look up prices here in the ’Hood…could I make an even trade, more or less?

Zillow thinks my house is worth a measly $565,600 grand. Redfin puts it at $606,699. Either estimate is a far cry from the $235,000 I paid for this place in 2004, or the $100,000 for the identical model I first bought here, about three houses in from the horrible Conduit of Blight Blvd.

We have arrived in California territory, price-wise. How on earth do young people ever get in the door of a real house (not an apartment, not a condo)? One semester I had a student who, with her husband and two small kids, lived a ways to the west of that North Mountain tract. Their tract was what I’d call working-class construction — I had occasion to see it when we had a major storm that blew the roof off the house, and the young people needed some help until such time as one or the other set of parents could get into town. Just the most standard, cheaply built stucco-and-styrofoam stuff — their place was largely trashed by the storm, and some of the other houses there were even worse off. The prices over there are now similar: $600,000+++ for tiny little tract houses! I can’t even imagine how a young couple would come up with that kind of money, even with both of them working full-time.

Soooo…. It looks like we bought my son’s house more or less in the nick of time. If, as he prefers, I live in this house until I croak over, he’ll inherit a paid-off shack that right now is worth 600 grand but in another ten to fifteen years will presumably be pushing a million bucks. His house is worth about $500,000 now (sez Redfin). If he inherits this paid-off house, he could…well…think about it! He could…

  • Move here and sell his house, netting around a half-million dollars
  • Move here and rent his house, providing a moderately steady second income
  • Stay in his place and sell my place, netting around 600 or 700 grand, put the money in his retirement fund, and knock off working early
  • Stay in his place and rent this place for some truly outrageous amount of money
  • Sell both houses and move to rural southeastern Utah or southwestern Colorado, one of his daydreams
  • Sell them both and move overseas, where (depending on his choice) he could live like a king and never work again
  • Or of course just keep on keepin’ on, holding his job and collecting a decent salary until he reaches retirement age and then moving to the South of France on the proceeds of both houses, his retirement fund, and my retirement fund. 😀

Financially, it would give him a lot of choices.

Probably the most advantageous strategy for him (and maybe for me, too), would be for me to stay in this house until they carry me out feet-first. It’s a nice neighborhood with pleasant neighbors…its only drawbacks are the startling crime and vagrancy rates and the noise from the main drags and the constant cop helicopter buzz-overs. But both of those come under the heading of Life in the Big City.