Coffee heat rising

Now What???

In a moment of misguided chumminess, I lent my laptop to a business acquaintance. This is a guy I’ve known for years, outwardly very professional, a successful chiropractor by trade.

Bad move! Among other antics, he contrived to break the computer, rendering it nonfunctional. My son has taken it to a computer store, in hopes of getting it fixed…but that hope ain’t one I hold out.

Can’t afford to buy another one. That unit was tax-deductible, purchased when I used it mostly for the editorial business. Now that I’ve pretty much retired from that gig and from teaching, I get no break on its cost. And my son is more than ever convinced that I’m crazy, largely because of long-standing friendship with Mr. Computer Vandal.

Meanwhile, a few weeks ago my car was trashed, when I rear-ended some woman on a dark, wet, rainy road.

Now I’m banned from driving (by the Kid) and so have to walk to the stores. I do still have a driver’s license…but no vehicle! He has glommed it and stashed it at his house…rather too far to reach without a car.

Luckily, the ‘Hood is richly endowed with neighborhood stores and chains: Sprouts, Albertson’s, Fry’s, Walgreen’s, Bookman’s, and a cute little liquor store in which to feel righteous by “buying local” when scoring a bottle of wine.

Dunno which way to jump just now. I could sneak around and rent a car. But frankly, that seems like more trouble than it’s worth. In the first place, I don’t want to go behind M’hijto’s back, no matter how unreasonable I think his driving ban is. Plus…about three houses down the street, a neighbor has gone into the Uber business. If I would get off my duff long enough to contact him, I could probably get him or one of his colleagues to drive me just about everywhere I need to go.

One damnfool thing after another, eh?

Yet to decide whether to pursue the scheme to convert the garage, now empty, into an art studio. Probably not: sounds like more trouble than it’s worth. Still…hmmmmm…. I do like it as an idea.

 

Ohhhh Most Brilliant of Web Gurus!

Well, our wonderful Grayson, the guy who keeps this site online and functioning, got me back in after I forgot (lost??) the password.

God bless him!!

Geez. I must be Alzheimering out. The more I fool with computer hoo-hah, the more opaque it gets to me.

Even when I print out this kind of ditz and tape it to the computer monitor’s frame, I still cannot get reliably in to this website, that website, or the other.

{sigh} I’m awfully afraid this is part of memory loss associated with aging. As the days go by, I recall less and less. Eighty-seven gerjillion passwords? F’geddaboudit. Due dates for bills?  Gimme a break. Who borrowed my laptop? I dunno.… Nothing is distracting me. I’m not sick. With no job, I’m never harried by work tasks, office politics, and general b.s. It looks alarmingly like the brain is simply wearing out.

Then we have mundane questions like…oh, say…what time is it?

  • The computer says it’s 8:47 a.m.
  • Clock on my desk: defunct. Can’t find it.
  • Bedside clock in the other room: 10 minutes to 2:00 (huh???)
  • Timer on the kitchen stove: 8:47
  • Clock in the dining room: 8:55
  • Best guess: HUH??????

 Figure out that it’s quarter after 9:00. Reset clocks, changing battery in one of ’em.

Cute li’l clock…wonder where I got it? Oh well. If only it didn’t have to be reloaded with batteries and dorked with to show what is apparently the current time.

Seriously: I can NOT keep track of all this ditz, much less make sense of six conflicting blobs of data.

Please, dear God: next time you bring me back to this planet, would you drop me on a desert island? One with no clocks? No computers? Maybe even no other humans???

But coffee, Sire. Plenty of coffee. Pleeze…..

AUUUGGH!!!

It
Just
NEVER
Freakin’
STOPS!

Now Google won’t let me into my G-mail account. And NO, I didn’t change a password. NO, I didn’t do anything weird.

So presumably that account has been hacked. Ducky.

Dammit. Now, come ten o’clock this morning, I’ve got to schlep across the city to the computer store and beg them to try to get me back into my email.

Either that or…what? Create a whole new G-mail account?

Uh huh…and how do I go about informing all the people and companies that have my current G-mail address?

Well. I guess this is a whop upside the head with a bit of (OBVIOUS!) practical advice: Keep a list of every email address for folks you do business with and folks you socialize with. PRINT IT OUT. Keep burning paper and ink every three or four weeks to print out new updates.

Gaaawwwd how sick AM i of life in the glorious new 21st Century?

Holy Junkmail, Batman!

Just happened to go into the email program’s “junkmail” folder, and…forgodsake!!!! Almost 550 junkmails have poured in since the first of the month! That’s in just two weeks!

DayUM, what a nuisance.

Nuisance because I’ve got to scroll through all that crap looking for any messages that are NOT junk, and nuisance because now I’ve got to delete it all, but can’t do so without checking to be sure I’m not accidentally trashing a message from someone who matters.

Yeah. That’s 548 messages in the junkmail folder, plus a sh!tload more that managed to slither into the in-box and will also have to be deleted.

Here’s one demanding payment for iCloud space. Hm. Senile though I am, I’m pretty sure I’d remember if I were paying for iCloud. And if I were, a monthly hit like that would be set up on auto-pay.

Man! These damn scammers come at you from all directions!

I’ve heard that for phone solicitors, there are lists of phone numbers organized by the marks’ ages. They figure older people are easier targets, so knowing that you’re, say, over 55 or 60 makes it easier to focus on a passel of potential suckers. Maybe they’ve got age-based junkmail pestering lists, too?

Wow! If all this crap were coming directly into my in-box, it would render my email unusable. There’s no way I could sift through hundreds of pestering messages.

Hmmm…. Here’s something about an “iCloud Plus” service. But I don’t think that’s what I have. My system is just the standard come-with iCloud, without any + sign after it. {but…see below for an update…}

Shee-ut. Today is Thursday: M’jito will be working from dawn to dusk, so he can’t tend to this. So I guess I’ll have to schlep this thing to Best Buy, where I have a service contract, and see if I can elicit any clarity there. That entails a trip through gawdawful traffic and a nice, long stand in line. Yay! /eyeroll/

***

Yea verily! It turns out there’s an iCloud Plus scam!  Damn these bastards!

I’ll have to traipse to Best Buy anyway, just to be sure it really is a scam and I don’t find my li’l computer empire knocked off the air.

Just how I wanted to kill half a day….

Adventures in Internet Life

Monday Evening…

All the Internet connections in the neighborhood are down. Down, down, downy-down-down.

This means I can’t use any of the phones in the house, all of which are fake land-lines. Right now the only way I have to call 911 or try to reach any other kind of help is through the accursed iPhone.

Problem with that thing is…well, make that problemS

 Main one: I’ll be damned if I can figure out how to use the dratted thing. It is SO arcane and so contrary and so effin accursed that I just can NOT make it work. Even dialing 911 is highly problematic.

Fortunately, Luz – the Cleaning Lady from Heaven – happened to be here. She was able to call the accursed phone company from her cell, so we got the outage reported. And she called the WonderAccountants, who live across the street: they confirmed that yes, their phones are out, too. And we were able to call my son, who expressed his annoyance at my stupidity.

And now I have no way to call for help if I need it …well, I guess I could run outside and scream HAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLPPP!!!!! at the top of my voice. But that’s about it.

Well. I do have an iPhone, but it’s so complicated I can’t figure out how to use it.

Nor can I get online in Firefox.

Ohhhhh well… tappity tap in Word. Maybe someday the computer will connect to the Internet, get me in to WordPress, and let me post to Funny about Money.

 This is the second time we’ve had a neighborhood-wide Internet outage. The last time, actually, it was district-wide. The only way I was able to get online, finally, was to drive down to AJ’s, several miles to the south of here. Buy a cup of coffee and park at one of their tables. Connect to the Web through their system.

Not inclined to do that this evening, because I have no urgent need to access the Internet or send an outgoing message. But it’s infuriating, considering what we pay for this alleged service.

It’s also nervous-making, since I’ve never really learned how to use the iPhone and very much doubt that during an emergency I would be able to reach help on the thing.

*****

Now it will let me in to Funny about Money’s web page, but won’t let me into the dashboard. So I can’t copy this squib out of Word and paste it into WordPress. Tomorrow morning I’ll have to traipse down to the computer store and get one of their guys to persuade this thing to work again.

Well…. At least the electric is on. That’s something, I guess. The streetlights are on – dunno whether the traffic signals are working…and am not about to go driving around to find out.

*****

And…and!!! YAYYYY! Funny’s site is back up! Let’s see if we can get this scribble online…

WTF??????

An afternoon from Hell brought me home, through 40 minutes of cut-throat traffic, to a glass of wine, a wooden rolling chair in front of an uncomfortable desk, and — when I went to sign in to FaM’s dashboard — a frantic warning that Funny’s website has been phished and it was unsafe for me to proceed.

Sumbiche!

Well, here we are anyway, and honi soit qui mal y pense.

What.

A.

Day.

Started out with my son, who has arrogated communications with the Mayo Clinic unto himself, surfacing to emcee an online appointment with my doctor out there. That was actually fairly benign — much more so than I feared. So we chatted with the lovely, brilliant lady doc, mulled over how we can get some legal hoop-jumps done (a task made far more difficult by the recent demise of my beloved lawyer), and generally wasted time.

Speaking of wasting time, a few days ago I was talked into driving way to Hell-and-gone out to the Mayo’s Scottsdale clinic to join a hand-holding group of patients who are coping with the vicissitudes of senility.

Yes. I spent FORTY MINUTES on the road EACH WAY for the privilege of listening to a bunch of duffers reporting that they can’t remember things.

Right.

And yes. That is EIGHTY minutes round-trip, plus an hour of hot-air time. Jayzuz!

***

Meanwhile, my beloved laptop crashed. A service contract with Best Buy, then, landed the contraption in that fine store’s precincts.

This morning, in comes a call from Best Buy telling me the computer is fixed and ready to pick up. So…this afternoon, after some of the other dust has settled, I jump in my car and fight my way through Phoenix’s lovely surface-street traffic, over to Best Buy.

Get parked. Bound into the Store. Get in line. Stand in line stand in line stand in line stand….  Finally get up to the repair desk.

“You called to say my laptop is ready.”

Huh?

The guy denied having any clue that the computer was fixed and ready to pick up.

No…kidding.

So I was only slightly furious. Trudge back out to the car. By that point it’s after 4 p.m. Rush hour is in full, rabid swing.

And now here we are: I’m perched at (horrors!) an actual desk typing on an actual desktop computer and…and…grrrrrrrr…and I’m so tired I can hardly think. As you no doubt can guess from the quality of this copy…

Mean-meanwhile: seeking a lawyer for a lawsuit I may have to pursue. More about that later… It doesn’t look promising.

Here’s a fine drawback to gettin’ old: All the professionals and all the business people you’re used to working with have either RETIRED or DIED. Yes. All of them Sooooo… Now you have to try to find new lawyers, new doctors, new car repairmen, new computer techs, new…god help us all, dammit!