Coffee heat rising

Techno-skeptic

Surprise! You get switched willy nilly!

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In comes an email from WordPress: Your site has updated to WordPress 6.1.2!

Ohhh goodie…something else to hassle with.

For more on version 6.1.2, see the About WordPress screen:
https://funny-about-money.com/wp-admin/about.php

WordPress 6.2.1 is also now available. Updating is easy and only takes a few moments:
https://funny-about-money.com/wp-admin/update-core.php

If you experience any issues or need support, the volunteers in the WordPress.org support forums may be able to help.
https://wordpress.org/support/forums/

I can hardly wait…

Welp…in the few minutes that I’ve been sitting here (very few), I don’t see any differences. It all looks the same and works the same.

That doesn’t mean that it won’t change, before we know it, make a great leap forward.

Nice timing, guys! When people are sick as dawgs and can barely think clearly enough to make their way from the bedroom to the bathroom…

Man, covid is grand fun. I haven’t been this sick since I was a very little kid.

As a young child, I was preternaturally susceptible to respiratory infections and to certain meds. If you believe my mother, I spent time in the ICU, and at one point was not expected to live through the night.

This became convenient for me, actually. Come the second grade, when I discovered how deeply I hated school and how VERY much I didn’t want to go there, I learned to take advantage of her fear by claiming to be sick. The “my tummy hurts” maneuver almost invariably got me out of the horrid place. 😀

LOL! This particular ailment, though, is no ruse.

The cough is so violent it tears up your throat as you hack away.

a-n-n-n-n-n-n-d…

Along about 7 a.m., I dish up a mound of dogfood roll for Ruby, her favorite stuff. Set it down in front of her…and she refuses to eat it!

She’s a corgi, for godsake. Corgis do NOT have picky appetites.

Break open a can of the mushy stuff she likes.

Turns up her nose at that, too.

Oh GOD!  Can dogs get the dread disease?????

Well…

Yes. Holy shee-ut!

  • The virus that causes COVID-19 can spread from people to animals during close contact.
  • The risk of animals spreading COVID-19 to people is low.
  • Pets can get serious illness from infection with the virus that causes COVID-19, but this is extremely rare.

At the rate I’ve been going lately, “extremely rare” is another way of saying “commonplace.” She sleeps on the bed with me, so “close contact” I guess is included in that.

Ohhh gawd! Now I’ll have to get on the phone to the vet the instant the clock hits 9 a.m. And make a 30-minute drive to his office when I feel like a limp rag. And of course he won’t let me in the building, since I’m shedding viruses like sawdust.

…hmmmm…  She’s in the kitchen now…think she’s eating, but am not barging in there to disturb her. But…this reluctance to eat is NOT normal.

In other precincts…

Wanna live in Phoenix? Here’s a garden spot for you.

It’s at least 50 or 60 years old. Bordered by two of the noisiest streets in the city. Devoid of landscaping. All spiffed up on the inside, in the latest shades of prison-gray paint. A hot plate for a stove.

They want half a million bucks for it!

For the luvva gawd, that is just INSANE. And we’re told real estate prices are coming down!

Nope. Dawg was not eating.

ooohhh gawd…now as soon as the clock hits 9:00, I’ll have to start getting through to the vet.

 

Monday: The Only Pretty Costco Day?

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Here’s an experience of note: This afternoon I made a Costco run — normally a trying project plagued with crowds and fraught traffic. But today, for the first time in memory, it was not bad!

Monday.

Got there around 1:00 p.m.

  • No problem parking — not far from the door. No crazies in the parking lot.
  • Plenty of shopping carts (but then, there usually are).
  • No gotta-get-in-the-door-firsters (usually plenty of those, too).
  • Navigable aisles, for a change. Few chuckleheads parked smack in the aisle, holding everyone up as they gaze slack-jawed at the piles and piles and piles of offerings. No cranky crying babies. No wild-a$$ed kids running up and down the corridors.

A miracle.

Snabbed the stuff I needed quickly and without hassle. (Another miracle!)

Short lines at the check-out counters: yet another miracle!!! Got through the line and out the door in a matter of minutes. (Are we sure we’re in Costco????)

  • Got a package of totally GORGEOUS lamb chops. A box of delicious quinoa salad. A package of doggy dental chews! Found THE cutest little casual top that will look pretty awesome with my cranberry-red jeans.
  • And made my way back to the Appliances aisle.
  • There I found that yes. Yes, indeed. I got ripped off ROYALLY by the inelegant B&B Appliances. That unholy outfit charged me almost twice as much for the crummy rip-off GE fridge as Costco is charging for a comparably sized LG refrigerator, the latter highly recommended by reviewers. And they have microwaves that probably out-quality the laughable GE micro by about ten to one.
  • Whenever the dust settles from that fiasco, I’ll betake myself back to Costco to replace the rip-off junk with LG’s.

But later. Got enough to deal with right this instant.

  • Left the Costco in time to hit the main homeward-bound drag around 3:00 p.m. This is the start of rush hour here in unlovely uptown Phoenix.
  • But interestingly, the traffic was not too bad yet. Got across town to the freeway. Entered the freeway without obviously risking my life or anyone else’s. Traffic started to thicken when I got off the freeway, westbound on Main Drag South, but it wasn’t too bad. Got into the hood with no major incidents, no major frustrations.

Yet another miracle.

So…

Lesson #1: Never buy local!

If I’d gone to Costco from the git-go in search of a fridge, I would have come away with the highest-rated model on the market and would not now be in a clench with American Express as we do battle with the noxious local dealer, B&B Appliances. By now I would have a nice LG refrigerator, no argument engaged, and I would know nothing of the elaborate workings of American Express as its lawyers take on miscreant local marketers.

Lesson #2: Avoid the rush hour!

If there’s any way you can swing it, try to surface at Costco’s entrance along about 1:00 or 2:00 p.m. If you can hit the homeward leg of your trip home by 3:00 p.m., you have a shot at getting home without too much torture.

Driving in Phoenix is, in general, just that: torture. But because I’d managed to skirt the afternoon rush hour, most of the trip to and from the store was…well…not too, too bad.

Phoenix, whose city parents pride themselves on having created a clone of L.A., is — like the beloved Los Angeles — a perfectly horrible place to drive in the rush hour, the pre-rush hour, and the post-rush hour periods. If you can contrive to get on the road after 10 a.m. and before 3:00 p.m., you have a shot at preserving your sanity and your life. Otherwise…well…hang onto your marbles!

Whilst perambulating, I noticed that Costco has nice new iMacs for much better prices than Best Buy’s. As advertised, the damn things are much shrunk in size, so if I have to get one to replace the sickly unit, using it as a television will not be good.

Yeah: I ain’t a-payin’ for cable TV, which is now the only way you can get television reception here in lovely uptown Phoenix. After our honored City Parents installed that innovation, I started using the iMac to watch the few TV offerings that are worth watching — news programs, PBS and BBC dramas, and whatnot. Those go away if an iMac can’t be persuaded to work. That, we’ll see about tomorrow, when a Best Buy fella is supposed to come over and connect the expensive new iMac to the Internet and upload data from the MacBook.

 

Gettin’ all computer-hassled out…

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Or maybe that’s “all hassled out,” in a more general way.

Tried to get in to Funny’s dashboard this morning. It wouldn’t take my password.

Tried again. It wouldn’t take my password.

Tried again. It wouldn’t take my password.

Tried…on and on.

Dug out the email address for BigScoots, the better to pester them. Type type type…

Tried again. This time it accepted the password. The SAME password I’d just entered repeatedly.

Yes. I do understand the need for computer security. I get hack attempt after hack attempt. Yes. And scam after scam after scam lands in my email inbox. Every day. Yes. I do know — from experience! — that there are large mailing lists organized by age, which sales hustlers use to target the marks they figure will the most vulnerable. If you’re over about 70, they figure you’re ripe for the taking.

As dawn cracks, for example, just in the e-mail inbox (not counting all the other possible avenues for scamming) we have

Hi Victoria,
I’ve selected a few opportunities you may want to explore. Apply directly if interested. If you’ve moved recently or would like to see different jobs click here and help me better serve you.

Have I applied for a job lately?

Nooooooo

Have I contacted this outfit in any way, directly or indirectly?

Noooooooo

Do they think I’m stupid as a post?

Sure enough

This morning I have to visit Young Dr. Kildare — his office is many miles closer to my house than the Mayo is, and so I’ve taken to seeing him for minor ailments, reserving MayoDoc for the heavy hitting. This is another nexus of computer hassle: every time you visit, they want you to sign into their annoying “Portal” and fill out redundant form after redundant form after redundant form. My computer will NOT let me into the thing, no matter what fu*king password I try. So I have to show up 15 minutes early and beg a staff member to help.

This is complicated by the fact that my appointment is for 9 a.m. — and they don’t open till 9 a.m.

but… <hard return hard return>…waitwaitwait!!!

lookee here! I’ve…

ESCAPED!

OMG! A miracle has happened.

I can’t believe it!

The night-long overcast has coalesced into a steady, pouring rain. The road crew out front has run off, presumably to a coffeeshop, leaving an army’s worth of equipment out in the road. I looked at that weather and thought…ohhhhhh shee-ut! Time for a strategic prevarication.

{grrrrr grrrrr…} I will be dayumed if I’m driving up the gawdawful Cave Creek Road to YDK’s office in the rain, through the rush-hour traffic under dusky early-morning skies.

one ringy-dingy
two ringy-dingies

Phone lady picks up.

I prevaricate extravagantly: “The city is digging up the road — apparently the sewer system has gone awry. [true; and true] I can’t get my car out of the garage [fake] and so it doesn’t look like I’m going to be able to get up to your place by 9 a.m. [faker than fake].”

She buys it!  Or at least, she kindly pretends to buy it…so I’m outta there.

Actually, the ailment that led to this morning’s appointment has magically faded away. Ear weirdness: felt like (are you ready for this one?) a strand of hair had somehow worked its way into the ear canal and was poking me in the inner ear.  Just in the past hour, though, that sensation (which I’ve been enjoying for the lo! these many days) has pretty much gone away.

Soooo…here we are, loafing in an easy chair, watching the rain and enjoying the enforced silence out front (soon to be broken, whenever the heavy machinery can be fired up). If I had any sense, I’d go back to bed and try to catch a few extra Z’s before these guys get down to work.

But no one has accused me, not lately anyway, of having any sense.

Tony’s Home for Wayward Delinquents is quiescent. Some of the kids live there; others are bussed in by van each morning. Strange. Do they close down when it rains?

Unlikely. Could be, though, that the city warned them that all mechanized Hell was slated to break loose this morning, so they may have arranged for the least stable of their inmates to be kept elsewhere today.

For awhile, I thought he’d acquired the house next door to the south of the Institute. But…now I think that doesn’t appear to be the case. Hard to believe the city would let him glom more than one house in a row to convert into reform schools.

What. A. Place. If I had any sense — and my son would pipe down and quit threatening to have me institutionalized if I dare to sell this house — I would move far, far away from here. EVERY DAY is a new litany of crime and craziness. And since the ‘Hood is bordered by the tired and sleazy west side, just on the other side of Conduit of Blight Blvd., and by one of the most dangerous slums in the state just to the north of Gangbanger’s Way, one does not feel very safe here. And one is bloodywell not very likely to extract enough from sale of a home here to move into anyplace safer other than the dreary, depressing Sun City.

Ain’t it fine?

Gas station barricade–wheee!
QT Employee stabbed! Yeah: you can walk there from here, no problem…
Build-to-Rent: The newest rage in real estate. Uh huh…that’ll add a lot of class to this area
Escaped prisoner captured in Phoenix Hotel. Hmmm…how d’you tell the difference between an escaped convict and the local yokels?
Body found in local canal. That’s about 20 blocks from here. You could walk there from the university.
Cop creamed in crash; suspects run off.
Another officer-involved shooting. This one, at least, is a distance from the ‘Hood. For a change.

One could go on and on and on. The local news runs like this every day, and a substantial number of the Happenings occur near or in the ‘Hood. This is why I drive across the city to go to a grocery store, rather than walking or driving to the nearby Albertson’s. It’s why I’d rather drive almost out to the university — any day! — to go to the Sprouts, rather than buy at the one within walking distance of the Funny Farm.

Computer hassles. Real-world hassles. Good grief! Where do I go to buy a cave in the red-rock country of southern Utah?

Ben FrantzDale, CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons

Still Struggling to Get Back

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Wow! Despite trying to reconstitute Funny a week or three ago, I’ve drifted away again. Seems like life has devolved into one hassle after another hassle after another hassle after another.

Got an appointment this noon at the Mayo. Fortunately, it’s at the campus in Phoenix, not the one way to He!! and gone out on the far side of Scottsdale, halfway to Payson. But it’s still a long drive, most practically done over a hectic freeway where, if your car breaks down, you’re pretty much screwed. Yes, I do have a cell phone, but I hate the things and have one helluva time trying to make it work. So…if the Tank craps out, today will be even more unpleasant than it’s already slated to be.

LOL! It’s already started out on the wrong…uhm…foot(?). Needed to print out the instructions the Mayo sent  — a trick, since they sent it via their obnoxious “Portal” lash-up, whose documents will not print out from my system, meaning I had to copy and paste the thing into Word, then print it on my machine, which hung and refused to be unhung. leading to an hour of farting with computer equipment. It’s now 7:30, my nerves are on edge, I haven’t had anything to eat, the dog hasn’t been walked, the supposedly “fixed” tooth in my upper jaw that seems to have caused an eye cyst hurts (yes: did you know that dental work can cause a cyst in your eye???), and I wanna bite someone. Already I’ve had so many sh!t-fits the poor little dog is hiding under the toilet.

Boyoboy, how i do NOT wanna spend the afternoon at the Mayo being tortured?!? These tests are going to take four hours! At the end of which, you may be sure, they’re gonna say they can’t figure anything out. Because…well: because. That’s the way things go, eh?

{sigh}

Y’know, when IBM first brought us the PC, I was an enthusiastic early adapter. But….

Today, I’m coming to hate computers. And not hate them….

Admittedly, I spend most of my conscious hours online. If I’m not reading news or cruising the Internet, I’m playing games. Endlessly, pointlessly, time-wastingly playing games.

And really: CAN you think of a worse way to spend the last few years of your life? Seriously?

Not much time is left to me, yet here I am, wasting it diddling with stupid, pointless, meaningless, eye-glazing online games. And Quora. And Facebook.

What else could I be doing? 

Well, not much that’s any more meaningful, come to think of it.

At this time of year, I could be hiking in the Mountain Preserve.

Why am I not?

Well…I’m leery of taking the dog out there — rattlesnakes, y’know. She pokes her head under every creosotebush, and sooner or later she’s going to get hurt or killed doing that.

And given my age and increasing decrepitude, I’m less than perfectly comfortable hiking around out there alone. One fall, and I’m screwed, even if not dead.

One guy — much younger and much more outdoorsy than me — slipped on a steep stretch on the north side of the mountain (where I used to hike all the time). He hurt his foot or ankle so that he couldn’t walk. His phone would not work because of the granite all around him. He hollered for help, and no one heard him. He ended up spending the whole night up there(!!!). The following morning, he realized people in the houses at the western base of the mountain might be coming out to go to work, so he started hollering again. Yelling. And yelling…and yelling…and yelling…. finally some fellow came out to get his newspaper, heard the guy’s cries out in the distance, and called the cops. They had to get a team to haul him down off the mountain.

So as you can imagine, my enthusiasm for prancing around up there is less than vivid these days.

There’s a (very!!!) upscale neighborhood over north of the Biltmore, where elegant mansions populate rolling hills that look out over the smog…uhm, city. This is an excellent place for mild walking exercise over paved roads…

Why do I not drive over there every day and hike around those elegant hills?

The main reason is that there’s no place to park. Well, there is and there isn’t. You’d have to leave your car on the street in front of someone’s house, and then…find your way back to it. Easier said than done: all those streets are winding little lanes, and it’s easy to get lost up there. You have a real good shot at losing your car. And…gooooood luck getting someone to help you. How do you call the cops and tell them to come help you if you don’t know where you are?

Second reason, of course, is that it is RitzyTitzyville, which means that you have almost no chance of getting help: no stores to go into, no houses where anyone would answer the door, no nothin’. Likely you wouldn’t even be able to get them to call the cops, which would be your best way of getting found once you got lost.

And finally, it being RitzyTitzyville, if you park your car on the street in front of someone’s house, the rich person or her servants will likely think you’re some kind of criminal, call the cops, and have your car towed.

So today will be utterly absorbed with traipsing to the freaking Mayo Clinic.

Meanwhile, the (expensive!!!!!) doorknob on the front door broke. The locksmith is supposed to show up tomorrow morning to fix it. Between now and then, dodging traipses to doctors’ offices, I’ve got to traipse to Home Depot and try to find a matching Kwikset doorknob.

Good luck with that. I’ve been here how long…eight or ten years? How much chance do you suppose there IS that I’ll be able to find hardware to match?

Yeah.

Well, I’ll have to stop by the Depot on the way home from the Mayo, and since these accursed tests are supposed to last a good four hours, it’ll be 5:00 p.m. by the time I get there…in the middle of the hideous rush-hour traffic.

Oh, good! Not one but TWO of the neighbors’ yard dudes just showed up at the same time. And they’re BOTH out there roaring away with their blowers and other racket-makers.

Gotta get going… And so, away!

Stormy stormy day…

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Okay, now for something…completely not different.

{grrrrrrr!} Possibly a glass of wine to go with it.

What is NOT different? Cox’s pi$$-poor Internet service.

LOL! In a classic Cox Moment, their connection goes down JUST as I stumble upon an exceptionally promising source going on about the accursed peripheral neuropathy. {One of the prime thangs it sez is that you’d best not drink alcohol. ANY alcohol. EVER.} {hmmmmmmmm… Well, I’m already at Death’s Door with this effer, so…do I care if another glass of white wine kicks in the deadbolt?}

Try to reach a Cox rep on the iPhone. This is actually a GOOOOD thing, because it forces me to learn to use the gadget. Reach a sweet young lady. She is as flamboozled as the rest of us. But she very charming…no doubt why Cox hires such creatures.

Can’t get Carol on the Magical Mystery iPhone (powered by T-Mobile}, so stroll across the street. They have a different carrier: she’s online. We try to find Cox outage info….hilarious!

We schmooze awhile. Her little dog is even cuter than Ruby, which is sayin’somethin’.

She shows me a scorpion Tom snared. HOOLeee shee-ut! He found it in the backyard. That means the li’l fellas are all over our corner…if not now, very soon will be.

Dunno if you folks have these charming li’l critters in your parts. Hereabouts, a scorpion is One Scary, Nasty Critter. You don’t even wanna know how far beyond description a scorpion bite’s pain registers…

I find another shingle down…in their driveway! This, a remnant of the current ferocious desert windstorm. It looks the same as the one New Neighbor and I found in the front of my house. NN and I could find no sign of a missing shingle on my roof (though it’s hard, probably impossible, to view the entire roof from the ground), but it’s pretty clear this thing is either from Tom & Carol’s or from some other decrepit building. So…uhm…there’s SOME hope that the Funny Farm’s roof remains intact, the FF being among a number of decrepit buildings.

Wherever Sally (or what remains of her) is, I’m sure she’s VERY glad she moved on to the Other World and the kids have got that house. Poor young pups! Luckily, they have parents, who presumably will help them navigate what are no doubt about to be some very choppy waters.

Heh. I think I’m quite charmed with New Neighbor. Haven’t met Wife yet, but I assume that if she matches him, she’ll be a nice addition. Dayum, but I do enjoy young people. Old people, too, come to think of it. But the young ones: yeah!

Guess that’s why I persist in teaching college and returning adult students for next to nothin’….

Fone Frolicks and Fluff…

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Took some time, but for the nonce — and suddenly — it looks like Cox has got the phone situation under control

Some vast snafu arose last week, so involved I couldn’t explain it here because I couldn’t understand it myself. Cox sent over a tech — one of the nicest men I’ve met in decades. He worked on the phone system for a couple of hours, and now, hallelujah! It seems to be doing what a landline phone is SUPPOSED to do.

Yeah…i know…but i keep the landline for some specific practical reasons.

One is that I know how to use it. Every cell phone seems to be different, and every one of them presents a new learning curve, highly decorated with annoyance and frustration. So, all told…

  • We have the cool iPhone my son gave me, which I have yet to figure out. So far I have managed to learn how to make a phone call and how to call up a map. but…geez…should I have to get a graduate degree in electronic engineering to make a phone call?
  • We have four or five extremely cheapo flip phones that can be carried in a pocket out by the pool, around the house, and when walking the dog. (No: an iPhone does NOT fit in the pockets of a pair of women’s jeans!)  These are not hooked up to any service. Because of the law that says all cell phones have to be able to dial 911 whether they’re connected or not, their purpose is exactly that: for dialing 911 in the next emergency.
  • We have the landline with five extensions, three of them situated within grabbing distance of the floor, for use if I fall and bust myself.

The problem with the landline of late has been an unending blitz of junk phone-soliciting calls. Of late — over the past few months — I’ve been getting 10 or 12 nuisance calls a day! EVERY day. This has about rendered the landline useless, risk of falls or no risk of falls.

The Cox guy cleaned up a bunch of glitches and set the modem so it works the way it’s supposed to. Good.

A-N-N-D… it appears that Cox has connected my land line number with its industrial-strength call blocker!

The CPR Call Blocker, a handy-dandy little gadget that you plug in-line with your phone & your land-line connection, works to some extent. But it seems to be maxed — of late it hasn’t been working worth a damn. I’ve been getting ten or twelve nuisance calls a day! All day, from early morning to 9 or 10 at night. I don’t know whether it’s maxed, or whether the bastards have now got a way to circumvent the thing. Whatever, it doesn’t work anymore.

But today, after I talked with the Cox folks again about this problem, not one nuisance phone call has come in since dawn!

Suspicious, I’ve called the landline number a couple of times from the iPhone. The clunker phone does seem to be working. So the only thing I can figure — and hope! — is that Cox’s call-blocking system DOES work.

Meanwhile, my son has gone off to Colorado to attend some obsequies for his late grandmother — more on that later, when I feel like writing more. Just now, I’m going to bed, before the dogs change their minds!