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
Ehh, if your son wants your house – he can be first in line to buy it. It’s your house – you get to decide if you want to stay there or sell and move elsewhere!
Your house is *your* investment – and if you choose to sell it and spend the money on round the world cruises or anything else you choose – that’s up to you – not him.
Anything that is left over when you are gone, maybe he gets – but that is *after* you spent it the way you want 🙂
I get snarly about kids thinking they get to police how their parents “spend their inheritance” – grr!
LOL! It is aggravating….almost as aggravating as when our parents would tell us what time we had to get back from a date. 😀
On the other hand, I do know some of my marbles are getting a bit loose…some may even be rolling out of my ears and disappearing down the sidewalk. It does help (to some degree) (uhmmm…within limits…) to have a smart, responsible adult keeping an eye on things. He’s not easily bamboozled by sales pitches, and he’s careful and responsible about managing our vast wealth. 😀 Seriously: if anybody is gonna tell you what to do and what not to do with your penny collection, this guy would be a good choice.
I have the same problem with passwords. They don’t work again and again.
Then, I try extremely hard to type it in correctly and it works. Usually.
Unless I had to change it due to their new requirements.
Frustrating!
I keep a list of passwords (yeah, I know: verboten!!!) saved, in secret code, under a totally irrelevant filename. If I’m in that file (assuming I can remember the filename….), I can copy the p/w and paste it into the desired page. But for reasons I don’t understand, occasionally those passwords stop working. I know I haven’t changed them, because when I do change a p/w I go into the file and enter the new p/w.
More recently — largely because of this phenomenon — I’ve taken to typing the p/w with a coded reference to the relevant website, snipping it out, and taping it to the computer’s frame around the keyboard.
But this isn’t foolproof. Just now, iCloud will not accept any of the passwords I have now or ever have had.
What a brave new world we live in….
I just don’t see you living in Utah, Vicki. Too many anti-government, anti-science, racist, separatist weirdos. And let’s not forget the Sovreign Citizens.
Well, Arizona is also Mormon country, the LA-style “Valley of the Sun” notwithstanding. Remember: we spawned Barry Goldwater…who in fact was relatively “liberal” (heh!) compared to some of his fellow state politicos.
Southern Utah is spectacularly remote and spectacularly beautiful. If I were gonna become a hermit, that would be the place to do it.
Maybe I was a bit harsh about Idaho. Lord knows, Arkansas has issues, too.
I know Arizona is conservative from news coverage and my sis-in-law’s FB posts. Which have become much less political since Jan. 6, so maybe she’s not such a T**** fan anymore.
LOL! Utah, Idaho…much of a sameness in many ways. Actually, Arizona is less conservative than it used to be back in the Goldwater days, mostly because of the influx of Southern Californians. On the other hand, you can be sure Barry would have had little or no patience with the Trumpeters.
Toward the end of his life — after his political career was pretty much over and he could be as frank as he pleased — he told me that the takeover of the Republican Party by religious right-wingers would mean the destruction of the party and would present a real threat to the country itself. How accurate that prediction was still remains to be seen…but certainly the Party no longer exists as the avatar of common sense. But…was it so then?
I dunno. At the time, I was quite far to the right. Now, I’m a left-wing crazy…and y’know, I don’t believe my philosophy and outlook have changed that much. What has changed has been our country. And its political outlook…IMHO.