Coffee heat rising

MacHassle

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Okay, so this morning I have to traipse — again — to the far west side, to the Apple store at Arrowhead Mall, there to take a course in how to use the iPhone. My son gave me this thing months ago but, being no fool, refuses to try to teach me to use it. So it has set, brickish, on my desk for month after expensive month.

Yes. I do have service for it.

No. I do not know how to use that service.

Nor, entre nous, to I especially want know. Ohhhh goodie! Another intrusive device that effing solicitors can use to interrupt what little peace and quiet we have left.

But it’s now clear you can NOT do without a cell phone of some kind. And since I already have Apple computers, I guess it behooves me to use Apple’s phones.

Not that I’m likely to continue using MacComputers much longer. The fact that you can’t get adequate service for these devices from Apple tends to discourage….especially when Best Buy will send a guy out to your house tout suite if you have an expensive contract with them. Especially when getting service from Apple entails driving halfway to San Diego or halfway to Payson, trying to explain to explain what’s wrong without the salesman/tech dude/whateverheis being able to see what’s happening or being able to ensure that it’s not a connectivity issue, leaving the device there for days, then having to schlep across the city to retrieve it, schlep back across the city to get it home, and then try to reconnect it to power and modem and godknowswhat, all by your untechie little self.

The Best Buy techs do know how to fiddle with Apple products, it’s true. But PCs present a number of advantages, not the least of which is that MS Word on a PC does a far, far more professional job of word processing.

Apple’s Pages word processor…ugh! What a piece of junk. The damn thing double-spaces between paragraphs, forgodsake. Well, actually, it spaces-and-a-half between grafs.

No. You cannot submit that to a scholarly journal.

No. You cannot format a manuscript for a typesetter with any such stupid gaffe in it.

I haven’t even tried to use their spreadsheet software. Why, when Excel does the job just fine?

The prospect of trudging across the city again this morning does NOT appeal. It’s a 45-minute drive out to Arrowhead Mall. Admittedly, Arrowhead has its appeals — it’s a very nice mall. But…but…I should drive 45 minutes through lunatic traffic for window-shopping?

Well, it’s almost 9:40. Better wrap this up and start driving…driving…driving…

MacNever-Never-Land

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In the horror story department, we’re in full “Creature from the Black Lagoon” mode!

Spent the entire afternoon at the Arrowhead Mall Apple store, halfway to San Diego. There, they tried to persuade me that I need a new MacBook. Could be, but I think not. The problem is, newer Apple computers don’t run MS Word and Excel! While Apple has supposedly equivalent programs, these are fine for hobbyists but they don’t rise to a professional level. There’s no way in Hell I can use Pages to edit an academic paper! (or any other kind of document for publication, come to think of it…)

Told the guy I would check with my financial adviser about pulling three grand(!!!!!!!) out of savings.

After traipsing across the Valley and about being persuaded that I need to buy a new MacBook, along about 3 in the morning, when I started drafting this little rant, I was SO exhausted physically and mentally I could recall almost nothing about that little adventure.

Because Google has three accounts – CE Desk, FaM, and Camptown Ladies – it’s extremely difficult to find a “sent” email, because it’s difficult to find the accounts and difficult to get into them. I haven’t used these accounts in years, don’t know the passwords, and this whole damn thing is driving me crazy. If the Macbook goes down, thereby losing memory of the passwords, I am screwed. screwed, gescrewed.

Meanwhile, MacMail — the program I use for ALL my email shenanigans, went down. It would only send and receive emails from its “Archive” folder. (Archive???????)

After reboots from both computers, it seemed to be working…provisionally, sorta.

I also think I failed to call Best Buy and cancel purchase of a new PC. But the truth is, I’m now soooo tired and so confused and so upset that I don’t know that I DID go through with buying one. Think not…but… About all I could recall was that they were supposed to send a tech out here. I paid for a BB service contract but at first was frustrated in trying to get someone to come out.

The password hassles get worse and worse. I simply can NOT remember the bottomless pile of different, ever-changing passwords, and right now I can’t even recall how to find the 23-page list of the damn things. Here, too: more than one copy of it. I find one dated 2021 but it doesn’t seem to have yesterday’s inventions.

Gmail FAM says my Apple ID password has been changed. But I don’t know what it’s been changed TO. I can’t find a note in the TWENTY-THREE PAGES of goddamn passwords. So I went over to https://iforgot.apple.com/password/verify/appleid to try to reset forgotten password, and it says vickyhay@mac.com is not my Apple ID: “vickyhay@mac.com is not valid.” Well…what is, then?*

Now I find a scribbled note that says the Apple ID p/w is, appropriately enough, [even more redacted] 22. This gem is dated April 8 and stapled to a summary of concerns about the peripheral neuropathy that I wrote for MayoDoc.

gaaahhh! We’re not in Kansas anymore, that’s for sure.

***

Awake in the wee hours: worrying, harassed.

The printer goes down. After much thrashing, I get it fixed. Along about 1:40 AM, the test emails I sent to MacMail about 25 minutes before  come through to vickyhay@mac.com. Why? If emptying out MacMail’s diverse inboxes worked, why did it take so long for a message to come across? It did come from vickyhay@mac.com. Could the issue be solved????

Well. If so, it’s solved in the weirdest of all possible ways. incoming mails arrived in the mailbox called “ARCHIVE.” Why? Is all incoming being redirected to Archive? Why?

After traipsing across the Valley and about being persuaded that I need to buy a new MacBook, I am SO exhausted physically and mentally I can recall almost nothing about that little adventure.

Bear in mind: Apple closed its centrally located store, leaving one open in North Scottsdale, and one open in the depths of Southern California Redux, on the far west side. My house is equidistant between these stores: 14 miles from one and 15 miles from the other. So each trip to the damn Apple store consumes THIRTY MILES’ WORTH of $4.67/gallon gasoline!

Surely I didn’t say I WOULD buy a new $3,000 machine? I think I said I would check with Financial Dude about drawing down the money, and believe I did send him an email to that effect. But of course, since the email system doesn’t work, I can’t confirm that to be true.

Because Google has three accounts – CE Desk, FaM, and Camptown Ladies – it’s extremely difficult to find a “sent” email, because it’s difficult to find the accounts and difficult to get into them. I haven’t used these accounts in years, don’t know the passwords, and this whole damn thing is driving me crazy. If the Macbook goes down, thereby losing memory of the passwords, I am ge-screwed.

By the light of the setting moon, I also think I failed to call Best Buy and cancel purchase of a new PC. But the truth is, I don’t know that I DID buy one. I think they were supposed to send a tech out here. I paid for a BB service contract but think I was frustrated in trying to get someone to come out.

*****

Just went to https://iforgot.apple.com/password/verify/appleid to try to reset forgotten password, and it says vickyhay@mac.com is not my Apple ID: “vickyhay@mac.com is not valid.” Well…what is, then?*

*1:47 a.m. Now I find a scribbled note on a typewritten list of concerns that says the apple ID password is [redacted] for all devices. It’s dated April 8 and stapled to a summary of concerns about the PN that I wrote for Dr. Fields.

Now, reminded of this, I bestir myself to look at the case around the keyboard and find [redacted] is the password for all devices as of 4/14/22.

See what I mean about fading memory. Folks. April 14 was YESTERDAY!

Less than 24 hours later, I not only could not remember the new password, I did not even register that I’d taped it to the top of the freakin computer keyboard!!!!!!!

Now, at 1:40 AM, the test emails I sent to MacMail about 25 minutes ago have come through to vickyhay@mac.com. Why? If emptying out MacMail’s diverse inboxes worked, why did it take so long for a message to come across? It did come from vickyhay@mac.com. Could the issue be solved????

These incoming mails arrived in the mailbox called “ARCHIVE.” Why? Is all incoming being redirected to Archive? Why?

*****

What a horror show.

I think I’m gonna give this fiasco a week or two to clear up. If the mess is not untangled and cleaned up by about the end of the first week of May, then I’m just going to dump EVERYTHING and start completely over, probably with PC’s.

At least a PC is cheaper to replace than a Mac, and there are more PC gurus out there than MacWhateverThey’reCutelyCalled.

Don’t think I’ve described the scam artists who got ahold of me, talked me into buying a refurbished used MacBook (the problem doesn’t seem to be a hardware issue, you understand…so this is FAST talk that worked on a CONFUSED old lady). I bought the computer from some outfit on the far, far, far west side (surely more than halfway to San Diego), and on the way home picked up (as advised) a new printer at Best Buy.

Luckily for me, within a few hours I realized that hardware was NOT at issue here. So returned the overpriced used MacBook, but decided to keep the printer. Bought a service plan from Best Buy.

Cox Dude is now on his way over here. One theory is that the problem is the modem, not either of the computers. If that’s true, maybe replacing the modem will solve the problem.

That, I believe, is wishful thinking. I believe the problem is the MacBook or the combined iMac and MacBook.

Welp…we shall soon see!

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!

 

Bye-bye Costco!

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Finally….lost patience with shopping in Costco. And made a little discovery in that department — one that should have been obvious.

No doubt I’ve remarked before on what a PITA it is to shop in a Costco store…not because of Costco itself, but because of the way the customers behave. People seem to lose their minds when they go into one of those vast emporiums of American consumerism. They lose track of everybody around them. Apparently all they see is the vast stacks of Stuff for sale, piled up to the warehouse-high ceilings. They cut you off. They bang into your cart. They let their bereft little kids sit and wail, strapped in a cart or stroller.

The last time I got so annoyed I stalked out, it was because somebody walked off with the shopping cart I’d spent half an hour or 45 minutes filling up.

This has happened more than once. Not the walking out…the walking off. People get so engrossed with staring into the meat counters or perusing the piles of junk, they’ll just push a cart down the aisle without realizing it’s not their cart. By the time they notice, it’s out of your sight — and chances are they don’t even remember where they started pushing it.

This time… {sigh!} I swear: what a place!

After circumnavigating the warehouse and picking up the stuff I need, I approach the front of the store. Only a couple of checkout lines are open, but it looks like not many people are standing there.

Wrong!

When I get up front to claim a place in line, I see management has decided to enforce the covid-inspired six-foot rule. This causes the lines to back up the aisles. Waaayyyy up the aisles. So what looks like a two- or three-person line actually extends halfway to the back of the damned store — which is vast!

Well. I’d already stood in line half my lifetime to get gasoline.

Did I really want to spend the other half my life trying to check out a few groceries?

Well.

No.

Left the cart standing there and headed for the hills.

This shucked off one annoyance. But I still faced the problem that groceries needed to be bought!

So on the (long!) way home, I decided to duck into the big Fry’s at Tatum and Shea, a conservation zone for the Rich and the Snooty fauna of Paradise Valley.

Fry’s, for those of you live points east and south, is actually Kroger’s. Some of their stores are huge, and the one in Paradise Valley is among those.

I rarely buy groceries there, partly because I’ve gotten into the habit of buying at Costco, which is just up the road, and partly because Fry’s made a deliberate business strategy of driving the AJ’s in Moon Valley out of business by installing that huge megastore and underpricing the nearby AJ’s. That AJ’s was one of the best stores in the city, and it was relatively convenient to my house. I so much resented this unethical business strategy that I’ve made it a practice not to shop at Fry’s.

But I guess that habit is gonna have to go into the trash bin.

That store had everything the Costco offers…and then some. The meat is first-rate. The fresh produce department is far superior to Costco’s, with many more choices, all of them offered in grocery-store style, not warehouse style: meaning you can pick and choose the fruits and veggies you want and not have to buy a lifetime supply of any one item. The liquor department still offers an excellent selection of cheapo wines — recently Costco has gotten rid of their better choices in the $9 to $12 range, meaning that the extravagantly priced AJ’s actually has a superior selection of those. Yea verily…the Fry’s selection outclasses AJ’s. Hot dang!

Costco offers cheapo clothing good for daily around-the-house wear. Recently they’ve gotten rid of their Gloria Vanderbilt jeans — about the only brand of jeans that fit around a middle-aged woman’s butt.

Lo! the Fry’s has a casual clothing department, too. And it far outclasses Costco’s. It not only has a vast selection of junk clothing, it also carries sandals and walking shoes — in regular shoe-store fashion, so you can try them on.

The jeans are Levis. These used to fit when I was a young thing, but I doubt if they will today. No big deal: I can order Glorias online.  And I suppose i can track down a Western-wear store and at least try a few pairs of Levis in fat-lady sizes.

I found THE prettiest casual white sweater! GRAB! Wore it to meet some friends yesterday. Perfect with jeans.

Barge up to the checkout lines — this store seemingly has an infinite number of them — and get behind just one woman, whose order was already more than halfway checked.

Buy the loot, haul back out to the car, fill up the back end.

Now to get home…

Turning left out of that parking lot to go in the direction of the Funny Farm via Shea Blvd is…well…highly problematic.*

Usually I accomplish this by going to the east end of the lot, turning south on Tatum, and then executing an Arizona Turn: that is, turning right and then pulling a U-ie in order to go left. Then proceed back up to Shea and cruise west as far as it goes.

This, as you might imagine, poses certain risks. And it poses an existential question: does one really want to risk one’s life for a pile of groceries?

So yesterday I decided to see what would happen if instead of circling back up to Shea, I proceeded south on Tatum to Lincoln and then cruised west on that huge thoroughfare. This would take me two miles out of my way, but the trade-off would be a far greater likelihood of survival.

All is going well until we hit Lincoln. Within about three minutes of turning right onto that venerable thoroughfare, we come to…a dead stop.

They’ve got the road shut down to ONE LANE.

Of course. Makes sense, this being Phoenix. Lincoln is one of THE main routes between North Central Phoenix and Scottsdale, the other being the majestically slow Camelback Road, several miles to the south. The traffic is dead stopped.

Well, actually, we move forward a few yards at a time, every few minutes.

It takes a good thirty minutes to traverse that mess.

Note to self: take Shea westward out of the Fry’s parking lot. Some things are worth risking your life.

At any rate: ultimately I decided that henceforth major shops are to take place at that Fry’s. Its offerings are far superior to Costco’s, and if there’s any price savings at CC, you couldn’t prove it by me.

As for standing in line till the cows come home just to save a few pennies/gallon on gasoline? Why?

The two QT’s on the fringe of the ‘Hood compete with each other for commuter customers, meaning their prices are not far off Costco’s. Surely it’s worth a few cents or even a whole dollar to avoid a crazy drive and a 20-minute wait in one of a dozen lines of eager penny-pinchers.

________________

* Costco persuaded the city to install a signal at the parking lot’s exit onto Cactus, but…bring camping gear! Sooo slow is the thing that it’s likely to be breakfast-time tomorrow before you get to turn left. Risking your life to go around Robin Hood’s Barn via the Tatum exit is much faster and less tooth-grinding.

Lost in Darkest Scottsdale

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Day before yesterday I had an entertaining (sorta) adventure in Valley street navigation. It actually was pretty interesting…and amazing.

Traipsed out to the Mayo, which is on the far eastern border of Scottsdale, halfway to Payson from here. Driving back, I decided to circumvent the unholy construction on Shea (or whatever the mess is: hard to tell why they’ve got the road blocked for mile after mile) by heading north on Frank Lloyd Wright and then cruising west on another main drag.

Well…this took me, shall we say, far afield. Ended up in north Scottsdale, in the general direction of where my friends Barbara and Larry used to live while Barbara and I were in graduate school. They rented a studio that was part of a big ole’ million-dollar house in what was then the fringe of Scottsdale up against some local hills.

What was then is NOT what is now. :-D.

That place…it defies description. A once-quiet enclave for the Wealthy in the Know is now a suburb that goes on and on and on and ON. It’s got vast spreads of apartment buildings. Miles and miles of tile-roofed stick-and-Styrofoam suburban HOAs. Dizzying clusters of commerce. It spreads way, WAY north, oozes around the little “mountains,” and saturates the land as far as you can see.

It was overcast, preparatory to yesterday’s rain, and the sky was so gray I couldn’t see where the sun was and so, having been turned and turned and turned, could NOT for the life of me figure out which way was north. Or which way I needed to turn to get out of the damned maze.

What a mess!

And what a shame. It was such a pretty place. Now…well, as ugly Southern-California style suburbs go, it’s not too bad. Comparable, I’d say, to some of the less annoying parts of Orange County. But as a place to live? Unless you’re into beehive-dwelling: ugh

This is why, if my son didn’t object so vociferously, I would move to Prescott in an instant. Or Patagonia. Or Oro Valley. Any place but here.

It’s funny how you tend to identify people with the places they live. Or lived. I think of Barbara as Scottsdale. I think of Larry as Phoenix.

Barbara, because after she unloaded Larry and married his Coast Guard shipmate, she ended up (by amazing serendipity) in far east Scottsdale, and that’s where she lived until she and the new guy moved to Seattle. Larry’s parents lived out their lives at a house in a North Central Phoenix neighborhood not far from where DXH and I lived. and despite his lengthy marriage to Barbara and the many places where they dwelt, I connect him with the parental manse.

Larry and Barbara had rented a studio that was appended to a lovely old adobe mansion (REAL adobe) in Scottsdale, and it was a beautiful place. Had about a half-acre back yard, with a view to the north that stretched all the way across the desert to the mountains. At one point, he proposed to us and the other couple in our threesome that we should band together and buy that house. DXH was averse: thought that was a losing idea.

But…Larry was right. Those houses are now going for prices in excess of (hang onto your hat!) SIX MILLION DOLLARS.

It would have taken half our adult lives to cash in…but if we’d bought that place and just sat tight, we would have cleaned up by now.

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.