Liking Waiting for a Birth

Getting new techie stuff for me is beyond exciting, but the wait reminds me of waiting for my brother to be born. The anticipation was great, but the end result was a bit of a let down. The tech was supposed to be here at 10am. I had everything backed up and ready to fly into the next level of Windows with arms spread wide planning to soar. My mobile phone rang since when the guy left yesterday, our landline, which is also cable stopped working. We have a call into the company to get that repaired now too. The labor time was premature, he has to stay at the office until 1:30pm. At 3:30, he show us. Having flunked yesterday's lessons, he had the audacity to state that this was going to be simple. All he had to do was set up the server. At 3:45, we gave him coffee. When the clock hit 4:25, it was ice water. The temperature out was 92F. By 6:30, we offered him a vodka and tonic. When it turned 8pm, we were thinking of including him in our dinner plans. At 8:30, we were considering making up a bed for him, but we are fully booked, so perhaps a spot on the kitchen floor? As it turns out, the hard drive that I used to back up everything I needed from the old computer was too outdated for the new computer, so could not be installed. He had to run to a computer shop to get cables to allow me to use the old drive as an external one. Then there was the installation of the server software on three more computers. What we have now is a system where guests will be able to video stream our movie collection onto their laptops in the privacy of their room. That is of course, after I have the time to load all of the 700+ movies onto the server. For now, I am reinstalling all of my programs under Windows 7, which has not been too much of a hassle. I guess having had to reformat the computer on a semi-annual basis in the past has increase my speed in doing it. What I hate the most about the reformatting is all of the programs that I bought online and have saved registration keys for, but when you try to reinstall them, the keys no longer work. This happened for three programs that I use continually. I write to the support and hope to hear back one day. Kudos to one company: Slysoft Software - www.slysoft.com I have three of their programs, which I use almost daily. They not only responded the same day I wrote, but they provided me with new keys. They thought the old keys may have been corrupted. Bless them. Hats off to MailWasher Pro, the program that filters out my spam in the e-mail. When I could not get the program to install, they wrote me back asking questions. Until I retrieve it, I have 759 e-mails to sort through. If you don't hear from me soon...

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Spam Is Not Only a Food Option

I subscribe to a newsletter from The Consumerist. Most if not all of the articles are US based, which does not aid my way of living either way, but it does help me stay up to date with what is happening there. Today, there was an article on SPAM, not the supposed food product that came in can, which my mother served with fried eggs on top, during economically challenging times, but that hateful e-mail we find in our in-box. A survey shows that 12% of the survey group actually responds to the spam messages. With a rate like that, it is obvious that spam is not going to disappear anytime soon. You can read the article here and within it there is a link to download the survey. http://tinyurl.com/no3lzg This comment that struck my funny bone, since the person's spam comes in Hungarian and they are presumably in the US. Most of the time, I open Google or even Blogspot, it starts in Hungarian making me navigate to English. Google.hu is the default regardless of how many times I have changed and saved my preferences. If all of my spam were in Hungarian, it would be so much easier to ignore; I cannot read it anyway. In the past, not being able to tell the difference between the good and the ugly, I have been guilty of forwarding pieces to students for translation with embarrassing results for both of us. Opps!

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Scams - Not Only E-Mail Variety

This elderly parent thing has really turned things upside down. Not only are my brother and I having to parent our father, but my brother who is seven and a half years younger than I, is having to take the lead. The pyramid is balancing on the pinnacle, rather than the base. It was only a few months ago that I learned from my phone conversation with my father that he was being scammed by phone. He slipped one day, by telling me he was coming into a large amount of money, planned to pay off all of his debts, refurbish the house, and install new wall-to-wall carpeting. I believe I have addressed this issue here before, but it was not until now that I found out the severity of the situation. This had been going on for months. Hence, the checks we have been sending him to help pay his gas and electric bills, chip away at his credit card debt, has been going to Jamaica. We do not know anyone in Jamaica and we especially do not want to support anyone in Jamaica at this point in time. Our intent was to aid my father, not strangers with a funny accent. My brother shared that he thought he had nipped this whole thing in the bud, but months later discovered my father was sneaking behind his back like an untrustworthy teenager and continuing to share his bank details. This forced the child brigade to shut down dad's checking account and reopen it with new account numbers, which I am not even sure he shared with my father. I would not blame him if he did not. He even bought an answering machine so my father would not have to answer the phone when the scammers called. He could monitor his calls. When I called and spoke to the machine, he told me it was because he could not lock his knee in time to stand steady to grab the phone. The machine did not stop the overseas communications though. Once he knew who was calling, he still picked up the phone, whether it was a familiar voice or a Caribbean accent. Sending money may have been a way to appease my guilt over not being there to assist, but in this day and age, who can afford to rip up a life that has been deeply rooted, watered, and nurtured. This is not the life plan I had mapped out, but circumstances created something that exceeded my expectations and I am grateful. If sending a check is my only way to assist, then at least I am thankful we are able to do it. It seems to me though, the Jamaicans should care for their own and leave my father out of this. My brother checked into reporting it to the NJ Attorney General or local authorities. No one seems to have any authority considering the country. They will willing take the report, but there are no teeth to take a bite out of the crime.

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