The Universe as Conscious Nemesis

Tuesdays. Usually innocuous. A day between that awful first day after the weekend and the hump-day that keeps us going until we reach another weekend.

But mine was off-kilter. It began in the wee hours, as any lurking ghost-reporters would have told you, I was cursing (again) the sad state of affairs in the world of Customer Service. They should just go ahead and change that moniker to Customer Disservice. I was on hold with Comcast, trying to figure out why I could not get online. This, after spending the last week, at the rate of 10 or 12 hours a day, trying to get my failing computer back into working status. There had been some nasty viruses in residence, that i finally found and removed using Malwarebytes. Seems the mother of them all these days is called AntiVir Solution Pro. It's claim to PC-crashing fame is that it pretends to be a program that found some nasty malware on your computer and politely--then insistingly--offers to remove it if you click the button. It even tells you it can sell you the ultimate way to get rid of them. All that clicking does is infect your computer more. The really malicious part of this fake-spyware program, is that it usurps your computer so completely, that you can almost never get around it. It keeps you from opening any program--including another virus checker. I got around it by booting into Windows and quickly going to task manager and removing any unfamiliar processes running, before the virus could take over. Then i ran Malwarebytes and got rid of it. But the damage was done. Apparently, there had been some corruption going on for some time. Anyway, I was trying to get back online so i could do some research and fix the other residual issues, and just could not get the networking devices to operate. So when I was on hold with Comcast for about a half hour, i finally reached someone, and then promptly got disconnected. I didn't call back. I was afraid I'd have a short fuse and couldn't bear talking to some foreign person who couldn't understand English--after i had so carefully pressed one for English.

So I called my tech service, Magic Flash Drive, and connected with the one guy who didn't seem to know what he was doing. They had no selection for English, and so I got a guy from --i don't know--Pakistan? Heavy accent, language barrier--there was no way to tell him what was going on, it seemed. He kept asking me stupid questions that let me know he hadn't understood a word i said. "Did you press enter?" or "are your cables connected?" In fairness, he's the only one at MFD service I found like this. The other two guys I've dealt with have been great. I've discovered that the good ones always seem to work after 11pm.  Anyway, I was very frustrated, and by this time, my partner, D. was about to be home from work (she's a night supervisor, EMT and Security Officer for a certain community. Love a woman with a stethoscope and a gun).

Ready for a break from the Tech-nightmare, I stood up, cursing my screwed up knee, and D.'s 100 year old Siamese, Kidd, urped on the floor, and so I had to clean that up. Then I was heading for the fridge for water,  walked into the dining room, and found a surprise. A big puddle compliments of The Little Bastard, as i call him. He's an irritating, incontinent dog who comes upstairs from the basement apartment, currently occupied by my partner's mom. He had finally managed to claw down the gate and make it upstairs. It's a stark reminder of why I don't generally like dogs. So i had to clean up that mess. 

Then D. called and says that she'll be late, because she had a flat, and gave me the whole story of how completely aggravating the whole thing was, and then she finally made it home and we went to my doctor's appointment at the VA.

Now, i have a knee-jerk stress response to going to the VA. My normal blood pressure of 120/70 become 145/100. It's related to that whole nightmare i went through for years with them and the military (for more details than you could ever hope for, see my memoir, Falling Through the Cracks: The Misadventures of No One Famous for a full telling of that crap). Surprisingly, the appointment itself was good. Meaning, I didn't feel the need to kill anyone, but the medication I needed would require a visit with another doctor, and that might be a week away. 

When i came out, i had to text D. to find her. Seems she'd gone to put money in the parking meter and found a ticket from the overzealous security folks who work there. 25 bucks because her tire was a bit over the line--only because the guy next to her parked like he was legally blind, and was way over the line on the other side of her. Bastards, all.

We took pictures of the situation, just in case we needed to plead the case, but ultimately, you just have to pay tickets like that when you work at night and would have no sleep on court day, and then have to go back to work that night in that condition. So much for professional courtesy. Or good sense.

So after that, we went back home and she had house and yard stuff to do so I could go do some errands I'd put off--deposit a rebate check into my dangerously low account, and to Wal-mart. On the way, at least three people tried to kill me with their paltry driving skills. When i got to the bank, i found they were not opening until 10am, so i had to put the check into the ATM night deposit. But I didn't know my account number. Luckily that was in my iPhone, but unluckily, my iPhone was in the Cherryot. So i had to walk way over to where i had found the last parking space on earth, and get it, and look up my number. I finally got the deposit in, sure that the scary bandanna-wearing Mexican guy was a gang member about to honor his initiation by mugging me, (but avoided that fate, at least) and headed off to Wal-mart to return the airbed i had purchased in an effort to find rest since the demise of my coveted foamy mattress.

I am afflicted with an inability to sleep on anything other than foam. I had been worried I would never be able to get another mattress like that because it seems that foam is made from petroleum products and we all know how the prices have risen on that. The mattress i was replacing had cost me $80 five years ago. Now, it seems, a comparable one (8" high density

sofa foam, sized for a full bed) was now around $300 and to cut it they would only charge $600 or so. Insane. For that price, i thought, I could just go with memory foam. But i knew those beds were several thousand. I thought maybe i could find just the mattress. So i began to search. My best friend was always trumpeting about the wonders of Overstock.com for good deals on everything, and so i looked there, and lo! --I found a 4 inch mattress topper in memory foam for around $80. I decided four inches of foam was better than no inches at all. (See? size really does matter). I ordered it and had it shipped. So, the trip to Wal-mart was to return the airbed, which was half-deflated the next morning after using it the first time. We took it off the bed and went back to the regular mattress with an eggcrate foam piece on top.

As most of you who read this blog knows, in the interim, i had to put my cat, Shoes, to sleep, and was dealing with the crash of my computer, which renders my whole life to shreds, and i just

didn't do much of anything else for a while, including keep track of the fine print on receipts that said airbeds had to be returned within a certain number of days. So here I am at Wal-Mart, dumbly trying to get a refund. When the clerk explained the time-limit, I argued. (What a shock.) I told her I had been dealing with a computer crash and a sick cat who i had lost, and just didn't get back in here in that time. Didn't' know there was a limit. She refused. I asked to speak to her manager. She refused. I asked to speak to the manager above her, and HE refused. Now, I'm thinking about my cat again, and crying, and thinking about my dead-in-the-water computer, and crying some more, and angry and upset that i seem to have wasted $45 on a bed i wouldn't use. The best they could do was exchange it. So they gave me another bed of the same kind. I left feeling like this was another example of stupid rules that should be broken sometimes by those with the authority to do so.

As i was unlocking the door to come back in the house, i heard a crash. I walked in and said "What the fuck?" A cabinet had fallen forward, inexplicably, and scattered two potted plants, trinkets and a store of food all over the dining room floor. I thought it was lucky I'd cleaned up the pee, or else we would have been plucking that stuff out of a stinky puddle. I asked her how the hell it fell over and she said she didn't know. It just fell over. For no apparent reason. There were no cats anywhere near it. I told her that the shadow people she always saw at night at work, who appeared and disappeared, must have followed her home, and oh great, now we have our own poltergeist. We cleaned up the mess and I said, "Baby, I think the universe is out to get us today and we ought to just stay inside and hide everything sharp." She agreed. We are of like-mind.

I told her about all the crap I had been dealing with, and that I had cleverly decided i would just wait a few days and take the airbed to another Wal-mart and get a refund within the time limit. That's when D. pointed out that the clerk had written "exchange only" on the receipt. Foiled again.

So I have to wonder, when I have days like that, if there really is such a thing as a conscious universe, and if it has the ability to peg you as the subject of its wrath. At least now, those bad days are shared with someone who loves me, and we can weather the storm together.

The Universe as Conscious Nemesis

How Spammers Really Make Money

Whenever my email box fills up, I have to wonder: what are these spammers thinking? Do they really believe that anyone will click on that link to buy what they are selling? DO they not know they are among the most hated individuals in the history of humankind? Well why would they care, when this type of business is anonymous, and also virtually free to market? One thing I do know is, if i get another mail about the size of my penis I'm going to scream. But, you think, they MUST be making money. Someone MUST be clicking those links. Otherwise, why would they continue to do it?

Well hold on to your skippy knickers, gang. Most of the money made by spammers has little to do with you buying one of their products. Spammers can make plenty of money selling addresses they've gleaned from websites, various open proxy servers and open SMTP relays. That just means they get it through the same channels you get your email.

And spammers make money from all those pop-ups. Have you ever found yourself on a site that turns out to be a series of pop-up pages? It doesn't matter that you close them. The spammers have already got what they need--it's an "ad impression" which means the page was, theoretically, viewed by someone, and they get paid every time that happens.

Then there's all the downright fraudulent spamming. I'm sure all of us has at one time or another gotten one of those pleas from some Nigerian representative, telling us they need to borrow someone's account to deposit a large sum of money and in return, you will get paid a large fee for providing that account. If you fell for this, you deserve to lose your money. Sorry. But that's just stupid. NEVER give out your information for a credit card or bank account to someone you don't know. That doesn't mean legit companies like your electric bill or phone bill sites. It means anytime you are ASKED for you information for any reason whatsoever, and you don't know who the asker is, don't do it. The fraud extends to all these pyramid schemes, chain letters, and any sort of multi-level marketing.

Another thing to watch out for are what is called pump-and-dump stock activities. You are encouraged via email to buy a penny stock and when enough people do this, those who own this stock then sell it while the price is high. And you are left with...well, a stock worth a penny.

And don't forget the bane of all inboxes: those who entreat you to try their product which will make your genitals perform better and/or look more impressive. These products are sold all the time, and when you buy them, IF you even receive them, they are usually sugar pills or something else that does nothing to achieve your goal. And how can they continue to do this so voluminously? No one is going to report them for selling them a product that did not make their wee-wee bigger. It's just too embarrassing. And do i have to mention that if you go to porn sites, you must never allow any site to talk you into downloading their special software so you can view the porn? Those are usually dialers, and they will sit unnoticed on your system and dial 900 numbers until you get your phone bill. Then you will not want to explain to the phone company that "no, that was not you calling porn lines..." They won't believe you, and you will probably be too embarrassed to do that either. You'll just be stuck with the bill.

Remember, when the sites you do legitimate business with ask you for verification and secret question answers, it's to protect your account or card information from getting stolen so that someone can run that up too.

One more thing: Don't EVER hit the unsubscribe link in one of these emails. This just verifies your email as accurate, and it will end up on even more spamming lists.

If you follow these guidelines, and also use the proper anti-virus and anti-spyware programs, while simply deleting unwanted mail, you'll have a better chance of avoiding catastrophic financial problems as well as the annoyance of more spam. I recommend using AVG products for spyware and virus protection, as they don't slow down your system, and they are very effective-as well as free. And buy Spambully for your outlook program. It's the best for that.

Good luck, and don't be a chump.

How Spammers Really Make Money