A curious thing

I’m soooo lucky! I’ve been awarded $450,000!

Yes, a Philanthropist has instructed a Canadian firm of tech experts using Google-powered software to select winners based entirely on their email address, and I won!!

Isn’t it wonderful?

All I have to do is tell them my name, address, telephone number, age and occupation…

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The choir isn’t listening

As my readers should already be aware, I’m the carer for my disabled partner, who suffers from various annoyances ranging from joint pain to diabetes, and apart from a cocktail of drugs they are on four litres of oxygen full time.

I make use of a sitting service to get time off, but would happily (almost) leave my partner home alone while I walked the dog, or did the shopping.  Provided they ‘toileted’ before I left, and promised not to leave their chair, I could leave them for an hour or two.  (Of course, I make sure my mobile is charged, and I can drop everything and be home in minutes…)

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Scumbag update

I don’t know if any of you have ever taken a look at the ‘Scumbags’ page available through the menu at the top of the page?  It gets updated from time to time, but it doesn’t really make very good reading, as the sole reason for it’s existence is for me to name SPAMMERS.

I’ve added a new one today, and… well… they’re actually doing everything ‘right’ but they still got on the list!

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Worser and worser

I’ve often posted about how bad the internet is getting – and today is just the same.

A few posts back I told you how I was unable to buy a 3D printer because the website insisted I register with them before they would sell to me.
Well, I emailed their sales department, to tell them about the lost sale, and they replied.  I’m smiling as I type this!

Their reply was that the registration was so they could ship the goods to my address and take the payment – and that they should probably be streamlined into a checkout page.  They said that they didn’t need a customers personal details ‘except to ship stuff when they buy it’…

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Their loss, not mine

A few days ago, I told you I was looking at 3D printers.  Since then, I’ve found the perfect one.  The software is much more user-friendly, it can use ABS or PLA, it is in a self-contained unit so no moving parts can catch on the wall or your finger or whatever, and it has two print heads – so you can use two different colours, or two different materials.
You could, for example, print a plastic wheel with a rubber tyre already on it.  Or make a hard plastic box with a soft rubber grommet built in.  The possibilities are endless, and I know I could have a lot of fun with it.

It’s a little more expensive, but it’s worth it – in fact, for what it can do, it’s actually very cheap: the nearest alternative is over £2,000, and that only has one print head.

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Silly adverts

Just thinking about some of the adverts on telly today, and I thought I’d share a few thoughts with you…

Let’s start with a common ‘instruction’ in adverts: ‘if you want <whatever they’re selling> just call/email/visit… ‘  OK… that’s what we do if we’re interested – what do we do if we’re not?  Not one of them ever considers the fact that most of us have no interest, and they never tell us how we can communicate that fact to them….

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I’m not gonna say it

I’m not going to say I told you so.  That would be childish, peurile, and beneath me.

However.

I have been helping, showing, and teaching people how to use computers for many years now – in fact, a good number of those reading this blog sent their first email under my tutelage.
And from the very earliest days of teaching email, I have pushed my three rules:

  1. Never open an email attachment unless you know the person who sent it.
  2. Never open an email attachment unless you trust the person who sent it.
  3. Never open an email attachment unless the person you know and trust tells you they sent it.

You can sum it up as ‘never open email attachments without a damned good reason’ if you want.

Yesterday, Channel 4 News led with a story about a massive new cyberattack.  Many thousands of computers in the UK are infected with it, and many billions of pounds have been raked in by the people behind it.

The first you know about it, is when you get a message pop up on your screen telling you that your files have been encrypted.  You want to see your files?  Pay here, please.

The technical term is extortion (some call it blackmail, but I always thought that was ‘pay us or everybody can see your secrets’).

And can you guess what the experts advice was?  Can you?

Yep.  Don’t open attachments without a good reason.

For the record, if you get the encryption message, you have just two choices: pay them, or lose everything on your computer.  There is no known method of decrypting the files without the key that they want you to buy.  It’s only a few hundred pounds…

Personally, I’d just wipe the hard drive and start again: everything I care about is stored elsewhere.  My photos, for instance, still exist in their original form on the camera’s memory card. (Cards, actually, I never delete the photos, I just replace the card.)

So.  The official line: don’t open attachments.  Exactly what I’ve been saying for years.

But I’m not going to say I told you so.

Oh… Isn’t that what I just said?

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Case in point

I made a couple of telephone calls today, and between them they highlight the problem with modern business methods.

The first was to a local charity.  I wanted the answer to a simple question, and I got it.
The second was to a well-known insurance company.  I wanted the answer to a simple question, and I finally got it.

No difference, then?

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Take your medicine

At the end of this month our Doctors surgery will close it’s dedicated prescription line.  We will no longer be able to request a repeat prescription over the telephone.

Instead, they say, we should put in our request online…

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I don’t get it

In my hand I have a cable.  It’s about four feet long, and has a 3.5mm plug on each end of it.  You may have seen similar things – in fact you probably have one somewhere, if not with a plug on both ends at least with a plug on one end and something else on the other.
Like headphones; or a pair of speakers; or a mobile phone; or an MP3 player.

It’s quite a common thing, in all honesty.  The 3.5mm jack plug is everywhere.  And it’s connected to a cable that has three wires in it, to match the three terminals on the plug.

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