Martha's Ramblings

Did you get an email from ‘Captain Greg Wallace’? I got several of them this past week. I read the first one with some amusement and dismay.

The amusement was because it is just another play on the old Nigerian scam albeit a new version. The dismay because somewhere,
someone, will probably fall for this scam and lose a bunch of money.

The email doesn’t ask for money, that no doubt will come as soon as the unwary victim responds to the email. Probably the request will be for ‘expenses’ or some other falsehood that requires money.

Supposedly the good Captain found a secret hoard while serving in Iraq. Being the good person he is, it was not reported to the
authorities, but was ‘secured with a senior United Nation Diplomat in Amsterdam Holland’. He doesn’t explain how he managed to get the box to Amsterdam. He’s counting on greed to overcome omitting that little detail.

The nice little email is so full of spelling and grammar errors you just know he isn’t using a spell check.

I wonder how many people will fall for this scam? I used to think no one would fall for this kind of scam, but I was wrong. PT Barnum
once reportedly said ‘There’s a sucker born every minute’. Unfortunately this is still true. Don’t be one of those suckers, delete those
emails and forget about them.

Martha

Thieves are everywhere, including the Internet.

By now most of us know about identity theft and are aware of all the scams out there. But there is another form of thievery as well, stealing a website or website content.

Webmasters work hard to make their websites. The really good webmasters learn how to program with HTML and write Cascading Style Sheets, commonly know as CSS. They take pictures of the products they sell. They take care to see if the pictures don’t take too long to load so their pages will load quickly. They make sure the pages are viewed the same way in all browsers, not just Internet Explorer. This process doesn’t happen over night. It takes many days and sometimes nights. Content is king on the Internet and some of us have to really struggle to get that content written. Content needs to be original and not everyone really likes to write. Trial and error is the name of the game until one day they finally get it right. All the hard work pays off at last.

Then one day, someone steals their site. Literally. They steal it by using something called a ‘scraper’. It seems there are some folks who decided it would be neat to write a program (which probably consists mainly of scripts) that could capture everything on a website and then post it to another site or blog. These folks offer their site stealing programs for sale and then the inevitable happens.

Someone decided to use a ‘scrapper’ or something similar on a Yahoo computer help Group with a lot of members, so there is a lot of ‘posting’ going on. While trying to find a solution to stop this streaming of posts to a blog with the very horrible name of http://how-to-make-a-computer-virus.blogspot.com/ (named no doubt to catch evil surfers). That’s when I found out about scrappers or site stealers. Some time back someone on one of my Groups had their site stolen and the wonder was how they managed to do it so completely. Wondering no more, a scrapper was used!

When this article is posted to my blog I am hoping the blog with the scrapper is gone. Complaints have been filed with the bloggers host, BlogSpot, so we will see what happens. In the meantime, everyone of us that has a website/blog has to wonder, ‘Will a thief target my site?’

Martha

I generally try to stay away from subjects like religion or politics when writing for my website, blog or posting to a list. You can’t change people’s opinions on these subjects and it is foolish to try. You can also offend some people by a remark that goes against their beliefs.

But this is just too much for me to keep quiet about. I am talking about the poor woman who was humiliated by having to remove her ‘nipple’ rings before she could board a flight. I have heard a number of stories about bottles being taken away from babies, old ladies being strip searched and a number of other absolutely ridiculous things the TSA has done to hapless passengers, but this one took the cake. If I am wrong, please let me know how a nipple ring can be a security hazard. I really want to know so if there is a nipple ring anywhere in my vicinity I can report it to Homeland Security.

All of this just emphasizes what can happen when you give power to a certain segment of the population. They do these things because they can get away with it. They enjoy humiliating and intimidating people. I think these are the characters that were once school-yard bullies. Now they are airport screener bullies. I believe most of the people who work at being screeners are just doing their jobs as best they can and the few who are bullies are giving all the rest a bad name.

I think the things that we have done to prevent nipple rings, baby bottles and the like from being allowed on commercial flights must have the terrorists laughing.

I am so happy I am not required to fly anymore. I don’t go anywhere that I can’t go by car. I just hope that one day I don’t have to submit to a body search to get in my car to go to the market.

Martha

Last month I wrote about a magazine that keeps nagging me to re-subscribe. If this was just an isolated problem it wouldn’t be so bad, but all my magazines are doing the same thing to a certain extent. Not as bad as Money, but they are wanting me to ‘renew NOW’.

I keep a spreadsheet to let me know just when my subscriptions expire as I do tend to be a tad forgetful. Since I am sorta forgetful, I guess the magazine people must know that, but a reminder eight months before the expire date is a bit much.

The letters, cards and covers are all telling me I need to ‘renew NOW’. If I don’t ‘renew NOW’, I am going to miss out by not receiving every issue. I won’t save money by not renewing ‘NOW’.

News Flash! I will save more money by not renewing at all. (Maybe that will stop the nagging!)

I think every magazine there is wants me to subscribe as I am getting all these offers for ‘Professional’ rates. If I did take them up, I suspect I would start getting the letters to ‘renew NOW’. No thanks, I will pass.

Magazines are not the only businesses that want me to ‘renew NOW’. At least once a month I get a letter from a warranty company wanting me to renew my warranty on my car before it expires. (It actually expired three years ago.) Since my car is now officially five years old it might need some repairs one of these days. But I don’t drive much any more (gas is so expensive!) and the car has less than 40,000 miles on it, so I am not going to renew the warranty ‘NOW’. (Or ever.) If those repairs get too costly, well, I like new cars and they come with a warranty.

I guess all of these ‘renew NOW’ cards and letters are helping the Post Office pay their bills.

I can read just about everything I need to know on the Internet. I will save money and be ‘Green’ at the same time. The recycle bin will be less heavy when I push it to the curb. I am so excited! I can buy more software with all the money I will save by not renewing ‘NOW’!

That will teach those ‘renew NOW’ folks not to be such a nag! (Just think of the postage they will save when they finally quit nagging me!)

Martha

For a whole lot of folks there are not enough hours in a day and for another bunch there are too many.

Normally there are 24 hours in a day, except twice a year. The first time a day doesn’t have 24 hours is in the late Winter/early Spring, when the so-called day has 23 hours. Then late in the Fall/early Winter there is a so-called day with 25 hours. The powers that be change the actual dates this happens and who knows when they will change the dates again. When we change our clocks for the exact dates and times. (You probably thought it was the same down through the years, but no, it wasn’t!)

It seems that many years ago, in 1784 to be exact, good ole Ben Franklin wrote a fanciful essay about saving daylight. It was surely written in jest and no one at the time really took it seriously. The people back then seemed to be more endowed with ‘common sense’!

Then in 1916, in an effort to save energy resources, it was decided to actually implement the farce known as ‘Daylight Saving Time’. Perhaps it did save some energy, but the amount of energy saved surely did not compensate for the effect of changing the time on the population. Losing an hour of sleep once a year may not seem like such a big deal, but statistics show there are more traffic accidents on the Monday following the ‘Spring forward’ event. In today’s fast paced world most people don’t get enough sleep as it is and taking a precious hour of slumber away is tantamount to a criminal act. Not to mention all of the aggravation!

A recent study published by Consumer Reports indicates that Daylight Saving Time is actually costing us more money! While we may be saving the cost of lighting, air conditioning and heating cost us more due to the time changes.

However, I doubt the powers that be that make the decisions will even look at the statistics showing the actual cost and will continue to make the population suffer through losing sleep one day a year.

Martha

When you receive something in the mail that proclaims in big letters ‘Warning!’, you tend to check it out. So when I received a letter a few months ago with this ‘warning’ on the envelope I checked it out in a hurry. Hmph, turned out to be a notice to renew my subscription to Money magazine. All well and good, but what’s going on? I had just subscribed to this magazine a few months before, so did I forget to pay the bill? I checked the label. There was the date the subscription runs out, July 08. So I tossed the letter. I’ll subscribe when the due date arrives.

Then a month later I get another letter telling me how much I will miss this magazine if I don’t renew now!

“Marketing is getting out of hand” I think and toss the letter.

Last month I received a third letter saying they just don’t understand why I haven’t renewed my subscription. I am tempted to send the letter back telling them my subscription is still good for six months so why are they so excited? However, that would mean I will have to put a stamp on the letter, so I toss it.

Today I received my copy of the magazine with a cover over it. This is what over half of the cover looked like.

The second half just had my subscription information.

I have decided I will not renew this magazine; I don’t need the harassment.

Martha

My, my, the older I get the more I find to complain about. I think this is a privilege that goes with old age, so I exercise it!

This ‘gripe’ is about ‘come on’s’. You know, offers to sell you something that are worded to make you think this is just what you have been looking for all your life, or this is exactly what you need to make your life just wonderful. Right.

I usually don’t fall for such drivel, but occasionally I get curious and check out one of those offers. (Isn’t the Internet great?) However sometimes I think I already know what the offer is and I bite. You’d think I’d learn.

This time the offer was for a magazine, Prevention. I subscribed to this magazine many years ago and I liked it then, so when I got an offer to subscribe again, I bit. What I didn’t realize, what used to be a fairly good magazine is now primarily a purveyor of advertising. I left Readers Digest for that reason. I understand these periodcals have to pay the bills and want to make a profit as well. But get real folks, who wants to pay for more ads! Especially for those obscenely priced prescription drugs that I should ‘ask my doctor if it’s right for me’.

Out of curiosity I counted the ads. There are 91 full pages of ads! And this isn’t counting the articles that are touting products like shampoos, beauty aids, etc! I didn’t count the partial page ads either. To make matters worse, there are ‘Supplements’ inserted by Prevention offering me the wisdom of the ages for books that cost ‘only four easy payments of $7.99 plus shipping and handling’. Geeze, this magazine is so full of ‘buy me’ they should have named it ‘The Ad book’!

Since I did fall for the offer, I paid for the magazine, but you can bet your bippy when it comes time to renew, I won’t!

Martha

Why are some people so mean spirited? They want us to not say ‘Merry Christmas’. They seem to think ‘Happy Holidays’ is more politically correct. Guess what, you meanies! If it weren’t for Christmas, there wouldn’t be a Happy Holiday for the majority of folks.

I have even read that some people don’t want the mall Santas to say ‘Ho, Ho, Ho’. Now I know that there is a slang word that rappers use to denigrate folks of the female persuasion. But I fail to see how anyone with an iota of intelligence can think Santa is using ‘Ho, Ho,
Ho’ to insult anyone. There are must be some folks who must lay awake at night to come up with stuff like this! Santas have been saying that for many years, long before the rappers decided to say their insult.

Some cities have elected not to put up Christmas decorations for fear of insulting someone. I do feel sorry for the people that have been deprived of the beautiful Christmas decorations in those cities. There are some cities that have decided to put up the decorations in spite of the few who are against Christmas. Hurray for them!

I guess it is a sign of the times we live in. One of these years, if this trend keeps up, ‘Merry Christmas’ may just go away. However, I am in hopes that the ‘majority by far’ will rise up and take back our favorite holiday expressions and tell the PC crowd to ‘stuff it’.

Since this is My Blog, here is what I have to say, “Merry Christmas to all who celebrate the birth of the Christ child”.

Have a ‘Happy New Year’ as well. I just hope there aren’t any people that want to do away with that as well.

Martha

Somehow the words ‘garbage’ and ‘gestapo’ don’t sound like they belong together, but if you live in my city they fit together just fine.

A number of years ago the City Fathers decided they wanted to make the city more attractive and at the same time start recycling seriously. Both of these ideas are good. However, the plan needs work!

They finally contracted with Waste Management to pick up the garbage and recycle stuff and the fun began. It took awhile for the citizens to get used to the idea of hauling those big containers to the curb on their designated day for trash pickup. A number of them still haven’t gotten used to only one day a week for trash pickup.

The idea of using those bins is a good one. The bins come with a bar so the trucks can use an automated bin lifter and dump the contents into the truck, thus saving time and eliminating the need for extra workers to lift and dump the containers. The idea was to make the streets look much neater since the containers are all alike, except for color to differentiate between the trash and recycle containers. However, while in theory it is a good idea, it doesn’t always work in real life.

When the bins are placed on the curb by the citizens, they are generally lined up fairly neat. However, once the trucks come by, the bins are strewn all over the street. Sometimes cars have to dodge them to avoid hitting them. For some reason the trash sometimes ‘spills’ out onto the street so the citizens have to pick it up when they come home from work. Occasionally the bar lifter misses the bin bar and knocks the bin over resulting in trash all over the place.Does the truck stop and the driver pick it up? Not likely in this lifetime! So does this should make the city more attractive? In practice it leaves much to be desired.

Because the trash is picked up only once a week, sometimes the citizens dump the overflow into the recycle bins. This contaminates the contents to be recycled and the whole load may have to be dumped into the landfill. There are larger carts to be had, but since they cost more every month, consumers on a short budget don’t want to get one. Some folks with large families just can’t afford the extra cost, a fact the City Fathers fail to realize. (Maybe they just don’t care!)

Enter the ‘Garbage Gestapo’. This is a special crew that goes around inspecting people’s recycle carts. If anything is found that doesn’t meet the criteria for recycling the poor beleaguered culprits get a fine of up to $250!

Personally I have a real problem with other folks rummaging through the recycle bin. So I shred everything and dump it in the trash. I would like to recycle all that paper, but I don’t want my identity stolen so it goes in the trash where the ‘Gestapo’ doesn’t search.

I rather suspect residents of nearby cities laugh about our ‘Garbage Gestapo’. I wish I could!

Martha

Everyone is jumping on the bandwagon about ‘going green’. Generally speaking, I think that is a good thing. We need to conserve our resources, water, energy etc.

However, this idea of ‘paying a carbon offset’ is a bunch of hooey! All it amounts to is someone has figured out a way to make money from ‘going green’. You send them money to assuage your guilty conscience about using so much energy. They put the money to use and then sell what they do to people with more money than sense. There may be some of these folks who are really trying, but if you put ‘carbon offset’ into a Google search field, you will get almost two million hits. Figure it out.

Supposedly if you drive your car to work every day, go on a road trip or fly to your favorite vacation spot; you can ‘pay’ a carbon offset to make up for the pollution your car or airplane ride puts into the air. Nuts! I don’t care how much you pay, the pollution is still there. You can pay all you want, no one has yet figured out a way to get paying money will remove the carbon that modern life has filled our atmosphere. True, there are projects that are trying to find ways to clean up the junk, but you can do your part by using some common sense.

Go green by turning off appliances when they are not being used. This includes lights and TVs. Replace your light bulbs with energy saving florescent bulbs. They do cost more, but last a lot longer and don’t burn nearly as much energy. The old incandescent bulbs give off heat. If you live in any area that is hot and you have air conditioning, that heat just makes your cooling unit work that much harder.

There are so many ways to conserve energy. I won’t list them here, but nearly every utility company has a website with tons of ways to save energy listed.

Some of the projects that are supported by the ‘carbon offset’ sites include planting trees and shrubs. This is a good thing; planting trees and shrubs is always good. I think there is a society that has been practicing this for a very long time, The National Arbor Day Foundation.

They will send you free trees to plant. Just read this article The Carbon Neutral Myth! It is pretty large pdf file, but worth reading.

Martha