Failyas ta Cah-myoonicate!
Jan. 5th, 2021 02:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogI'm starting to write up a report for 2021's Permanent Record Card. It may be premature, as a lot of this relates to things that actually happened, or didn't happen, in 2020, but it may be time to get the new year adjusted to how things should be done.
In short: NOT how they were done last year....
Over the past day, reports have blinked on and off about the death of onetime Charlie's Angel Tanya Roberts. She's dead. She's not dead. She's getting better! Canadians seem to have this down better, as reports are confirmed of the death of former Sabres coach and GM John Muckler. He was legendary in running teams on and off the ice in four different NHL cities, but his influence here was probably as important as it was in any of them. He was behind the bench for the two most celebrated goals in franchise history- May Day! and Where Jimmy Hoffa Is! - and in our front office he filled the other net with the greatest goalie of all time.
Closer to home, nobody's dead, but if annoyance can be a potential cause of death, we're testing positive.
----
We've been New Yorker subscribers for ages. One of the most monumental decisions we had to make when getting married wasn't where to live? or how many kids? but which of us is keeping the subscription? (I did; my hangover student/educator rate was still in effect.) The 50 issues a year are down to 40-something, and that rate no longer exists, but those few minutes most weeks with their news, reviews and "drawings" as they were long called remain cornerstones of our sanity.
The subscription got screwed up this year: I kept getting renewal mailings specific to our subscription that were barely below the cover price, even as they were emailing me ridiculous come-ons of eight issues for a dollar plus a free tote! I finally called and got them to honor an in-between price that seemed reasonable for the value we were getting, sans tote, but the credit card never got charged. They then sent an invoice, which I paid online with the same credit card, this time getting a confirmation number and all, but again, no charge on the card and, in late November, another invoice. Finally, I switched credit cards, the charge went through, but the magazine, which had been coming the whole time, stopped with the December 7 issue. Eleanor finally mentioned it over this weekend- that she was really missing the mind candy coming from it. We've always had access through our computers, but the tactile comfort of real paper is a thing with both of us.
So I called first thing yesterday for a fourth round of fun. Turns out the issue with the issues wasn't the invoicing but a general post office problem. We missed three issues in all in December, plus the first of 2021 remains at large, but they extended us out two months as a we're sorry gesture. It doesn't mean much, since we'll still be subscribers after we're both dead, but we're trying to catch up through the e-editions now.
They're not the only ones who've been unable to Go Postal, even after all the kerfuffles of the election ballot season. A week or so before Christmas, I sent out a small number of snail-mail bill payments to the relatively few I don't pay online. One was for a life insurance policy I've had since my 20s. I noticed, when checking for the stimmy deposit, that they hadn't cashed my check for the premium, now going on three weeks after I sent it. Just now, I called them- and they are only now getting to payments that should have been delivered to them in the last week of November. In other times, this could pose a problem, since I probably can't reacquire that coverage at that price without health exams- but New York has banned non-payment cancellations unless you go way longer than 30 days, so we'll be okay eventually.
And by we, I mean the real we.
----
I awakened this morning to a Facebook message from a dear friend of both of ours, who hasn't been having the best of holiday seasons for various reasons. Yet she took the time to report that she'd received a Facebook message herself from, it seemed, Eleanor. Except it quickly turned into a cascade of bad spelling and get-rich-quick spam worthy of your standard fake Nigerian prince.
At first we thought it was a thorough hack of Eleanor's Facebook account and who knows what else. But it wasn't in her sent threads at all, and her last message to our (real) friend that was there dated to mid-2019. So, not a hack but a spoof, as the script kiddies say: Bad Guy gets hold of your real name, profile picture and names of your Facebook friends- all defaulted to public and for anything but the friends list not optout-able- and either sends a "new" friend request to them or maybe one to their friends; or, as in this case, uses Messenger to send a "Hi, Friend" message which doesn't come through automatically but you see Oh, a message from Eleanor and you accept it. At best, it's spam. Or it can lead to porn, hacky links, identity theft phishing attempts, or Grandma Scam tales of woe where they beg you to get them out of a foreign prison or whatever by sending the gendarme a $500 iTunes gift card.
It's been reported and we've heard of nobody falling for it beyond seeing the spiel about the Max Grant United Nation Free Money program. But we really have better things to do first thing in the morning than put up with mean people sucking.
----
I now have a full day of appointments booked in Rochester for Thursday. Hopefully they're all real. I will miss being away, though, because look who's been caught in the act of outright cuddling:
There's no stealing those identities:)
In short: NOT how they were done last year....
Over the past day, reports have blinked on and off about the death of onetime Charlie's Angel Tanya Roberts. She's dead. She's not dead. She's getting better! Canadians seem to have this down better, as reports are confirmed of the death of former Sabres coach and GM John Muckler. He was legendary in running teams on and off the ice in four different NHL cities, but his influence here was probably as important as it was in any of them. He was behind the bench for the two most celebrated goals in franchise history- May Day! and Where Jimmy Hoffa Is! - and in our front office he filled the other net with the greatest goalie of all time.
Closer to home, nobody's dead, but if annoyance can be a potential cause of death, we're testing positive.
----
We've been New Yorker subscribers for ages. One of the most monumental decisions we had to make when getting married wasn't where to live? or how many kids? but which of us is keeping the subscription? (I did; my hangover student/educator rate was still in effect.) The 50 issues a year are down to 40-something, and that rate no longer exists, but those few minutes most weeks with their news, reviews and "drawings" as they were long called remain cornerstones of our sanity.
The subscription got screwed up this year: I kept getting renewal mailings specific to our subscription that were barely below the cover price, even as they were emailing me ridiculous come-ons of eight issues for a dollar plus a free tote! I finally called and got them to honor an in-between price that seemed reasonable for the value we were getting, sans tote, but the credit card never got charged. They then sent an invoice, which I paid online with the same credit card, this time getting a confirmation number and all, but again, no charge on the card and, in late November, another invoice. Finally, I switched credit cards, the charge went through, but the magazine, which had been coming the whole time, stopped with the December 7 issue. Eleanor finally mentioned it over this weekend- that she was really missing the mind candy coming from it. We've always had access through our computers, but the tactile comfort of real paper is a thing with both of us.
So I called first thing yesterday for a fourth round of fun. Turns out the issue with the issues wasn't the invoicing but a general post office problem. We missed three issues in all in December, plus the first of 2021 remains at large, but they extended us out two months as a we're sorry gesture. It doesn't mean much, since we'll still be subscribers after we're both dead, but we're trying to catch up through the e-editions now.
They're not the only ones who've been unable to Go Postal, even after all the kerfuffles of the election ballot season. A week or so before Christmas, I sent out a small number of snail-mail bill payments to the relatively few I don't pay online. One was for a life insurance policy I've had since my 20s. I noticed, when checking for the stimmy deposit, that they hadn't cashed my check for the premium, now going on three weeks after I sent it. Just now, I called them- and they are only now getting to payments that should have been delivered to them in the last week of November. In other times, this could pose a problem, since I probably can't reacquire that coverage at that price without health exams- but New York has banned non-payment cancellations unless you go way longer than 30 days, so we'll be okay eventually.
And by we, I mean the real we.
----
I awakened this morning to a Facebook message from a dear friend of both of ours, who hasn't been having the best of holiday seasons for various reasons. Yet she took the time to report that she'd received a Facebook message herself from, it seemed, Eleanor. Except it quickly turned into a cascade of bad spelling and get-rich-quick spam worthy of your standard fake Nigerian prince.
At first we thought it was a thorough hack of Eleanor's Facebook account and who knows what else. But it wasn't in her sent threads at all, and her last message to our (real) friend that was there dated to mid-2019. So, not a hack but a spoof, as the script kiddies say: Bad Guy gets hold of your real name, profile picture and names of your Facebook friends- all defaulted to public and for anything but the friends list not optout-able- and either sends a "new" friend request to them or maybe one to their friends; or, as in this case, uses Messenger to send a "Hi, Friend" message which doesn't come through automatically but you see Oh, a message from Eleanor and you accept it. At best, it's spam. Or it can lead to porn, hacky links, identity theft phishing attempts, or Grandma Scam tales of woe where they beg you to get them out of a foreign prison or whatever by sending the gendarme a $500 iTunes gift card.
It's been reported and we've heard of nobody falling for it beyond seeing the spiel about the Max Grant United Nation Free Money program. But we really have better things to do first thing in the morning than put up with mean people sucking.
----
I now have a full day of appointments booked in Rochester for Thursday. Hopefully they're all real. I will miss being away, though, because look who's been caught in the act of outright cuddling:
There's no stealing those identities:)