I usually just join in the conversation when somebody is doing that. When they glare at me I go all innocent: “I thought you were talking to me.”
Seems to work pretty well most of the time.
Whelp. The norovirus is working its way through my family. I think the kid had it Tuesday. I’m on day three of a miserable trip, not really fully recovered, but Sr. Weasel is on day one, I’m afraid. So he’s out of commission and I’m stuck with childcare duty while feeling quite crap. We’ve at least learned to stagger our illnesses so we’re not all sick at once. Would have been nice to work Friday and relax this weekend given all the fucking stressful shit going on…
Oh, man, I’m beginning to think that the reason most of us are doing okay is…
… that there are a couple of people here that are getting enough shit thrown at them for all of us…
So just before I left town for a week I got my new desktop. The Geek Squad had managed to get the files transferred from my old computer and installed most of my programs, which saved me a lot of aggravation. I even haven’t had much trouble with the change to Windows 11. The one thing that has been driving me nuts is that my Firefox was set up to use the privacy browsing as the default. At first I thought that was a pretty good idea, until I found that I was constantly having to log on to websites because in privacy mode Firefox blocks all cookies, and apparently won’t store login information.
I finally managed to get the standard Firefox browser on my taskbar. Why would anyone want to use a browser that requires you to enter log-on information every time you go to a website?
Paranoia.
Seriously, there are people out there who are willing to turn web browsing into a massive pain in the ass in order to protect their privacy.
Privacy mode can be useful but using it as a default is ridiculous to me. Especially since they’re still providing most of that data to web sites anyway, because you have to in order to use those web sites.
For Superbowl viewing, especially with guests, my wife has usually cooked and baked a large “spread” of savory and sweet snacks. This year, she understandably wanted to make it easy so we ordered pizza, wings & salad from a good, reliable, pizza place near us. (Lou Malnati’s, if you live in metro Chicago.) We ordered in the morning for pickup at 5:10p, ample time for the scheduled 5:30 start.
So I went to get the pizza, and stopped on the way for groceries including some frozen food because I presumed I’d run in, grab our order, and be on my way. Nope. When I got inside, just a little after 5:10, the lobby of the takeout location was packed with people standing and watching their phones for the start of the game. A man in front of me said his order was for 5pm and he was still there at 5:20. Sure, I thought, I’ll be out of here about 5:30 and won’t miss much.
Nope again. The all-teenage staff (the cooks may have been adults, but we couldn’t see them) scrambled to fill orders, but not with any resemblance to when they were placed. People came, waited 20+ minutes, and left with their food while I still waited. The “manager” checked on my order several times, with profuse apologies but no results. Finally, my 5:10 order for a pizza, wings, and salad with nothing customized or special came up at 6:25. I did get home in time to eat in comfort during Rihanna’s “how many ridiculous poses can I get 100 creepily-anonymized dancers into while I sing in a more-or-less dignified pose” half-time show.
Had we known that ordering in the morning would do us no good, I would have walked in, bought one of their heat&eat pizzas and a salad, and my wife would’ve heated the pizza at home in a fraction of the time I waited. I felt suckered in by their advertising email suggesting ordering well ahead of pickup time, as if they were making an implicit promise: “if you order well in advance, it’ll be more convenient for both of us.” Silly, silly me.
Jesus mother fuck. I just got a notification from some bank I don’t use that someone opened in account in my name. I don’t need this shit.
Did they deposit money in it?
I don’t think they got that far.
Too bad. 
ATT is about to lose me. I spent an hour and a half with them because my email suddenly stopped working on every computer and my phone. I get a message “not found on Accelerator” In a google search it said to clear the cache and cookies. My work computer just had the cache cleared a few days before. So I called ATT and they couldn’t find my account and I pay on line and everything goes to my email that I cant access. They finally found my account confirmed it had my name and zip code but said it was a business account. Went around and around with that, they then transferred me to the business area who could find anything and said I needed to call Bellsouth, I pointed out that that is the first number I called that transferred me to them because they couldn’t find my records. By that time I had pulled up my account in ATT.com and pointed out that I was paying someone at their address $50.00+ a month so they should be able to find something. I don’t have a house phone anymore and only kept this for my internet and email. The internet needs new lines installed inside my house with me there during normal working hours and now the email isn’t working. I have a different number to call for Bellsouth. and if that doesn’t work ATT will be gone. I will lose years of photos, and other stuff I had saved in my emails.
CVS carries CPAP supplies for about the same price as Apria for the stuff I seem to use up like the head gear that holds my mask in place.
Driving to a Super Bowl party yesterday evening, and two dickheads went around us at 100 MPH or so (one on the shoulder (miles apart, they didn’t bracket us)). And then on the way home at halftime (wife got a work call out), a third asshole went screaming past us.
It’s been years since I’ve seen that, and three in one night.
So maybe the unauthorized account was in and of itself a scam. Maybe I got scammed, because I definitely called the bank in question and gave them my personal details. I’m too sick to deal with this today. But I’m gonna have to put a freeze on my credit now.
Fuck me I’m so fucking stupid.
For the record, I’ve been getting a lot of BS emails and texts claiming that my account has been frozen due to unauthorized access. It’s easy to tell that they’re bogus because they appear to be written by someone with a shaky grasp of English (awful grammar, misspellings), and the contact info doesn’t clearly identify the organization it claims to be from. Usually a link to some random website.
I just mark as spam and delete. This has been a big thing just in the last few weeks. I think spammers go through fads.
All the emails I received looked legit, I just don’t know that they were. The number I called also seemed legit in its vast network of annoying phone options making it difficult to get to an actual customer service representative. Somewhat concerned now as I went to the bank’s website and couldn’t find the number I called. I’m just going to say hell with this last week and start over again.
That seems very different from the scams I’m familiar with. It sounds like you were dealing with a legitimate issue and not a fake.
I’m not sure about that. The best way to find out is to Google the bank’s number and call that one and talk to the fraud dept. Never use the contact info contained in an email you weren’t expecting.
And also, don’t beat yourself up about it. They prey on vulnerable people, and that includes people who have so much on their plate that they don’t have the capacity to spot what they might if they weren’t so burdened with other things.
One thing that is worse than that is people walking around talking on Bluetooth earphones. I haven’t had the nerve to respond to them as if they were talking to me, but I did on several occasions comment to passersby that these peculiar folks could easily be mistaken for escapees from a lunatic asylum talking to imaginary friends. Everyone I thus commented to was in full agreement.