LOL, I get it. 
Thanks to those who helped talk me down. Today was better. I got an application and a report done, enough that I can still take PTO Monday and Tuesday. Not quite the failure I feared. I was able to clean up a little too.
Now just have to survive the weekend with a five year old.
Glad to hear it. One thing I’d learned having had undiagnosed MDD for most of my adult life, is that sometimes the best you can do is to just keep going.
Could be worse. They could be a twelve year old.
I just got one of those frightening phone message alerts.
Since I have been in the house all day I thought it might be another massive storm. I about had a heart attack from the urgency of the sound.
Turns out that all of Pennsylvania’s 911 systems are down and we have been alerted to call the non emergency numbers if needed. A local television station has put out a list of those numbers.
That alarm really kick starts the adrenaline.
Those alerts happen all the time for trivial reasons.
Time to practice not getting excited about 90% nothing, 9% interesting, almost 1% potentially harmful, and 0.001% “Oh SHIT!!! somebody is SCREWED!!! And it might possibly be us, but that’s still massively unlikely.”
We get those for Amber Alerts at like 2am. Nothing like coming out of a dead sleep to loud blaring about something you can’t do anything about.
Those can be probably be silenced if you set your phone up correctly.
I turned off AMBER alerts since there is substantially zero likelihood I can personally do anything about them. And especially not at 2am; they are not hiding in my bedroom.
The events are real. And often tragic. But the alerts are all show by the “law and order” (read “RW crazies”) to encourage the stranger danger paranoia that everyone should always be afraid. And reminded frequently of that fact.
I turned off everything except for actual emergencies on my phone because some of those alerts were just too intrusive.
I got one a couple months ago in advance of a massive storm which was also broadcast across my car radio. Storm was a very intense and a tree fell in my yard.
I guess having 911 go out across the state is a valid emergency.
Especially in Hawaii!
Now that you mention it I think I did turn them off.
My phone will ‘read’ the Amber Alert (or sometimes the NWS storm/flood advisory) aloud in addition to playing the alert sound. So I’m driving along, enjoying my sound system, then start thinking…“Huh, I don’t remember background speaking in this part of the song. Kinda trippy!” Then it gradually dawns on me that the speaking isn’t coming from the stereo, but from my bag.
Seems like whenever I get an Amber alert, it’s for an abduction that happened a couple of states away, and eight or ten hours earlier. Yeah, sorry, I don’t think I’m going to be much help there.
Ditto.
This is only a mini-rant because it can only possibly affect only the very few South African board members, but man, it is irritating.
I have a cellphone. I buy data on a system called “pay as you go” - I do not have a contract with fixed monthly costs. I buy data as I need to, aka “prepaid”.
So there is an app, helpfully provided by my cellphone provider, which, aside from trying to sell me new phones, contracts etc, purports to be able to sell me data. And, yes, it can, except for one fatal flaw.
If I have data, then I can buy more. If I run out of data I cannot.
The reason is because there is a “whitelist” of URLs I can visit (including APIs that allow me to buy via the app) but some obnoxious fucking marketing dickwad inserted a tracking redirect link.
The purpose of this link is to get my info, and should just be seamless.
But while the morons in charge have “whitelisted” their actual purchase functionality, they have not whitelisted this one single URL. So making it impossible to buy data because it is counted against my data balance, which of course is zero. So I am blocked.
The work-around exists… it just makes it really complex. I can get an airtime “forward”, essentially a short term loan. I can then convert that to “data”. I can then use that small amount of data to get a data “forward”. Finally I can use that to buy more data.
I mean, the solution - all of this trouble, which cannot be only happening to me, is to whitelist and zero-rate their stupid tracking link.
The Amazon gift card saga continues. 
I didn’t think to check the balance on the replacement card that suddenly arrived - after all, this one was sealed! Mom went to Starbucks today to use the card, and found out that it was never activated.
Fuck. I guess I’m out $25. I’m still filing a complaint with the Attorney General’s office, and I will let Amazon know what happened, for all the good that will do.
Well, not for nothing, but if a someone has been abducted it’s not crazy to think they might be a couple of states away after ten hours or so.
After 10 hours they could be nearly anywhere in the USA if they fly. Should every alert be sent everywhere and all 380 million of us should be looking around fruitlessly for 10 new kids a day every day?
Went to urgent care for lower leg rash ( had it for a bit, used cortisone cream which made it worse). She said it was because of the edema ( from the highe dose of amlodipine I was on last week).
Came home. Later I felt chilly, took a nap, felt fevery when I woke up.
Dr said take a tylenol and come in Monday.
What percentage of Amber Alerts are for non-custodial parent (who I realize shouldn’t have them but most likely will not harm their child) vs. true ‘stranger-danger’ abductions?
On my way home the other day a nasty line of storms was pushing thru; I got a severe thunderstorm alert on my phone (but not my work phone, which was inches away in the car). I decided to make a stop on the way home…at the firehouse in case we got called out as there is a high probability in that weather, either for ‘electrical fire outside’ (tree down on wires or just wires down) or water rescues so I was standing around other people/phones. When I said something about I got an alert on my phone one of the other guys looked at me &, busting my stones, said, “I’ll let you in on a secret, everyone got that alert.” So of course I didn’t get the second one, extending the time on the thunderstorm warnings or the other one about tornado warnings; yet other people, standing in an open garage doorway just feet from me did.