Thanksgiving decoration

This weekend I was in pain big-time. My doctor prescribed higher dosage pain meds and gave me a shot - short of euphoria, but would probably allow me to take a bullet to the body without flinching.

Yesterday, when I got home and realized I could move without excruciating pain, I thought I would do a load of laundry. Did that and went downstairs to pick it up. To save myself a trip, I thought I would get the Thanksgiving wreath from the next room, and hang it on the front door as I went up the stairs.

So far, so good. This morning there was a knock at the front door (nobody that knows me comes to the front door). It was the UPS guy laughing his head off. He said "Are you making a feminist Thanksgiving statement with your decoration?" I had no idea what he was talking about until I looked at the wreath. Somehow, when I transported the wreath on top of the laundry basket, my bra had become hooked to the wreath. So there, draped on my front door, was my underwear. Good thing UPS made a delivery, else my bra would have been there until I changed to the Christmas wreath.

Many folks in my generation had mothers who insisted that we always have proper, mended and clean undergarments in case we were in an accident.

I bet my mother never counted on them being used as holiday decorations....

Where oh where did my focus go?

I am trying to figure out exactly when I lost the ability to focus. In specific, to get a task done without being sidetracked. I suspect menopause is the cause of this disappearance, but then again, I blame menopause for everything that's gone awry, (memory loss, facial hair growth, sleeplessness and other stuff that I already forgot).

Yesterday was a perfect example of how my focus wandered. I was so annoyed about the Ellen and the Rescue Dog story on TV, I decided to write an email or post an item on my blog. Early in the morning, I started to do just that. I wanted to include a picture of my adorable Rescued pets. I decided to use a photo that is on my website, so I went to that site. Since I haven't used or updated my website in quite a while, when I opened up the site, I noticed that a number of links were broken and information needed to be updated.

I decided that it was a good time to launch the Frontpage program and edit my site. It has been so many months, I have temporarily forgotton how to use Frontpage, and I have no recollection of what userid and passwords I used to access the site. In my search for a valid userid/password, I discovered a repository of critical web development information that needed to be sorted and organized. So I sorted those files and finally found the information I needed. It is now mid-morning.

Back to Frontpage to see if I can recall how to manage that program and update my web pages. Right off the bat, I notice that the picture of me on the "about me" page is badly out of date. I go searching in my photo files for a more current picture.

I find a current picture but it needs to be "Photoshopped" a bit to be appropriate. I decide to do something "arty" so the Photoshop process takes many hours. It is now mid-afternoon, and my Blog item about Ellen and the Rescue dog is not finished, the photo of my rescued dogs is not uploaded and the Photoshop picture is not finished. Grim.

I go back to Frontpage and almost re-capture the process I need to use in order to edit my webpages. Almost, but not quite. By now it is late afternoon and I know I need to feed animals and family their dinner.

Thank goodness I am retired.

It is now the next day, and I have finally finished the Photoshop pictute, I have created the Blog page and included the dogs' picture. I still have the whole mess of editing the website and re-learning Frontpage ahead of me. I just spilled some granola and in order to clean it up I need to: find the vaccuum (and the bag is full); find the vaccuum bags and since they are low, I should probably order some more online, but I can't remember where I got them... you get the picture. There's no telling how far off track I'll get today.

There once was a time when I could decide on doing a task then actually get it done from start to finish. Then there is the whole "mulit-tasking" thing, but I digress....

Can spam drive you crazy?

I have come to the conclusion that spam can drive you crazy. Not the Spam in a can, spam that arrives un-invited in our electronic communications sources. My ISP has "spam blocker" software, but even with that software in place, I get at least 50 pieces of spam in my email every day -- the software does block hundreds of items daily. Then, my home phone and cell phone, which are both registered on the "do not call" list are regular targets for spamming.

It appears there are loopholes in the "do not call" registry, including the exemption of: companies that you have previously done business with; non-profit solicitation; political campaign information; calls that are initiated from outside of the US, and more.

I have a friend who once ordered prescription drugs from a company online. He now gets at least 10 calls a day on his cell phone and that's with call blocking in place. There appears to be no way to get these callers to stop. This causes him to rant daily about his phone and email spam, and I realized that spam has driven him crazy -- of course, he did have a good head start in that direction.

I regularly receive phone calls for "surveys" and multiple automated robot political campaign calls. I finally contacted the political websites of these callers and told them if they don't stop calling me, I will never vote for them. Thank goodness election day is just around the corner.

The thing that puzzles me is why on earth do the originators of the email spam messages think they are effective? Everyone attempts to block them. Do they really generate business from these messages? The spam ads I get for loans, investment opportunities, prescription drugs and porn sites are sent in massive numbers with the exact same message from multiple senders every day. Do these advertisers really think this is an effective method of delivering their message? I would go out of my way to avoid supporting these businesses.

The spam that drives me crazy are the "phishing" efforts that look like legitimate email from sites that I have a relationship with. I worry that I will actually delete an important message when mistaking it for spam. Someday, my ebay account, or paypal account or bank account, or ISP account, may be suspended because I have missed a legitimate message.

In the "olden days" where spam arrived in the mailbox, I found an effective way to get removed from the solicitors' lists -- when they included a postage paid envelope or postcard for return business, I would glue it to a brick, or some other heavy object, so they would have to pay the postage due when they received the item.

So, in the future, if you see news coverage of some lunatic(s) who have gone on a rampage against spammers, don't be surprised. Their defence can be that the spam drove them crazy....