OK, I guess it has it’s uses, like keeping up with family and friends that don’t have time (or the inclination) to communicate with everyone, but I don’t understand why I need to know about all of the strange creatures someone has found playing a game, or all of the other peculiar things that folks do with these games.  I certainly don’t need to know one of my friends is now friends with someone I never heard of.  I don’t need to know that one of my family members made a comment about one of those folks I never heard of. But I confess, I have a Facebook account.

And for the life of me I don’t understand why I should ‘follow’ some web site on Twitter or why I should want to be a ‘fan’ of some other website. I don’t ‘follow’ anyone and I certainly don’t want anyone ‘following’ me.  I think that used to be called stalking! I had a twitter account, but I cancelled it.

I keep getting invitations from some people I have never heard of, wanting me to be their ‘friend’ and join them on some weird website for some specific purpose like ‘studying’ or whatever. I left school along time ago, so what do I need to ‘study’ now?

My Gmail account wants me to ‘Buzz’.  What on earth for? My email is supposed to be private, so why does Gmail want me to share it with everyone? I don’t know everyone! (And I don’t want to, either!)  I still use Gmail, but I turned Buzz off.

Facebook wants me to let everyone in the world know what I post. Why? Does Facebook think I am so wonderful that everyone in the world is eagerly waiting for me to say something marvelous?  I am afraid they are all going to be very disappointed. Marvelous and me are not something that goes together.

There is a lot of other stuff that makes me think I may be an old fogey.  I don’t like cell phones!  I have one, but I don’t use it much.

I see folks everywhere with cell phones in hand. What are they always taking about?  What they had for breakfast?  Who knows, but when I am out in public I don’t care to be overheard taking to anyone.  I don’t want to hear them talking either, but there they are yakking away, oblivious to their surroundings and who might be listening.

The Old Fogey

Not all of these scary scripts are the same, but nearly all indicate gloom and doom for the human race.

There are times when I wonder, ‘maybe this wouldn’t be a bad thing’.

One of the things that make me wonder are terrorist attrocities. How can they justify killing of innocents? They claim it is because their supreme being tells them to kill, but I don’t believe that. The terrorists are destroying the airline industry in bits and bites at a time.

Another thing that makes me wonder is how greed has nearly destroyed our country’s financial well being and ruined so many lives. People are still losing their jobs, their homes and their health care due to pure greed.

Corporations send jobs to other countries due to greed. Never mind more people here are unemployed when those jobs leave. It’s the bottom line. Greed.

Big pharma is a major player in greed.  Paying big bucks to convince people to ‘Ask your doctor’ and paying kickbacks to the doctors so they can sell higher and higher priced drugs that have side effects that can and probably will kill countless folks over the years. (I think I may start rooting for that asteroid!)

It is pretty obvious the Lobbyists own most of Congress. (Look at the good things for consumers that get voted down because the Lobbyists tell the congressional members if they want support come election day, they better vote no.)

False statements like “Health care for every one will cost too much money and ration it for everyone.”  Guess what, health care is already rationed. If you can’t pay, you get no care and you die. It seems to me like it’s a case of “I got mine, to hell with you.”  Some of the more vicious of the statements about health care for everyone were saying when you get old, you get put to sleep. Maybe not in just those terms, but that is what came across to a lot of folks.

Yep, those are just a few of the things that make me think maybe the asteroid will be all for the best.

Rant over for now,

Martha

One of the most annoying is the notice that someone commented on something someone else posted. Why on earth is that necessary? I really don’t need to know about all those comments that are not very informative.

I finally found something I can become a fan of, it’s ‘I dont care about your farm, or your fish, or your park, or your mafia!!!’

I know I am perhaps a party pooper here and if some folks get enjoyment from all of the silliness, I guess that’s okay, but I just can’t see myself farming online or cleaning fish tanks!

Martha

One type of call I really hate are the jerks that give you the option to ‘Opt out’, but you have to listen to the entire call to get the option to press ’2′ or another number to opt out. Those calls ensure that I will never under any circumstances use their product/service or whatever they are trying to sell.

But the worst offenders are the ‘robo’ calls, especially the robo calls using spoofed phone numbers! These perps belong to the same class of email scammers that fill our inboxes with spam!

I keep getting calls from folks trying to get me to lower my interest rate on my credit cards. I just need to ‘press 1 now to speak to a representative’.These calls are filling my answer machine so I decided to see if I could ‘opt out and answered a call. The robot went through
the spiel and I patiently waited for the call to get to an option for opting out. However I waited in vain! Instead the annoying person repeated three times ‘Press 1 now!, each time getting louder and more annoying.

I decided to call the number displayed on the caller ID and was greeted with the message ‘your call cannot be completed as dialed’. So what is going on? Is this really a legitimate call for me to lower my interest rate? Nope, it is a scam.  They will try to sucker me into paying for some scammy service that doesn’t really exist or they just want my credit card details so they can steal them and rack up a lot of fraudulent charges.

So from now on when the phone rings if I don’t recognize the number, the answer machine will just get busy. Or maybe I’ll just turn the sucker off!

Martha

There are a lot of full page ads, but I won’t miss those. There are some articles that I still enjoy reading, but those are few and far between.  Most of what is in the paper I saw on the local news the day before, or I read it online from USA Today or CNN.

I used to get enough grocery coupons to pay for the cost of the paper. Now the coupons are still there, but not for stuff I want. Besides the store brands are less than the name brands even with a coupon.

I have been debating for some time whether or not to keep the newspaper. There has always been something satisfying about reading the paper with my morning coffee, and that enjoyment kept me from unsubscribing even though the content has been diminishing and some days there doesn’t seem to be much of anything besides the comic strips. I need that morning chuckle to start the day.

Today was my decision day to stop paying over $200 a year for the paper. Sunday morning comics have always been a nice respite from all the negative news.  Today they were gone. No comics.  I called the paper to find out why and was told they were to be found in Section F. Why would you put the comics in the ‘Homes for Sale section? Perverse humor? Nope they weren’t there either.

“Well, look in the Your Life section, That is section F” the customer service rep said. Nope, not there either, and that section is section E not F. I know sometimes I may not ‘get it’, but I can read the section numbers! The comics are missing. So she sent me out another paper.

Guess what, no comics in this one either, but there were a few more ad circulars. The section numbers are still the same as the first paper. So, the customer service rep didn’t know which section was which or else no one told her the comics were gone. Another thing could have been a ‘Dilbert’ move, they laid off the folks who know how to put the paper together.

Regardless of what happened, my decision has been made. I customized my Google page to include my favorite comics and that’s the end of it.

Martha

Bonus – New definition. Another way to screw the Amercian taxpayers by rewarding people who really should be fired for incompetance.

How terribly sad!

Martha

So why do I have to opt out? It is almost like all of the spam we receive that tell you to ‘opt out’ if you don’t want to receive any more spam.  All of those are just trying to find out if your email address is valid.

I keep getting phone calls from various ‘service’ companies wanting me to have my carpet cleaned, etc. I can opt out of those calls, but I am forced to listen to the entire spiel before I am given the choice to ‘opt out’ by pressing a number on my phone keypad.

I didn’t ask for these calls, so why do I have to ‘opt out’?

I still get a lot of snail mail for stuff I don’t want.  In order to stop it, I have to go through a long process. I have to write letters and then wait who knows how long before the snail spam will stop coming, if it does stop.

I didn’t ask for this waste of resources that keep coming into my mailbox, so why do I have to ‘opt out’?

I suppose there are some legitmate reasons for sending all that junk to me, but I don’t want that junk. Why do I have to ‘opt out’!

I don’t want any more mail from American Express wanting me to apply for their card.

I don’t want that Grouply spam or any of the other ‘Social network’ spam that tricks new member into sending ‘invitations’ to everyone in their address book.

(These uninvited invitations are sent out because most of the wording is such that new members don’t realize they are giving these jerks permission to go into their address books. Why they don’t realize it I don’t know; they gave them their user name and password! What did they think was going to happen? Why would anyone of reasonable intelligence give a strange website their user name and password for their email? I think these are the same folks that reply to  Mrs. Eki Omorodion in Nigeria.)

Martha

Go to the Medicare website and find a plan that suits your needs.  Then go to that plan’s website and enroll online. What could be easier, a no-brainer NOT!

I went to the plan’s site and signed up. Like a good document person, I printed everything.

Three weeks later I got a letter saying everything was approved and what my monthly premium would be.  In the meantime, before I receive the card I can use this letter as proof of coverage. Except……this was not the plan I signed up when I enrolled.

After several phone calls navigating the infamous phone menu hell more than once,  someone answered.  After explaining the problem, I was told I could call another number and re-enroll in the correct plan. Now since the plan I was told I was enrolled was about $30.00 a month higher than the plan I actually enrolled, I had to resolve this and fast!

So I called the last number given to me and waited on hold. And waited. And waited.  All the time I am waiting my eardrums are being blasted by the same music. Over and over and over again, for over an hour.  After about 40 minutes an irritating beeping started. The beeping was intermittent and what it was for I have no idea unless it was to irritate me so much I would hang up.

Finally someone answered and I refrained from snarling.  I explained my problem and was told the same thing had happened to some other folks.  (Bait and Switch?) The operator took my enrollment again after I made sure she was enrolling me into the correct plan. (I only have her word for it.)

So hopefully when I receive the next letter it will be for the right plan. If it isn’t, the snarling will surely begin in earnest. This time the snarling will be to the local watchdog, my US Representative, US Senators, Medicare and anyone else I can think of.

I am perhaps a little more patient than a lot of folks. I am also more familiar with using a computer than the majority of seniors. I keep hearing about how frustrated a large number of seniors are about signing up and some don’t sign up, and now I know why.

The providers for Medicare Part D have from January to November 15th to make sure their websites work properly for folks who sign up on the web.  If they can’t manage to do this, then they shouldn’t have the option available to signup on the web.

Surely if I had chosen to call and enroll it would have saved me quite a bit of frustration and agravation.

Rant over,

Martha

This is not the first time I’ve griped about the drug companies, but today I learned about one more that really has me steamed. This one takes advantage of folks that have a hard time getting to sleep. A very heavily advertised drug that costs about $3.50 a pill (and that alone is outrageous!) on average will give the user 11 to 19 minutes more sleep. The way I figure it, if the pill taker gets 11 more minutes of sleep, those 11 minutes are costing about 32 cents a minute. Pretty pricey sleep! The commercials show folks getting a good nights sleep. Ripoff!

I like catalogs. I get a lot of them as well. I know that if I order something from one catalog, that merchandiser will probably sell my name and address to a bunch of other merchandisers which in turn will sell my information to others. It’s an endless proposition.  I ordered some stuff from one of those catalogs that was supposed to remove baked-on crud from cookie sheets. It didn’t work at all. Ripoff! I should have known if it sounds too good to be true it usually isn’t, but even though I am generally suspicious I still get taken every now and then.

Magazines are purveyors of ads more and more. Readers Digest and Prevention magazines now have as many ads as they have content. (Maybe more ads than content!) Ripoff! I just don’t think I want to pay for ads anymore. I would rather pay more for the subscription and get content, not ads. I know they have to pay the bills, but really, half of the pages are ads? Maybe they could have two types of subscriptions; they could have one with fewer ads costing more and one with mostly ads costing very little. Dream on.

Shopping on line has it’s share of ripoffs.  Most reputable sites will let you know before you click the ‘Place order’ button what you shipping and handling will be, but I have encountered some that don’t. Since a lot of sites offer free shipping you may think that’s what  you are getting, but the ‘gottcha’ shows up when you get your credit card bill. Oh and there’s another ripoff waiting to get you, the little box that offers you a ‘discount on your order, just click here.’ What can happen and often does, you are signed up for something called ‘Rewards’, Discounts’ or some other misleading scam that will charge you $10, $12 or some other amount each month and bill your credit card. Ripoff!

Most likely the biggest ripoffs of all are the spurious products being advertised to make plump folks lose weight. They promise amazing results, but seldom deliver. Once you buy the product, an insert will tell you to follow the included diet and exercise regularly. Guess what, if you follow the diet and exercise you don’t need their product. Ripoff!

Martha

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