Category: Craziness

I’ve loved my phone, a Galaxy S8 very much. That was before this last system update. Suddenly, everything has changed! I mean everything.

I have spent so much time looking up how to do things on the Internet because this blasted update made my much-loved phone nearly unrecognizable!

I’ve always enjoyed the camera on the phone. It takes great pictures. I like the little mini-videos that it takes and the ability to send them to friends. The videos are just sort of a gif-type file.

I spent over an hour today trying to track down how to do this now because the update completely changed the format! It’s like going from Windows XP to Windows 10! Ugh!

I want to love my phone again, but right now there is a certain amount of frustration that I am feeling and I’m not loving it.

I know I will eventually learn it all again, and then I will be happy, but I expect by that time, they will do another upgrade and screw it all up again!

What a crazy day Friday was. If you showed up here yesterday, you probably landed on a page announcing I was down. Here is what caused me to absolutely crash.

I was up very early, as seems to be the case lately. Since I was up so early, I decided to call GoDaddy and finish the migration to their new servers.

You see two weeks ago they called and offered me a free year of hosting if I moved the blog to their new servers. Okay, I thought, they promised a smooth migration and all their help.

Well, when I called I was asked to hold on for a few minutes. Okay, I thought, once they come on, Dackel Princess will be up and running and I’ll be all set.

I wish I could say that was the case, but I waited for two and a half hours! I didn’t want to hang up because then I would have to start the waiting process all over again.

Finally, I got a nice young man, who, after 40 minutes didn’t get Dackel Princess up and running. But I was promised that he would send it to Hosting and they would finish it up.

Well, by noon, that hadn’t happened either. So I called back and again waited. The person I spoke with didn’t know what was wrong and transferred me to their Geek Department. Apparently, this young lady wasn’t Geeky enough, because she couldn’t get it to load!

So she passed me off to Evan, who knew code, and went through the config files until he found the one broken link, and once he did his magic, Dackel Princess was up and running!

That was at 4:30 this afternoon!

Meanwhile, Jack needed my Geeky Computer help with our Income Taxes, and I have been setting up and programming my new Galaxy Tablet.

I do really like the Galaxy Tab S4. It’s slightly larger than some, and I increased the memory with an SD Card and got a nice case with a keyboard. And the best part was when it was all in the case and set up it weighed just 2 pounds!

Just call me happy! Happy Dackel Princess is up, Jack’s Tax woes are under control, and the Tablet is all that I wanted!

I think sometimes you are going along, everything seems well and then there is frustration. My day began on Friday at 5:00 AM. I woke to feel a tad cold, so got up, made the coffee and checked the outside air temp. It was six degrees below zero!

I sipped my coffee, but then I had the thought that we had not had a fuel delivery in a while, so I went down to check the fuel level. Just a smidgen above Empty!

I came back up and alerted Jack to call for a delivery. Which he did. Explaining our plight.

The morning passed with my friends from the Jehovah Witnesses stopping by for a visit. They drove in with a normal car. No four wheel or all wheel drive. But it seems the driveway was fine for them. Jack and I went to get the mail, and I noted the driveway was so much better at the top then it had been. Good, I thought. The oil truck won’t have any trouble.

Then later in the afternoon, I went out to get some Mozzarella Cheese and I went right up the drive, no problem. So, imagine my confusion and disbelief when I got back home and Jack told me that the Oil Company had called and the driver had refused to deliver because our driveway was unsafe!

Now we usually catch the tank before it is this low, but heck we have had below zero temps all week and it just sucked up the oil! However, that being said, really, today the driveway was good. Not only could I get up the top of the drive with no problem at all, but the lower 3/4 of the drive where it is paved is completely clear!

Between Jack and I, we were able to relate our anger at this outright lie. At first, we were told that for an additional fee they could deliver tomorrow. Ha! We have used this company for 20 years. We told them if they tried to pull a fast one like that with us, we would bring our business to another company. We must have gotten the point across because they will deliver on Saturday morning, with no additional charge.

However, I am really annoyed. I have seen our driveway much worse in the winter and the driver never had a problem. So this is not sitting well with me at all.

As a child I recall the Oil Trucks having chains around their tires making deliveries in the snow. So, come on. This is 2019, not 1960 and people here in New England should know how to drive in snowy roads. And in the case of our drive on a small portion has snow on it! The rest is dry and clear!

Yes, yes. I am truly annoyed by this.

It is my hope they actually get here tomorrow and deliver fuel before we run out!

ALTON BAY, N.H. (AP) — Officials say a small airplane making a landing in New Hampshire spun out during its landing.

The plane flying in from Connecticut spun out while landing at Alton Bay Ice Runway Sunday morning. WMUR-TV reports the plane crashed into a snowbank, but the pilot and two passengers were not hurt.

The plane’s nose and propeller were significantly damaged.

Crews pulled the plane off the ice Monday morning.

And so when we were driving home from the Veterinarian yesterday we saw the plane in question sitting in a parking lot. I just had to stop and snap a couple of pictures.

The prop took a hit!

The nose gear was repaired enough to tow it off the ice.

Alton Bay is unique for a winter runway. Once the ice is solid, the runway is open until ice-out. Then it goes back to being a seaplane base.

From Wikki: Alton Bay Seaplane Base has one seaplane landing area designated 1/19 and measuring 2,600 x 100 feet (792 x 30 m). For the 12-month period ending 31 December 2011, the airport had 600 general aviation aircraft operations, an average of 50 per month.

During the winter months, the base may seasonally open an ice runway instead of the normal seaplane landing area. This is the only FAA approved ice runway in the contiguous United States. The earliest the ice runway has opened is January 10. It is required to close no later than March 15.

I admit that on Saturday I just wasn’t feeling like myself. I felt oddly paralyzed and the only thing I accomplished was washing down our bathroom and setting up our coffee maker to brew fresh coffee for us on Sunday. Aside from that, I was mostly useless.

I believe I am one of those people who is great during the crisis and then falls apart afterward. At least, that is how it felt today.

I am in the final countdown for my Disney trip. This has helped me turn things around over the course of the day. From now until I depart, I have something happening as I get ready to begin my adventure.

Monday, Anneliese gets out her stitches. Hopefully, her infection has healed. It looks much better to me.

Tuesday I go and get my hair done. I also need to go and get the canned dog food for Lili. Anneliese and Arnie are all set.

Wednesday is my finish the laundry, change the sheets, and finish the last bits of packing day. Then put my bags in the car.

Thursday I blast off to Mandy’s for the night for an early departure out of Boston on Friday morning!

Poor Jack and the dogs will be left behind to hold down the fort while I am off on my own. I’ve got all sorts of meals frozen for Jack and kibbles measured out for the dogs, so I think everything will go off here at home without a problem.

Maribeth

Well, it seems the Spammers and the Phishers are really out there in full force.

Monday morning I got a call (On my landline) from a woman with a very heavy accent telling me she was from Amazon and she asked are you Maribeth and she read my email address to me.

Red flags waved in front of my eyes and alarms went off in my head! Amazon never calls you for things. They might send an email if there is an account problem, but NEVER do they call asking you for your information!

I told her I didn’t know who the heck she was and that was it.

As soon as I got off the phone I initiated a Customer Service Call from Amazon. I had the woman’s phone number (Not Amazon!) and he directed me to not only change my password with Amazon but with my email server as well.

Done and Done!

It is kind of creepy to think that the Phishers and Scammers are out there in full force! I guess it’s the New Year thing, but really, what a pain in the arse! I am running out of things to use as passwords. I had to sit here and think for a moment before I came up with a couple of new ones to use.

I know the reason why these dishonest people do this, but I hate that they do.

I would never take anything from someone in this manner and it just really just makes me pretty angry.

I think I will make a few more password changes while I’m at it.

I was sitting here finishing up my dinner when I glanced over at the little Christmas tree. I noticed the white lights on the top half of the tree were searingly bright. Uh-oh! Usually, lights do this right before they burn out.

Sure enough, right as we finished up, I looked over at the tree and the lights are off. Holy, Moly!

After thinking this over and debating the final solution, I decided that tomorrow morning I will completely take the tree apart, remove the bad string of lights and restring the entire tree with new ones.

Then I had another genius idea!

At the end of this Christmas Season, I will put a clean sheet around it, and store it until next year.

It’s not that I don’t enjoy decorating Christmas Trees, but stringing the lights and all that is not my thing.

All will be well in the end. I just didn’t think I would have to put up two trees this year!

I’d prepared a lovely meal for Jack and me, and I was in the final stages of cleaning it up when disaster struck!

Now although it was terrible, it is perfectly okay if you find yourself giggling, because in five or ten years I hope I am giggling too! Here’s what happened…

I’d made a lovely Perdue Rotisserie Dinner with a side of Asparagus and fries for Jack. Really it tasted great. The only problem with using the rotisserie is that it extracts a lot of fat from the bird, which goes into a drip pan underneath. The pan had a lot of chicken fat in it, and I was getting the fat can out from under the sink while holding the pan with all the fat, and suddenly, the fat can slipped, the pan with the fat flipped and I was covered in chicken fat!

It was no small accident. It was in my hair, all over my clothes, even onto my slippers! Needless to say, the countertop and the floor and the throw rugs all were covered as well! Ugh!

I stripped down quickly to my shorts and tank top, and took off my glasses and washed them and set them aside to dry. I grabbed a sponge, and a towel and started cleaning it all up. I got out the Clorox Wipes and after I got things cleaned, I took the scented sheets of Clorox (smells like Coconut), and wiped everything down again! Then I washed the floor.

Once that was done, I put the rest of my clothes and slippers in the wash and jumped into the shower to wash the chicken fat off of me!

I’d never given this much thought before, but I am here to tell you that being doused with chicken fat is gross, really gross! It was cold (thank goodness) and in some ways that made it even worse!

Now  I am clean, and the first of three loads of laundry is washing in the basement.

I told Jack that this has to be one of the dumbest things I have ever done. He kept from laughing but managed an “I hope so”.

Ok, did you laugh? It’s okay if you did. Really I think in a few years I will be laughing too!

I got a scary, yet interesting email this morning. The email told me that the person was in possession of a Porn Movie of me. They said I had two options. I could either pay them $7000.00 and they would not do anything to publicize this Porn Movie, or if I didn’t pay they would send it to all my contacts.

I felt very uncomfortable about this. I have never been threatened like this before. I thought about it and decided to call my Internet Provider.

The young man said it was a Phishing Scam, and to block the address on my Spam filter and then completely delete the message.

While I was speaking to the young man, Jack piped in “How come I’ve never seen this movie?”

Both the Technician and I burst out laughing! The Technician said I had just made his day!

It leaves me feeling uncomfortable though. This wasn’t your usual Phishing Scam. This was a downright threat. All I could think was, “What is this world coming to?”