A Public Service Announcement (and other stuff)

A little web research has led me to the discovery that several viruses have used the identical wording and modus operandi I’m seeing now to trick people into opening attachments. I have only started getting these emails in the past week or so, so whoever is infected probably became infected only recently.

If you only know me by Salamander @deardiary.net, don’t worry, you aren’t the culprit. If you know how to get hold of me using another address, then make sure your antivirus software is up to date. If you have been receiving similar email telling you that a piece of mail you sent has been returned, do not open the attachment.

I had a good day yesterday. I took a lot of pictures yesterday. I planned to come home, download the pictures to my PC, crop a few, and make an entry about yesterday. Instead I came home, downloaded the pictures to my PC, and took a nap. So now I have my Peeps entry and my Sunday the 18th entry to work on, as well as keep current on my daily entries. I’m filled with good intentions. It’s just that my follow-through leaves a bit to be desired.

I’ll get to it. Eventually.

Why is it that when I have the most time available, I have the least to say?

I did go to the Nokia open house at my cell phone company’s newest local office on Friday. It was far more of a production than I realized. They had some poor sod walking around in a Nokia cellular phone outfit. I was tempted to ask if the mascot’s name was “Phony” but then figured that I would be the only one who thought that was funny, and so kept it to myself.

It was a successful visit. I got a new phone that is more compact than the barge I’ve been carrying around, and at a very nice price. I also got information that will help us cut our phone bills AND get us better national coverage. The Socialist will need to upgrade the phone he’s using now for us to take advantage of the new plan. My old phone will work on the new system and by coincidence I won’t be needing it any more, so it looks like he won’t have to do a thing except reactivate my old phone under his number when the time comes.

I also learned quite a bit about how to use my phone, including how to lock the damned keypad, predictive typing, and what the SIMS card is all about. I thought I’d figured out how to get The Socialist’s voice mail set up, but when I got home it didn’t seem to work the way I’d been led to expect, so he’s on his own there. Hopefully he’ll get it set up before May 20th, which is when I hope to get the new plan started that will save us money and work better. My plan is to simply cancel our landline at that point, and go with cellular only. No reason to keep paying out every month for a service we really don’t need any more.

It looks like I’ll finally have to memorize my cell phone number, though.

On Saturday I checked out an auction company that opened shop a few blocks away from where I live. They advertise that they’ll sell your stuff on eBay for you. I’ve got a shitload (pardon the vernacular) of Hummel figurines that were my grandmother’s that I’ve been hoping to sell. While I’m comfortable with buying on eBay, I’m less comfortable with selling on eBay. This looked like a good compromise, or so I hoped.

It turns out that they’ll only sell items with an anticipated value of $50 or greater. There’s a small up-front fee, plus they get 38% of the resulting sale proceeds for anything under $200. There are also eBay fees (on a graduated scale). If I sell a figurine for $50 through these guys, I’ll end up with $29. That’s too big a bite in the pocket book for my tastes. I may let them sell my old computer monitor though. The damned thing weighs a ton, and I’d rather not be bothered with shipping it.

Temperatures were fairly high over the weekend for this time of year. I returned to work this morning to find my pansies limper than overcooked spaghetti and hanging over the edge of the window box (even though the last thing I did on Friday before leaving for the weekend was water them). After water and TLC, they’ve perked up a bit, but the existing flowers on them are fried. The smaller buds seem to have survived the heat though, and so I’ll just have to be patient and wait until they’re in bloom again.