- I want to know what mailing list I’m on that I received personalized advertising for cremation services. Have I just reached ‘a certain age’. I think that’s preferable to believing they have inside information, like foretelling people’s demise.
- Speaking of being a certain age…I’m sixty now, and I receive a lot less junk mail, other than cremation services. It’s nice, as a ‘younger baby-boomer’ (52-61, according to a recent survey) to finally have the credit card, personal loan et al quite circling like waiting buzzards. Or maybe they have access to the same information, that I’m due to die soon, so they’re taken me off their mailing lists.
- Isn’t it better to have cremation services junk mail rather than dead skunks and raccoons? A coaching candidate didn’t get the job. He mailed dead skunks and raccoons to the rival that won the job to be a fourth grade teacher and basketball coach. I’m making a snap judgement but if he’s such a sore loser, perhaps it’s better that he’s not coaching fourth graders.
- Fan mail is always fun, especially when they ooze praise for your writing, how a novel ended, or for general creativity. I don’t get much of this stuff and to receive three in one day, from different people, and they didn’t know me, nor were related, is an astronomical high.
- One of the weirdest recent developments is using FB to send personal messages. People have email addresses but prefer to go to FB and just click and send via that app, rather than using the more tedious method of typing in names or email addresses. I know, because that’s what I do, given the option. It is easier.
- Speaking of FB, you can always friend me on Facebook. I admittedly tend to FB much less in recent months. It just became too much of the same thing, whether it’s because of the groups I subscribe to, or FB’s tailoring or privacy and security settings. Either way, I’m tired of dealing with their changing settings. So Friend me! Please. Hah.
Sometimes….
Sometimes, you want an outlet. Or a second opinion. For me, this usually comes when computer and connectivity issues crash my plans activities.
Because I’m left wondering, is it me? What is causing this? Is it Google, Chrome, OS, the Internet connection, the web site, computer security, plug in failures, or one of the add-ons, or some misplaced value, or an update running ‘transparently’ in the background? And then I go through each of those, looking for answers about why this is happening, but not finding any. I track to sites like isitdownrightnow.com. By the third incident on one -day, exasperation is spilling over into my tranquil writing-like-crazy processes. Worse, this is the third day in a row….
My evil twin whispers, “Yes, but wasn’t this week of the monthly updates?”
Yes, yes, my evil twin is correct. Update Tuesday, when Microsoft unleashes its fixes and updates and sometimes called Patch Tuesday (please don’t confuse it with Patch Adams) was this week. Microsoft’s updates trigger a tsunami of other fixes, which often include a software entity whose updates or fixes don’t work. Or, some organization doesn’t update its software and now is out of compliance, aka, broken.
Of course, as Wednesday follows Tuesday, Exploits follow Updates. The released updates reveal what needed to be fixed. As all systems and orgs don’t immediately update their systems or launch a corollary fix to address the revealed issues, exploits are quickly developed and deployed.
Yep, anything can happen after Update Tuesday. It drives me mad because here I am, alone on my desert island of computer use, wondering, WTF is going on?
Michael Seidel, writer 