jsonder

I really wanted to use this as an icon for this story, but it is too large for LJ.



Can you tell that I still haven't forgiven Chuck for getting my mother started on AOL (which she still has to have and I wind up "supporting").

The story (from the inquirer) is below:

AOL HAS BEEN 'upgrading' the free accounts of its former employees and then trying to charge them.

The outfit's antics have been outed by former Time Warner employee Jason Zweig, who unfortunately for AOL now works for the Wall Street Journal.

After Time Warner merged with AOL he was given a free online account. He gave it to his wife who moved to Gmail last year and promptly forgot all about it.

About a month ago, Zweig started getting calls from an Indian collections agency "concerning unpaid charges of $103.60."

It turned out that for four months in late 2008 he had supposedly received "upgraded service" from AOL. The upgrade was automatic and the collections agency insistied he would have to pay up.

Zweig pointed out that he never got a bill. They said it was sent to his AOL account. When he requested a printed version of the bill he was told that the collections agency was not authorised to do that.

AOL refused to help unless he could remember the answer to the security question established when they set up the account nine years ago.

When he refused to pay he was told that AOL would be reporting the "unpaid bill" to the credit bureaus.

Zweig said that he was not the only former Time Warner employee who's gotten these phone calls from Kafka.

He said he would file fraud alerts with the credit reporting companies.

Everything that I could salvage from the old web site has been dumped here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/42418779@N00/

Apparently I had an old flickr account as jsonder and now a new one as jsonder59, which doesn't show in search, yet.

Definite nostalgia caused by John's cartoon.

"D'oh" sure fits.

I addressed John and Julie's anniversary card last week, but didn't mail it Saturday so that it wouldn't get there too early.

Did I mail it Monday? No.
Did I mail it Tuesday? No.
Did I mail it Wednesday? Not with the mail carrier. It took a special trip to the post office to get it mailed.

With luck, it will only be one day late.

I had the laziest day. Slept in until 6:45; goofed around the house with calls from boys, taking a late morning walk. Caught up on forii and read a bit in the afternoon. Found "Merlin" on NBC tonight thanks to Brenda; and took a two-mile walk in the starlight after 9 pm.

I had a nice dirt out, pavement back ride yesterday on the KLR, and found out why Jamie had problems with his KTM Duke, which also had Dunlop D607 tires. Those dang tires are unstable in sand. They want to set up a weave that will quickly become a tank slapper; it seems to only take 3/4 of an inch of sand to cause that response from the KLR; deeper sand is worse.

I rode the KLR as far up trail as I felt was safe (I was solo and there was no cell phone coverage in that area, I checked, had coffee, and turned around and came back to the main dirt road and followed it into Sahuarita. Gassed up and found that I only got 59 mpg with the KLR.

I took the Honda NX to get milk and other groceries after dinner. Came home and found that I had no headlight. This morning I was getting reacquainted with a multimeter. The light is good; I can turn it on with alligator clip wires from the battery. I am not getting 12 volts out of the fixture that attaches to the light. The blue and green wires will give 12.75 volts when run thru the multimeter to the negative and positive battery terminals, respectively. The white wire to the headlight yields an open circuit to the next connection point, but bypassing it to that connector doesn't generate proper voltage at the plug.

Gonna have to do some thinking and more looking at the wiring diagram. I did try dieletric grease in the high/low headlight switch, which had no effect.

Rats.....

We are back, tired, and I'm still a tad woozy from the anesthetic, but all is well. One large polyp removed, nothing else found. Come back in one year for another colonoscopy. I'm not complaining.

I wish to apologize to all. When I set up the new camera, I set the date a month behind, making Katie look to be more precocious than she is. Mainly the California trip photos mucked up, but I noticed it here with the bike pic dated a month before I bought it.

This is the "new" bike, a 1989 Kawasaki KLR 250.

Parts came this morning. The NX250 now has a new speedometer gear and dust seal, plus a new shift lever. A 30-mile trip netted a pair of MX pants and shirt from a Craigslist seller, and warmed the bike up for an oil and filter change, chain lube, etc.

I'm still playing telephone tag trying to get a 'redo' colonoscopy scheduled. The x-rays showed a missed polyp. Probably 3 days on liquids, again, plus a couple days of strong laxatives. Yeech! Not fun, but needed.

I got lazy and didn't get a fire picture tonight. It is still burning in several areas (new stuff further south on the ridge, getting a tad nearer to us).

http://members.cox.net/jsonder67

Link

You can start with the 1st comic (1997):

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1

or go to today's comic:

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php

One of the big advantages of the old web page was that I could put pictures there and mom could see them. She insists on using AOL, and they zip photos from outside of AOL. Mom is not good at unzipping photos and/or finding where they went. I get told "I can't get the photos."

So posting pictures for her to see has been the main function of the web page for the past couple of years.

It looks like I'm going to have to sh*tcan the 2 10-megabyte accounts that can't be accessed.

I can try to reconstruct something close to what was there, or, I can make it strictly a picture viewing location for her.

I'm tempted to do the latter, but, I'd like input from the family before deciding what to do.

We should get results back from the barium enema x-rays early next week. I'm happy to no longer be leaking dense milk of magnesia into the toilet. The three days on a liquid diet got me to where I wasn't really feeling hunger any more. However, my appetite seems to be recovering.

;-)

Cox now ate a second web space while I was putting up a picture of Bryce from Christmas.

I no longer have a web page. While photos were spread around, the core was all at members.cox.net/jsonder59/ which is not allowing anything to be read.

When I called Cox after it ate my pasaderahoa web space, I pretty much got that the free web space is a "freebie" and they don't make any effort to support it if you have problems.

I'll give it a week and see if anything gets reset.

Sighting of the head of Cox's customer service:

THE FBI and the US Marshals had to partially shut down their networks yesterday after they were hit by a computer virus.

According to the AP, the agencies' computer problems began Thursday morning, while the FBI began experiencing similar problems earlier. It was decided to save the main US Justice department network from potential infection by disconnecting the US Marshall's systems.

Various sources say that the virus might be the Neeris worm and that the problem has likely been caused by the US Marshals Service running backlevel antivirus software, Trend Micro's OfficeScan version 5.0, and not applying patches to its computers.

Trend Micro says protection against the Neeris malware has been in OfficeScan ever since version 8. The current version is 10, but for some reason the US Marshals have not upgraded the software.

It was not as if they were short of a few dollars more. The silly federal coppers had paid for the upgrades, but simply had not installed them.

News blurb borrowed from The Inquirer (http://www.theinquirer.net/)

The dual sport is up on jackstands to pull the front wheel for investigating why the speedometer and odometer died on the Sheetiron300. It turns out that the plastic gear was worn out. Possibly I didn't grease it enough after getting a new tire on the front wheel 800-900 miles back.

Anyway, the gear, a new dust seal and screws were ordered plus a new shift lever. We've bent the shifting lever back to "sorta right" in both sheetiron runs. I'll use the new one as a template for bending the old one back to near factory shape and have a spare for next years sheetiron.

Planning for next year should indicate that a good time was had, should it not?

Katie seems to like flour tortillas. I'll add the pic once Cox undoes whatever happened on their server when I degraded a chmod command using gFTP; currently all passwords are invalid despite resetting it with the general server. Well, lets try another account....

The 2nd pot of coffee is brewing for the 2nd thermos, and I'll go for a walk when it finishes.

It is a gorgeous morning with the temp currently in the low 60's.

With any luck we will get out of here by 8.

By Lee-Anne Goodman, The Canadian Press

WASHINGTON - The United States is in the midst of a devastating recession, mired in two overseas wars and grappling with a swine flu outbreak, but conservative critics are assailing President Barack Obama on another pressing issue: his choice of burger topping.

Dijongate is in full force, with Fox News and a conservative blogger leading the charge against the president for his choice of the apparently un-American mustard atop his cheeseburger during a recent impromptu lunch stop with Vice-President Joe Biden.

Here's a piece from her latest blurb:

Motorcycle Safety Awareness Month

I have been riding motorcycles for over 20 years-so the issue of motorcycle safety is of great importance to me. That is why, as co-chair of the Congressional Motorcycle Caucus, I was proud that H.Res. 269 passed the House earlier this week recognizing May as "Motorcycle Safety Awareness Month." This resolution recognizes the importance of motorcycles, and encourages riders to always wear helmets and other protective gear, to never drink and ride and to be properly licensed and trained. It also serves as a reminder to all riders and motorists to always share the road respectfully.

In Arizona, we have more than 150,000 registered motorcycles. This is partly due to our abundant sunshine and beautiful weather, but also to the more economical and fuel efficient mode of transportation that it represents. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, motorcycles consume 56% less fuel per mile traveled. On average, motorcycles can get between 40 and 75 miles per gallon of gas. I am proud that, as a motorcyclist, I can leave a smaller footprint on our earth by riding my bike.