A) Post at most five links to something someone else has created/posted/shared per week.
I stuck to that pretty well with the exception of the weeks surrounding the recent presidential election, so I’m comfortable with saying that part was a success.
B) Refrain from any selfie taking unless said selfie is integral to a crafted post.
I don’t think I took any selfies this past year. Things have been too busy.
C) Vacation posts will be exempt from rule B, but that still doesn’t mean self-editing isn’t important.
Vacation?!? I still haven’t even booked my Cayman trip that I talked about two months ago.
D) Make constructive updates: IE I will not post “I hate life and that Darth Vader Wannabe.
Yeah I just don’t do that sort of thing at all.
E) If I find humor or discover something thought provoking out there in that big expansive world, or if I myself create something humorous or thought provoking, I will share it and not expect any of my friends to comment and pat me on the back for my awesomeness.
Yes.
F) Try to encourage friends to do the all of the above
Here is where I failed!
So I’m upping the ante: that’s right. If you post something that is clickbait, false news, a random cooking recipe and you do not provide any explanatory information such as this is something you cooked last night and my was it tasty, or that you do not agree with said policies regarding lack of maternity/paternity, and I see said post, I’m going to call you on it. If you share an image or movie of some sort, same deal.
If you post something about your life though–great!
And I’m going to encourage like minded people to do the same. Sitting back and letting friends post what amounts to digital garbage is just not useful. With such a craptastically fascist political and social landscape in front of us for the foreseeable future, no one should get a pass to bury their head in the sand.
Side note for those completely unaware that you can do this: I use my own algorithm for FB. You can create one for yourself in about 2min. Just make a custom list, toss all your friends on to it and then use that when you want to read what is going on with people. Plus side: far far fewer ads and you actually see posts from ALL your friends, not just the most traffic’d. Minus side: you see ALL the posts from you friends.
I started writing this post on Facebook as a quick update but then it just took on a life of its own. It’s a great little capsule of what daily life is like at Purgatory.
This morning I awoke with god awful cramps, took advil, soaked in the hot tub until I felt human, got dressed, checked the mouse trap and low and behold I had caught the newest invader who yesterday gave me quite a fright as I was searching for my mousemitt that I thought I had dropped it while walking the property with the tree service guy.
I should probably back up a bit: see we have to get some trees moved in preparation for the great wall project and this guy was recommended by the engineers. I retraced all my steps, even out to the stables (which last weekend and this is having the roof rebuilt/repaired but that will all be posted about on Purgatory).
By now you’re wondering what a mousemitt is: it’s basically a small glove like thing with padding that protects the underside of the wrist and thus prevents RSI/Carpal Tunnel issues. Having had such issues/pain in the past, I cannot say enough good things about them. (If you want to try them out yourself, hit up mousemitt.com.)
Anyway, the upshot of walking all over the property a second time is that I failed to find the missing mousemitt. So, there I was standing in my office casting about trying to think where else had I been; I popped my head into my booth (for those unaware I have a large 4’x6′ sound booth in one corner of my office) and while I didn’t see a mousemitt I did find one of my little plush animals on the floor of the booth. I thought, “well that’s odd” as yesterday that very same animal (a small purple unicorn) had been on the floor again. I have a few such stuffed toys in my booth as sometimes having them about is helpful to divert my focus/energy when performing. They sit in a little thing I made years ago out of an IKEA A-Frame wine rack.
So I put the little unicorn back in his little slot still thinking “well that’s odd, this guy was on the floor as well yesterday when I walked in here .” I then wiggled the frame about and then I pulled it from the wall and looked behind it. I gave a loud,short scream of surprise as sitting there on the wall was…a mouse. Now we don’t have deer mice (I was confused about that last week) but instead we have California Mice. They normally live outdoors, but the lure of free bird kibble means we occasionally have one scurrying about the house. They are territorial so we usually have just one and last week we thought we had caught that one. We emptied the humane trap it was in out by the stables, but there’s a good chance the little guy/girl found its way back. Side note: these guys are incredibly cute and when they run they bound about with a series of hopping movements that make them look like bouncing fluff balls.
In my booth there is a hole for an air vent that has a small fan attached, as during long recording periods it can get a bit warm. Of course said mouse made a b-line for the hole and was in vent. Rather than freak him/her out, I got a humane trap from the kitchen and just poked it into the vent hole. In the pic to the left you will see the vent hole up near the ceiling of the booth.& Then I returned to my desk and what did I find on the floor camouflaged by the dark rug underneath it….the missing mouse mitt of course.
Fast forward to this morning and here’s a shot of the invader before I released it.
I used a Sharpie to mark its tail prior to release and if it shows up in the house again we’ll have to take it farther away–like say up the well tank–to release it. As we realize that just like the feral cats, we now live in the country and we’re going to have live mice and bugs and spiders and snakes plus the occasional dead critter to deal with. While we could shoot, trap-to-kill and wreak other deaths upon the lifeforms here, we are trying to find harmony. It’s just not sanitary for a mouse to be sniffing about the bird cages plus it pisses the boys off no end. Then there is the matter of the food stashing–in the last six months I’ve found stashes in my desk drawers, file cabinets, behind books and even inside my sewing machine. They seem to just love the Harrisons Bird Food the boys eat–as do the wild birds–as any stashes I find I don’t toss in the garbage but instead toss outside so the natives can have a free snack.
So that is a pretty typical morning at Purgatory minus the whole waking up with awful cramps. But hey, I’m a girl…that happens. The rest of the morning was spent working on some web posts (like this one) calling contractors to come clean the crawl space under the house and ordering a few more of those humane mouse traps off Amazon. Then it was time for the daily chores: cleaning the kitchen, feeding the boys, tossing in a load of laundry (we only usually do one load a day since we’re on a septic system), answering emails and doing some work for my father’s company. Later today I have a list of things I want to get done, but like most lists I might get to 2 of the 20 things on it as something will happen to distract me…like a bird will hit my window and be too stunned to fend for itself. (Although sometimes they break their necks and die.)
That is a common thing here as we have a lot of windows–28 individual casements (not counting the exterior transom windows in two of the bathrooms) plus 6 sliding glass doors. To make that number even more insane….the north wing of the house has transom windows throughout the interior. Thankfully no birds collide with those although sometimes Tenar likes to get himself stuck in one.
And with all this window talk I failed to mention all the glass paned doors we have…There are 6 if you count the french doors that separate the north wing from the rest of the house. We have in fact almost no “normal” doors in this place–most of the others are either pocket doors or accordions and only the closets in AS’s office and the recently remodeled guest bath have “solid” doors and I must say compared with the rest of the ones in the house they feel kind of…meh and hollow. Thy agrees…
Oh and to make that window number even more insane…I did’t count the windowed front doors or secondary kitchen door, the skylights, or anything in the Studio building. At some point I need to start the window cleaning cycle back up, but of late there have been so many other things to try to get done….
At the beginning of June I loaded the truck up with various bits and drove to L.A. I picked my father up at LAX and then it was off the Anaheim Hilton for the Reliant food show. We set the booth up that night, and the next day we spent handing out samples to all the Reliant customers in attendance.
The next day was Sunday and we visited Disneyland. I find it an odd sort of place. Only the feral mallards are real.
The days actives as closely as we remember:
Lincoln room during which time we walked around the gallery
The title of this post should really be do not;trust your data to Skype. I was so naive when I started my little journey into support hell as I actually thought my issue would be resolved. I thought my data was marginally protected and maintained. Oh how wrong I was.
To back up tiny bit before I inundate you with the gory details, Skype is a service that allows people to make phone and video calls no matter what sort of device they use: be it a traditional phone on the PSTN networks, a personal computer or their cell phone. Skype maintains a database with some pretty personal information and they charge for many of their premium services so they have financial information on their users as well. We know they’ve been in bed with the NSA for years thanks to the documents released by Snowden, and Skype, as of 2011, is owned by Microsoft.
On with the saga: a few weeks back I wanted to get Skype running on a new machine, but because Skype doesn’t use a normal username/password framework that allows storing said information in OS X’s Keychain management system, I can’t just retrieve my password from said app and be done with it.
I went to the Skype site to try to reset my passwd: now because ONE computer I own can actually login to the Skype App, I can actually login to my Skype profile, but I cannot change the password without knowing the password. I tried to do the “put in your email address here and we’ll send you the steps to reset your password” step.
This is what I got.
skype@ is a simple alias that routes to one of my email accounts which is then listed as my second acct with Skype. It too has the same issue.
Did you know in order to contact Skype for support about an issue like this you have to fill out this form on the left with questions like: “When were you born?“ “Give us some of the numbers on the CC you used when you created your account,” and “Provide five people on your contacts list.” Needless to say the first time I had to fill out the form I was angered by the process. I just wanted my password reset.
March 19th, I got a response from “Albert C” telling me the standard Tier 1 support line of “uninstall and reinstall” the software. I was so irked by the demonstrated incompetence I didn’t pick up the thread again until April 4th (after investigating possible third party hacks.) I responded with the screen shot shown earlier of their system refusing to send me email.
I got another response from “Albert C” on April 5th:
We appreciate your effort in sending us a screenshot however we will not be able to see and check for it as it is not in attachment form.
Please be advised to send it as an attachment so we can check on it.
Once we send the screenshot, expect us to do the necessary action to your concern.
To which I responded:
I’m sorry, so you’re saying your CRM cannot handle incoming email messages that conform to standards set out by IETF RFCs? If this is the case you should REFRAIN from sending emails that are not in Plain Text form as this signals the receiving MUA that replying via a non-plain text message is permissible–MIME attachments can be formatted a tiny bit differently accordingly.
The screen shot clearly showed that your system refused to acknowledge my email addr in order to send out a password reminder/change token.
To quote:
(Red Exclamation Mark) Sorry, we were unable to send an email to this address. Please update your primary email by contacting <customer supper>.
Enter the email or phone number you registered with Skype and we’ll send instructions to get you back on your feet.
Email or phone number |———————————————————| | | | | |———————————————————| /end quote
I have tried both skype@purgatory.org and stega@purgatory.org but the system spits out the same message. Now apparently you all can use both addresses just fine as I’ve gotten email from you via your CRM.
A day later I got a response telling me they were going “to transfer you to our Specialized Team, we will ask you to fill out our verification form properly as you need to pass verification process before transferring you to them.”
I was irked by this as it shows just how awful off-shore support processes can be. Thus my response was not very nice:
I’ve gone through and already answered all the questions at that url.
Please escalate this ticket to a manager or someone who can actually assist.
Eventually on April 7th I was escalated to someone named Jan who told me:
As we have reviewed the information you have provided from the form you have submitted (SR 1332079698) and compared it to the information we have on file and the ones you saved on the account, the entries did not match the records and because of that, we are not able to gain access to your service.
So here is what I can offer you as a resolution in order to help you with your case. I will have to ask you to fill out and submit our online verification form once again but this time, please make sure to fill out everything in the form along with the current details of your Skype account in order for us to properly verify it and further help you.
This time it was clear the person I was dealing with had more than a basic understanding of English and might actually be willing to help, so I filled out the long, intrusive and annoying form again.
Then I responded with this and the ticket number:
When I login to Skype from the one machine I have that still has the ability because it is magically tokenized, I get this:
• We could not deliver a notification to skype@purgatory.org. We sometimes send important messages about your account.
Why can’t you just email to an address that has been associated with the account for almost ten years? Why is your system so broken? Is it Catholic? Does it feel guilt?
But then the next day I was now in the care of someone named Anabella who told me:
I understand that you need to reset your password and you don’t have access to the email address associated with your account. Don’t worry we’ll have this resolved for you in no time!
Please send us the new email address you want to use and I’ll be happy to update your account for you.
So I replied, trying to find some humor in the situation:
No.
I have access to the email address: your system just refuses to send the token to my address.
I’m told: “ We could not deliver a notification to skype@purgatory.org. We sometimes send important messages about your account.” and: “Sorry, we were unable to send an email to this address. Please update your primary email by contacting customer support.”
Yet your support people have NO PROBLEM sending email to that acct/alias.
Either your system is offended that I own purgatory or it’s just broken. Perhaps its secretly catholic.
The next day I awoke to find this in my inbox, once again from Anabella:
Please be advised that the current primary email of the account is already invalid and therefore, it will not receive the token email you have requested in order to reset your password. In order for us to resolve the issue, kindly send us another active email address that you can use to reactivate the account.
To which I responded
HELLOOOOOO
The primary address isSKYPE@
Please check your CRM: as YOU JUST SENT EMAIL TO THAT ADDRESS.
Thus it IS VALID.
The second address on the account STEGA@ is treated the same way by your system. SOMETHING IS WRONG with your apparently paranoid catholic system. Please fix it. Full email headers of the message YOU SENT ME:
Another day went by and on 4/10 someone named Jessica now took over:
We understand that you can still access the email address on your Skype account however our system is not accepting the domain you have therefore you are having an issue receiving our password token. Please send us a new email address you want to use with a different domain and I’ll be happy to update your account for you.
I was annoyed by this answer obviously:
NO.
I own purgatory.org, it is my primary domain and the primary way in which I have sent and received email for the last nineteen years. Any address I give you will be from this domain.
The next day (4/11) I got this back from someone named Donald:
Thank you for contacting us back.
First of all, I am sorry if your concern is not yet resolved until now. Please be informed that we can only sort this out if you will give us an alternative email address you want to use on your Skype account. In this way, you can reset your password successfully.
I look forward to your reply!
I’m pretty certain my this point they were not looking forward to my reply which was restating the obvious yet again:
I do not understand why I have to give you a new email address.
The problem is with your system. Your password reset/user profile database system refuses to send email to a perfectly normal domain, yet your customer support management system is able to reach me at that domain just fine.
There is obviously something wrong with your primary user database and backend system. You should fix this. You chose not to.
Any address I give you will be from this domain. Thus you need to find out why the problem exists.
Donald responded with
Thank you for your reply.
To be honest with you we can’t sort this out and help you recover your Skype account if you will not provide a new email address for us to update it on your Skype account. The problem lies on the email address on file and there is no problem with our system.
Thank you for your cooperation on this matter. I look forward to hearing from you!
I responded one last time
You JUST sent email to the address you claim your system won’t send email to.
Seriously.
Skype@andstega@are both valid addresses as evidence by the fact that all correspondences for this issue have been delivered successfully to me.
There is no problem with said addresses or said domains.
There is a problem with you system. Fix it.
How fricking hard is it to send this ticket on to a sys admin or dba that can look at whatever exception rules are causing the issue.
And then I received this:
I just want to inform you again that we can’t help you further if you will not provide the information we are asking you. Please do not worry, once you are able to access back your account, you have the option to change the register email address on it.
Your response is very important for us to resolve this concern. Thank you in advance for your reply.
I could give them a random email address, reset my password and then change the account’s primary email address back to what it was and things would then be broken again: any notifications about changes to the EULA or security issues just would never be sent to me because they won’t fix the bug.
Who wants to trust their more sensitive data and bank account information to an organization that is unwilling to maintain it?
Having parrots means you never know what thing they will fixate upon and try to destroy. While I’m lucky in that neither Tenar or Thy are particular destructive sometimes they do go a bit crazy.
A few months ago, Tenar decided to eat the seam of one of my fuzzy socks.
Thankfully I have a sewing machine and I know how to use it. Here’s are the hasty before and after shots.
a bird just wants some more mum time. Of course if this mean walking halfway through the house, opening two doors, scaling a bed and then sitting on mum’s chest, even better.
As the New Year approaches and I try to clean up my to-do list of all the not quite done stuff, I noticed that yesterday FB suddenly became more interesting. People stopped reposting so much random crap and click-bait Instead they were generating their own content. It was very pleasant and I think we need more of this. To that end, my “NY Resolutions” will be to limit the amount of crap content sharing I do and to increase the amount of meaningful content I create.
I will thus make it my habit to:
A) Post at most five links to something someone else has created/posted/shared per week.
B) Refrain from any selfie taking unless said selfie is integral to a crafted post* (i.e. I will write a short description of why I am posting this image. Is it a shot of Agent Smith and I riding on a tractor? I will tell you why we’re on the tractor and include any other pertinent details.)
C) Vacation posts will be exempt from rule B, but that still doesn’t mean self-editing isn’t important. Thus only ONE picture of me holding a giant octopus/space alien/dangerously sharp instrument of torture/etc will be posted.
D) Make constructive updates: IE I will not post “I hate life and that Darth Vader Wannabe”. I will instead include a short description of whats going on in life and thus avoid the whole passive/aggressive attention seeking ploy which is only resolved after 5 people comment/ask what is going on before I finally respond. (Of course if I have been posting regular about job interviews and one morning I make a short post that “I can hardly contain myself!” friends will understand, but that’s because context already exists.)
E) If I find humor or discover something thought provoking out there in that big expansive world, or if I myself create something humorous or thought provoking, I will share it and not expect any of my friends to comment and pat me on the back for my awesomeness.
F) Try to encourage friends to do the all of the above as well as let’s face it, the people I really enjoy connecting with on social media are the friends who do more than share boiled cabbage recipes, post the same funny videos that five other friends just reposted, and take stupid “Which Harry Potter Broomstick are You” quizzes. I, and I suspect many others, like reading about each other’s lives and trying to connect with far flung friends and acquaintances. So instead of bemoaning the death of hand written letters and the commodification of our personal lives, I will thus accept the state of things and technology in a constructive fashion.
* By crated I mean actually taking a few moments to formulate my thoughts so that any friend/contact reading said post will not have to ask for clarification.
Yes…that’s a box of compostable waste bags (6 actually) shipped in a box of non-bio-degradable packing peanuts.
If I didn’t have a box where I store any packing peanuts* we get so that I can reuse them when we have something to send out, I’d feel incredibly silly. As it is, I feel slightly silly.
* I also save bubble wrap and reuse any butcher paper to line the boys’ cages.
Case in point, I have a little “floating shelf” I wanted to use to hold a speaker for my keyboard, only the speaker is a bit too big. Enter my old O’Reilly Sendmail book and wa’la…perfection.
Just don’t tell Claus.
Raw MaterialsCenter the bookWrap the bookUse the ribbon to tie the endsPut into service
During which time I managed to blow up this site. Thanks to having a backup of things though, I managed to piece things back together.
I’ve also been busy managing Purgatory. Things have been very busy over there, but I’m pleased to note I’m finally getting my personal site back in order.
If you aren’t reading the updates over at purgatory.org, my life has been totally consumed by the work required to get our new house ready for move-in. So much work has been done, but so much more work still needs to be completed.
In one week’s time the movers will arrive and I will leave my little house in San Francisco for the big ranch in San Jose. I will be sad to go and I will miss visiting with the neighbors at the daily mornings coffee time (we are next to a cafe) and the fruit trees in our upper garden, but a new adventure of extreme proportions awaits.