Friday, October 25, 2013

Mesa, AZ - Sue Fals, Russians and Evil Friends

SUE FALS

Amazing how easily one can shoot a day trying to change addresses with large corporations. Between the two of us we must have spent about 1 3/4 hours with Humana/Walmart both changing addresses and then signing up for the 2014 prescription drug plans: 1/2 hour changing addresses and 1 1/4 hour signing up for 2014 plans. At one point, the rep on the other end told me that I had to listen to a phone disclosure that lasted 6 minutes. He underestimated: it was 9 minutes 19 seconds. I could have filed my nails during it but every now and then it asked for a response. Tricky, that disclosure statement. Then, because Gary was also renewing his plans, we got to listen to the 9 minutes, 19 seconds again.

Probably the most difficult thing was trying to get young people on the help desk to understand the name of Sioux Falls, SD. One young woman asked: ‘Is that Sue as in the girl’s name?’ I’ll bet she can text message with the best of them and can tell you at the drop of a hat what Kim Kardashian wears at any given moment. But ‘Sioux’, that’s beyond her.

Another young man laughed and spelled it Foo Fals. I tried to tell him that it was ‘Sioux’ as in the name of an Indian tribe, spelled it for him - and, as an added bonus, I also spelled ‘Falls’ for him but it was a hard sell. I spent about 30 minutes on the line with him and he told me every single computer key his fingers touched. I heard him say ‘delete, delete, delete, delete’ and I heard him say ‘F9, F10, F11.’ I wanted to tell him that silence was golden but I was afraid to distract him and make the call longer than it already was.

Some companies realize that people move, that address changes are common and a way of life. These companies make it easy for you and you can change addresses on line. I’ve changed many that way. Then there are the companies that require a signed notarized form - one for each account. But phone calls to large corporations are the worst: how many phone trees before I actually can talk to a human?

RUSSIAN HACKERS?

I use Blogspot. com to upload my blogs. This is a Google website and they make it pretty easy to write a blog and upload pictures to it. One of the features of this website is the ability to see how many people have read your blog. There is a ‘stats’ section that can tell you how many page views there were in any given day, week, month and all time. You can also see what country readers are coming from. As if I care. Ah- who am I kidding? I check every now and then - I think that anyone who writes would like to know how many people read what they write.

However my stats are bogus. I’ve got a lot of page views coming in from a web site called: (and I’m writing this wrong here so that no one can go there - I’m not sure what kind of site it is and what it might do to anyone’s computer) vampire stat. com. And, most of these readers live in Russia. MY blog? What secrets do they think I have? What do they think they’re going to learn of any value? The blog they read most often is one I called: Walt and the Lyon Steps, about the Walt Disney museum and the Lyon stair steps in San Francisco. This is my most popular blog and most of the readers are Russian. I have read and reread this blog many times to try to see what word in it keys hackers from Russia that this is a valuable blog. I want to go to their website and tell them to get off my blog.

Maybe they’ll read this blog and realized that they’re reading the wrong person.

OCEAN FIXES

Ocean fix, ocean fix. When will we get our ocean fix? Not for awhile if I know our schedule, and, since i put it together, I know it pretty well. We will get to the ocean when we hit San Diego in February. Meanwhile I’ll live my ocean dreams through friends of ours who are in Galveston now, heading towards Baton Rouge and all points south. Not only does she tell me about all the ocean and water things they are doing but then she adds insult to injury when she sends pictures of all the sights they’re seeing. These pictures have water, ferries, seagulls, beaches, waves, palm trees, sunshine, etc. All designed to make me envious.
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Evil people, these friends of ours. And, I’m sure they’ll rub salt in my wound when they send more pictures as they head east along the Gulf Coast. Hey, Shirley and Jerry, you know I”m kidding, keep sending the pictures. I love them. I hope you keep having a great trip.

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