When Technology Fails

My technology woes began about three weeks ago when my  Windows 7 desktop was infected with adware. Those critters were slipping past the free Microsoft Essential virus protector. I remembered that Best Buy gave me a malware/adware /virus protector named Trend Micro Titanium. The salesman told me that I probably wouldn’t need it because my new MacBook Pro laptop does not need a virus protector. I installed the software on my desktop and it found 137 parasites, two days later it found 424 more, and then I had to go through a continuous loop of booting and rebooting until they were finally gone. I was just on the verge of calling a technician, so they could pull out those critters by the root.

A few days before Christmas, my wife went to Target and paid for a couple of gifts using her debit card. It wasn’t a long after that when she heard on the news that 40 million of Target's credit and debit card customers’ information might have been compromised. Within hours, my wife received an e-mail from Target informing her that she should check our bank account for any discrepancies. It’s funny; we've never had a Target credit card, so how did they get my wife’s e-mail address? My wife had to go through the process of receiving a new debit card but was told that she could keep her pin number. The next day she received a new e-mail from Target advising her to change your pin number, so on to the bank she went to change our pin number because we didn’t want to take the chance. Lucky for us, we got to the bank on time before any one tried to illegally withdraw any funds.

Last night, I saw a news story of a person who ordered lobster from Amazon for her Christmas Eve party. Say what? Anyway UPS was a day late and a dollar short, so all she got the next day was smelly lobster. Amazon refunded her money and gave her a $25.00 gift card but that didn’t make up for a ruined Christmas Eve party. I guess there’s a moral to this story, the customer expected too much and Amazon oversold on what they could deliver.

Delta Air had a costly computer glitch, so it was not only customers who suffered. Some lucky airline customers received a $48.00 round trip from North Carolina to Los Angeles and another received a trip from Los Angeles to Hawaii for $88.00 which normally sells for over $3000. Delta honored all the tickets that were sold online. The fact that they honored the ticket purchases, gave them some unintended goodwill publicity.

Despite all the ups and down, I’m still anxiously awaiting the iPhone 6 or the next electronic gadget that will make my life easier

Hope everyone had a good holiday and didn’t suffer from any technology failures.

You Live and You Learn

One of the things I’ve learned this week is that there’s not enough hours during the day for me to have a good discussion on Facebook and on the online forum and still have time to keep up with my two blogs. I know, I bragged that I was retired so I certainly had the time to accomplish that. You live and you learn.

The best thing I learned is that Facebook allowed me to have a couple of good civil discussions. It can be addictive because the responses are in real time.

We had a week that started with the “White Santa” controversy and ended with the Duck Dynasty head duck’s comments.

I still believe that the Duck Dynasty issue has a lot of support from those who want to say controversial things without any repercussions. I also believe that A&E made a free market decision to protect the integrity of what they portray as a Christian family espousing family values. A& E’s sponsors may have gotten, spooked and decided that a short suspension would ease the minds of their viewers. I think Duck Dynasty’s 14 million viewers have the same mind-set as Phil Robertson. I know a lot of people like Phil Roberson, who partied hard until they got old, and then they found religion. I also know a lot of people that age who are generational racists. These people have a misconception that minorities were happy go lucky before several pieces of civil rights legislation were passed. I’m pretty sure if someone reminded Phil of the lynching, discrimination, and other reprehensible events, that took place in that era, he would agree it was wrong, and that he was taken out of context because he was just describing the environment he grew up in. I’m sure Phil Roberson is a good man but he’s not one that I would discuss world events with. I used to have a lot of Phil Robertson types in my family and I’ve worked with many but they are a dying breed. I don’t buy the notion that he was standing up for orthodox Christianity and I think we can agree that he was not denied his freedom of speech. I see the divide between social conservatism and the fiscal conservative belief in the unfretted free market.

Newt Gingrich has got to be the most quotable man in history and not in a good way. I don’t know how many WWIII he’s compared conflicts with but he took a sentence from a Phil Roberson quote and immediately compared him to Pope Francis. The man has no shame; he’s a flimflam man who knows his outrageous remarks will make the evening news.

In between the two stories during the week, I discussed Georgia’s Rep. Kingston’s remark that children should sweep the floors of the school they get their free lunches from. Jack Kingston is not a Tea Party nut. He's a pretty reasonable Republican, but he’s being challenged by a couple of extremists. He has backtracked a bit, now he’s saying that he wasn’t talking about a specific group and that everyone who gets meal paid by the taxpayers should pay at least a nickel or a dime for it. He wants to let them know that nothing is free. Well, for one thing, it is my understanding that only those who are 130% below the poverty level get a free meal, so if that’s the case, he is targeting that group. It is my opinion that these children need to go to school to learn math, science, English, and history and they shouldn’t be a pawn for social experiments or a political message