Nothing Much

Thursday we got the barest hint of white stuff falling from the sky (though area’s not much south of me had a couple inches to deal with).  I was not amused, and was dreading Saturday when they said there might be accumulation.  Probly not much, but some.  We got missed, thank god.  Not sure if the storm ended up a bit more east than expected or what, but we didn’t even see flurries.  After seeing pictures from the people who got hit I’m just as glad!  (Apollo’s not though, he broke the ice on his kiddie pool this afternoon cause it was “so hot” he wanted to dunk himself, he’d have been delighted with snow!)

We ended up with this model (from my local Tractor Supply).  For those of you who don’t want to click, its a Cub Cadet 24in 2stage Electric start model with Zero Turn (woohoo, that’ll make it easier for ME to use it).  Not the biggest snow blower out there, but it should do our driveway just fine.

(I’ve noticed that set of search times a few times, but hadn’t bothered to look at where they were coming from.  I will admit to being amused)

Edited: Oh, and how come Blogger’s built in stats can say 96 page views one minute, 3 an hour later, and 35 a couple hours after that and yet none of those are even close to what Site Meter says?

CivWorld got back to me today about my complaint about being unable to unsubscribe from the newsletter.  Basically saying that they didn’t know why it bounced but they’d removed my email from the list manually.  While double checking the email address I’d sent the unsubscribe to I realized what exactly had gone wrong.  When they coded the template for the newsletter they coded the email address incorrectly.  Basically if I manually type in the address as shown it works fine, but if I click on the email address (cause its clickable) the coded version was incorrect.  Simple typo from the looks of it.  I advised them of the error along with thanking them for taking me off the list.

So….I posted Monday about the spam EA sent me.  And my reaction to it: EA got a less than completely polite email telling them to never ever send me emails again.

Then yesterday morning I open my email to find a “newsletter” from the Facebook version of CivWorld.  Now I did give it a try when they first annouced it, afterall I like the computer game AND the PS version, but quickly decided it wasn’t for me.  The whole reason I don’t do games on Facebook is cause I’m not on it often enough to keep up with games, so many of them require regular attention (as in every few hours!) or you loose horribly, and since I’m on there less than once a day, that just doesn’t work.  Course, when I deleted the app I forgot to make sure they took me off their email list.  Sigh.  At least THIS email has instructions on how to unsubscribe from the newsletter mailing list……right?  Well, it DOES, but the email address you’re supposed to send your email to bounces.  Lovely.  I hate marketing people some days.

Then last night, husband was checking over his credit card statement online in preperation for paying it, and discovered a charge that he didn’t recall making.  $39.99 to “cscalllog.com” (which I am deliberetly not making a link, but yes its a website).  A quick check of their website proves that yes, not only did we NOT authorize this purchase, its a through and through scam and not someone trying to use his card.  The front page includes statements like:

Customers that receive a charge on their statement(s) that show ‘Cscalllog.COM’, can use this site to obtain membership information, submit billing and support related questions or contact a representative for support directly by phone.

and

We will be more than happy to help you if you are contacting us regarding a charge on your credit card statement from and have questions.

And there is NO mention of what exactly you GET for this charge, and all reads like they’re trying to get you to retroactively approve this charge on your card. 

Oh, and “refunds will be issued promptly for your first months subscription fee if you ask.”  Uhuh, I’m sure they will.  We didn’t even bother.  We informed the CC company that we did not authorize that charge, and canceled that card.  The charge was placed monday.  So since this is the only card used for online purchases, AND its a reletively new card cause the older version had been used on the Playstation network before THEY got hacked, I can assume it was a recent purchase that let slip our information.  I’m in the process of putting together a polite email to the last few vendors we purchased from advising them that one of them may have had a database leak.

Wonder what the rest of the week will bring me……

The lady in the house south of us (the one with the miniature poodle….) informed me today that she saw a fox in her yard yesterday.  I’m less than confident of her ability to correctly ID said fox, but that WOULD explain Apollo’s sudden attention to following trails across the yard and peeing on them in strategic spots this last week or so.

Seems a Wild Animal Preserve in OH had a bit of a problem yesterday.  The owner was found dead, and most, if not all, the cages were open and animals roaming free (reports vary as to whether all the cages were open or just some).  Police aren’t discussing which animals they’re missing, but they are making comments about worrying about big cats loose.  Not sure if the lack of specifics is because they’re trying not to panic the public, or because they don’t know exactly whats missing (could be either, or both in my opinion), but apparently there were a variety of big cats, bears, and wolves (along with a bunch of non-predator types) on the property.

Local schools have canceled classes, people have been advised to stay indoors, and call police if they site an exotic animal.

I have to admit that my first response on reading this was to be glad that even if the big cats took off in this direction right away it’ll be a couple days before they can reach my area.  Which is a good thing since I don’t have my Pistol license yet (dammit).  I did see one commenter, on a blog I read, say that he didn’t expect some of the animals to do well over the winter.  Frankly I expect them to do just fine, if they’ve been living at the preserve for any length of time they’ve already had a chance to adapt to the winters, and unlike the average house cat, big cats don’t seem to loose their ability to hunt prey just because they’ve not done it recently (or technically at all, even captive bred cats have killed their handlers on occasion).

Simply put, I don’t like it.  I don’t understand why everything has to look like Google plus, I really don’t, but to top it off, I do quite a bit of blogging from my iPad.  And the new interface doesn’t work right in the iPad default browser.  Screens don’t load correctly, links don’t click correctly, and when I attempt to use the “leave feedback” option IT DOESN’T WORK, instead I get an error message that  basicly states that “oh that form is not working now, the tech folks have been notified, try again later”, except I’ve been trying at least once a day (on both my iPad and the Windows desktop) for a few weeks now, AND ITS STILL NOT WORKING.  Dammit if you don’t really want my opinion then don’t ask for it.  And I’m not the only one having problems with the new interface.

Now to top it off they’re getting ready to force everyone to switch over whether we want to or not.

Did I mention I’m not amused??  (why yes, I’m a bit grumpy this week)