I got one of those emails saying that the sender had infiltrated my devices and had complete access to all my data.
They further said that they’d looked at my browser history and seen that I’d been going to porn sites. Then they go for the blackmail pitch.
The sender said, “I’ve recorded your masturbatory habits and unless you send me 2K in bitcoin I’m going to send videos to everyone in your contact list.”
WHATEVER!
Go ahead! Do It! I put on a fine show, just ask my friends…
If there was actually a way to track this moron down, and they actually had video of me, I’d bill THEM. Obviously they’ve gotten their jollies from watching my sex shows!
Jackass!
I did love the comment near the end where the sender claims they’re honorable. Uh Huh, RIGHT!
I don’t go to porn sites, and haven’t for over 4 years. They’re too spammy and with very few exceptions boring. My own porn library is way better, and the image quality is excellent, especially on the big screen!
The only thing that is of interest, is that this email appears to have originated from my Outlook address. I thought Microsoft was supposed to prevent email spoofing.
Well, I’ve been thinking about deleting the Outlook email address anyway. Maybe today is the day. It shouldn’t take too long to change the email address of the businesses that I still use, to something else.
That would allow me to abandon the purveyors of some of the ridiculous SPAM I get, and then I wouldn’t have to worry about LinkedIn exposing all my contacts to data breaches either.
LinkedIn (A Microsoft Company) absolutely will not let me delete the connection to my Outlook contact list from their service. The Microsoft Outlook email account, (not the application,) continues to remind me of birthdays for contacts that have been deleted for literally years, and repeating calendar events that have been deleted for longer.
Several years ago, I very briefly experimented with switching to all Microsoft applications instead of Mac native apps. It was not a happy experience and within a month, I’d gone back to Mac native applications.
Yet, after manually deleting the contacts list, and the calendar data, somehow stuff keeps popping up even though according to the Microsoft web based portal there’s nothing stored. Hmm. Maybe my data isn’t actually mine???
Perhaps the only way to deal with it is to delete the account(s) entirely.
I’ve even been considering not renewing my yearly subscription to Microsoft Office.
More often than not, I use other word processing or spreadsheet software. I’ve saved 2 GB of disk storage by deleting the Outlook and PowerPoint applications from my system. I could save another 2 GB by dumping Word and Excel. Why on Earth does Microsoft Office need to suck up 4 GB of disk space?
I’ve already deleted Office completely from my iPad and guess what? I don’t miss it at all. I never missed a beat after it was gone.
Don’t fall for these kinds of scams. The only thing real in the email is the bitcoin wallet address.
Besides, even if someone recorded you rubbing one out in front of your computer. After Jeffery Toobin… It doesn’t matter in the least.
Who knows? Your antics might get you some interactive action not just the one handed kind.
The prevalence of these threatening emails might just breathe life back into the dirty magazine industry. After all if you’re getting your freak on with a magazine, you’ll never have to worry about being recorded.
The neighbor whose house and cat I’ve been looking after is apparently getting better and may be coming home. His Niece and her Husband came down to clean up his house and make it suitable for someone using a walker.
It meant for me that I didn’t have to look after the cat and for at least a few days had the opportunity to look after my own affairs. That was a relief and my mood was pretty good.
For my assistance, and their using my dump access card, they agreed to save some space in one of their dump runs for various yard trimmings that I’d piled up around the yard. They’d rented a large pickup truck and my yard stuff would fit nicely on top of the other stuff they were tossing from the house.
I was out in my yard bagging the stuff to make it easier to load.
It was a lovely spring day and I was in a good mood. The sun felt great and for the first time in months I was warm and cheerful. Progress, warmth, and getting things done always makes me a happy camper.
Apparently the crazy lady in the neighborhood was enjoying herself wandering up and down the main street that all the residential streets intersect with. Aside from her occasional outbursts I was in my own little serene world.
This all went to shit.
I was almost finished with my chore when the crazy lady starts screaming the name of a dead woman who lived across the street from me. While she’s screaming the dead woman’s name she’s walking toward the gate of the house.
The house in question has been sold, purchased, and renovated entirely by the new owner. Seeing crazy heading toward the house, knowing that the former occupant was dead, and that crazy had previously kicked the door in, terrorizing the former occupant I was left with a choice.
I could watch the fun as she pounded on the door, or kicked it in, setting off the alarm system and summoning the police… Or I could say something.
In future, I’ll keep my mouth shut and enjoy the live police show.
On this occasion I simply said loud enough that she could hear me, “She’s dead. She’s been dead for over a year.”
This simple statement of fact resulted in crazy targeting me. As I’ve mentioned occasionally elsewhere in this blog, Crazy has a mouth on her that could make the entirety of several military forces blush at once. The fury of her insanity spewed forth in a rabid staccato of nonsense and obscenities and she started walking back down the street toward me. She was practically frothing at the mouth.
This sort of thing has happened before and she usually sputtered out then wanders off.
Wednesday, she didn’t sputter out.
She demanded to know who I thought I was telling her that the neighbor was dead. She further said I was a liar because she’d just spoken to the neighbor.
I replied, “As you wish,” and went back to my work. This enraged her further, she picks up her pace assuming what I suspect she felt was an appropriately intimidating and aggressive walk. Were she a 4 year old and not spewing foul obscenities every step of the way, it would have been funny.
I still didn’t take her as a threat, in part due to her size and in part due to the comical walk. That being said, I was monitoring her approach. She demanded I produce ID as she stomped onto my property. I asked her what good that would so since our ID has our post office address, not our actual physical address printed on it. ID tells her nothing.
This seemed to cause a momentary pause in her diatribe. Perhaps some logic process attempted to engage, and was promptly choked to death by the crazy raging in her brain. She then told me that she owned my house and that I needed to get off her property.
This annoyed me a lot. Her rage and aggression directed at me in close quarters was starting to really piss me off. Not to mention her yappy ill behaved Chihuahua that has on more than one occasion tried to bite me while I was doing yard work, by sneaking up on me from behind.
One of these days that little piece of shit is going to tangle with my weed whacker!
I said, “If this is your goddamned house show me the cancelled checks!” I know this was the wrong thing to say, I knew it the minute it left my lips.
Some part of me recognized that I was being drawn into her crazy and that wasn’t the way to go. That part of my brain gave me a disdainful “Tut tut tut” and called me a dumbass.
This internal dialog stopped me from peppering Crazy with a bunch of followup questions like, “What’s the mortgage payment? Who holds the mortgage? What was the sale amount of the house? Is there a second?” I think in my growing anger I was still considering the possibility that I could somehow win.
When she said, “The checks aren’t canceled,” I realized that you can’t win with reason against this kind of crazy.
At around this point she punched me…
I registered impact and minor damage on my right upper chest. Now I was facing a crisis.
Let me explain, and please remember all of the following happens in two or three heartbeats.
When someone hits me, I tend to instantly lose control. The world narrows to the person who hit me and I’m looking for openings and weaknesses. I start looking for ways to break bones, dislocate joints, and I’m not thinking about things like fair fight or Queensberry rules. I’m thinking about how to efficiently terminate the threat while looking around for potential weapons at hand.
In the past, this has resulted in epic rage and coming dangerously close to killing. In those instances it was only friends being present, dragging me bodily away that stopped me. Even so, whoever hit me from then on would literally crawl out a second floor bathroom window to avoid me.
That rage scares me more than anything else in my life. During the rage, I’m not there, when it’s over I have little to no memory of what I’ve done. At most, I’ll retain images or almost sexual gratification, but no clear timeline of events. It’s a monster that I keep chained in my head and never let out because I fear that the monster would overwhelm me then I’d lose myself in it.
This time I was completely alone, and that part of me that I fear most, was breaking free.
It also didn’t help that every bit of psychological, emotional, and most physical abuse perpetrated on me throughout my entire life has been inflicted by women.
Women who were bullies and knew they’d get away with it because when no one was looking they could. They knew they had the upper hand, if I responded, they’d immediately revert to the victim and poor defenseless girl roles.
Then as I was taking whatever punishment for raising my voice, or responding to their aggression they’d smile slyly through their fake tears, knowing that they’d won, because they’d baited me, or goaded me into exactly the situation they wanted. Far too often they’d do it just for fun, or a promotion, or just because they didn’t like that their obvious crocodile tears didn’t elicit sympathy from me.
Hey bitches, you say you’re equal. If a man cried you’d humiliate him about it, why should your tears get people falling all over themselves to make you stop? Fair is fair.
Here was yet another woman striking me, assuming that she’d get away with it.
Some of the chains holding the beast, snapped.
“After all it’s only the two of us standing in my driveway… Who would know?”
Crazy is a threat to my peace and quiet, a disturbance to the neighborhood, an ever present worry. She’s defective. A waste of DNA. She at one time may have been simply mentally ill but over the 20 years she’s lived in this neighborhood she’s gotten much worse and may now be using drugs other than those prescribed.
I do my level best to ignore her and shut her out of my consciousness. Going so far as to close my house up and run the A/C with the windows and doors locked even on beautiful breezy spring and summer days while she screams horrific obscenities at the top of her lungs .
Questions I rarely consider are, “Why are her rights more important that all the rest of the people in this neighborhood? Why does she have the ability to imprison us in our homes with her insanity?”
More of the Beasts chains snapped.
“Her neck is thin as a chicken’s… Who would know?”
My narrowing vision was increasingly tinted red. The Beast was awake, the rage was growing uncontrollable. Blood pumping warm adrenaline felt like life and youth returning to my old bones. Life around me slowed, I could see the fly hoping for a meal suspended in front of her face. Dust motes froze mid air reflecting the sunlight.
More chains snapped.
“That fly looks hungry, why not feed it and 1000 generations of it’s line… Free me, let me serve you, some of those branches would make excellent clubs… Who would know?”
The rational part of me had been busy processing that I’d just been hit with no provocation came back. That part of me just couldn’t understand why she’d hit me at all, it made no sense and was therefore an unresolvable question. The answer that came back was, “this bitch is crazy,” then the rational part screamed in my head, “you don’t have to be crazy too!”
The Beast snapped its jaws at the rational part of my brain but began retreating to sulk in his dark dungeon.
Tenuous control of my anger and rage began to reassert itself. Rationality rebooted fully.
If I responded to her attack she’d win. I’d go to jail, and she’d smile. I’d lose my freedom and complicate my life in endless ways. I live in California. Women always win here, they’re always right, even when they’re not. Women who commit brutal murders get much lighter sentences than men, those who commit assault are lightly punished if at all.
The police would have no choice but to take me away. At the time, I thought California had some stupid law in place that said I, the victim, had to retreat and let the criminal take whatever they wanted.
My internal dialog said, “Choose a better option.” The part of me that is the Beast, accepted this proposition but added if she hits me again all bets are off.
I looked Crazy in the eyes and quietly said, “I don’t want to do this today.”
I knew the rage still burned in my eyes. The very few people who’ve seen my like that, described it as seeing Death looking at them, out of my eyes.
By some miracle, Crazy decided to leave. Her expression was one of confusion. She walked away without looking back, swearing and calling me names. Two that stick out were “misogynistic bastard” and “fucking fag”.
It cracks me up that when a woman is jonesing for a fight with a man, if he refuses to fight her, the woman always calls him a fag. Jesus! The deck is stacked against men!
Her one last parting shot was this, “You’ve always looked down on me since I moved here.”
As I stood there feeling the sun on my skin. I though, “Yep, you’re right about that because you’re trash, and always have been.”
The rational part of my mind acknowledged the defusing of the situation without additional violence as a win.
But the masculine, male, proud part of me, and the Beast were both wounded. By not responding as she so richly deserved, the bitch still caused me injury. She emasculated me. Not in front of the neighborhood but in front of the one person that I can’t ignore.
Myself.
It’s not about wounded pride, that heals.
This is about my fundamental right to defend myself. Am I now too old to fight? Am I weak and feeble? Am I not a man anymore? Have I caved into the bullshit and now too afraid of legal shit or consequences to even defend myself?
I was a proud apex predator, what am I now? Old? Used up? Useless? Should I just wander into the forest and die?
Will I forever hide behind the police and the law, will I forever be a victim?
The police were called. They dutifully took statements. They advised me that I could have her arrested for assault but that she’d be out in 8 hours or less. They suggested a better legal approach was to file a restraining order against her.
Either way, I know she’ll retaliate. She’s a vindictive bitch. I know of at least two other assaults she’s committed against neighbors which were unreported because the victims feared her retaliation.
I know that I must file a restraining order. Not just for me, but because it puts Crazy on the radar of the legal system. Long term, that benefits all the neighborhood. Unfortunately it also puts me on the same radar. Worse though, this feels like I’m hiding under my mother’s skirt.
The rational part of me is trying to convince the Beast that using the legal system against Crazy is satisfying because it’s using her own tools against her.
The Beast isn’t buying it. The legal system is long and drawn out and requires lots of energy to be expended. The Beast is about instant gratification and the almost erotic joy of vanquishing an enemy definitively in the moment.
The Beast is pissed off, that yet again a woman fucked him over with self inflicted wounds.
One good thing came out of my conversation with the police. They told me that I absolutely had the right to defend myself on my own property. They suggested that I get a security camera with recording ability so that in the future, once the restraining order is issued I’ll have a record of whatever transpires.
The Beast is happy about that. “If she comes at me again… Who cares who will know?”
Another bright spot is that the visitors cleaning up the neighbors house were video taping the exchange from his property.
That will make the legal process a bit easier. But it will still take time and effort and trips to the court house on my part. All of which costs me money while Crazy incurs no expense, no punishment, no inconvenience, basically… she gets to win again.
I know, you’re thinking, “Another one of those posts! Next!”
Bear with me.
Implied Social Worthiness Scores.
The last company I worked for, was very concerned that I didn’t have active Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn accounts. They were also very concerned that I didn’t attend employer sponsored events such as going to the water park, dinners, or baseball games.
I asked them why my having or participating in those things mattered.
They said It’s about being able to determine if our employees are engaged and happy with the workplace.
I said that my happiness was dependent on my paycheck. I was there to do a job, I did the job and went home. As to the company events, I couldn’t participate and be a good employee. My schedule was 5am to 1pm Thursday through Monday. Their events typically started at 6pm on a weekend defined as Saturday and Sunday. Since I was usually in bed by 7:30 to 8:00PM, were I to attend their corporate events I would not be good at my job the next day due to tiredness. As such I was behaving in a responsible way towards my employer.
I said regarding Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn. That I found these services to be a waste of time. I felt no need to broadcast minute by minute, the details of my personal or work life to the entire world. (This blog notwithstanding) Therefore if they were concerned about my speaking out of turn about the workplace or my employer, they had nothing to fear. I kept my opinions to myself or confined to a small select group of people that I interacted with in person.
This was not good enough.
Because I wasn’t posting my life online for all to see, they were suspicious because there was no way for them to apply metrics about my life choices (Judgmental much?) I believe that they were trying to determine my social worth and obtain more leverage over me than a simple paycheck.
Eventually, after many annoying emails from HR and the Activities Committee, I conceded to creating a LinkedIn account. Upon which I would sometimes parrot the company announcements. Other than that, I didn’t post anything.
That wasn’t good enough. Now if I didn’t post something at least once a week I’d get an email from one of the two groups. Always such emails suggested posting something about my life and happiness. (Uh, nobody’s business but mine.)
While creating the LinkedIn account I thought, “This is a slippery slope and since they cajoled me into this, they’re going to apply more pressure for me to hand them a loaded gun in the form of information.”
This assumption was borne out when someone on the Activities Committee saw me getting out of a new car one morning. I had no sooner sat down at my desk, than there was an email suggesting that I post pictures of my “pretty” car on LinkedIn and use it as a first post to Twitter and Facebook too. The rationale was that everyone would love to see success and share in my happiness.
Frankly, that creeped me out on a number of levels.
Since I chose not to post it on LinkedIn, they did. With a picture clearly showing my license plate number. “Someone got a new car… Let’s all congratulate him”
I viewed this as an invasion of privacy. They seemed to view it as a corporate success story. Completely missing the rest of the story…
My old car had been totaled and this was a logical replacement. I wouldn’t have gotten a new car, if my old one, which I loved, and was in fine working order, hadn’t been destroyed. The new car represented not success, but a major life setback, because my old car was completely paid for. The new car represented payments, tighter budgeting, and a loss of disposable income.
I let it go, they were being childish and I didn’t need to point that out. LinkedIn did it for me, deleting the post as a violation of their terms. This of course was before LinkedIn became part of Microsoft.
It is possible that my lack of compliance in the social media arena led directly to my not being on the “retain list” when the layoffs happened. There is no way to prove it, but I do wonder from time to time.
It always leads back to the same question for me. Why couldn’t they just let me be a good worker and do my job? All I wanted from them was a paycheck, medical insurance, and something productive to do. Why do so many companies these days feel that external activities are so dang important?
People who can’t take what you say at face value
I’m currently involved looking after a neighbors cat. There is a lot of other drama in this situation. I won’t bore you with the details.
There are a couple of points that are really annoying. The largest is the delivery of supplies for the cat.
To the person’s credit, they don’t feel that I shouldn’t incur costs for litter and food and I applaud that.
But I said in the beginning, “Don’t worry about this, you’re ill and we can settle up at a later date. If this is only for a few weeks.”
That apparently was not heard. Instead, the person has to schedule delivery of cat supplies from a market 2 miles away. You’d think that’s fine except that I’m at or near the market pretty frequently so it’s no big deal to go in to get what’s needed.
I was also serious about this only going on for a few weeks. We’re now at 5 or 6 weeks and there appears to be no plan for it to end.
The problem with delivery is there’s a four hour window. So without thinking about it, this person has chained me to my home for half a day, watching for a delivery of stuff to appear on their doorstep. I know, they’re trying not to inconvenience me, but they’re doing a great job of that, in trying not to.
The other annoyance is that no matter what I say, the schedule is completely arbitrary. The person is 40 miles away and has zero idea what I’m planning to do or if I might plan to go do something to do with my life. They’re not intentionally trying to be selfish, but in that they’re succeeding mightily.
When I said don’t worry about it, I meant it. I told the person I’d keep receipts and we could just add it up whenever was convenient. They could write me a check and that would be all there was to it. It’s not like I can’t take 5 minutes while I’m in town to pick up a bag of cat food.
That would be far less inconvenience to me than having half my day shot to hell.
I just don’t understand why people refuse to acknowledge that you mean what you say. Is it that so many people don’t mean what they say?
Then there’s the gift as thank you for watching the cat. It will be alcohol, it’s always alcohol. That’s really nice, except that I don’t drink very much anymore. I still have an unopened bottle of Gentleman Jack from last year.
I don’t drink alone and am alone more than not.
In this particular situation, a better gift would be informing me that arrangements had been made for someone in their family to pick up the cat and look after it while the neighbor is laid up.
It would be much better for the cat and me. As it is, the poor thing is alone too much and is craving attention. I’m spending at least an hour a day playing with and cuddling the poor creature. That’s an hour I’m not playing with my dog who also likes a lot of attention. By the time I add it up I’m spending at least 2 hours, often more, of my day tending to animals, and not doing stuff that I need to do.
It’s not that the critters aren’t deserving of attention and love, it’s that I need to reclaim my life. That being said, it’s not the fault of the animals wanting the attention that their respective humans agreed to give them when we brought them into our homes.
In the case of cats, I like cats. But after my last cat passed away, I found that I enjoyed not having to scoop litter boxes, deal with nasty fur balls, the smell of cat urine or canned cat food.
Perhaps, the cat thing wouldn’t be so trying if the person’s house was neat and clean. It’s not! The place is a disaster and I do my level best to not touch anything other than what is absolutely necessary. The place is a hazmat site waiting to be discovered and red tagged. At least the stench of stale pot smoke has finally dissipated.
I’ve gotten in the habit of not eating breakfast before I go over there because I always feel like I’m going to vomit. When I come back, I’m not in the mood to eat. I guess the upside is that I’m saving money and losing weight.
Honestly 30 to 45 minutes is about all I can take. I’ve considered bringing the cat over to my house, and all that entails. I haven’t because I think my dog would decide to play with the cat and that wouldn’t end well for either of them.
The cat is fully armed and not afraid to scratch or bite with little or no provocation.
Then there’s the issue that the dog likes being able to go in and out to the back yard which means the door is open. That wouldn’t work with the cat.
I’ve considered opening the windows at the neighbor’s house but that doesn’t work because the windows and screens are in such poor repair that I fear the cat would escape via one of them, never to be seen or heard from again.
I’m not even going to delve into the mess caused by the neighbor rerouting all their mail to my small PO Box but neglecting to tell me that they’d done so. That, at least was relatively easy to fix. I’m now getting my mail again!
In summary,
The road to hell is most definitely paved with good intentions.
