Nearly seven weeks after I managed to shut the car door on my right forefinger, breaking the tip of my finger in the process, the fingernail is about to fall off. In the past couple of days it has gotten dramatically looser on my finger; at present only the left edge of the nail is still fastened down at all. When I lift the nail and peer underneath I can see clear, unblemished skin in the nail bed and what appears to be a new nail starting to grow from the cuticle.
After a couple of weeks of relatively normal usage of my finger, having the nail come lose like this has made me more aware of my finger once again. Even with the nail trimmed a closely as possible, it still wants to snag on clothes and threatens to get torn off; so we’ve been keeping it bandaged once again to try and keep the nail in place as long as possible.
Even after seven weeks of seeing the purplish-black color under my nail I am still startled by the flash of color sometimes when I move my hand. The discoloration seems to be fixed to the underside of the nail, so when it comes off my finger tip will once again be flesh colored.
Once the old nail does fall off it will be interesting to see how or even if, the new nail grows. Will it look like the other fingers, or will the nail extend only part way or be misshapen? Only time will tell.
Recently I learned that the word “alright” isn’t really a word. “All right” is correct, not the popular contraction. I’ve also recently been working on breaking my habit of saying and using in type the incorrect “towards,” replacing it with the proper “toward.”
All right? Toward the weekend then.
The Apple Phone Show is giving away an 8GB iPhone today. I figure my chances of winning are slim and none, but I’ll take slim.
Sibylle and I have been moving more or less continuously since Memorial Day weekend. There have been lulls, days where we didn’t lift a box or try to figure out where to put things, but they have been precious few this summer. We’ve both experienced the dislocation that comes from being multi-residential, Sibylle more than I as she was for a brief period tri-residential. For the past couple of weeks we’ve been about 90% mono-residential, but that last 10% has been enough to exhaust us.
Our reserves, financial, emotional, and physical are nearly spent. Decisions about minor things are nearly insurmountable, and major decisions are enough to make us want to hide away under the bed with the cat.
Don’t get me wrong; parts of this summer have been wonderful and marvelous. Seeing the full moon eclipse a few mornings ago was special, especially since we saw the other one this year on a freezing cold evening in March. Hearing Sibylle play her pianos in our new home was satisfying and heart-warming for me. We both have expressed growing satisfaction and pleasure in our new home. We are still sorting through the boxes, trying to decide where to put the books, or the kitchen gadgets, or the artwork; but we are feeling more and more at home everyday.
Two weeks ago my car was backed into while it was parked. I happened to be coming out the front door of the townhouse and witnessed the accident. The driver of the minivan was suitably upset and we exchanged contact information, and I collected from him his driver’s license number and insurance information. He said that he wanted to handle this himself and not involve the police or insurance. I was willing to go along with that, mostly because the damage looked so slight.
In hindsight I should have called the police and let let them handle the matter. The insurance information I copied from the guy was out of date. I noticed this and asked him, “This is out of date, you do have current coverage?” To which he replied, “Yes.” Not seeing a current proof of insurance card should have been my warning to call the police.
In the two weeks since I have been unable to get him to commit to paying, or even to call me back. I took the time to get an estimate for the repair (turns out it was far more expensive that I would have guessed, $1968 plus a rental car for the four to five day repair time), and faxed it to him. No response, no call, nothing. When I called early last week he said that he had only just taken the time to pick up the fax and would have more information for me in a couple of days. I said I would expect his call by Thursday. When he didn’t call back I emailed all the information to my insurance agent.
This morning my agent contacted the insurance agent on the expired card I was shown only to learn that the policy has lapsed. My agent called the other driver and learned that he has no insurance whatsoever. The other driver also indicated to my agent, that he hasn’t got the money to pay for the damages either.
By being a nice guy two weeks ago I lost some leverage in the situation. I don’t have a police report, and at present there is no penalty to the other driver, and I have to pay $500 to cover my deductible. It is my understanding that there is no time limit on getting an accident report, so I could call the local PD and get one filed. This has a feeling of retaliation to it however. It won’t get me any money for my deductible, and it very well could cost him his driver’s license.
The lesson here, for me at any rate, is to learn to use the law to establish a set of parameters around a situation. Calling the cops two weeks ago would have taken care of me. Yes, the other driver would have been in more hot water, but he, after all, caused the situation. Wanting to be a nice guy hasn’t accomplished anything except delay the understanding that his carelessness is going to cost me time and money. Using the police two weeks ago would not have been me being a “bad” guy, just me being a nice guy caught in an abnormal situation needing some help.
For the past eleven years (twelve in February) I have had my domain registered with Network Solutions. Back then they were the available option for registration. Their website has always been cumbersome, and the layers of controls, checks, balances, identity verifications, et cetera only add to the poor experience of using their site.
Back in the day there were multiple roles assigned to a registration: Technical, Administrative, and Billing. Having a site registered is only half of the equation, you must also have it hosted otherwise there isn’t a resource for anyone to locate. At one time some of these roles were fulfilled by your hosting service, i.e., their names and email address appeared next to the roles in the account. It always made me nervous as it looked like my domain was partly mine and partly theirs.
As near as I can tell the roles are a Network Solutions feature, and one that really doesn’t get used any more. Therefore I’d like to change all the roles to me. I will be the account holder, the primary contact, the billing contact, and the technical contact. Only I can’t remember the primary contact password.
So I went through the “reset my password” hoops only to have the resulting email get deleted by my recent layered defense approach to spam. Oops.
Turning off the auto-responder and delete rules on that account and retrying the password reset process failed as Network Solutions will only send a reset link once every 48 hours. Since I was trying all of this on Thursday afternoon I figured sometime on Sunday would be a safe bet to reset the password. (They only send out the reset information once in a 48-hour period to prevent someone else from hacking my registration.)
Last evening I tried to access the account again only to get the same “A password reset link has been sent in the last 48 hours” message. Nuts. This morning I called Network Solutions and talked to a customer service representative. She was willing to verify my identify by calling the number on the account. I explained that this wouldn’t work as the number was more than three years out of date. I asked her why if I was outside of the 48 hour window I couldn’t get the password reset function to work. She did a little investigation and found out that there is a second policy that states the account will be locked if the wrong password is entered too many times. Locked for FIVE days.
On Thursday I tried all the likely passwords that I use for such accounts to no avail. In what I suppose is a reasonable anti-cracking measure, Network Solutions locks the account silently after some unknown failed sign on attempts. Locks if for FIVE days. So, now I need to wait until at least Wednesday before trying to access MY account again.
I’d transfer the whole stinking mess to another registrar today except that I did manage to access the technical role on the account last Thursday and updated my address. I was warned at the time that Network Solutions would not honor any transfer request for 60 days following an address change, again, as an anti-cracking measure.
I should wait until say, November, and transfer the whole mess to Go Daddy or Pair NIC and be done with it. However patience is not my strong suit in matters like this; I’ll be on the phone to Network Solutions first thing Wednesday morning to reset the master account password, and I’ll update all the addresses and emails and phone numbers then. I hope. That will start a new 60-day clock ending sometime in late October. Come November 15th, I’m going to move to a service that doesn’t put so many flaming hoops in my way of my own account.
A couple of years ago I was introduced to a spam filtering technique by a colleague of mine. The idea has been percolating in the recesses of my mind ever since and I have finally put it into practice. In short it is a layered defense.
To do this you will need four email addresses. A public address that you will give out to any and all who ask, a filter email address that you won’t share with anyone, your real email address, and an address for online businesses you deal with.
The Public Email This is the address you’ll give to people who you don’t know. It’s the address you’d put on a business card. You expect this address to be harvested by spammers and you really don’t care since every email sent to this address will be deleted. For this email address you will need to setup two rules on your mail server.
Rule One An auto-responder. Normally this function is used when you are on vacation to tell people that you’ll reply to their message when you get back. In our case we are going to reply to every incoming email with a message saying that in order to reach you they need to re-send their original email to the filter email address. Since the spammers use software to send their email they aren’t going to see, or respond to, the email with the filter address. Only a human will.
Rule Two Once the auto-responder is setup, you’ll want to create a second rule to delete the mail from your mailbox. In my case this rules wipes out some 700-900 spams a day. Make sure the rules execute in the proper order otherwise you’ll delete all the mail before sending the auto-response.
The Filter Email The middle layer in this defense is the filter email address. This can be any address you want; expect to periodically change this as it may become known to spammers over time. There is a single rule for this account.
Rule One Create a rule that forwards all email to this account to your real email account. By using this redirection your real email address is still unpublished and unknown outside of the circle of people you trust.
Your Real Email The last layer in this system is your real email address. This is the address you’ll use with family, friends, and trusted people. It will receive the automatically forwarded email from the filter address. Be careful to not use it online in forms, et cetera, or it will start getting unwanted email traffic.
When you get an email that has been forwarded from your filter address you will have a choice: either give them your real email address and trust them, or continue to use the filter email address with them. By altering the “reply-to” field on outgoing emails you can continue to hide your real email address should you choose.
Dealing with Companies Where this system breaks down is in dealing with online retailers or your bank or other businesses that want to sent you email. Usually the email notifications you get from Amazon, say, are sent from an account that you can’t reply to. If you use the public email address to sign up for alerts you’ll never get them as the auto-response won’t be seen and acted upon. You’ll have to give those businesses you deal with online a valid email address. Create a retail email address for use with your bank, Amazon, et cetera. If you are like me you likely all ready have an email address associated with the companies you do business with online. This is okay, but be aware that some merchants will share your email address.
In Practice I’ve only been using this layered email approach for a couple of days now. As I said before it has eliminated several hundred spam emails per day from even downloading to my email client. Most of the people I know already have my real email address so I haven’t had the opportunity to hand out the public one as of yet, but I have tested the auto-responder and the forwarding rules on the first two layers of the system successfully.
I expect that over time the filer email address will become known to spammers and that the forwarding rule there will start to pass on spam to me. When that happens I’ll simply increment the address by adding a number to it, update the auto-response and forwarding rules and once again, leave the spam behind.
Perhaps this is easier for me as I have my own domain and can create as many email accounts and rules as I like. I also can set my domain up such that any email sent to a bogus address at my domain is simply deleted. If (when) the filter email address is overrun, changing it to a different account will cause the incoming spam to be automatically deleted.
While I haven’t tested this idea using GMail I think you could implement this system there with three different GMail accounts. Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail or any of the other web based providers will probably work too.
If you have any thoughts or ideas about this, or if you want to see my automatic response message, you can email me at mnichols@zanshin.net.
Growing up I was often the target of the neighborhood bully and his miscreant friends. As I was sensitive and cried easily when teased or picked on I was an attractive target to bullies, easy game as it were. As an adult I find that I react strongly to incidents where I see someone being bullied or when I feel like I am being bullied.
I also react when I feel like I am being the bully. Eleven days ago a man moving his minivan out of a parking space where we live backed into my car causing an estimated $1968 damage to the sheet metal and finish. I faxed him a copy of the estimate just three days after the accident and have been waiting for him to call me ever since. Sunday evening I called and left him a message asking for an update; and last evening, since he hadn’t called me yet, I called once again.
The emotion I feel during these calls, and in the minutes leading up to them is one I don’t like. The term I use for it is “being a bully.” In truth I think it is my compassion for a fellow human being who made a simple mistake and is now having to pay quite a bit of money to repair the damages. I’d be terribly upset if it were me who had backed into another car, so I want to feel sorry for him and his plight. Only I also want him to make my car whole again, and soon. In order to override the compassion feelings I have to be more aggressive, internally, and that makes me feel like a bully.
On Friday I’ll be handing this whole matter off to my insurance agent. After all, that’s what I pay him for - to act as my agent in matters requiring insurance and repairs and for making damaged bits of my life whole again. I won’t have to “be the bully” any more. As you might expect I have some mixed feelings about escalating this situation with official involvement, but in the end I need to take care of myself and my property.
The entire world, except for three countries, uses the metric system. The three countries? Liberia, Myanmar, and the United States.
For the first time in fifteen years I have moved without also changing jobs. Last January I changed jobs without moving, a first in over ten years. Every move I’ve made since 1992 has been necessitated by a new job in a new city, except for this last one.
This morning I got up at the same time and left for work at the same time and arrived here at work at basically the same time. Google maps says I am now 21.6 miles from work (17 of those on I-35) whereas last week I was 20.4 miles from work (15.6 of those on I-435 & I-35). The drive time is virtually the same as there is less traffic, and fewer traffic lights, on the surface streets between our new home and the highway.
So the new commute is the same (more or less) as the old commute. This is a good thing.