FLORA AND FAUNA INVADING MY HOUSE

Years ago I watched a NOVA show telling how many millions or billions of life in the form of bacteria and whatever live in the human body. The news was somewhat chilling and I imagined everything as though under an electron microscope. It made me bathe more carefully and wash all my parts (especially my eye lashes after I learned they are full of mites) to which I had paid less attention.

Today a friend asked me to come over and check out her pantry because mice had been in there and a trap had been set which she couldn't bear to see. She was planning to serve anchovies in a Caesar Salad for our lunch and the can of anchovies was in her pantry. After telling her I had lots of cans and would bring her one, I began to think of the many mice with which I have dealt over the years as they invaded my laundry to nest, been trapped in the set tub in the basement, unable to get out (once even in the washing machine when the top had been left open), and worst of all, racing by me in the kitchen. I found bits of chocolate where I knew I had not left it. Sometimes they were gray, sometimes a dark brown. I'm not a mouse racist but I wanted them out of my house, whatever color they were. (I have always had a rule that nothing was to live with me that didn't pay room or board.)

Having grown up on a working farm, all sorts of critters were familiar but we kept them out of the house. The farm cat kept the mice population within control. The farm dog kept snakes, other cats, and lots of other poor animals that might have wandered in convinced they wanted to be elsewhere. My mother, having been born in a country with poisonous snakes, was terrified of even the little harmless garden or garter snake. One scream and the dog cleared the territory of them.

For years spiders were terrifying. I guess I had fallen for all the myths and seen too many movies in the days where the cameras magnified them into gigantic size and had them doing horrible things to humans. Since central air conditioning where opening windows is no longer necessary, I see far fewer of them. My treatment for my own terror was to buy a book on spiders and soon learned that we live in a zone that has no lethal ones, there are no brown spiders, and while I have occasionally seen a nursery spider I no longer get near hysterical.

Ants are nuisance invaders. The cure for all the creepers, crawlers and fliers is 'never leave uncovered food on a counter'. I suppose I should be grateful to the wildlife in my house because it has taught me to cover or put away food immediately. However, I resent something crawling up my leg while I am at the computer only to see that it is an unfortunate wandering ant soon sent to ant Heaven. Carpenter ants are around but there are so many myths about them I never know whom to trust though fortunately I don't seem to have those in the house. I used to have fantasies of my house one day falling down on top of me as the tunnels by these 'wood-eating (not so)' insects made beams give way. It even comes as a shock to realize that tiny little cement ants can ruin a walkway of cement and make it crack by tunneling under. When our picture window was removed we found a huge ant colony living on the concrete base on which the window frame had rested. Cleaning the colony out, adding a bit of boric acid before putting a new window in seems to have cured that constant invasion by the tiny looters who sought sweets.

Flies, 'no-see-ems', crickets, centipedes, and mosquitoes are all equally unwelcome. With great vigilance I keep no food around on which flies can feed and raise their families. I consider all of them unwelcome guests and dispose of them before they invite all their relatives to the party. When humans leave doors open they experience me as a nutty lady. I scream epithets and rage, "Come in or stay out, but shut the *@+* door." If I see either a fly or mosquito in the house, nothing else gets done until it is gone. When I learned that the reason mosquitoes stay on the wall after biting you is to pee out the water of your blood so they can fly, I am even more determined not only not to be a transfusion vehicle but to prevent my walls being used as their toilet.

I have long since given up my battle with squirrels for control of bird seed and have just stopped feeding the birds. I never had time to look at them anyway. For some reason the birds are now doing what they have done for centuries before man started to feed them. They clean up around the yard and seem quite happy. The squirrels nest in neighbors' trees and are out of my reach.

The last to comment on are all the things that want to live and feed on my houseplants. I tried to save the lives of many plants for years after someone brought me a gift of mealy bug. The hours spent trying to save them was not useful to the plants and extremely frustrating to me. Eventually I threw out all plants, no matter how sentimentally attached to them I might have been, that were favorites of mealy bugs and providing hotel space to them. I seem finally to have rid the house of them....at least for now.

I'm perfectly happy to live and let live....just not with me or on me!

NEVER UNDERESTIMATE CULTURAL BONDS

Recently I was able to have lunch with a woman who had grown up in Greece, in my mother's village with my cousins, other relatives and the grandmother for whom I was named but had never met. When she saw me she gasped, "You look just like your grandmother". I knew I looked like my mother and knew she was supposed to have looked like her mother, yet I still found it strange to be told my face it that of someone I will never meet.

Our lives have crossed a few times over the years but we really have not known each other. How strange it was to hear a talking history of so much of my family that feels close but has been out of reach. Talking for almost three hours seemed like moments. We shared and understood the other despite having led totally incongruent lives. There was no 'white space' in the entire three hours. She has been in this country long enough to speak adequate English but her preferred language is still Greek. I heard her speak the same 'kitchen Greek" with which I had been raised. Since there is no one else in my life with whom I currently speak the language, it was a surprise to see how quickly vocabulary came back to me. We spoke in both languages and I left knowing more about her family than I needed and a great deal more of my own than I had ever known before. There were no 'aha!' kinds of information, just some pleasant 'color casting' as they do in sports and racing...someone who knows the sport well and describes what is happening with a much broader perspective than just calling out what happened or who is ahead.

Our conversation ended, we hugged a goodbye, and a warmth was felt akin to what siblings separated in the East and West by the Berlin Wall felt when the wall came tumbling down.

SHARING, LEARNING, AND NEVER BEING LONELY

What do you write when you think you don't have anything to say? I go on an Internet Forum where discussions are held about all sorts of subjects. I marvel at how freely advice and opinion are shared. Did I say shared? I should have said how they are so liberally spread around, right or wrong.

I have limited experience with Forums but it has been my observation that few threads stay on topic for long. It is somewhat like Middle School. Someone decides it doesn't matter what started the thread it's as good a place as any to give irrelevant input. With that, the thread is now off topic. Some bright or annoyed soul may bring it back but there are always a few people who refuse to be constrained or respectful to the people having a serious discussion.

Those frustrated on the thread may then take their conversation to private messaging, in which case it is no longer in a place shared by many or commented on by them. Discussions on Politics or Religion seem to step on the most toes. Those who disagree either kidnap the thread by taking it off topic or turn it into attempts to be funny. That shortly flops as it is annoying to the people who are serious, so the end result is that people just walk away from the thread.

Rants are good because they warn people of many dangers out there about which people need to be careful and avoid a variety of things. Rants also teach people lots of ways to resolve things that seemed insurmountable. Answers to questions is a focus of many Forums. There are Forums of so many subjects and hobbies, news, medical problems, and almost anything one might want to share in with others.

If you are looking for a Forum, type a subject on Google followed by Forum. Looking for a blog? Type a subject in Google, add blog after it and you will be amazed at how many there out there that will meet anyone's needs. Would anyone ever need to feel lonely again?

MORE PRIVACY INVASION

There has to be a stop on invasion of computers. Advertisers want to know what we want to buy and sneak into our computers to find out what we look at. If you look at car sites, you will be given more car ads. I drowned in pet catalogs when I ordered pet gift online or bought one in a pet store or something. Life was bad enough when we used to fill in registration cards that asked our hobbies, income, and tastes. At least you had a choice to send in the form or not and could write whatever you chose to indicate an interest in. The new advertising schemes actually take over your computer without your permission or knowledge. I do not know why there aren't some laws made so that people can report violations and, at worst, cut the practice down.

Phorm is a new UK trial. " Online advert system Phorm could make the net less secure and breaches human rights, the service's creators have been told." Are they worried? Seemingly not. Hotbar is one of the spyware goodies that invades us. Hotbar consumes over 20MB of disk space on your hard drive. It will slow down your browser, make your PC boot slower, and may crash your computer altogether. Hotbar also disables certain popup blockers. Conversely, if your computer shows any of these symptoms, run Ad-Aware, SpyBot, or any other programs to remove this type of program. Run them frequently! If you find Hotbar on your computer, get it off!

It is sad to note how long this has been a problem and how little has been done about it to stop it.
I resent robots trolling my computer to pick up addresses but resent, even more, friends who insist on mailing me humor with pages of addresses in the forwards. It is bad enough that they are sending addresses out but, worse, they have included mine in full view to be harvested.

VERIZON FRAUDULENT SALES

There should be a 'kick me' sign on my back. Why did it never occur to me that a major company like Verizon FIOS would have had pages of complaints about their product and practices on the Internet which I could have checked had I thought of it? When my TV had a segment on the evening news about their 'bait and switch' techniques, it was already too late...I had signed a 2 year contract with them. When my neighbor told me how they cheated her out of the free HD TV they had promised her, I believed it was because she had ordered online and had no paper work while I had a salesperson go over everything carefully. After I had signed all sorts of papers I was left with one that had my signature on it and little else. She also told me about the bait and switch she had received after I had signed with Verizon.

Others have lived through the interminable phone maze, promises and lies. I made it through the first promised delivery date that never showed, and made it through the installation by a very pleasant and personable tech. It was clearly not his responsibility that FIOS had made no provision to adapt to existing peripherals like DVD recorders which require their own TV Guide to program timed recordings. After all, they offer monthly rentals that work for a gouging price.

But the major problem was a promise (apparently a verbal agreement that never made it into the final contract which was rushed in front of my eyes. The salepersons were not permitted to enter my home (by Verizon rules, they said) while I had to stand, freezing on my front porch, as we negotiated. Today. three weeks after installation, I received a letter in the mail that promised me $100. (not the $200 I had been told I would get) at Circuit City, I was given instructions to get it. Since I wanted to talk to a live Service Representative, I found a time in my day that would leave me open-ended and dialed the number listed. There, a Monica, told me that she could do nothing about my situation, she could only handle the $100 gift cards. She gave me a second number to call and I wasted another several minutes through the phone maze after speaking with the sultry voiced lady robot. The second customer service, after much holding and delay, on and off, said she could not do anything for me and would have to transfer me. I then got to speak with someone who must have teethed in the business as a debt collector. He was smooth and heartless. His name was Chase and he was probably well-named. We chased each other in circles. He first told me that in order to have received the $200 I would have had to order the 20/20 speed Internet for $10 a month extra. I said I didn't order it because I do not need a fast upload. Over and over he kept telling me that he could do nothing for me. Whatever the salesperson had said and the tech, who verified that it was written on my contract, Chase insisted he could only give it to me if I ordered the 20/20, knowing that I neither wanted nor needed it. I would have been buying my $100 in ten months for $100 and gotten a speed I didn't need nor would really use. In those 10 months, Verizon would have saved the $100 promised me and made another $100.

I asked chase if he went home with indigestion after taking many calls like mine. Chase told me he loved his job. He added that he had many people with my complaint this very day which certainly came as no surprise other that he was confirming it was a frequent scam of Verizon customers.. His tone of voice indicated that he had no problem lying to people. I told him I thought that was horrible business practice and terrible PR. He added the token, "I'm sorry" and I suggested that I seriously doubted it from his tome of voice but that I was sorry he had to lower himself to this behavior to earn a living.

I immediately wrote to my Senators and Representatives nationally and in my state. I plan to add my voice to those shouting to the wind. I still retain the hope that this country will start noting the bad business behaviors that these business are leading into monopolies. There are more emails and letters to write and many complaint boards left to rant to on the Internet....

THE RITE OF SPRING CLEANING

As I watched the weekend fly by, I wasn't washing coal dust off the walls as used to be done in England, but busily doing some computer spring cleaning with the help of a techie friend. We discovered that Adware had accumulated on my computer to the extent that the icons on my Desktop would fade totally after less that a minute on boot-up. You might know that if there is nothing on the desktop, you are unable to get to any program to load. In essence the Adware had successfully functioned as destructively as a virus.

Undoubtedly it need not be upper most on the priority list of our lawmakers, but aren't there a few lesser-involved politicians who might introduce some legislation to make it against the law to drop unwanted, unsolicited pieces of junk on private computers? I understand that, even all those free programs we love, need to be paid for (advertising being the currently preferred method). Should it be lawful that it all be done on the backs of the sole, private computer owner to be forced to use precious time to look up those things on the task manager that are unknown (mine shows 62 processes running at the moment) as well as all the less-visible things? Most of these processes are written in some shorthand that doesn't make clear what they are. If you try to close them you get dire warnings (also that are inexplicable) as to what will befall you.

One, though tedious, way to find out what is running is to Google each process. It ia amazing how many processes have, without asking or receiving permission, decided to run on your computer, slowing down anything else you might be doing. My running Spybot and Ad-Aware several times times eventually rid me, I hope (see fingers crossed here), of all of it for the moment. I then ran a registry cleaner to pick out the debris and defragmented my computer. (I must confess that this all happened, discovery through purge, by a friend who knew what he was doing while I hadn't a clue at the beginning.

This over, I bought a 750 gig external drive and we did a back up of the whole computer after it had been defragmented as well. The backup program started by saying it would take 182 days. It must have been set for a VERY slow CPU because those 182 days speeded it down to 14 hours, long enough to tie the computer up for most of the day. The major culprit in this case was Hotbar.

The amount of time spent on computer maintentance seems equal to, if not exceeding, maintenance of my person and clothing.