email

Getting silly now …

/ Tony / Leave a comment

It’s actually more annoying than silly. For the past few months, I have been getting spam emails that advise me that my anti-virus suite has expired. It usually comes, supposedly from a well known on-line retailer on behalf of one of the large anti-virus (AV) companies. It’s not an issue to simply to click on the ‘junk mail’ button and send to offending mail to the deleted folder. No, the issue is the number of emails that are turning up every day.

Up to the current time (13:00) today, I have had 7 of these scams. All purport to come from an online supermarket, but the underlying email address is usually a random address that simply doesn’t exist. The image on the left shows the number of emails that I received in a 3 hour period, in just one address.

The thing that angers me most, is that the supposed AV company does not seem to be interested. Most other companies that I have dealt with, regarding spoof and phishing emails have (or appear to have) a dedicated address to which the offending mail can be forwarded to for investigation. This particular AV company only accepts the email if it has been added as an attachment. Not good enough. There is a huge amount of embedded information in an email that is not available if the mail is sent as an attachment.

The interesting thing (if you can call it interesting) is that I have never had a anti-virus subscription and definitely would never pay for one.

Bl**dy postal system … part 2 (and part 3)

/ Tony / 3 Comments

Mrs H had ordered online, some bedding for the youngest. We had an email to say that it was on its way and gave us a tracking number. We gave it a couple of days, and on the 19th November, I set about trying to track where it was. It as easy to track, but the result was astonishing. The item had been delivered from the Canterbury Delivery Office. That is quite a distance to travel to deliver a parcel to a house in Yorkshire. A quick message to the seller and within an hour or so, we had a reply with the promise of an investigation and replacement. The replacement arrived two days later. Job done!

Fast forward to 26th November and another missing parcel. This time the tracking showed that it was delivered on the 23rd and signed for. I know for a fact that there was no delivery that day, as I was in all day. So we are now going through the process of discovering where the parcel has gone to. The local delivery office has identified that the parcel was delivered to ‘someone’ on our street, but cannot see the actual location. They have promised to investigate further and ring us back on Monday. To be honest, I cannot see us getting anywhere with this and may end up putting a claim against the Royal Mail. Meanwhile, we also in contact with the seller, who is not being as helpful as the earlier seller. All very annoying.

Glutton …

/ Tony / 2 Comments

I’m forever downloading free apps for my phone, iPad and even my laptop. I hear or see someone mention some piece of software or app and immediately think “… that might be useful or fun or whatever …” They very rarely are and I usually end up uninstalling the things and questioning what I was thinking!

Here’s an example: I received an email regarding a regular local meeting that was due to be cancelled. Within that email, was a link to what seems to be a ‘collaboration hub’ called Slack. As mentioned I thought “that might be good for…” although I cannot remember what I thought it would be good for. But me being me, I downloaded and installed the software.

I then spent the following hour, firstly trying to understand how to use the program and the next 20 minutes trying to figure out what I would do with it. As a result, I think it is a piece of software that would be useful in a workplace environment or a user group, but I don’t think it was for me. I mean, who do I need to collaborate with?

So I needed to say goodbye and as usual my trusty copy of Revo Uninstaller comes into it’s own. It’s one of the very few pieces of free software that I have kept for a long time. It is so easy to use, and I haven’t used half of the features. I often think I should cough-up and pay for a full copy, but as it works as is, I think I will stick with what I’ve got.

From then to now . . . back to work

/ Tony / 1 Comment

Jump forward to the 1st September and I am summoned, by works phone, to appear in front of my line manager. It seems, that although it was pre-determined how long I would be away work for recovery, I had to have an interview to discuss my “return to work strategy“. It was not a disciplinary interview, more of “fact finding interview” Fortunately I had already formulated my phased return, so I was able to show her my plan of action. There was a slight moment of finger wagging during the twenty minutes I was there, but I got over it.

Two weeks later, and another phone call. This time it was HR, who wanted to have a little chat with regard to my phased return. They said they could come to me at home, or if I wanted I could see them, at my nearest office. I opted to see them and made an appointment for the next day. This turned out to be a real discussion. I explained my plan, which was to phase my return over four weeks. One day, then two days, then three days followed by the last week of four days. The lady that interviewed me said the plan was a good one, but was worried that it might be too quick and they would monitor my progress. I did mention that I had had the same interview with my line manager and was told that it should not have happened. It seemed that because it was a pre-elective procedure with a set recovery time, I was technically not on sick leave.

The phased return worked well for me, and I managed to get back to working full time with very little problem. However, people were very understanding and I think they made special efforts to get me back to normal. In all truth, during those four weeks I had very little to do. In fact apart from reading work newsletters, catching up on emails and trying to read software manuals, I did very little at all. It became very boring and quite stressful.

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From then to now … gets a bit boring !

/ Tony / Leave a comment

When I say ‘… a bit boring …’, I mean that nothing really eventful happened. YawnA few new residents zones installed, new staff, new equipment but nothing startling for about six years. The team and me just plodded along. So as I say, when I look back, it was just a bit boring. Still enjoyed the job and most of the staff were easy to work with and I had built up a bit of a reputation, but that was about it.

Then, towards then end of 2012 rumours started appearing about job/staff changes. We had two members of staff leave and they were not replaced and this started to worry a few people. We were told that they would be replaced in the new year, but that we would have to manage until then. Which of course we did.

Around about this time, the Council were beginning to look at reducing staff to cut costs. Central Poundsfunding was being cut and departmental budgets were being squeezed. The Council was promoting what the called ‘Early Leavers Initiative’ or ELI. Essentially what this was voluntary redundancy. Staff would leave, get the standard redundancy payment and gain access to their works pension. I thought about this a lot and K*** and me decided that it might be a good move. Leave the Council and get another job somewhere else with a nice lump sum of money in the bank. So in January 2013, I applied for this ‘ELI’. After a few weeks, I received a reply, explaining that I could not be considered as I was ‘too valuable to the service’.

Later in 2013 me and a colleague (one who I had a bit of an issue with) received an email, quite out of the blue which explained that service was being reviewed and that we were part of that review. I Astoundedqueried this ‘review’ with the Assistant Manager who dismissed it as ‘… just something the Head of Service had to do and that it would not affect us …’ His face was a picture when both me and my colleague, G*** forwarded him the email we had received. He still claimed that it would not be an issue and that he would get someone to explain it all to us.

A couple of weeks later someone from HR did come and explain. What was happening was that some Worriedof the posts throughout the department were being looked at, to try and centralise some of the functions. the example they gave was that G***, who was our Training Officer would probably serve the department better if she worked within the Training team, where there would be vacancies in the future. The same applied to me, and I would be of more use in the departments IT service area. We were assured that we would still have a job, but it was still a very worrying time and made a mockery of the reason I was rejected for ELI. Not so valuable now, I thought.

A little bit “miffed” …

/ Tony / 1 Comment

More than a bit miffed really. (For those who don’t know the word click here) I do the National Lottery online. That is to say, I have an online account and I buy my tickets that way. So I never actually have a physical ticket as I find this way easier. If I win, then I get emailed and I log in to my account to see the prize. For some bizarre reason, I  had a go at the Euro-Millions draw (I usually do the Thunderball draw which is the cheapest!)

This morning, I got the email that announced “… got some news about your ticket …” which is their way of Winningssaying “You’ve won!!!” I quickly logged in to my account, to see that I had won a grand total of £2.60 on my ticket. Now when you consider, that the ticket actually cost me £2.50, I had actually won 10p. This was for predicting 2 correct numbers so you may be able to see why I was a “little bit miffed”.

Yet another breach …

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This time it’s Twitter. it would seem that there has been a ‘Glitch’ (their words) that showed un-encrypteTwitterd passwords on their servers. Twitter claims that “We fixed the bug and have no indication of a breach or misuse by anyone…”. However, they also say that the passwords were exposed for several months. There seems to be voiceno end this kind of thing. As a follow Twitterite tweeted today, “I wonder when the tide will turn’. Luckily I have never knowingly had a problem, as my previous job made more aware than the everyday user. Saying that though, I’m often told that I’m far too cautious sometimes. I have been known to delete genuine emails simply because they ‘look’ odd. It’s the same with phone calls. If I don’t know the number, then I usually don’t answer on the basis that, if it is important then they will either leave a voice-mail or call again.

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I think I’m becoming the wristwatch battery guru. It started a couple of years ago when I had a watch that needed a new battery. It wasn’t a quality watch by any means, but it was comfortable to wear and had a sensor batteriesthat lit-up the screen automatically if it was dark. It only cost me a couple of pounds when I bought it, so I was quite amazed when I was told that a replacement battery was going to be £4.95 fitted. I reluctantly paid but I was not happy about it. I then found a kit on the internet that had all the tools that I needed to replace batteries in any digital watch. I then found that I could get all the batteries I needed from one of the Pound Shops. So I was sorted! So now, when anyone needs a new battery in their watch, I’m the first ‘port-of-call’. Five replaced in the past three weeks.

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Looking for your advice …

/ Tony / 4 Comments

Right from the first day, I have always allowed people or organisations to follow me without hindrance. I always thought that the point of a blog was to maximise the number of readers and subscribers. That was until recently. I don’t always follow back and don’t always look at their site either. Earlier this week, I noticed that I had a follower that appeared to be offering blogging advice and tips. Always on the lookout to improve, I thought I would take a look at their site. Clicking on the link at the top of one of their posts, opened up my browser with a warning message that the site was unsafe. Being the over-cautious one that I am, I quickly closed it down. I then removed subscriber from my reader list and breathed a sigh of relief. I also noticed that a couple of subscribers no longer had a ‘clickable’ by their name/site name and I removed these also.

So, the advice I’m looking for is: should I enable the Blog by Email option on my site? Does it deter the casual reader? Is it worth it for the number of subscribers that I get? Is it actually any safer?

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Twice in as many days …

/ Tony / Leave a comment

It’s beginning to get a little annoying now. This morning I got the second spoof email purporting to come from PayPal. Yesterdays was quite convincing if it had not been for the two spelling mistakes. SpooferA casual reader may not have spotted ‘bellow’ instead of ‘below’ and ‘passwurd’ instead of password. Inviting me to click on the  link ‘bellow’ to cancel the payment and change my ‘passwurd as a precaution. They had managed to get my email right, but did not include the usual checks that PayPal have in place. Todays was just an obvious spoof. Easily spotted by the way it was addressed “Dear (insert username here)‘” at the beginning of the email text

Now after working in an IT scenario for a number of years, I’ve become quite adept at spotting when an email looks wrong, but many people would have believed the first one. I have heard of people clicking these types of links and getting their personal payment details stolen.

Of course I report these kind of phishing emails, but I’m not sure anything gets done. I usually get an email back, a day or so later thanking me for reporting them and advising me to check my account an change my password. I add the address to my blocked list but the next time it will come from a different address. K*** gets many emails that look like they have come from AT&T that are fake. Usually start with “ATTCustomerCare@”, but then the next part of the address is so obviously false. Again, I have reported these to AT&T, but they don’t even respond. All a little annoying.

Update – I have just had a reply about the second spoof email. Even though there was over 100 intended recipients and even though the email was addressed badly, PayPal have deemed it not the be fraudulent. I have asked them to take another look.

A little bit pear shaped …

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Last week, K*** suddenly noticed that she could see ‘floaters’ out the side of one eye. She had just started a new prescription for her contact lenses and thought at first it was that. But it got worse and she was experiencing a bad headache. Called the optician on Friday, who told her to come straight away. They sent her to the eye-clinic at the hospital, and it seems that the gel that surrounds the eye had become damaged, causing a bleeds at the back of her eye. They told that it should just clear up in the next few days, but she has to go back in a fortnight for check. Now, it would have hard anyway, but we had invited K***’s parents for lunch that day and we couldn’t really put them off. So I was ‘entertainments officer’ for the day. K*** thought she would be home by half past one, but it was nearer five when she got back.

To top it all, whilst I was out on Monday, I think the wind got into my eye, as that has been sore since then. Feels swollen and is a little uncomfortable when I blink, but not to the same extent as K*** has suffered.

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My laptop has started to play-up a little. It’s seems to have been happening since the last major update to Windows, but I think it is just a coincidence. What is happening is that my Wi-Fi connection dropping out. Does not happen to any of the other devices we have connected though which kind of proves it is not the router. My other Windows 10 machine does not have the issue (although I don’t had it powered up as much) which may be another pointer away from the issue being down to Windows update. I did Google the issue, which led to a lot of possible reasons. The main reason seemed to point to an issue with the network card in the laptop. I’m awaiting a reply from the manufacturer as to what can be done, but I’m of the opinion, that I may have to live with it. I can connect directly with an ethernet cable and it’s not too inconvenient, but I will see what happens.

The issues with K***s emails reoccurred again yesterday, just over a month since the last time. The mail app on her iPad stopped  delivering any emails. They could be viewed on the website but were not being ‘pushed’ the the mail app. I could not get them on my laptop, which was the same as the last time. Turns out, that it was an issue with Yahoo (Sky email provider) which was exactly the same as last time. No-one at Sky or Yahoo seems to care about it. Both say they are sorry and are working on a fix. Maybe it’s time for Sky to have a rethink!

(Update: emails on her tablet are now coming through. some 24 hours after the issue started. Not good)

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Well both K*** and R*** are still in bed, and I think I’ll let them sleep longer. R*** has been a star over the past two days. I don’t know, but he seems to kind of know when K*** is not well and it tempers his behaviour for want of a better word. We have has no issues with him at all, not even when my laptop dropped the Wi-Fi.

I’m just going to start on the ironing , which shouldn’t take too long. I actually love ironing and have sort of ‘adopted’ the job as my own, which suits us both. Someone once told me that we all have some minor Autistic tendencies, and I think ironing must be one of mine.

 

It’s been a while …

/ Tony / Leave a comment

It’s been a few weeks since my last post. No particular reason except laziness really! I tend to post when I have something I want to get off my chest and usually wait until there are a couple of things that rile me. Well there has been some things that have ‘annoyed’ me somewhat, but I’m wanting to break away from the rant style post which may account for the ‘laziness’ I just mentioned. But until then …

I just about survived Christmas, as usual. Saying that, I wasn’t well from Boxing Day to the 29th. I had what I thought was a variation of the Norovirus. I did not have the sickness, but had all the rest. The one thing that seemed to floor me was the lack of energy. On the Friday, I spent the whole day in bed, most of it asleep, which is unusual for me. Lost about 8 pound in weight (sadly not permanent), but by New Years Eve I seemed to be a lot better and by the 2nd I was nearly up to my pre-Christmas weight again!

K*** and me had a trip out to the Designer Outlet at York on Friday. R*** was on respite and was due home that day, so K*** wanted to get out whilst we could. The weather was terrible. One minute it was raining, and the next it was foggy. K*** was driving as I had driven to Harrogate on Wednesday and wanted a rest from it. You know I lost count of the number of cars/vans/lorries that did not have any lights on. Many didn’t even have sidelights switched on. It’s no exaggeration to say that most of them were grey vehicles. So that’s a grey vehicle on a grey road on a grey day! I was told by my driving instructor that those types of day need headlights. I saw one police-car on the whole 25 minute journey and he was at the side of the road eating some food. What cay I say to that?

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K*** (or more accurately, me) has been having issues with her email. She does all her stuff on her iPad which suits her as she has not been much of a fan of my laptops. So ever since the latest update the iPad Mail App has been playing up. Emails have not been showing up when they arrive (as they did before) and I have tried to get it sorted. The problem is that I’m not an Apple expert so I have had to hit Google a lot. The problem was exasperated by the fact that her email client is Sky.com or the be more precise Yahoo! It did used to be Gmail until a couple of years ago and it’s not been the same since. Don’t get me wrong, when Yahoo works, it is very good, but when it doesn’t work there is noting worse. It seems to be a little better now, but she now has to refresh the app and wait until the emails appear now instead of them being there when she opened the app. It also does not help that she never deletes any emails. Still, Yahoo tells us that she space for another 54 million emails, so ‘she’ is not too worried. I may have to do a clear out for her at some point.

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So, in the spirit of blog posts to come (hopefully). Happy New Year

I suppose there is a reason …

/ Tony / Leave a comment

At work, we are now only able to access our pay advice via what is called a ‘Self-Service Portal’. This basically means a page on the works intranet site. The only really downside, is that you have to be at work (or on VPN) to get your payslip. Previously, it was possible to access the site from your personal computer/tablet by logging through the web-mail app.

So, how do you get your payslip home. You could print the thing, but work frowns upon unnecessary print so the only other way is to email to your personal email address. But wait …isn’t that a security risk? I know, I’ll pack it up in a zip file and password protect it. Oh no! Work doesn’t like that … it cannot virus check it! It refuses to send the mail!

So what do I do? Well, I open my personal webmail application (ZoHo mail. The one I’ve been playing around with) and attach the password protected zip file and mail it to my GMail account. No problems encountered, and my password protected payslip is safely delivered.

I think I know the reason that work wouldn’t send the password protected file. They would not want to be responsible for any problems with an email coming through their accounts. But hey didn’t stop me sending it through a personal email account, which I find a little odd!

I like the look of this …

/ Tony / Leave a comment

 

I am referring to the new free theme Karuna. I’ve been on the lookout for a change of theme as I’m beginning to tire of my current one. There is nothing wrong with the Independent Publisher theme and it has served me well for a long time, but I think I need a change.

There seems to be a lot of things that will be familiar in Karuna, but the overall look is a bit cleaner. The default font looks tidier and I like the idea of a menu at the top and a side menu. So I might just give it whirl over the weekend.

(Posted by email)

Is it a scam …?

/ Tony / 4 Comments

Yesterday, I received an email direct to my WordPress email from an organisation that calls itself  ‘My Trending Stories’. Having a quick look on their website, it seems that they collect posts from various people on various subjects.

The email drops a few flattering phrases into the body, such as “…and strongly admire the content. Your writing abilities and ability to engage readers is remarkable and a very rare asset…” and “…strongly believe that your writing aligns with our core value…” and concludes with “…we only allow a certain amount of writers on the website in order to provide mentorship and personal growth…”. Now, this all sounds very interesting and promising, but is there a catch? I emailed them back for more details, and the reply was very much of the same. It appears that I would have to post regularly eg two or three times a week and can even repost work I have posted on my blog at WordPress.

I did a little Googling around, and I understand that a number of people are among the ‘certain amount of writers’ that this site  is attempting to attract. I have to say, that I am a little intrigued, even interested, but I have doubts. Nothing I can put my finger on, but I’m a bit uncertain. Maybe it’s the commitment or maybe it’s the excessive flattery that worries me, I don’t know.

I would be interested to know if any of my followers/readers have had the same email or any experience of this site.

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Now for the “Rant of The Day.” I’m not the biggest fan of tennis. In fact, I’m not really a sports fan at all. But K*** like to watch Wimbledon, especially when it’s Andy Murray. So the point of my rant today is how it is shown on television. The BBC covers all the big matches, but they seem to like to mess around with the channels. Tonight, Mr Murray’s match was on BBC 1 until around 6pm when it was moved to BBC 2, to allow for the news. It then flipped back to BBC1. Why? Why could they not re-arrange the schedules and put the tennis on BBC 2 and BBC 3? It’s not as if they haven’t done it before. I have an idea, that it is to stop people from ‘live pausing’ the matches. That is all well and good and some of us can remember the days before live pausing, but it is a feature that a lot of people have and we should be able to use it. Come on BBC, get your act together.

That seemed to work quite well …

/ Tony / Leave a comment

After a couple of false starts, I eventually got an email post to look almost the way I expected. A bit disappointed that one of the text effects didn’t transpose from the email. Using a coloured font does not seem to have an effect. It maybe the email client I used (work Outlook 2010) which is getting a bit past it’s sell by date now. I shall have to try using Outlook 2016 and also try using Outlook.com.

I’ve not tried embedding an image in a post, which is the next test followed by posting multiple images. From what I understand, if I post multiple images one after each other, they will be converted into a gallery. I want to test if the same happens if I post multiple images with some text in between each image.

I also noticed, that using the Independent Publisher theme does not appear to show any tags, that I add to a post. The categories are displayed but not the tags. I dropped a query into one of the help forums because I thought tags should be visible.

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Stupidest comment I have ever heard “I suppose I will vote to leave, but I don’t really know why!”

This was in response to a question about the EU referendum. Now I know that there has been a huge amount of information and dare I say it ‘misinformation’ about this poll, but you have at least to know why you vote the way you are doing. But then that is the way our country works. Many people suffered and even died over the years, to give us the right to vote. It always astounds me that the same right gives people the ‘right’ not to vote. I could rant on for days about voting, but that maybe for another time. In a nutshell I believe that if you don’t vote, without a good reason, the you should lose that right. Not straight away. Possibly a ‘three strikes and your out’ type of thing, but there should be some deterrent.

Testing ‘Blog by Email’ option

/ Tony / Leave a comment

I seem to recall giving this a try some time ago. I must have had some issues with it (or maybe it had issues with me!) because I think I would have posted more this way. There has been the occasion when I have not had access to the internet. An email post via my smartphone would have solved the problem.

Anyway, this is just a test, so …

TEST TEST TESTING TESTING TEST TEST TESTING TESTING

Communications …

/ Tony / Leave a comment

I’ve come to the conclusion that the work place is not an appropriate scenario for Instant Messaging. As the Council moves away from fixed office bases to a more mobile solution, the need for mobile communication has become greater. The reliance on mobile phone technology as opposed to fixed line, has increased some costs. Some see the way around these extra costs is the Instant Message provision that Microsoft offer. There are enormous benefits to this form of communications, but it also has its downside.

When it first arrived in the office, we were all amazed at the possibilities that email offered. However, it soon became a problem when it was a lot easier to email a colleague than to write a letter/memo and even more convenient than the telephone. Soon we were swamped with masses of email, that we either did not read, or spent most of our time reading rather than working.

Now we have the Instant Message. An email sits the receivers inbox until they read or delete it. Not the case with the Instant Message. The thing about Instant Messaging, is that it only works if both/all communicators are online. But I suppose the biggest downside (well for our scenario) is that, unless your ICT allows to to save your messages, once the conversation is over, all evidence of that conversation is gone. So when your manager says it is okay for you to leave early, there is nothing to back up your claim if your manager denies all knowledge of their agreement.

The other downside is that there is no hiding place. An email can be left until your ready to read it. A telephone can be ignored with the claim that the volume was turned down. An Instant Message is in your face. You cannot miss that persistent flashing icon on your task bar.

I will use the Instant Message tool at work … it’s Corporate. But I will always use email, if I need a record of a communication. It is so much safer.

Been a poor blogging week …

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Title says it all. It has been a poor week for my blog. As I mentioned last time, I have been on leave this week and other things have kind of taken over. For example, I re-painted the ceiling of our en-suite shower. Don’t ask how that went, suffice to say, it took all day. Then there were other things that made sitting down and typing a few words , a bit of a chore. Although I did have a stab at the Writing Prompts – Creative Copy Challenge. This blog give you 10 random words and you have to make a short story using all the words. As the subject says, it was a bit of a challenge, but as some of the words this time seemed to suggest an Easter theme, I came up with this.

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Friday was a hard day. The eldest son and his girlfriend are buying a house, but as with all house buying, there have been a slight delay in getting the key. The place that they have been living for the past two years has been shared with a friend of the owners … it’s complicated, but the short story is that they basically had to move out yesterday. There had been a lot of issues there, and they both thought that the had just got to get out. Problem! With no key to the new house it seemed like an impossible situation. Ta da! Family and friends to the rescue. Me and K***, his university friend R** helped them shift all their worldly goods (and there was a lot of them) to one of his drama group friends garage and spare room. They are also staying at this friends house until they can move into their new one. Now the husband of this drama group friend is local, or maybe I should say national dignitary. I do not agree with the majority of his Governments politics, and I’m not going to embarrass them by stating their names, but have to say, they are genuine, nice people.

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As expected, I did check on my work emails during the week. However I did not answer any, and they are all marked as ‘un-read’. Some of them will just go straight in to the trash/deleted folder, but intend to do what everyone else does, and ‘do a catch-up’ and read everyone of them, before starting anything else. Should put an hour or so away.

All going along nicely …

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The hospital appointment went well. The doctor has always had a knack of being ‘a little behind’ as the nurse politely put it. So it was no surprise when the appointment was delayed by about 30 minutes. I had blood pressure taken and the (same) nurse observed that the ‘bottom half’ was a little high, but nothing to worry about. I put it down to driving through the centre of York. Why is it, that visitors to that grand city seem to like wandering into the road for no apparent reason?

Anyway, the ultra-sound scan I had the previous week was just what the doctor was expecting. He listened to my heart, and that was fine, and he never even mentioned my blood pressure. We had a chat about how I was feeling as opposed to before the operation, and what was going to happen in the future. That was it! In his words, it was ‘all going along nicely!’

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That is about it really. I’m on leave for a week and I don’t really know whether anyone will pick up the work I do. My line manager (gnash, growl, spit) should do it, but I can’t see it happening unless she is forced. I would say I don’t care, but I do! I know I will be checking my emails every day, and I’ll try not to answer any of them, but for the past ten years, I always have kept in touch while on leave. It’s just something I do.

Up and at ‘em again!

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Well my ‘blogging time out’ did not last very long, did it? I will have to take this offline at some point in the near future as I want to change the theme I am using. I am not too happy with the text layout on the Penscratch theme.

I have started knitting again. I used to knit quite a lot, but got out of the habit some 10/15 years back. What got me started again, was seeing somebody wearing a knitted poppy. I thought to myself “That looks easy. I could do knit that!” And so I did. It took only an hour or so, once I got started, but then it took 3 months for me to get in the mood to make it up (always been a problem.) It looked as good as I expected it to look and K*** was pleased with it. So pleased that announced that a daffodil would look nice! I think it was more than a hint and so I trawled the Internet looking for a pattern. Found one and had a go. I goes on from there. Four daffodils later and I’ve a full set of needles and accessories. I’m now also half way through a cushion cover and over 70% the way through a Clanger. The whole thing takes me back years.

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My email is playing up again. Well, not so much my email it’s K***s. I’m unable to download her emails into Outlook 2013. Problem has only just started (like yesterday) but it has happened before. The problem lies with the server I think. You see, my email accounts are with Google and Microsoft. K***s on the other hand is provided by Sky and is powered by Yahoo. That is the issue I think, Yahoo! I was very disappointed when Sky announced they were changing to Yahoo from Gmail, but my complaint fell upon deaf ears at Sky.

I would love to get here away from using the Sky email address, but to change now would be a nightmare. I think the current issue will rectify itself over the next day or two, but it is very frustrating at the moment.

Watch out for this one ….

/ Tony / Leave a comment

I’m pretty keen, when it comes to my online security and tend to delete any emails that offer any type of security/antivirus service, often without even reading them. On this occasion though, I thought I would share it with you, as a number of people I know have received this email and at least one of them has been fooled and responded to it. I have copied the text below (all links have been removed).

Dear Sir or Madame

We at VirtureScan are an industry renowned internet security company. We have been contacted by your Government as your ISP is alarmed at the volume of emails originating from your computer’s IP address. We have scanned some of these emails using our VitrureScan software and believe your computer has been contaminated with the Zeta321 virus. Currently there is no current AV software that is able to detect this virus. However we at VirtureScan have developed an online scanner that is able to hunt down this and remove it from your equipment.

There is a charge for this service, and the cost will be automatically deducted from your Paypal account. We understand that your ISP are willing to re-imbuse you for your cost.

We are currently offering a large discount of 68%, if you undertake the service by the end of today. After this the charge will reverse back to its original charge of $360.00.

If you our a responsible person, then you will take up this offer now. Click on the likn below to be taken to our site.

As you can see, there are a number of spelling and grammatical errors, and this type of thing should ring alarm bells. The link takes you to a website which I understand automatically installs a key logger type of virus. These capture every word you type and are used by hackers to break into any online banking you have. The name of the company changes often so it may not be the same if you receive the email. Just be aware.