Head Rambles

… and for once I’m not talking about the virus [mine, or that Covid thingy].

I’m talking about batteries which seem to be joining the long list of hardware items that have set out to annoy me.

Last night I went to bed. There’s nothing unusual in that and I have been doing it for most of my life. Having found myself a comfy[ish] spot on the mattress and after kicking Penny onto the other bed I settled down to read myself to sleep. I find a good read last thing focuses the mind on something bland and I can forget my cares and worries before dozing off.

I retrieved my Kindle from under Penny and there was that dreaded symbol – a blank screen with a cartoon of a battery on it. Fuck! The battery was dead. What was even more annoying was that I had charged it only a couple of days ago.

When a Kindle runs out of power it is dead. Unlike a phone or a laptop you can’t just plug it in and start reading. You have to wait until it has a bit of charge in it first and then you can start reading while the rest of the battery fills up. So I had to search around in the darkness for a lead and then plug it in. But the lead was shortish so I had to lie on my other side on a lumpy part of the mattress while it reached that minimum charge.

I have been reading on and off for almost all the last seventy years. I have read tens of thousands of books and never once in all those years did a book run out of power. I could leave a book open for weeks and it always retained its charge. I can’t say the same for a fucking Kindle.

Don’t get me wrong. I like the Kindle, once I got used to it. It does have some irritating habits like opening a book several chapters away from where I left it off, and flicking pages when I accidentally touch the screen but it has two vast advantages over the old papyrus books: it [usually] remembers where I finished reading and also there is the availability of a vast store of books without leaving my bed. There is no sense of panic when I turn the last page and realise I have nothing left to read as I can just download another book.

There is one unusual feature of a Kindle. It has no screws. There is no way of dismantling it or accessing the battery. It is one solid sealed unit with one button and one USB port. This is very frustrating for someone who like to take new purchases asunder and a bit worrying if the battery does fail. I suppose it just means a new Kindle which is a nice marketing ploy?

This morning I went to check my phone for messages. The battery was flat! Herself has been giving out to me that I never check my phone for messages [which is true] so I have taken to actually checking first thing. Most people use their phones for phone calls [surprising?], browsing the Interwebs, taking selfies or texting their mates. My phone is generally used for a different purpose on a very regular basis – as a torch. This is by far the handiest feature but I suppose it does suck the battery a bit?

My Kindle is now charged and my phone is charging.

There were no messages.

Herself just told me about something she heard on the radio.

It was one of those stories where I knew the ending when she was only a quarter way in.

It concerned a nurse who had just come off a double shift duty when she got a phone call to say there was a problem with her bank account [now you’ve all guessed where this is going?!]. To cut a long story short and reach the inevitable conclusion, she gave her bank details and her entire account was cleaned out. She lost every cent she had saved, working through the pandemic.

It’s very easy to say she deserved it. God knows there has been enough in the meeja telling us about the latest scams and what not to do, but the poor girl was tired and not expecting she’d be a victim so I don’t really blame her.

I have been the target of the latest batch of scammers [what is a collective noun for scammers? A Nigerian?] and they are really fucking good. And I mean really professional. They are convincing and friendly. They know your name and address and can appear to know everything about you and of course they are only contacting you in your best interests. Suggest to them that they are scamming and they will laugh before sounding hurt – how could you possibly believe that?

I almost hanker for the days when some gobshite from Darkest Africa would phone me to tell me “dat my Windows machine hab a virus and day clean it fo me”! Those calls were fun because they were so blatantly obvious and I could [and did] have a lot of fun with them, winding them up and wasting their time.

The modern lot are a thousand times more convincing. I am a bit of an old lag when it comes to scams and they damn near had me convinced they were real. In the end I found a way of trapping them. Just ask them for more details about “my case”. The first one was about a complaint I had lodged online [I told this story before?]. As it happened, I had lodged a complaint so this call could be legitimate, but there were one or two things about it that rang alarm bells. My solution was to ask them for more details about my complaint. The girl in my case laughed and said surely I must know the details and I said that of course I did, but did she? She tried bluffing but I knew I had her and hung up. She phoned me back, all hurt and insulted [I did say they were professional? Add bold to that] but I hung up on her again.

The same girl phoned me again a couple of weeks later. Same girl, same phone number but a different scam [obviously a mistake on her part?] and I laughed at her and hung up again.

So now I am even more cautious. I get emails from An Post [Irish postal service] telling me there is a parcel awaiting delivery but could I please click a link to pay an excess delivery fee. I delete them. I get numerous emails telling me my Netflix or Amazon accounts have been compromised and could I log in to verify my account. I delete them [I don’t have accounts with them anyway]. I get phonecalls saying my Interweb connection has been compromised and “press 1” or I will be disconnected. I ignore them.

I think twice – three times – more – before putting credit card details or personal details into a website

However, I can’t blame anyone for falling for a scam.

They are just so credible