Al's Blog-o-Sphere

You’ve probably gotten phone calls from one of these scammers. The ones where you get a recording telling you it’s an important message about your credit card and they want to lower your interest rate. Maybe you never listen that long, I know I never did.

When one number called so often and for so long that I started to recognize it on the called ID, I starter to pay attention. I Googled the number and found dozens of web sites about these phone scams and that many people are receiving the same calls. What are they all about?

The consensus is that they are bottom-feeding scammers out to get your personal financial information for illicit purposes. At the very least they provide a worthless service that they charge either your credit card or phone bill for. Not one poster had any information that could be construed as a legitimate purpose for the calls. In fact, it is all but impossible to reach a real representative of any of these companies.

Here’s what I found out through repeated searches on many of these numbers that called me and sorting through the online complaints sites. Continue Reading…

Okay, I’m sitting here in December with the sun shining and wishing I could go for a ride. I put the bike away yesterday, taking all the batteries, lights and electronics off and bringing them indoors, and covered it up with a tarp.
I did several rides of length – overnighters – last summer. The trip to Angola for Memorial Day, the trip to the Rochester Hamfest and the Erie Canal tour. But after that, I sort of lost my steam and didn’t get out again all summer. Maybe it was the heat, the rain, other things going on, or just a succession of excuses, but once immobile, I tended to stay immobile. Inertia set in.

But I’ve learned a lot. Continue Reading…

A while back I had written in this blog about the experience of my son’s lung transplant. I don’t much feel like writing this post, but in the interest of following up the story, I am.
Albert lost his 35-year battle against Cystic Fibrosis this past week. He passed away in Pittsburgh at the same hospital he had received his new lungs in.
He had been in the hospital for nearly the past six months. Problems with lung infections caused the new lungs to present rejection symptoms. The cocktail of drugs being used to fight both the infections and the rejection took their toll on his kidneys and he experienced kidney failure. Eventually, they reached the point where if they treated the infection aggressively, they would lose the battle against rejection and if they treated for the rejection, the infection would get worse.
His brother and I visited him and were on the way there again when the news arrived. He had refused a ventilator and accepted his end with courage and grace.
He told his brother, Frank, who is also a CF patient and currently undergoing transplant approval, that the transplant was worth it and he was glad for the extra time it gave him. He had the transplant three years ago.
Please remember Albert in your thoughts. Should you wish, a donation to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation in his name would be appreciated.

His cartoon web page has been updated as a memorial site. You can see it here.

Many friends have left touching notes at his Facebook page as well.

I hate cell phone accessories. Even more than cell phones.

Cell phones have become a fact of life, though. A necessity that we can’t live without. So we pile on features to make us think we like them. My phone is a camera, a web browser, an email client, a personal assistant, a toy and lastly, a phone.

The funny thing is, it’s not very good at any of those things…

I just ordered a bluetooth earpiece. You’ve got to have one or risk a ticket in your car if the phone rings. I don’t talk much while I drive, but it is safer than even the corded earpieces on the rare occasion that I do. Continue Reading…