Tag: Family

Categories
ramblings of a madman

… It’s been awhile

Hello one and all. Yes it has been a long time since my last post. That last post was April 3rd of this year to be exact. The McKeeSpot is still around, and I am still alive and kicking.

So you ask, what have I been up to? As I mentioned in that April post, I have found this to be an interesting time in my life. And much has transpired over the past six months that I plan to write about. I have been very busy, both personally and professionally.

Lets start with the professional. I am still working a normal work week. I am still in my current job. Soon I will have surpassed 35 years of employment. I will turn 65 next year and will be old enough for Medicare. As I write this, I plan to continue to work for a while longer. Guess I haven’t found a better gig to support the third act in my life, yet.

Personally I have been exploring the world in terms of the internet. And yes, it is a dangerous place. There are scams and there are scammers. You can be hacked and not know what to do. It doesn’t matter if it’s a dating site. It is a random and you are infected before you know it. It can be a random email, or a text message from some unknown number. Even established websites (LinkedIn, Substack, FaceBook, etc.) have their share. They are full of scammers who prey on us lonely hearts (or naive people). The established sites don’t know who these scammers are. However, they are aware they exist. Good luck trying to report them to get them removed. All you can do is block them.

Or they block you and have moved on to their next target. Some have lots of followers. They may not be legitimate influencer’s but they certainly can influence one’s future if you get connected with them.

And why does the magnificent seven tech companies sell tools or allow the scammers to run? Why do these large companies allow for fraudulent email services to be established? Mask phone numbers? Good luck using tools to search phone numbers and location, or explore the names of people. If they do not have a legitimate footprint on the internet, they are fake. Alternatively, they have correctly limited their information. But once your information is out there, good luck trying to remove it. With AI, a machine creates a whole new life for you. It’s not created by yourself or by fact. This machine can destroy your credibility and take your ID. Cyberdyne is alive and well. I read this morning about growing grassroots efforts. Their objective is to limit or not allow data centers across the country. They take too much power, they destroy a hard working jobs, thinking that the future will be better.

And the tricks are the usual. Found you interesting or love your posts. Lets continue the conversation on some other app. WhatsApp looks like the instrument of choice, but there are others. There I have personally conversed with six different women, all who have the same line. They are lonely. The younger men their age are immature. Let’s invest jointly into a crypto account and make lots of money. This way, we can travel the world together. Yet they are all young, attractive, and are tech savvy and have good jobs. Or so it appears…

I have found that several crypto platforms that are defi, or decentralized finance, are fake, and the scam is set. Some are actually registered with FinCEN. Some of the crypto companies know the fake sites but will not tell you as such. You send your money and it is lost, all the while they suggest excellent returns. They may look legit. Some are legitimate. Nonetheless, most will let you withdraw some, but not all, of your money. Why? Because your money left the moment it was deposited. The women always want you to invest more. Those ocean houses and world travel cost dollars.

You can quickly end the conversation with the scammers in most cases. State up front that you are not interested in investing with them in crypto. They quickly move on. For others, it takes awhile. They sell you on their legitimacy. They have great pictures. More often than not, the pictures are from other people’s Instagram or other sites.

Over the past year, I have conversed with six. I will write about all six and the trials and tribulations. You can (and will) lose money. Sadly, our government, and the crypto companies, are unable, or unwilling to deal with these fraudulent investment scams. The government has limited tools. The crypto companies will do only so much, and it is to limit their liability, not yours.

I am sure that there are legitimate crypto investments. I have found some of those. Often, legitimate women that I have conversed with have helped me. They are exploring the internet, just as I was, while looking towards the future. I still converse with them. The real test is whether they want to meet in person, no strings attached. I will write about these, because they too run the gamut of stories and falsehoods.

Exercise caution with anyone you meet on the internet. The future we are leaving our children will not be as great. It will not be as wonderful as the one our parents left us.

I will write more in the future. Until then, it’s a brave new world out there. Be safe. Be careful.

Categories
ramblings of a madman

Today is Sunday, July 16

Happy Sunday. It is sunny and almost noon here in Northern New Mexico. I have had my morning coffee, paid the bills, caught up on some news, and managed to get to the grocery store. Quite a productive day, so far. I found a brief moment to rush a posting on the blog. So here we go…

Yesterday I managed to take a Steve day. A Steve day is where I get out of the house and go off on some adventure or execute a ritual from times past. Well in this case, I went to Santa Fe, for all things…wait for it…lunch at Red Lobster. Yes, it is the simplest things in life. Given the distances between points in the west, compared to the east, one can drive miles as part of the adventure.

Except this was not much of an adventure. Only a 30-mile trip by car. Checking out the blue sky, running the air conditioner on high, and blasting the music while driving. Relaxing! Yet with gas still at $3.59 a gallon, the road trip has become somewhat more of a luxury than an adventure. That may be why it is best to combine the trips into the weekend getaway or plan multiple errands for the same trip.

I finally used that gift card that the kids got me for Christmas. It was tasty and filling. Followed that up with a trip to Dillard’s. Yes, I was at the mall! Malls still exist and are an important socio-economic element in society. Dillard’s remains an anchor tenet at Sante Fe Place, the mall south of Santa Fe. Malls were first hit hard by on-line shopping, and then the pandemic. There I bought some dress clothes for a possible trip in August, to attend the wedding of my cousin’s daughter. Not sure yet because there is much going on later in the month work wise. After clothes, some coffee and a grinder. Necessary for my morning habit.

When I first got to New Mexico, I spent lots of time at the mall, trying to adjust to my new surroundings, meet new people, get out of the house and have something outside of work look forward to. It was typically lunch and a movie, or lunch, a movie and a trip to the bookstore. After the long years of work, marriage and divorce, what I have become to call the hibernation years, I am finally resuming what I hope is the return to normalcy. After all, I am a human of habit. As the kids get older and are onto bigger and better things in their own lives, what becomes my third act in life is slowly taking shape, or so I may think.

For me, life is basically reduced to three acts. The first act encompasses the first 29 years and covers growing up and going to school. The second act, which I guess is slowly coming to an end, are the work years. These years represent the 30+ years here in New Mexico. When I retire, which remains unclear, will be the end of the second act and the start of the third act.

As soon as I have laid out that third act, then I can pull the lever and make it happen. I find that music is an important element of those periods and perhaps that is part of the problem. I have not found the correct sound for the next act. Yesterday I found myself dusting off some old music from the 80’s and 90’s, in the form of the Screaming Trees, Husker Du, the Buzzcocks, and other vintage sounds. According to Wikipedia, the Screaming Trees are no more, but the Buzzcocks released an album in 2022.

I don’t know why music fills much of the stages of my life. Corny to call the selections an operatic soundtrack? I have a lousy voice, cannot carry a tune, I cannot play an instrument, but find that music is at the center of many of my memories, from growing up in Pennsylvania, to college, to today. I have given thought about taking up an instrument when I retire, so maybe that will happen.

Sadly, I should have gone back to Pennsylvania last weekend for my uncle’s funeral. The last immediate relative from my childhood passed away earlier in the week. Except for the neighbors, who are in their 80’s, some cousins scattered throughout the state, there isn’t much of a reason to return. My connections with that time are limited and relegated to memories.

Except for the occasional Facebook postings, much of my interactions with where I grew up are now just memories. There is no more Chief Logan High School. Most of my friends from high school, or for that matter, college, have moved on. Away from Pennsylvania. Contact is reduced to Facebook.

It has been very hot the past week or so, with the daily temperatures getting up into the high 80’s or low 90’s. Some wind, low humidity, but no rain. I have been growing tomatoes and sweet peppers on the back deck. So far, so good, but I have been applying lots of water to them.

Too hot, unfortunately, to work outside at the stables and finish the fence. Might have to adjust my schedule and work very early in the morning. We shall see. Hay deliveries resume in a week and so I need to get into the summer weekend activities. After the fence, I need to work on repairs to the stable buildings, the back yard at the house, and my ultimate desire to find land away from everyone to have a weekend retreat, a compound, a place to get away from it all.

On that note, I will end it here. No pictures for this update. Just words about the weekend. Nothing about the happenings of the past week. Hope you have a great weekend and week ahead. Until next time…

Categories
the week in review

At home. Quarantined. No school. No going to work. Life has changed.

It has been a few weeks since my last post. I had started several posts but never finished them. Much has changed since my last post.

Sadly, we are coming up on day 14 of the 15 days to slow the spread. They call it “flatten the curve”. As it is, I am starting my second week of working from home. Only so much of my job that I can do at home. Lots to do but working on things, trying to access my work computer from home has been difficult.

For the kids, the school year has been cancelled. In New Mexico, we have 208 positive cases out of 10,977 total test as of the latest information on the New Mexico health website. I am sure that the numbers will only increase. At present, no one in Los Alamos County has tested positive, but several people in every county surrounding us has tested positive. It’s just a matter of time I am afraid. But I fear that there will be a rush to return and that will only make things worse. We have been instructed to work from home in order to limit the number of people at work. Well if you cram four to five to ten people per office, the outcome will not be good. Some people have been designated as essential to the national security mission. So for them, work continues. I don’t like to be considered “non essential”!

Yes we will pay in terms of our economy in the short term, but the longer term and many unnecessary lives is not worth it.

Even if you are young, or otherwise healthy, you are at risk and your activities can increase the risk for others. It is crucial that you do your part to slow the spread of the Coronavirus.

The only times we head outside is either out for food, to the grocery store, to walk the dog, or to the stables to feed the horse. Have plenty of supplies in terms of food. Dreary Sunday morning. Ruby is fine.

Ruby at feeding Sunday morning, March 29, 2020.

Spend lots of time reading things on Facebook. Whether it is posts from friends who are similarly locked up inside, or the news spinets that are for or against the President, we all have to pull together to beat this illness.

I find this interesting in a scientific way. Several times a day, I venture to see the updates on the Johns Hopkins website ( https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html ). It saddens me that it is a scoreboard,

From https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

much like when I turn to CNBC to catch the daily scoreboard of the stock market. Certainly have taken a hit as far as my retirement accounts, but that will recover over time, just like we will recover over time from this illness.

It’s times like these that make me ponder, make reflect, about what are the best things in my life. Family. My kids. This adventure of mine that will soon surpass 59 years on this planet.

I do not have the illness, not that I have been tested. I find myself checking my temperature several times a day. Wash my hands frequently. Drink lots of fluids. However, those damn seasonal allergies make people look at you if you are in the store and sneeze, cough, blow your nose, or look sullen around the eyes.

Soon, this too shall pass, and our lives will return to some semblance of normalcy. I am sure that the dog would like to have her days of peace and quite.

Jewel sitting still for a moment.

Don’t forget to fill out your Census 2020 forms. I did. Every ten years we count the number of Americans, well at least we try…Until then. Everyone stay safe, hug your family, and be careful.