Random thing you loathe right now.

What an absolutely sh*t
day
week
month
year

past six years it has been.

I'm glad that permafrost thaw has gotten a lot of media attention lately, but it drives me crazy that so many places (many that should know better) call it permafrost melt instead of permafrost thaw. Makes my eye twitch a little every time I see it.

I'm getting hundreds of emails a week claiming to come from PayPal. They come to my Gmail address. Either someone signed up for a PayPal account using my Gmail address or I'm just getting that many spoofed emails per week. Either way I have no idea what to do other than to close my PayPal account so I can safely just shuttle these off to the trash using a filter.

Has anyone ever had luck getting PayPal to sort something like this out? It should be possible to prove that my email address is being used by someone else if it is. It should also be possible for them to somehow inoculate their customers from such blatant phishing attempts, shouldn't it?

DSGamer wrote:

I'm getting hundreds of emails a week claiming to come from PayPal. They come to my Gmail address. Either someone signed up for a PayPal account using my Gmail address or I'm just getting that many spoofed emails per week. Either way I have no idea what to do other than to close my PayPal account so I can safely just shuttle these off to the trash using a filter.

Has anyone ever had luck getting PayPal to sort something like this out? It should be possible to prove that my email address is being used by someone else if it is. It should also be possible for them to somehow inoculate their customers from such blatant phishing attempts, shouldn't it?

I keep getting an email saying my paypal credit card is not linked to my account, using the old email I had on paypal, and on the new email I get an email saying I am prequalified to apply for one. I have never had a credit card through paypal, and nothing shows up on my credit report for one, so I just ignore the emails.

I think it's the latest trend in scam/spam emails.

I occasionally check my Junk mailbox and have lately been seeing TONS of emails saying my Amazon order shipped, my AT&T monthly bill has increased (I don't use AT&T), my new DMV plate is ready, my CC is blocked, etc.

Looks like they're targeting services that most people have on auto-pay, the 'set it & forget it' stuff that raises alarm bells for unsuspecting individuals.

The amount of stuff that comes to my mynameATgmail.com account is more than what comes to my junk gmail account and I have used the junk account for more than the myname account. Oddly both of them seem to get more spam than a third account that is actually my main account for most things (the one I used to register here).

Well, I broke down and took the trouble of calling them today and actually someone was using my email address. Not sure what they get out of doing that or if it was a typo. Either way they wouldn't be getting their notifications.

My Gmail account uses 2-factor auth, strong passwords, all that stuff. So I know no one has been in my account. Not sure why they used it, then. Either way, PayPal shut it down.

I'm partly relieved to have it sorted it and partly unnerved that someone is running around signing up for stuff using my email address and apparently I can't stop them.

Another scam to watch for is if you suddenly get a flood of spam emails. They do this to try to bury any emails that come through of real transactions they made using your account.

We actually got a PHONE CALL from "PayPal" last week. Given that they only have my cell number and not the landline, I just ignored it and hung up. I guess if they make enough of those calls, they'll get at least a few bites.

American healthcare and the mess it is hurting my friend.

Statistics homework.

As posted in the pet thread, losing a pet f*cking sucks, yo.

St.Hillary wrote:

As posted in the pet thread, losing a pet f*cking sucks, yo.

It does f*cking suck, I'm very sorry for your loss.

Somewhat related, my uncle succumbed to bile duct cancer late last week. f*ck cancer.

St.Hillary wrote:

As posted in the pet thread, losing a pet f*cking sucks, yo.

This last year has been a lot of kicks in the dick with moments of stuff actually going well to lull you into a false sense of security.

Kannon wrote:
St.Hillary wrote:

As posted in the pet thread, losing a pet f*cking sucks, yo.

This last year has been a lot of kicks in the dick with moments of stuff actually going well to lull you into a false sense of security.

Yeah. I lost 3 in 2017 right after losing my mom. It was easily the most depressing year of my life.

Obviously losing my mom was the worst, but losing my pets just kicked me while I was down. It made me so profoundly sad.

DSGamer wrote:
Kannon wrote:
St.Hillary wrote:

As posted in the pet thread, losing a pet f*cking sucks, yo.

This last year has been a lot of kicks in the dick with moments of stuff actually going well to lull you into a false sense of security.

Yeah. I lost 3 in 2017 right after losing my mom. It was easily the most depressing year of my life.

Obviously losing my mom was the worst, but losing my pets just kicked me while I was down. It made me so profoundly sad.

Absolutely. Losing pets are real serious loses. It's the death of family member.

thrawn82 wrote:
DSGamer wrote:
Kannon wrote:
St.Hillary wrote:

As posted in the pet thread, losing a pet f*cking sucks, yo.

This last year has been a lot of kicks in the dick with moments of stuff actually going well to lull you into a false sense of security.

Yeah. I lost 3 in 2017 right after losing my mom. It was easily the most depressing year of my life.

Obviously losing my mom was the worst, but losing my pets just kicked me while I was down. It made me so profoundly sad.

Absolutely. Losing pets are real serious loses. It's the death of family member.

Totally. I went through some real sh*t in my life with those cats. My mom, dear as she was, wasn't the one who sat on my lap and made things slightly better for 17 years through bouts of severe depression, anxiety, injuries, etc.

Even thinking about it now makes me sad.

DSGamer wrote:
thrawn82 wrote:
DSGamer wrote:
Kannon wrote:
St.Hillary wrote:

As posted in the pet thread, losing a pet f*cking sucks, yo.

This last year has been a lot of kicks in the dick with moments of stuff actually going well to lull you into a false sense of security.

Yeah. I lost 3 in 2017 right after losing my mom. It was easily the most depressing year of my life.

Obviously losing my mom was the worst, but losing my pets just kicked me while I was down. It made me so profoundly sad.

Absolutely. Losing pets are real serious loses. It's the death of family member.

Totally. I went through some real sh*t in my life with those cats. My mom, dear as she was, wasn't the one who sat on my lap and made things slightly better for 17 years through bouts of severe depression, anxiety, injuries, etc.

Even thinking about it now makes me sad.

I hear you. I lost two cats last year, it's still melancholy thinking of them. I have a new cat now, but she doesn't fill the void the other two have left.

I'm sure I've posted this loathe in this thread before, but... FedEx SmartPost.

Please, shippers, if you're shipping things with SmartPost, don't hide the fact that it's SmartPost behind the name "Standard Shipping." TELL me it's SmartPost. Seriously, I will pay for the next step up in shipping just to avoid SmartPost.

I could walk the package to my goddamn door faster than SmartPost.

The Minecraft (Java Edition) purchase process -- specifically the initial age verification process, used by literally millions of parents each year.

I simply cannot buy the game for my second daughter. Two different profiles, three different emails, five different credit cards. If it's not the "problem with credit card" error, it's their brain-dead web page saying "you must enter a profile name" when it's right there. The first purchase went through just fine, so something's messed up with her profile. And her second profile. And round and round we go.

I love that my kids like Minecraft, and I'm happy to buy them their own accounts after all this time, but this is teeth-grindingly frustrating. I guess I'll just lie about her age on a new "grown-up" account. But it can't be with her email address or her profile name since they're tied up with borked profiles. So I'll ask Mojang to fix it or reset those profiles:

Mojang Support wrote:

We're currently replying to cases received on April 2nd. We thank you for your patience.

I am literally trying to pay them, and their systems are so fragile that they won't allow me to give them my money. If only they were a successful game company with revenue enough to hire some competent web page designers or database administrators. OH WAIT

Unwanted wedgies when driving.

MaxShrek wrote:

Unwanted wedgies when driving.

As opposed to wanted ones?

Jonman wrote:
MaxShrek wrote:

Unwanted wedgies when driving.

As opposed to wanted ones?

No kink-shaming... rawwwrrr

New York metro area infrastructure.

Air conditioners that don’t work.

Sure, we just scraped up the cash to do a bathroom remodel that starts the first week of June. So, really, this is just the perfect moment to spring for buy a new air conditioner.

That’s what get for assuming we could limp through another summer. The unit is about 27 years old.

On the bright side you should see some efficiency gains in the new unit over the 27 year old one.

Agent 86 wrote:

On the bright side you should see some efficiency gains in the new unit over the 27 year old one.

Yeah, it should be a nice improvement.

Th last house we owned had the craziest, and supposedly most efficient, unit ever made. The house was a pretty large brick house, and usually they require two units, one for upstairs, and one for downstairs. Instead, the previous owners installed this high tech unit that used a series dampers and multiple thermostats to send air where it was needed. It was a beast, but it could operate super efficiently by ignoring areas that didn't need the cool air.

Then it stopped working one day. I called the company that had installed it, and still, the repair guy was flummoxed. It was so new and unused, he just didn't understand all the complexities to it. Eventually, we had about seven air conditioning guys both trying to trouble shoot the problem, and just checking out this insane system.

The previous owners had to be pretty bizarre. They had remodeled the upstairs bathroom so that it had 6 or 7 different lights that you could turn on. Plus, there were so many mirrors, along with a glass enclosed shower, that you could not help but stair at yourself naked from every position, like a freaking funhouse. And it was so out of place in a home built in 1911 that had so much cool woodwork and such. They really had just terrible taste and too much money.

The Missouri Legislature.

SallyNasty wrote:

The Missouri Legislature.

Funny how not a single one of those bible thumping, woman hating assholes took the tornado in Jeff City as a f*cking sign.