The truth is Janice forwarded this to me and I have no idea if the originator is a computer tech or not. Other than that it’s stuff worth knowing and heeding. Oh, I did a bit of editing to correct spelling, adjust font sizes (unless it’s intended for those who are nearly blind, 36 point fonts don’t drive the message home any better IMHO), reduce the amount of blank space between paragraphs etc. and that kinda stuff. Except for this paragraph the rest is the original message:
This is great, check it all out!
E-Mail Tracker Programs — very interesting and a must read!
The man that sent this information is a computer tech. He spends a lot of time clearing the junk off computers for people and listens to complaints about speed. All forwards are not bad, just some. Be sure you read the very last paragraph.
He wrote:
By now, I suspect everyone is familiar with snopes.Com and/or truthorfiction.Com for determining whether information received via email is just that: true/false or fact/fiction. Both are excellent sites.
Advice from snopes.Com VERY IMPORTANT!!
1) Any time you see an email that says “forward this on to ’10′ (or however many) of your friends”, “sign this petition”, or “you’ll get bad luck” or “you’ll get good luck” or “you’ll see something funny on your screen after you send it” or whatever — it almost always has an email tracker program attached that tracks the cookies and emails of those folks you forward to. The host sender is getting a copy each time it gets forwarded and then is able to get lists of ‘active’ email addresses to use in SPAM emails or sell to other Spammers. Even when you get emails that demand you send the email on if you’re not ashamed of God/Jesus — that is email tracking, and they are playing on our conscience. These people don’t care how they get your email addresses – just as long as they get them. Also, emails that talk about a missing child or a child with an incurable disease “how would you feel if that was your child” — email tracking. Ignore them and don’t participate!
2) Almost all emails that ask you to add your name and forward on to others are similar to that mass letter years ago that asked people to send business cards to the little kid in Florida who wanted to break the Guinness Book of Records for the most cards. All it was, and all any of this type of email is, is a way to get names and ‘cookie’ tracking information for telemarketers and Spammers — to validate active email accounts for their own profitablepurposes.
You can do your Friends and Family members a GREAT favor by sending this information to them. You will be providing a service to your friends. And you will be rewarded by not getting thousands of spam emails in the future!
Do yourself a favor and STOP adding your name(s) to those types of listing regardless how inviting they might sound! Or make you feel guilty if you don’t! It’s all about getting email addresses and nothing more.
You may think you are supporting a GREAT cause, but you are NOT!
Instead, you will be getting tons of junk mail later and very possibly a virus attached! Plus, we are helping the Spammers get rich! Let’s not make it easy for them!
ALSO: Email petitions are NOT acceptable to Congress or any other organization – I.e. Social security, etc. To be acceptable, petitions must have a “signed signature”and full address of the person signing the petition, so this is a waste of time and you are just helping the email trackers.
and EMAIL ETIQUETTE:
Please delete details of all previous senders before forwarding/sending.
No one wants their email address circulated in forwards !
Tips for Handling Telemarketers
Three Little Words That Work!!
(1)The three little words are: ‘Hold On, Please…’
Saying this, while putting down your phone and walking off (instead of hanging-up immediately) would make each telemarketing call so much more time-consuming that boiler room sales would grind to a halt.
Then when you eventually hear the phone company’s ‘beep-beep-beep’ tone, you know it’s time to go back and hang up your handset, which has efficiently completed its task.
These three little words will help eliminate telephone soliciting..
(2) Do you ever get those annoying phone calls with no one on the other end?
This is a telemarketing technique where a machine makes phone calls and records the time of day when a person answers the phone.
This technique is used to determine the best time of day for a ‘real’ sales person to call back and get someone at home.
What you can do after answering, if you notice there is no one there, is to immediately start hitting your # button on the phone, 6 or 7 times as quickly as possible. This confuses the machine that dialed the call, and it kicks your number out of their system.. Gosh, what a shame not to have your name in their system any longer!!!
(3) Junk Mail Help:
When you get ‘ads’ enclosed with your phone or utility bill, return these ‘ads’ with your payment. Let the sending companies throw their own junk mail away.
When you get those ‘pre-approved’ letters in the mail for everything from credit cards to 2nd mortgages and similar type junk, do not throw away the return envelope.
Most of these come with postage-paid return envelopes, right? It costs them more than the regular 44 cents postage, ‘IF’ and when they receive them back.
It costs them nothing if you throw them away! The postage was around 50 cents before the last increase and it is according to the weight. In that case, why not get rid of some of your other junk mail and put it in these cool little, postage-paid return envelopes.
One of Andy Rooney ‘s (60 minutes) ideas.
Send an ad for your local chimney cleaner to American Express. Send a pizza coupon to Citibank. If you didn’t get anything else that day, then just send them their blank application back!
If you want to remain anonymous, just make sure your name isn’t on anything you send them.
You can even send the envelope back empty if you want to just to keep them guessing! It still costs them 44 cents.
The banks and credit card companies are currently getting a lot of their own junk back in the mail, but folks, we need to OVERWHELM them. Let’s let them know what it’s like to get lots of junk mail, and best of all they’re paying for it…Twice!
Let’s help keep our postal service busy since they are saying that e-mail is cutting into their business profits, and that’s why they need to increase postage costs again. You get the idea!
If enough people follow these tips, it will work I have been doing this for years, and I get very little junk mail anymore.
THIS JUST MIGHT BE ONE E-MAIL THAT YOU WILL WANT TO FORWARD TO YOUR FRIENDS
Never let it be said Curmudgeon is even a half axed (how’s that for polite) DIY plumber. The last several days brought that home to roost again. Re-affirmation of rank amateur status started Saturday night when Janice announced “Houston we have a problem”. Houston is not a pet name but I’m assuming you figured that out. Anyway she showed me what happened each time either kitchen faucet was opened. Water dripping below the reverse osmosis filter canister was a little disquieting. Nothing was going to get fixed Saturday night but it did allow time to ruminate over the problem, speculate on the solution and suck down a few extra “misbehaving on Saturday night” beers. So all in all it was a good night and provided a challenge plus stuff to keep the hands busy for the next couple days. Oh boy!
There’s something to be said for ruminating over this kind of thing. It let me figure out that if there was dripping water when either hot or cold faucet was open the most likely culprit was the old faucets. Sunday afternoon found us in Lowe’s deciding on faucets. One might think this would a straight forward pull the old, put in the new and all is good to go. Enter Murphy.
Guess I shoulda known. Removing the old faucets went well until time to unscrew those big plastic holding nuts. Does stuff you work on sometimes talk to you? After an hour or so trying to loosen those big nuts the sink finally said “hey you, Mr. obviously not a rocket scientist, your option is to pull me out and bust these plastic nuts off so get with the program”. No problem. Well maybe small problem because the sink was held with the normal hold down things (whatever they are called) and caulked from the under side with tenacious white stuff that’s really hard to cut through. A cartoon bubble of the crazy Irishman aka Murphy sipping (more likely guzzling) Irish Whiskey and roaring with laughter floated overhead. What ever I did to deserve him is a mystery.
Oh, did I mention if there had been plastic plumbing in the Roman Empire the supply lines from shutoff valves to faucet inlets could have come from that era? Aside from mangled tubing ends (looked as though the tubing ends were gnawed rather than cut) the plastic fittings ceased to be industry acceptable long before this mobile home was manufactured. Suffice it to say my discomfort level with outdated fittings and mangled tubing was huge. But it’s fixed, no leaks, no drips, no errors and nice new faucets. Only three runs for parts and information but it’s a done deal. Now all that remains is to return extra parts.
Talk about an eye opener, spend Sunday and most of Monday with no running water to the kitchen. Hearing the dishwasher run Tuesday evening – priceless. There’s a sense of accomplishment with any project.
Anyone want to hear about my aches and pains from down, standing back up, back down (about 47, 392 times), lying under the sink with cabinet ledge digging at my back and because it’s not daily routine the belief enough ibuprofen doesn’t exist? Yep, that’s what I thought! Oh the burdens of being a DIYer!
