iPhone 13 and Apple Watch Series 7

Proving I didn’t live where I didn’t live

The doorbell rang, and then there was knocking on the door. I came downstairs and received a box from the FedEx guy. It came from a fulfillment center in Fort Worth, TX. When I opened the package, I found a packing slip for an iPhone 13 and an Apple Watch Series 7. You might guess the problem.

The form message from Spectrum Mobile was a bit ominous. “If you did not order this product, DO NOT OPEN DEVICE PACKAGING and please contact us immediately at (833)…” Oh yeah, “Once a package is opened or seal is broken, future returns or exchanges may result in restocking fees of $50 per device.” And there’s a 14-day window, not from when I received it but from the shipping date two days earlier.

I should note that I do have some services, including the Internet, from Spectrum. But I have nothing from the related Spectrum Mobile.

The first person I spoke with said they’d cancel my Mobile account, which I doubt happened because I kept getting welcoming emails. The second person was worse. They suggested that, since I had the equipment anyway, maybe I wanted to keep it and switch to Spectrum Mobile. What? Upselling me when a fraud has been perpetrated on both Spectrum and me? Then I was on hold for a minimum of twenty minutes.

One out of three ain’t bad

At least, the third person, in the fraud department, was helpful. They told me:
* The items were purchased on a MasterCard that was not mine. But during the transaction that got this unwanted equipment to me, the purchaser used MY Social Security number. This was extremely discomforting.
* The purchase was for $268, but that was just the downpayment on the purchase, which totaled about two grand.
*The buyer used a variation of my name on an Outlook account that is not mine.

I was trying to figure out how a crook would make money sending me the equipment I did not request. My wife theorized that maybe porch pirates were scoping out our house. The rep suggested that I might receive a contact from the fraudsters to tell me the package was sent to me in error. They could then get me to return the box to a fraudulent address.

Before I sent the package back, using a FedEx label Spectrum emailed me, I became obsessed with my vulnerability for identity theft. I went to the Experian page and checked the information they had on me. My credit card usage appeared to be correct. But the file showed that I once lived in Schuylerville, NY in Saratoga County, NY, in the Albany metro, but 30 miles away, where I’ve never resided.

Experian wanted me to send documentation, such as a photo of my current DMV ID, to prove I DIDN’T live in Schuylerville in the past? Je ne comprends pas. I requested that they make the change sans the picture.

If we must die by Claude McKay

If we must die is a poem by Claude McKay, written in 1919, in response to the Red Summer.

If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.

If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!

O, kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?

Like men, we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

Start of Harlem Renaissance

As this article noted, “In the summer of 1919, race riots spread throughout the United States, spurred by the end of World War I. Returning soldiers of all races were looking for employment and tension rose as the number of applicants far exceeded the number of jobs available. The press mixed these racial issues with the concurrent First Red Scare, and soon the conditions were ripe for violence.

“At the time the riots occurred, poet Claude McKay was working as a waiter on a Pennsylvania Railroad dining car. Through his travels on the railroad, he was able to see the violence spread from city to city, constantly aware that he and his fellow black railroad men might be the white mob’s next targets. As McKay himself has written: ‘But its [WWI] end was a signal for the outbreak of little wars between labor and capital and, like a plague breaking out in sore places, between colored folk and white… It was during those days that the sonnet If We Must Die exploded out of me.”

Putting this in a broader context: “The Hundreds of writers and artists lived in Harlem in the 1920s and 1930s and were part of a vibrant, creative community that found its voice in what came to be called the ‘Harlem Renaissance.’ Alain Locke’s 1925 collection The New Negro — a compilation of literature by and essays about ‘New Negro’ artists and black culture — became a ‘manifesto’ of the movement… The work of these artists drew upon the African-American experience and expressed a new pride in black racial identity and heritage.”

The zen of refiling music CDs

Lessee, H is after G

For years, I’ve played lots of compact discs each day. In time, I would engage in the zen of refiling music CDs.

You might say, “Why don’t you just play your music digitally?” And I have quite a bit of music accessible on both my laptop and my newish cellphone. But somehow, it doesn’t bring me as much JOY as the physical music. For one thing, I tend to read the liner notes. Who wrote those songs? What other artists appeared on the tracks?

Optimally, every three or four months, I sort through my recently played CDs First I sort them alphabetically by artist. There are separate piles for TV and movie soundtracks, classical music (arranged by composer), and other specialty categories.

We recently got a round table from my MIL; no knights were involved. It replaced a rectangular table we had borrowed for over a decade. Square or rectangular tables are easier to sort than round ones. Those 90-degree angles make it easier to create piles of A-F, G-L, et al.

As a matter of course, I always cover the table with a thick blanket or quilt, lest I scratch the surface with nicks. That bad outcome would make my spouse… unhappy.

Taurus, Gemini

And I know I took WAY too long because some of the piles grew so tall, they risked toppling over. It was necessary to put several letter categories in small boxes. You’d think, being retired, getting to this process would be easier, but no.

I could tell I hadn’t sorted the CDs since May because I had albums from David Byrne, Bob Dylan, and the Stevies Winwood and Wonder. Yes, I tend to play the music from the artists’ birth month in that period.

What I find useful in the sorting. Some of it is the exercise of alphabetizing. But the other is trying to identify the artist by album cover color/design/font. This is an oddly satisfying exercise, as I do rather well.

At some point, I suppose, I’ll start to get rid of my physical music. maybe next year. Or the year after…

The cement-like storm

ice floe

ice tire The snow/ice storm of February 3/4 was a serious pain. The local newspaper wrote afterward: “While areas to the north enjoyed fluffy snow, the communities around Albany received a ‘prolific’ dose of sleet that kept the inches [1.6″] down but left residents digging through a heavy, cement-like mixture to clear streets, sidewalks, and cars.”

Th, Feb 3: I need to pass out kudos to the Albany City School District, which had decided to cancel classes for the 4th on the 3rd before 12:45 pm. And not just have a remote day, but no school at all. Perhaps it was the concern for ice disrupting distance learners. At 7 pm, there were only three major school districts that had decided to shut down, but by 10 pm, EVERYONE was on board.

Fri, Feb 4: As the storm bounced back and forth among rain, snow, sleet, and freezing rain, I decided the previous evening that shoveling would be counterproductive. But the dry snowpack covering the ice was all but impenetrable. Two of my neighbors told me the same thing. And it was cold enough to maintain the status quo.

But one neighbor was slowly chopping through the ice on the sidewalk. How is he doing that?

Sat, Feb 5: My neighbor lent me his tools. One was a pole, a little thicker than a broomstick, but it must have weighed 30 pounds. I tried that briefly but it was too much like Mjolnir.

The other tool was much easier to use. It was a shovel, more like a spade, with what looks like the serrated blade of certain knives. It worked well in cutting into the tightly-packed snow, leaving a layer of thick ice that I could treat with rock salt.

Meanwhile, my wife was working on digging out her car. She couldn’t move it – the tires spun – but we figured we could work on it more the next day.

Ice station zebra

Sun, Feb 6: After church, I was determined to finish up the sidewalk. Then I tackled the walkway towards the house.

But before I could finish the walk, my wife called me over to her car, which was parked on the street. The entire driver’s side was caked in ice like waterfalls that had frozen. There was a large puddle/pothole near where she was parked. The water splashed on the vehicle and then froze over. And as bad as it was on the body of the car, the tires on the driver’s side were even worse. I poured some salt around the tires.

My wife called various entities, including the non-emergency police number. That person suggested we call AAA. She had – she’s a member -but they couldn’t help, because… I’m not clear, actually.

Mon, Feb 7: My wife got a ride to work, but took two buses home. Fortunately, she lives with a resident expert on getting around via the CDTA.

The icing of the driver’s side repeated, not quite as severely as the previous day. [The photos were from the second day.] In the afternoon, I broke off the coating on the car. Then I return to chipping more ice, pouring more salt, and cat litter. I was aided by a neighbor, and eventually, my wife, my daughter, and even a total stranger. The neighbor tried to move the vehicle. It’s a four-wheel drive. It looked like a large feline attempting to pounce except that its rear legs were stuck on the ground.

That evening, my wife noticed that her insurance allows for towing, so she got them to send a truck, It kept telling her it was coming soon: 18 minutes, 10 minutes, 5 minutes…12 minutes, and it turned out to be an hour later than we expected. The guy couldn’t use the winch because there wasn’t enough clearance underneath. But he was convinced he could drive the vehicle out of the space. He couldn’t.

Same as it ever was

Tues, Feb 8: The daytime temperatures were getting warmer, which made other people’s sidewalks that would melt and refreeze more treacherous, as my wife, who took the bus to work both ways, could attest.

Meanwhile more digging. The imperative now is that there is alternate-side parking coming up so they can plow the streets to the curb. But despite our efforts, nada. My wife called the parking enforcement, and she left a message to tell them her plight.

Wed, Feb 9: Sure enough, the ice floe that her car was on was even more inaccessible, with the plow pushing even more ice under the car. And my wife got a $50 ticket, although the two folks from the parking authority called to tell me that they would take her situation into “consideration.” I do not know what this means.

My wife took two buses to a mall to get picked up by a colleague so she could go to a conference.

When she got home, pretty much in desperation, she called John, our contractor. He came over with a jackhammer to break up the ice. Then he put down a 50-pound bag of salt.

Free at last

Th, Feb 10: John broke up more ice with the jackhammer. Then he started the car. It sat there spinning for about 90 seconds. I’ve seen this rodeo before. But then it MOVED. But there was nowhere to repark it so when my wife returned from her roundtrip bus commute, she could tell the vehicle had moved to the top of the ice mountain. John came back after the school let out, and reparked.

I’ve lived in Albany for over 40 years, and this may have been the worst one. Twenty-six inches of snow in March 1993? No big deal; just keep shoveling.

Lots of people gave us suggestions for our auto problem throughout. Call AAA (did that). Use cat litter (did that). Our failing was that we didn’t use our jackhammer (which we don’t own) and that we used salt when we needed to use…

SALT!

Food insecurity and waste

Farmlink Project

You may have heard about the peculiar confluence of food insecurity and waste during the pandemic. More people in the United States and elsewhere are dependent on food banks and other supplemental sources of nutrition. At the same time, farmers have had to leave some food in the fields to rot because there is no market – restaurants, grocery store distributors – to sell to.

When I first saw that food left in the fields while people were hungry, I was both enraged and depressed But I had no sense of how to remedy the situation. This story from 2020 touched on some suggestions. “Governments, as well as businesses, are buying excess food and redistributing it to food pantries and other places in need. In some areas, restaurants are buying bulk quantities of everyday ingredients, then selling it to their customers directly.”

Farmlink

Now, CBS Saturday Morning noted a newish non-profit is tackling the problem. The Farmlink Project has found a formula. “Some young people had a vision to shortcut the supply chain and directly link those food products with the people who need them most.” Here’s an April 2021 interview with co-founders James Kanoff and Aidan Reilly.

The group is actually addressing a multitude of issies with work. “Billions of pounds of produce are going to waste while millions of Americans are going hungry. Let’s change that.” And “according to the USDA, the prevalence of adult chronic conditions in food-insecure households are found to be 18 percent higher than those in food-secure households.

Not to mention: “Food-insecure students are more likely to get lower grades, have higher rates of absenteeism, repeat a grade, and struggle to focus in class due to hunger and malnutrition.”

But also “If food waste were a country, it would be the third-largest contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions.” Incidentally there’s a Farmlink Mexico. As the page says, “The problems of hunger and food waste are massive, but solvable. Join our community of givers to combat hunger and heal the planet.”

I should note that per Charity Navigator, Farmlink Project have not been scored by the organization, largely because it has under $200,000 in annual revenue. “The absence of a score does not indicate a positive or negative assessment, it only indicates that we have not yet evaluated this organization.” Yes, I sent them a little bit of money and might send more.