When I went to use our landline phone on July 1st, I only heard silence. It was dead. This seems to happen at least once per year. Often it is related to water covering the outside wires at the connection junction. I called Telus and I was surprised that they were able to send out a technician late afternoon the next day. In the past we have had to wait up to a week. We each have a cell phone and have had this landline since we moved here in 2003. We likely could get rid of the landline which only costs us around $22.00 per month but it also serves as our business line. One ring means “hello” as it is personal while two rings requires ” Colin Jewall Photo Studios, how may I help you”. Until we shut down the company we will continue to keep the landline going. Plus we have our first ever email address attached to it on which we get the occasional old client contacting us. That costs us only $7.00 per month. Being as they are both company write offs we will keep them for now.
Turns out that the source of the problem was this broken telephone wire, situated between the bed and a night table. No signs of mice, so whatever would cause the wire to become a problem. Normally if the telephone problem is inside the house you are charged a $100.00 service fee. Fortunately the tech said he was not going to charge us. Phew!
Either later in the day or the next day, I started getting strange things pop up on my computer screen. Something was definitely wrong so I shut down my desktop computer. We were almost ready to eat and this was the only way I could think to contain the situation. The next morning I called Apple Support. What a great group they are. You email for help and give the serial number of your computer and phone number and in less than two minutes you are speaking to someone. By then I had an inkling of what had caused the problem. I had been reading s news article when it came up that my Adobe Flash was out of date and needed to be updated to continue. So I stupidly clicked on it and updated. That is when I started noticing problems. First off my dock was changed and Google had been taken over by some weird site I have never heard of. Then I started getting messages from ‘creep world’ that said I needed to click ‘here’ as I had some virus issues.
Well I was stupid enough to click on the Adobe update but smart enough to not click on what looked to be a proper Mac page to remove the viruses. Looking closer I could actually see the words ‘creep world’. Thank goodness for Apple Support, all at no charge. The tech I spoke with said he could help and not to worry as he would for certain be able to fix it. So he ran through a few things here and there and we deleted a few things here and there and looked for where the malware might be hiding. No, it was not a virus. Apple computers do not get viruses ( they are built to be virus free ), however they do get malware and spyware.
The next thing he had me do was to download a free trial version of Malwarebytes. He later guided me as to how to install this at no charge on my computer and suggested that I run the program every two weeks.
In the end 18 issues were found and they were removed and placed in the trash and of course the trash was then emptied.
The tech told me that my computer was in great shape and that he has seen up to hundreds of malware issues in other computers. He also suggested that I should never ever ( and in the back of my mind I knew this ) click on an update link unless it is directly from Apple or in this case from the Adobe website itself. Lesson learned. He also mentioned that our desktops would last at least ten years each before we needed to update our machines. So fortunate that we were able to call in the professionals at no charge to us.
On the other hand, Charlie the coyote has let us down. We were watching TV and eating dinner when I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. It was a quick jump up and run for the camera and take the shot without allowing time to focus. Charlie cost us $100.79 including tax and as a professional he was letting us down. In all fairness he was partly hidden by the patio furniture.
These kids were looking for a sweet snack before bedtime.
Both parents were keeping guard. I only got the one in this shot.
I opened the patio door and waived my arms and off they went. The very next day Charlie was moved to the middle of this photo on the patio, right next to that sweet patch of clover. Wherever did that clover come from? I guess we need to find some clover remover. Always something!
July 1 and July 3 were rain free and this is the week ahead.
Yes that is great for the fires and the smoke but we can’t work in either rain nor smoke. Very unusual weather for our area at this time of year. Nothing we can do about the weather. Just take it as it comes. Some of my flower pots are dying as they are getting too much water. I have turned off our drip irrigation for now.
