Category: Family
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Microsoft: The Phisher King
This morning I got an email telling me that my 14-day free trial to Zune Music Pass is ending, and I will automatically be signed up for the monthly service at a cost of $9.99 per month, unless I cancel. It also handily provides a link for me to go online and confirm my account and payment details. I’ve never signed up, so figure that this is just a phishing attack, and am about to delete and ignore, but Zune is a Microsoft product an my eldest has an Xbox which is also Microsoft’s, so making a short mental leap,… Read more
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Step on into the light
Recently, for one reason or another, I have found myself attending AlAnon meetings. For the uneducated (of whom I’m envious), AlAnon is not Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), but is a separate, albeit closely-related support group for friends or family members who have had their lives affected by alcoholism. So AA is for the alcoholic, and AlAnon is for the people that the alcoholic has affected. Really, they should have come up with a better name for it, because whereas AA stands for something, AlAnon does not, even though it sounds like it should. Confusingly, the same word – AlAnon – is… Read more
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Yet you know there is no answer fit
Attorneys (lawyers to you ‘foreigners’ on the wrong side of the Atlantic) have always had a bad rap. They are often portrayed as amoral shysters just out to milk whoever they can for whatever they can. And having witnessed them in close range recently (thanks to my ongoing and increasingly-acrimonious divorce), the reality is even worse. Divorce in the U.S. is a strange thing. And considering that the most recent statistics claim that a full 50% of marriages end in divorce, they certainly make you jump through some hoops to get one. Firstly, you can’t really get a divorce without… Read more
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Keep On Truckin’
A couple of weeks ago I was at Reliant Stadium for a football game. This weekend I was back at the same venue for an entirely different type of ‘sporting’ event – a monster truck rally. This is actually my fourth or fifth, but I hasten to add that it has always been for the benefit of the kids. Honest. The two boys have both been into monster trucks, but this time it was Freya who seemed most keen on going. Must be the Texan in her blood (she was born here…). Last time I was here we were bussed… Read more
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Extended Warranties: Putting the ‘con’ in ‘consumer electronics’
At the risk of sounding older than my tender 43 years: They don’t make ’em like they used to. Consumer electronics, that is. Last month my TV finally packed up (and within a month of getting my surround-sound in place, FFS!). This is a Toshiba 50″ plasma flat screen, which I bought for the not inconsiderable sum of $2,000 three years ago (actually as a 10-year anniversary present for the wife – ever the romantic, eh?). About a year ago one of the HDMI ports stopped working, which was irritating but not the end of the world (it has a… Read more