I still eat spicy foods, other than the flaming hot chips/cheetoes/etc.

If I eat spicy foods now, I just have to swig half a bottle of Maalox, and still suffer.

Fortunately, I don't think I have ever tasted Maalox.

Not as bad as soap. Not as pleasant as cough syrup.

Maalox is not too bad. It is far from my favorite unless my innards are on fire. Then is is wonderful.

Morning all. Off to work early so I can go get shot two.

Phew, it is almost 2:30 and I can finally get some business work done. I need to reconcile the company checking account. It might take 5 whole minutes.

The boss's wife rousted me from bed to take her to Sam's for a fresh fruit run bright and early. We got home and I finally got to eat breakfast, and one cup of coffee. Then I had to take her to Petsmart to tote the dog food bag to the El Camino. We got home and I had time to read the on-line newspaper, and finish my coffee. They had changed the online log in procedure so I had to futz with that to get to read the paper. Then I was time to go to meet a buddy for lunch. That lasted two hours with all the chatting and catching up we had to do.

I got home and I got a package ready to send out, and then took it to the post office and while I was out, I stopped at a tag agency to get the personalized tag on my 911 renewed. That cost me twenty bucks and took 5 minutes.

While at the tag agency I asked about our new state driver's license. It will be a "real ID" finally. I asked if I could just bring a passport as that is THE definitive real ID and I had to bring in birth certificates, and original social security card, and other forms of ID. The passport is just one form of proof. I still have to bring in a social security card, or a W2 with my social security number. I don't get W2s anymore, but I can bring in a utility bill. The good news is my license does not expire until November of 2022.

The state in some likely brother in law deal hired an out of state company to set up the real ID system. It is very buggy and keeps crashing, and the company has to send in techs from out of state, and of course the Wuhan flu gets blamed for everything now, so that is part of the problem.

I need a nap!

Egg on my face. A $76 egg, no less.

I got a call from my costco credit card company yesterday. The fraud dept noticed some unusual activity. I had this same account compromised over the Christmas holidays, where someone racked up a couple hundred dollars worth of Uber charges. I don't even have an Uber account. So I had a new card sent out to me, and on purpose I've only used it at Costco since then.

But over the past 3 days, there had been about 15 small charges from Microsoft, for Xbox purchases. I didn't recognize the charges. I haven't made any Microsoft purchases recently. So I had the fraud dept contest the charges.

Turns out my 7-year-old has been playing an Xbox game. Last weekend Mrs. Noah allowed him to use a couple gift cards he had received to make in-game purchases. When those funds were exhausted, somehow Microsoft linked subsequent purchases to my Costco credit card. The weird part is that the card number on file was of an old, canceled card, and although it wasn't supposed to (feature turned off), the charges rolled over onto the new card. So I called back Visa this morning to tell them that I'm responsible for $76 of video game purchases.

Wow, $76 bucks of games? My dad would have held out his had and said I need to fork over $76 bucks right now. Of course when I was six that was the equivalent of $8.65 for me according to the inflation caculators. Likely about my life savings when I was 6. I remember counting through my money, and I knew every bill and coin very well. Somewhere I have a photo of the very first $100 I scrounged together in High School. It was a few $20s, a roll of quarters, and several rolls of nickles and dimes and some fives, tens and ones. That was my down payment to dad for my first car. I had to pay dad 100% of the cost of the car within one year.

I can remember thinking that if I could do that just 10 more times I would have a $1,000 and man, I would be rich. In 1970 $1,000 is the equivalent to $6,778.71 today.

We had a similar situation but it was close to $200. Peanut knew he was busted and emptied all his savings to pay for it. Microsoft’s system for that is absolutely terrible, so I remove my card from the account after every purchase now. They recently switched us to an automatic billing without approval and won’t fix it. I absolutely hate their systems.

Apple has it figure out honestly. You setup a family group and enable “ask to purchase” foe the kids accounts. It sends a notification to my phone and I have to approve each one.

I need to get my real ID done. They kept delaying the date so I hadn’t done it, and now I haven’t traveled in over a year. I have Global entry so I can always use that card at the airport, but I hate having to carry that with me if I’m not flying internationally.

Yeah, it took me about 45 minutes to figure out how to even remove the credit card from the Microsoft account. They certainly don't make it easy to do so. While I now know how to work the system, I'm exercising my right as a consumer not to make future purchases from Microsoft unless I have to. A video game does not fall under that category. So no more Xbox Live.

Looks like it was $87. That would have been a year-and-a-half of Xbox Live.

We use Microsoft Office 356 and mostly for the Outlook email program. Microsoft hosts the site and all for "just" $24 per month for the rest of our lives for the two full accounts we have, and 4 other email addresses.

Just the cost of doing business. The One Drive FTP is worth a lot of it. We can stick a 2 GB file up there and the client can download it at a decent transfer rate.

Yesterday the boss's wife had me in the back yard pocking up dog poo and thinking of the Joe Walsh song "Ordinary Man." then we had the fun of cleaning off the back porch. Today is set up the fountain in the front garden day. I also have a couple of simple tasks for the Elky. New fuel filter, and air filter, and other tasks.

Well, all the watches are sold except the two brand new Seikos. I hope I get offers on them soon and I can be done with this. If Richard had not been a close friend I would have just handed the watches back to the family.

My routines are all messed up!

We have guest that spent the night. Nice couple, and we all get along well. But dang, my normal routines are all messed up. I guess I will survive, as I am tough and resilient. I have to get three boxes with watches in them to the post office today. That is not going to be too tough.

Our kids have Steam accounts and the only way they purchase something is to ask for or buy a Steam gift card or pay us and we will send the game as a gift through my Steam account. Our 11 year old is asking for additional chores to be able to buy the new Subnautica game.

Windows 10 can purchase Microsoft games for PC though the MS Store via a Live account which we had from games of long ago before the CC was a requirement and those games we needed it for can't even connect any longer because that service is no longer in use.

Geezer voice:

Why back in my day we just made up games that involved dirt, sticks and rocks or climbing trees or riding our bikes, none of them needed electricity or batteries. Water came from the garden hose not a fancy aluminum bottle with a fancy logo on it. And unless an artery was severed we did not get a band-aid and none of them had cartoon charterers on them!

Don't forget mud! Mud is one of the best toys on earth!

Got the watch in the mail. thanks Glen! The shipping label gave us a laugh! 🤣

I’ll get it cleaned up tonight and replace the band. 😁

Glad it arrived OK. I use Stamps.com to ship with and there is a line for the person's title. Gotta fill in the blanks! ;)