BerthaBlog

Ever since I started this blog, I’ve had it mirrored over to LiveJournal, because that’s where most of my usenet friends collected when usenet went down the tubes.

A while back (I don’t know, three or four months? Alpha Geek will tell you I’m terrible with time) LiveJournal changed something and all their formatting went to shit. I could still read it, and post comments, but I had to scroll through a page or two of unordered lists because their style sheets were fucked. Oh well.

Their latest change seems to have killed LJ completely for me. I can read posts, but I can no longer read comments. I just see the list of menu items (all vertical, since there’s no styling), and a comment box that I don’t use because it just replies to my own posts. I see the comments via e-mail, but I can’t see them on LJ and hence can’t reply to them.

So everyone who’s been making comments to my last few entries, I see you—I just can’t answer you. At least, not in Chrome, and I know myself well enough to know I won’t be opening a separate browser just to keep up with LJ. (If more sites were breaking I’d switch, but since it just seems to be LJ I probably won’t.)

I miss the days when web developers would try their code out in several different browsers before they released it.

This afternoon I got an odd phone call. The man on the other end said I had won a prize in some contest form I’d filled out, and he was calling to verify my information.

Thing is, I never fill out contest forms at the mall. Chance of winning = slim to none; chance of getting on a zillion scam and marketing lists = 100%. I asked what company he was calling for, and he would only give me a vague “a marketing company.” I asked what company was sponsoring the contest, and he claimed not to know, it was just “something you may have filled out in a mall.” I wouldn’t give him any information, and he said he was sorry for wasting my time.

I was describing the call to Alpha Geek, who had heard the tail end of that and was curious.

“He said I probably filled out a contest form at the mall,” I ended, “but I never fill those out, they’re just scams and data mining.”

“I wonder if this had anything to do with Amber,” he said thoughtfully.

For the last month or two, we’ve been getting the occasional piece of mail addressed to Amber. The address is ours, the last name is ours—but we don’t know anyone named Amber, much less one with the same last name. I just write “Not at this address” on them and stick them back in the mail.

“That’s right,” I said, “He didn’t say my first name, he just asked if I was Mrs. so-and-so. Maybe Amber’s out there filling out mall forms.”

Could be. Looking up the number from CID, they seem to be random scammers, trying to pitch time shares.