Bertha

Shared Cultural Expressions

General Comments Off

Dec 232009

A relative visiting Sri Lanka sends us updates on what he’s up to. They’re typically interesting and amusing, but this bit in particular had me giggling:

On reaching the hotel I noticed blood on my foot so we went straight to our room to have a look. The moral of this story is, don’t wear sandals in the jungle. Both feet were covered with leeches. No African Queen – type heroics for me. Off we went to the spa. The pretty young girl in the sari spoke little English, but “eeew” turns out to be universal.

Basic Security? Whassat?

Geek Wannabe, General 2 Responses »

Dec 192009

Dear job.com:

Thank you for sending the information for my new account to me in clear text. It’s good to know you’re not remotely serious about protecting my personal information from being compromised.

Fortunately I a) did not mis-type my e-mail address when giving it to you, or b) have my e-mail account accessed by a third party, so my username and password did not wind up in someone else’s hands.

Sheesh. In this day and, you’d think anyone who runs any kind of network service would know better than to send passwords and login information together like that, with no encryption or verification.

But then, I’ve seen network servers that have their root password set to “password,” so I guess security is not an issue on everyone’s mind.

Last year one of my molars started hurting whenever I bit down on that side. I mentioned it to the dentist at the next visit, and he had a look and said the molar was developing a hairline fracture. He recommended getting a crown on it, and gave me an estimate.

Then Alpha Geek got laid off, and I kind of put expensive orthodontia on hold for a while. I also started chewing on the other side of my mouth.

This week at the dentist I mentioned that a molar on the other side had become sensitive to temperature. He observed that the filling there was worn away, and recommended getting a crown on that one. “But,” he added, “I’m more concerned about that other molar. It’s actually developing a fracture.”

So now I need two crowns, and we may or may not have dental insurance next year.

Shit.

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