The Garbage Gestapo

Somehow the words 'garbage' and 'gestapo' don't sound like they belong together, but if you live in my city they fit together just fine.

A number of years ago the City Fathers decided they wanted to make the city more attractive and at the same time start recycling seriously. Both of these ideas are good. However, the plan needs work!

They finally contracted with Waste Management to pick up the garbage and recycle stuff and the fun began. It took awhile for the citizens to get used to the idea of hauling those big containers to the curb on their designated day for trash pickup. A number of them still haven't gotten used to only one day a week for trash pickup.

The idea of using those bins is a good one. The bins come with a bar so the trucks can use an automated bin lifter and dump the contents into the truck, thus saving time and eliminating the need for extra workers to lift and dump the containers. The idea was to make the streets look much neater since the containers are all alike, except for color to differentiate between the trash and recycle containers. However, while in theory it is a good idea, it doesn't always work in real life.

When the bins are placed on the curb by the citizens, they are generally lined up fairly neat. However, once the trucks come by, the bins are strewn all over the street. Sometimes cars have to dodge them to avoid hitting them. For some reason the trash sometimes 'spills' out onto the street so the citizens have to pick it up when they come home from work. Occasionally the bar lifter misses the bin bar and knocks the bin over resulting in trash all over the place.Does the truck stop and the driver pick it up? Not likely in this lifetime! So does this should make the city more attractive? In practice it leaves much to be desired.

Because the trash is picked up only once a week, sometimes the citizens dump the overflow into the recycle bins. This contaminates the contents to be recycled and the whole load may have to be dumped into the landfill. There are larger carts to be had, but since they cost more every month, consumers on a short budget don't want to get one. Some folks with large families just can't afford the extra cost, a fact the City Fathers fail to realize. (Maybe they just don't care!)

Enter the 'Garbage Gestapo'. This is a special crew that goes around inspecting people's recycle carts. If anything is found that doesn't meet the criteria for recycling the poor beleaguered culprits get a fine of up to $250!

Personally I have a real problem with other folks rummaging through the recycle bin. So I shred everything and dump it in the trash. I would like to recycle all that paper, but I don't want my identity stolen so it goes in the trash where the 'Gestapo' doesn't search.

I rather suspect residents of nearby cities laugh about our 'Garbage Gestapo'. I wish I could!

Martha

Shopping in the USA

I am not a true died in the wool shopper. I just don't like to shop. I usually know what I want and I either find it or I don't, in which case I buy it and go home, or go home frustrated because I didn't find what I wanted.

Lately I have seen several articles and news items about people buying extremely high priced items like handbags, shoes, etc. An article in the newspaper yesterday was about a woman who finally realized she was embarrassed to carry a handbag that cost more than a medium priced SUV. I had to wonder what took her so long to get to this point of embarrassment?

Today is 'Black Friday', the day after Thanksgiving and the first official day of Christmas shopping. The term 'Black Friday' originated because this is traditionally known as the day retailers go into the 'black' after being in the 'red' all year until now. Every merchant is counting on the crush of shoppers buying up goodies for Christmas. They offer extended shopping hours and special pricing on hot items to get the shoppers in the door.

I have often been guilty of saying nothing surprises me any more. I always have to take that back as something always surprises me. Some of the national branded stores in this area opened at 4 AM today. I cannot think of anything I could possibly want bad enough to be at any store at 4 in the morning, but there was no shortage of shoppers waiting to get in the doors when they opened. In fact, the lines started on Wednesday afternoon and this is Friday! They spent Thanksgiving Day in a queue waiting to shop. Anyone would think this was the only chance to buy anything needed to survive!

Never mind the temperatures at night were in the 30s and last night we had snow as well. There were hundreds of these folks! Some of them had tents and sleeping bags, but the news showed some of them just sitting on folding chairs. All night in the freezing cold sitting on a folding chair, just for a chance to get a bargain on something.

All I can say is I hope it was worth it. I hope they managed to get that bargain that was worth missing one of the best family holidays of the year. I hope they didn't mind not being with loved ones; for the sake of a bargain for a product that may or may not last until this time next year.

As for me, I am doing my Christmas shopping online. But even if I couldn't shop online, I sure wouldn't stay up all night in the freezing cold hoping to get a 'bargain'.

Martha

Why?

I wonder about a lot of things that are probably trivial to most folks. I suppose someone somewhere has the answers.

I wonder why people will spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars for a computer and then plug it into a ten dollar power strip for protection. This is true for expensive TVs and other electronics as well.

Someone please explain to me why Daylight Saving Time saves daylight. There are still the same number of hours in a day. You can't save daylight! You can aggravate millions of people who are forced to either set the clocks back an hour or set the clocks forward an hour, but you can't save daylight. They need to call it what it really is, 'Aggravation Time'!

Why do people think it's funny when someone falls down? There are TV shows that show 'funny' videos of folks falling, getting hit in delicate physical places and otherwise being injured. The producers of these shows seem to think these videos are funny. (They make me cringe.)

Why can't the TV networks get together and broadcast their programming at the same level of sound? Viewers who change channels have to adjust sound up or down to achieve the right sound. Seems like a no-brainer, but no one seems to know why. I think they do it to keep viewers from changing channels, but it doesn't work. Everyone changes channels to watch their favorite programs.

On the same note, please tell me why TV commercials are so much louder than the programs? Do the commercial producers think we will be more apt to listen if our eardrums are being pierced? Don't they know most of us have a mute button on our remotes?

Why does my newspaper always wrap the Sunday comics with an ad for a store I won't ever patronize? Do they think it will get my attention so I will rush right out and go to this store? (It gets my attention alright; I toss that ad PDQ!)

Why do advertisers say you can get something 'free' with a purchase? If you have to buy something to get something else, it isn't free!

I wonder about a lot of things, these are just a few of them.

Martha

Gloom and Doom

Lately, everywhere I look I see harbingers of doom, either on the Internet or on TV.

For instance in a recent newsletter there was this little tidbit to cheer me;

"One in 60 older people might have brain tumors: One in 60 older people may be walking around with benign brain tumors and don't know it. Even more may have bulging blood vessels in the head that could burst." Lovely. I am what is known as a senior.

"Peripheral Artery Disease Up Sharply Among U.S. Women: The condition, which is has no symptoms, can lead to heart attack and stroke." Wonderful. I am a woman.

The nightly news is also full of sweet tidbits. A lot of our food is contaminated with e-coli which can sometimes kill folks and superbugs are going to kill us if we get sick and have to go to the hospital. Nice. Hopefully I won't get sick.

We have to take the toys away from the kids. They are contaminated with lead if they were made in China. These days all toys are made in China. Christmas is going to be tough for parents and kids this year. (What ever happened to 'Made in the USA'?)

People are losing their homes because sneaky mortgage brokers let them buy houses they can't afford. I guess those folks who bought those houses still believe in the tooth fairy as well. Why wouldn't they know they couldn't afford that house?

My used-to-be favorite TV channel, the Science Channel is also full of really nice programs guaranteed to keep us awake at night. Yellowstone National Park is really the caldera of a massive mega volcano which could erupt at any time killing most of the people in the USA and changing the world's climate so much that all of mankind and any other living creature will die. It could happen any time according to the experts.

Then there is the chance the Earth will be hit by one of those asteroids the size of Montana that are out there in space. When this happens, (and it probably will sometime according to the experts) the entire planet Earth will erupt in flames and kill all of mankind and any other living creature.

There is an island, La Palma, in the Atlantic Ocean that has an excellent chance of having a large portion of a volcano named Cumbre Vieja slide into the sea. This will cause a mega tsunami that could wipe out the entire east coast of the Americas (North, Central and South America) with waves of water over 100 feet high. The experts say this could happen at any time. Millions of people will die when this happens.

I may have to quit sleeping so I can stay awake and worry about all of the things the news tells us are going to kill us and the things the experts are saying 'will happen someday but we just don't know when.'

Martha

The Bane of My Inbox, Spam!

I absolutely despise spam. I think I hate it more than most and I spend a lot of time trying to defeat the nasty email. Sometimes I think I'm winning, but the victory soon turns to the agony of defeat. I have created, abandoned and deleted so many email accounts I have lost track of the number.

I have used countless spam filters that only half did the job. The filters either were too aggressive or let too much through and they all slowed the flow of email due to the filtering. My ISP has spam filtering, but I don't use it. I would rather read email that has been downloaded to my computer and the spam filters put too many legitimate emails in the Bulk folder. I have to log onto the account on the web and sort through the Bulk mail, find the legitimate mail and move it to the Inbox. The filters are supposed to 'learn', but they don't 'learn' fast enough for me. Once the spam that gets by the filters have downloaded to my computer it is too late to 'teach' the spam filter.

I think I may have found a solution for keeping spam away from my Inbox. My ISP offers something called AddressGuard™. It's really simple to use; I just create some 'throw-a-way email addresses. I use these addresses for different things. One is just for registering to view content on websites. Once the spam shows up, (and it will, some of those sites lie like crazy when they say they will not share your email address) I just delete the account. I have another just for Yahoo Groups. Once an infected computer owned by a Yahoo Groups member starts sending me spam, I just will delete that account and create another.

If your ISP doesn't offer this service and you would like to have it; there are a number of services that will provide it for a fee. Yahoo Mail Plus provides the same service for $19.99 a year. With Yahoo Mail Plus you can also download your mail to an email client on your computer.

Here's hoping I have found the solution to no more spam for my Inbox! (At least for a while.)

However, if you want to try to prevent spam by using some other methods, you can look at Spam in Your Inbox and use these tips to avoid spam.

Martha