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As if there aren’t enough idiots out there spamming our email, stealing our identities, crashing our computers and causing all kinds of other mayhem… NOW there are the telephone number spoofers!!

I just can’t believe that so many people spend so much time sitting around trying to think up ways to annoy other people.  If they were really that silly, wouldn’t you think they’d want to annoy other people in person??!?

But, no, they take the chicken way out and do all their mischief from a distance.  It just drives me nuts.

So, what is a telephone number spoofer, you ask?  Well, there are ways that you can call someone and make their caller ID display a number other than the one you’re calling from.  How useful, eh?

In fact, you don’t even need to be an egghead, coder extraordinaire!  There are actually services on the Internet that will make it easy for you.  Cheez.

But, be careful where you tread.  There are efforts in many places to outlaw that particular service, you knuckleheads.

Why do I care?  Well, mainly because I need my sleep.  I work as hard as the next person, so interrupted sleep isn’t something that I try to achieve.  Then, enter the telephone number spoofers.

At 4:30AM.   In the morning.   While I’m asleep.   Or at least while I had been sleeping.  What is this new trick? Someone calls my landline and tries to send a fax.  Every day for days at a time.

And, it’s only a real good prank the first time. That’s the time when you rise out of bed, sure that there is some dire emergency, grab the phone, put it to your ear, and have your ear drum almost ruptured by the crashing noise of a fax machine looking for a mate.

After that, you tend to look at the caller id first, and if it’s a number, you don’t recognize, you just let it go to voicemail.

Without telephone number spoofing, fixing a problem like this would be simple.  Just block the number.  However, what good does that do in this situation??  None.  The calls never come from the same number twice, so blocking the spoofed numbers wouldn’t do any good.

And, I’m really sure that these are spoofed numbers. I corresponded with one cranky person via texting on my cell phone.  And, both I and a rep from my phone company talked to another cranky individual early one morning – I didn’t think to check what time zone the phone number was in.

In both cases, each cranky person assured us that they had not been up in the middle of the night sending faxes to people they don’t know.

So, evidently, it’s just the latest way folks are trying to drive me crazy. . .

I found an amusing article in a magazine the other day.  It listed some weird words that appear in other languages.  It struck me that the words seemed to tell a story about what a culture thought was important.  After all, if they made up an entire word to specifically describe something, it must be important, right?  Here are some I came across:

♦ Mamihlapinatapel - This is a word from Yahgan, a language of used in Tierra del Fuego.  Don’t feel bad.  I had to look it up, too.  It’s an archipelago near the southern tip of the South American mainland.  It describes the meaningful look two people share when they both want to start something but are reluctant to jump in.

Of course, not to be confused with the look exchanged between drunk folks right after last call has been declared in the bar on Friday night.

♦ Cafune – When you are running your fingers through someone’s hair when you’re speaking Brazilian Portuguese, this is the word you’d use to describe that.

You can see where the hot-blooded Latins are coming from!

♦ Jayus – In Indonesia, if you tell a really bad joke and tell it very badly, people will describe that as jayus.  Guess the Indonesians don’t produce many comics….

♦ Tartle – I really do wish we had a word like this in English.  I do tartle from time to time myself.  It refers to hesitating when you’re trying to introduce someone because you’ve forgotten their name.  How kind of the Scottish to put a name to that!

I got to wondering if we had any weird words like that in English.  And, now I’m not sure just how commonly used the words above are.  Why?  Because I found some weird English words that I have NEVER heard of.  For example;

♦ Limerance – When someone tries to scientifically explain the nature of love.  Sounds like us nerdy Americans.

♦ Nudiustertian – When was the last time you used this word to refer to the day before yesterday?  That’s what I thought.

♦ Tyrotoxism – If someone poisoned you with cheese, you could die from tyrotoxism.  I don’t really remember any murder mysteries where the bad guy started poisoning people with cheese, but maybe I’ve been reading the wrong books.

♦ Mungo – The next time you see someone dumpster diving, don’t distain.  They are simply extracting valuable things from trash, and are therefore mungos.  Or is that mongoes?

Do you have any favorite weird words?

I’ve had the same vacuum cleaner for quite a long time.  It does a good job, but it’s starting to make a whine that is somewhere close to being so high-pitched it is beyond the capacity of human beings to hear it.  Unfortunately, it’s only close, so it’s still a bit painful when the machine is running.

Given that situation, I’m starting to think about a new vacuum, and that started me to thinking about what I’d want in a new one.  And, something that has annoyed me ever since I got my current vacuum rose to the surface.

It is what I would consider a design flaw that even a child could have avoided.  What is it, you ask?  The exhaust for the vacuum is located on the front of the upright tank.   This may not sound like a big problem, but think about it.

What you’re trying to accomplish when vacuuming is to transfer crumbs, and other moveable objects that have gathered unlawfully on the floor, to the inside of the vacuum.  If the exhaust is in the front of the machine, what happens to all those little movable objects?  They get blown around in front of the vacuum until it can nab them against a wall or counter, for example.

And, that does work unless you’re vacuuming in an area with stationery objects that are on legs.  Even short legs present a challenge.  That came clearly to mind the other day as I was vacuuming the laundry room.

I had cleverly left some store tags on a couple things I purchased recently, then put them in the wash.  So, there were all kinds of little washed up shreds of paper lying on the floor around the washer and dryer. 

Naturally, when I tried to get rid of them, the little shreds did a fair impression of River Dance as they were caught up in the force of the air blowing through the vacuum’s filter, on their way to gracefully exiting under the washer and dryer.

Does that design make any sense to any of you????   Dumb.

I don’t always check the caller ID on the phone before I answer it.  So, the other day, I answered the phone and was greeted by a gentleman who said his wasn’t a sales call, he was with Wachovia and Wells Fargo and was asking for my feedback.

For those of you who may not know, Wells Fargo fairly recently bought out Wachovia Bank in Georgia.

So, I thought “Well, I have a minute to help the banks out”, and asked “What can I do for you?” and, here’s how the conversation went after that.

Caller:  Are you with Wachovia Bank?

Me:  Well, I was, but of course now I’m with Wells Fargo.

Caller:  Uh, but do you bank with Wachovia?

Me: I did, but since Wells Fargo bought Wachovia, there isn’t a Wachovia any more.

Caller:  But, I need to know if you are banking with Wachovia.

Me, feeling like I’m on Candid Camera, and starting to talk slowly because it makes me believe it will help the caller’s comprehension:  Hmm, I’m not sure how to answer that.  I was banking with Wachovia.  Then, Wells Fargo bought them.  So, it would be impossible for me to bank with Wachovia now, since it doesn’t exist.

Caller:  I really need a yes or no answer.

Me:  Ah. . .  well, if that’s the case, and since Wachovia is no longer in business, then I’d have to say no, I don’t bank with Wachovia.

Caller:  Ok, thank you for your time, we have filled our quota for Wells Fargo customers, so have a nice day.

And, then the caller hung up.

And, then I said:  “What????”