Everything That Creepeth, Crawleth, Flyeth and Baiteth

[dr_phil_physics]

Normal?

Whew. Temp this morning was like 33degF. It's January. That's good. What did we have? Near single digits like ten days ago? And then Friday the Great Meltdown began. 40s. 50s. 57degF at midnight? and 58degF in the morning? Geesh -- it got up to 63degF.

Sunday

We had some company for the weekend, and as they were getting ready to go, I was standing by their rented silver Pontiac G6 and saw something on the hood. It was a mosquito! It got squished.

Monday

Working in the office and there was this odd, short buzz. Thought maybe a Coke can was rubbing up against a mouse cable. Nope, it was clear. Happened again. And again. Take LED flashlight and peer into empty can. There was a fly inside. It, too, got squished -- reached in with a stainless steel letter opener.

Tuesday

One of the sure signs of spring is worms on the sidewalks when it rains. Well, we've had melt and rain in January. So what does it mean when you see a 2-1/2" slug crossing a sidewalk?

The Unspeakable

The university e-mail account is really getting hammered by idiot spammers. I cleared out a few pages of spam when I was off at Christmas, but I guess I hadn't looked at the spam filter from 12/27 to 1/8. FORTY-SIX pages of spam -- twenty e-mails per page. For those trying to actually make money selling whatever, they can't be. Too much competition. And how would I choose between their offers? Oh wait, I delete them all unread. Too bad for you.

Weird

That's all I've got to say.

Dr. Phil

Comments

[kizmet-42.livejournal.com]

Does this mean that there will be fewer mosquitoes in the spring if they mature and die now?

[dr-phil-physics.livejournal.com]

Under the right circumstances, a good hard freeze -- must lower than upper 20s -- for a couple of weeks will greatly reduce the mosquitoes. Letting them expend their energy to spawn in January and freeze everything up -- that's just bonus. (grin)

Dr. Phil

I'm always so amused...

[wendyb-09.livejournal.com]

by the mass amount of spam that accuumulates in the spam accounts. My yahoo account that I use as a "public" address can get several hundred in the space of a couple of weeks. People wanting to send me drugs for body parts I'll never have (or want), my Nigerian fortune, all manner of stuff. Still, a couple dozen manage to sneak through to my main accounts each week.

And then there was the new phish attack I got the other day. Very official email from the IRS, saying I had an additional refund coming, and they could deposit it through my debit card. The link takes you to a very official looking IRS web page that asks for your bank name, account number, debit card number, expiration, PIN, in other words, everything they would need to clean you out.

Of course, I went to the REAL IRS site, found their fraud alert address, and forwarded it to them. I mean, if they really owe me money, they already HAVE my direct deposit info, they've had it and it hasn't changed in the last twelve years.

I may have been born at night, but it was NOT last night!!

Re: I'm always so amused...

[dr-phil-physics.livejournal.com]

I really wish I thought the pit bulls of the cyberworld were employed by the IRS, so that they would backtrack things like that and take out the turkeys. Alas, the IRS isn't necessarily that technologically advanced...

Dr. Phil