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I have an added feature with my phone carrier to notify me of potential spam calls and an enhanced blocking feature. For some reason my good friend John gets added to the blocked list. Several calls to tech support gets him removed and minutes later... he's back to being blocked!

My call was transferred from the carrier to Samsung's tech support where I installed an app allowing them to do diagnostics remotely on my phone. They couldn't find John on the blocked caller list so it must be a glitch. According to Samsung, the cure was to go back to the carrier and get a new SIM card.

A second after I entered the store, the salesman asked if he could help. I explained my friend keeps getting blocked on my phone and that Samsung said I need a new SIM card.

Immediately I detected an attitude... he said that wasn't the problem and that I needed to buy a new phone. After we went through the identification verification, he got the tool to remove the SIM and I said "The phone is still on!"
That didn't stop him from removing the SIM and inserting a new one while the phone was powered up.

Flipping screens on my phone and his tablet to enter the new number scanned from the card holder, he was back and forth a few times removing and reinstalling the SIM. All attempts were unsuccessful as the phone reported no SIM installed, when one was in the phone. He removed it again and installed the old SIM and got the same message.

At that point... he told me my phone was broken. I asked his name, SNATCHED MY PHONE FROM HIS HAND, said "Have a nice day" and walked out of the store.

Ya think I was pissed?

There's another store 5 miles away, so I went there.

Explaining the salesman (at the first store) 'hot swapped' the SIM on my phone. The new guy knew exactly what I was talking about. He scanned the card, installed a new SIM, powered up the phone and all was well.



I cannot recall how many times my phones have had SIM card changes in the last 25 years and EVERY time it was done with the phone turned off.

Basically, removing the SIM while the phone was on, damaged it, installing a new SIM while the phone was on, damaged it too.

John isn't on my blocked list anymore.

I'm happy that the issue was only with the SIM cards and thankful that it didn't damage my phone or the SD memory that shares the same tray.

Not rocket science...

A man has been mauled to death by a lion at a zoo after he climbed over a 7.6m fence to take a selfie with the beast.

Prahlad Gujjar from Rajasthan, India, entered the non-public enclosure that housed the lion at Sri Venkateswara Zoological Park by climbing over the fence.

Desperate for a selfie, the 38-year-old ignored a zookeeper’s warning to step away from the lion and continued to get closer to the large cat.

Before the zookeeper could intervene, Dongalpur the lion mauled the man to death.

A few years ago, I bought an attractive IKEA bed frame that matched the dressers, also from IKEA. The mattresses were to sit on supports that comprised of a few dozen pieces of flexible slats. They were purchased as optional supports, made for that style of bed. I opened one box, read the instructions, packed them up and returned for credit. Instead, I went to Home Depot, bought 2 plywood pieces (cut to size) and installed them as platforms.

The mattress height on this Scandinavian style is very low and I later bought some box-spring units to raise everything so getting in and out of the bed was more of the height of conventional beds sold in America.

Not long after, the bed developed a creaking sound that annoyed me for months. To fix it required removal of the mattresses, box springs, plywood and tighten the inner support brackets, then reinstall everything.

I did the maintenance and a few months later, the creaking returned. Thinking the problem was the plywood, I installed some wood supports around the perimeter. It helped some but the creaking was still there.

Soon... like many of my projects, it will have to wait.



Photo from the IKEA catalog:

A coalition including the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) has agreed to form Pakistan's next government, ensuring that former Prime Minister Imran Khan's party is the most powerful. Be more powerful. Despite getting votes, she will not come to power. Vote in the election.

At a press conference in Islamabad on Tuesday night, it was confirmed that the rival parties had agreed to form a coalition government with two smaller allies to "bring Pakistan out of trouble" and that the Muslim League ( The President of N) Shehbaz Sharif belongs to him. Nominee for Prime Ministership.

Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party criticized the alliance, calling it a "mandate thief".

In recent months, I have discovered a pattern. I meet more bad people in my life than the good ones
The line in life between good and bad is, of course, very arbitrary.
Well, really: who can be considered good and who bad? What criteria might there be?
Most likely, this is all individual, but if any of us is deceived, betrayed, or does some kind of meanness to us, we will not dare to call such a person good. Or another question: Can a hypocrite be considered a good person?
My own statistics have shown that in my life I meet such people much more often than the sincere ones. It's sad to admit, but it's so as it is.
But why do people tend to choose these ways of interacting with others? What pushes them to do this?

I think the point is that people naturally tend to be selfish and think about their own interests and desires first. While a good person tries to maintain a balance between realizing his/ her desires and not going over other people’s heads, a bad person loses his sense of proportion and begins to not care about others, including friends and relatives.
Apparently, correcting your own shortcomings is more difficult than making your own mistakes. because you need to face the unpleasant truth about yourself, accept it, and this requires courage, a sincere desire to transform. But here the hypocrisy takes over
I'll leave the blog open for comments as it would be hypocritical not to let people, who do disagree with me, to speak up
I wish all of you to meet good people more often in your life

I grew up in the time period where long playing (LP) vinyl records were king. The platter was 12 inches and they ran at a speed of 33-1/3 rpm. A decade earlier were 7 inch records that ran at a speed of 45 rpm with only 2 songs, an A side and a B side.
The 45's were perfect for coin operated jukebox players often found in fast food restaurants. Drop in a dime, make your selection and it will play a song. For me, the music I listened to was too obscure for top 40 air play, so LP's were the only way to go.

Depending on the length of the songs an LP, you might find more than 10 songs on an album as the total playing time to be around 44 minutes.

I'll admit, I was a BEATLES fan when I was a kid. There were lots of influences in my musical beginnings and in 1966 we were told that Paul McCartney had died in a car crash and was replaced by a look-alike named Billy Shears. The news was everywhere and so were the fact finding documentaries.

Confirming this were the many clues on the BEATLES records... the one thing needed to hear them was to play the recordings backwards.

I owned a DUAL brand record player with a SHURE brand stereo cartridge. It had a speed adjustment of only + or - a few percent so not possible to run the motor backwards... but I was able to record to my Wollensak reel-to-reel tape machine, flip the tape over, move the play head to the monaural setting and poof! Backwards BEATLES.

Don't ask me if I heard John Lennon saying "Turn me on dead man, Turn me on dead man" as maybe I didn't... or maybe I did.

Calvin Bautista, 38, crossed into northern New York on a bus from Montreal to New York City on July 15, 2018. The young adult snakes were hidden in the inner thigh of his pants in snake bags tied to the pants' drawstring.


They were discovered by US Customs and Border Protection officers, according to court documents and a release from the office of US Attorney Carla B. Freedman.

I need a valentines date

When your remotes have their own side of the bed

Love is what you need.
From love comes forgiveness.
Hate is what you don,t need when comes from evil.
Hate makes killings.
You have to choose to love and not hate, this makes you what you need and who you are.
Hate makes not what you need and makes not who you are,but ruin and destroy you.
So love God and love all creation.
Is said:Love God with all heart...,and love your neighbours as yourself(love all people).
To love is to be.Love heals, hate makes sick.
To love is to know God and yourself and your neighbours.
Love brings happiness.
God bless.