High school basketball has ended and March Madness is about to begin with conference tournaments and a growing excitement as we hear that brackets are not far off.
In the meantime, life will be changing from the winter slow mode to the spring hurry-up and "get it done and move on to the next project."
Yesterday I did some clean-up here in my computer room after Terry signed off on the ceiling repair. It's back to looking the way it did before the limb tore open a hole.
We are pleased that one third of the repair projects has been completed. Now, on to the hole in the roof and other repair work on the deck roof.
On Saturday, Bill used his chainsaw to remove two big shrubs from the deck garden. They had died.
So, when plant season comes along, I'll purchase some replacements.
Lots to do around here and definitely no time for being bored ever during March Madness.
On another topic that is truly maddening, I saw the sentence below this morning and felt it was worth mentioning.
Older Americans are losing billions of
dollars to financial exploitation.
I copied and pasted this sentence from the New York Times Morning bulletin and thought about the incident mentioned below as well as knowing, from family and friends' experiences, that this hideous, mind-boggling activity is not at all limited to older Americans.
Last week I did read a post about a friend's 90-year-old parent who was almost scammed out of $5,000, thanks to a computer screen message allegedly coming from Microsoft.
He followed up on making the call and was told that $10,000 had been removed from his bank account.
During the course of his trying to follow instructions from the scammer, he was also told not to use his phone because supposedly it had been infected.
Fortunately family members had already been alerted and were desperately trying to get ahold of him as he had also been instructed to go to Lowe's and purchase a $5,000 gift card.
Fortunately, his lack of tech knowledge at the self check-out prevented him from purchasing the card.
The advice from the friend after telling this story: PLEASE TALK TO YOUR ELDERLY PARENTS ABOUT SCAMS. MAKE THEM WATCH VIDEOS WITH YOU SO THEY ARE AWARE OF HOW THESE CRIMINALS WORK.
There are older people who are victimized as well as every day ordinary people of all ages, many of whom are tech savvy and fully in control of their faculties.
And, there are also public entities, like the City of Clark Fork and now the nearby City of Newport, Wash, who have lost big bucks.
https://hagadonenewsnetwork.com/news/2026/feb/26/newport-loses-330k-in-fraudulent-web-scheme/
I have personally been aware of several instances among family members and friends, including myself. A couple of years ago, I received an email telling me that I owed more than $300 for a computer virus program.
That situation involved calling a number and then a lot of yelling at the guy demanding to have my bank account information.
I even pounded on my desk with frustration while talking to him and later turned over the phone to Bill who also tried to reason with him.
When we both decided that reasoning was not going to happen, Bill said we were hanging up, to which the creepy scammer said, "Thanks a lot for wasting my time."
I don't know what we do to prevent these situations from happening because the scammers keep perfecting their strategies, and, as they say with AI, the scammers have gained an added advantage.
We are living in a world where day by day we encounter sources of information which are invalid and outright fabrications.
Recently, I've noticed this in dramatic fashion on Twitter aka X, where realistic news headlines suggest that something dramatic has just happened to a major figure when it's really all just made up.
It's taken me a few embarrassing moments to learn to avoid being sucked into these headlines.
I used to have a writing project in my English classes where I'd read to my students a few outrageous stories from the World Wide Weekly News or the Enquirer.
We would all laugh and talk about how outlandish they were. Then, for fun, the students would be assigned to write their own news report for either of the publications.
They came up with some fun stuff, but we all knew it was made up. Sadly, we now live in the real world of World Wide Weekly News or National Enquirer.
Times have changed, and because lying by people who should know better has become so rampant, generally we can all fall victims to outright lies.
Sadly, it's affecting us all on a wide variety of fronts and, even more sadly, our news outlets have been infiltrated and are gradually being controlled by those with personal selfish missions and motives straying far off from what's good for the general population.
It's a scary world out there, and even with vigilance, we can be fooled into embarrassment, personal losses and even the devastatingly sad loss of our belief system.
I guess the tried and true answer is to rid ourselves of all the wires and devices that connect us to the outside world.
These days, that is hardly realistic.
Still, at this point, disciplined vigilance and remaining extremely skeptical of everything you hear over the phone or what you see on your computer screen seems to be the best antidotes available.
There are scammers at virtually every level these days, and we must be constantly watching for them.
Not the most upbeat Monday morning topic, but since it's such a pretty March day out there, at least it maybe be palatable.
Happy Monday.
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