Newest Nigerian Scam

John has tried to sell two laptops on ebay. In both of the listings he clearly stated that he would only sell to US buyers. At the time he was not aware that he could block bidders registered in other countries.

The first auction was won by a bidder from Spain. He emailed the bidder and contacted ebay. The bidder agreed to withdraw his bid and the computer was relisted and sold to someone in the US.

The next auction saw quite a few bids but went to a bidder from Sweden. Again he contacted the bidder and ebay. Things went differently this time however. He received an email that appeared to be from paypal that payment had been made and the funds were being held in escrow until the buyer received the computer.

We have gotten many spoof emails pretending to be from paypal. Paypal tells you that they will always address you by the name you registered with which has always made the phonies easy to spot. The email that John received addressed him by his registered name and looked official.

How did he know it was fake? He didn't at first but it all seemed wrong. Funds being held in escrow? The buyer was registered in Sweden but had supposedly sent the money from a Nigerian account and wanted it shipped to Nigeria.

He checked his paypal account and there was nothing there so he contacted them and sure enough it was a spoof email. Meanwhile they continued to send more emails trying to bully John into shipping the computer. Had he fallen for this he would have been out a computer, shipping costs and ebay fees.

He contacted ebay and pointed out that the bidder was fraudulent. Ebay responded that he had to wait until the bidder retracted his bid or 7-10 business days. He contacted them again and was told that the bidder was no longer a register user but he'd still have to wait. All of the ebay responses seemed to be automatically generated, we don't think that an actual person looked at any of them. Never did ebay point out that he could block bidders in the future, we found that on our own after wading through their unhelpful HELP menu.

After 10 days he was able to again request that his final value fees be refunded. They won't refund his listing fees although he may be able to relist it for free.

I have gotten some bargains on ebay over the years and I have sold a few things. But ebay has gotten too big and is no longer interested in the little guys, they want power sellers and to rake in the bucks. Support costs them money so good luck getting any. My ebay days may be waning. I wish Bean luck as she trys to start a home based business with ebay. (So far she is doing quite well.)

Goodbyes

Two good men died yesterday, one young and the other old. Both left families to mourn them.

John's Uncle E.R. passed away at the home of one of his sons; Aunt Aggie left us in 2000. I didn't know him well but I enjoyed visiting with him at family gatherings and I am saddened by his passing. I will see his children and other family members at the wake and funeral and will be able to easily express my condolences. I will chat with people I haven't seen in awhile and the conversations will be comfortable. I welcome the ritual of saying goodbye.

Dave was several years younger than I, the husband of a co-worker. I had only met him a few times and although I have known his wife for a dozen years we are not close. I like her, we talk often as our routes overlap, we just don't have a lot in common other than the job. His cancer progressed so fast that by the time he was diagnosed it was too late. I will attend the wake, I will tell his widow and young son how sorry I am for their loss but it won't be easy. There will be dozens of people there that I know well but none of the conversations will be comfortable.

Visit with Nana

Bean brought the kids to Mom's today. It was the first time that Mom had seen Twig. She wouldn't hold either one but enjoyed watching them.


Sprout gave lots of kisses. She still does not like it when I take her picture but didn't seem to mind if Grandpa had the camera.


I can't believe how fast Twig is growing!


John twisted wrong while we were there and hurt his back again. It wasn't too bad until he finished mowing. I'm hoping that he'll be in less pain tomorrow.

Security Training

The summer program ended yesterday. Over all I thought it went very well. I was impressed by the administrative intern, Mr. A. He will be back to teaching in the fall but I hope he choses to persue an administration position and look forward to working with him in the future.

Our refresher was held today so we would have the rest of the summer off. I'm getting 14!!!! kindergarten students and one of them doesn't speak English. As far as I know none of my students from last year have moved off my route and I have no paperwork yet on any that may have moved in. Right now I have 57 on my list, only eight more and I will be full so I am trying to plan for an overload situation.

The primary focus of our training was security. The speaker was a retired cop that now works as both a homeland security officer and bus driver. We did have some instruction on terrorism but mostly we focused on threats such as pedophiles, nut cases and students. If I hadn't been doing this job a long time I would have left the meeting wondering what on earth I am doing driving a bus for a living. The training was very good and focused on recognizing trouble and heading it off before a situation gets out of control.

It was good to see everyone after six weeks but I am thrilled to have the next three weeks off!

A Day at Sandy Pond

We spent the day at Mary & Hugh's house on Sandy Pond today. Family, food, sunshine and swimming; an idyllic day.

Click on any picture to enlarge.

Lynn took the kids for rides on Mary’s scooter. You would have thought they were at an amusement park. They fought over whose turn it was and rode around and around.

This picture captures all of their personalities so well. Nikki with her sunny disposition, Mike smiling to show off his missing front teeth, Liz with her hands on her hips and Alex really hamming it up.
My great-nephew, Bob, visiting from Virginia.
My nephew, Frank, brought his dog and let the kids throw a tennis ball into the water for her. I'm not sure who had more fun, the kids or the dog.
Singing Happy Birthday to Great-Grandma. Liz wasn’t letting the ice cream cake out of her sight.
The water is very shallow, it never got over Liz's head. And it was very warm, perfect for me. Nikki wore me out pulling her around on the board.
Liz didn't like the seaweeed, so she played by herself.
Alex never wanted to get out but finally no one would stay in with him. I'd say he had a good time.
This pretty much sums up the day.

What A Week!

I'm glad that I have that behind me. Hot, muggy, and rainy; the weather was less than perfect. Even kids at work were were quiet and droopy.

John's ebay auction ended a week ago today. He only sells to US residents so of course it was bought by someone registered in Sweden who tried to pay and have it shipped to Nigeria. This was the slickest scam we have seen yet and I'll write more when he finally gets things straightened out with ebay. Ebay and paypal both recognize it as a scam but here we are a week later and they haven't let him relist it yet.

BJ got tons of OT this week so the boys were here and had to put up with a tired, hot and cranky Grandma. Of course with with storms rolling through and it being too muggy to get a good nights sleep they were a little on the cranky side too.

On Thursday my motherboard went - again!!! I had it replaced several months ago. I think the computer manufacturers intentionally design to have your product wear out and give you problems when they are a few years old to force you to buy new ones. I do not like change. I liked they way I had things set up. John moved my hard drive to another computer and even though he hasn't got ot working right yet I was finally able to back up most things. You would think that I would have learned that lesson the last time. He is going to try to set me up with a new hard drive and I will have to start all over. UGH. He enjoys doing this, for me it is a nightmare. It's not his fault but he has ended up on the recieving end of my frustration.

Yesterday BJ tried to upgrade to windows xp. Things did not go well. He was still on the phone long distance to some suppport center when Angie dropped the boys off so they could go out for their anniversary. Hopefully they made it to the restaurant on time for their reservation.

The week wasn't all bad. We enjoyed going out to dinner. We did have fun with the boys. The new garden bed is ready, Mike helped me seed some of the center section and I did the rest.The fifth week of summer work tended to make us a little silly. Buses were hidden, other pranks were played, and there was a lot of good natured ribbing. I wish I could work with just this group of drivers all year long. We have all gotten along well and there has been none of the meaness or fights that normally keep me out of the driver's room.

After the boys get picked up this morning we're heading out to our favorite park for some swimming and relaxing in the sun.

The Weed Gardener

Most gardeners spend hours and hours pulling weeds. I’ve pulled quite a few. But what exactly is a weed? The dictionary definition is “A plant considered undesirable, unattractive, or troublesome, especially one growing where it is not wanted, as in a garden.”


We have jewel weed growing in the woods out to the lawn on one side of the yard. It is beautiful, fills in nicely and hides the trash left by the previous owners. I am encouraging it to fill in on the other side of the yard. We have tons of weeds I’d like to get rid of, poison ivy being at the top of the list, followed closely by locust tree seedlings.

When I first decided on a butterfly garden I was attracted by the idea that several of the recommended plants had “weed” in their name and therefore should be easy to grow. I have planted butterfly weed and tropical milkweed.

When we first moved here, Bean let me dig some black-eyed susans and blanket flower from her garden. Last summer, to my delight, they both came back. I watered and fussed over them and the black-eyed susans finally rewarded me with tons of blooms. The blanket flower just got bigger and bigger and kept sending up funny looking stalks that never flowered. I now realize that I spent the summer nurturing a narrow leaf plantain and it was a very pretty, very large plantain. So large that I didn’t recognize it as being the same as the weeds in the lawn a mere two feet away! It is no longer in the flower bed but I laugh at myself when I see one of the dozens growing in the yard. It turns out that they are a butterfly host plant so I had started my garden without realizing it and they are welcome to remain in the yard.

The fleabane growing at the edge of the woods is pretty. The motherwort I haven’t made up my mind about. The wild blackberries can stay in the areas that are wild but I have dozens to get rid of.




In the area where the old willow was we had a huge weed patch. Before killing everything there to start a new bed I spotted a pretty little vine with heart shaped leaves and tiny white flowers. Needing something to cover the other willow stump I transplanted it. I have just learned that it is wild buckwheat, considered a weed. It will stay as I think it is pretty, certainly prettier than the stump I need covered.

Also in the weed patch was some common milkweed or at least that’s what I thought the tiny seedlings looked like. I transplanted a dozen of them to the garden and nine survived and started to take off.

While looking at various milkweed plants online I realized that it wasn’t milkweed as the leaves were alternate rather than opposite.

So I spent a good deal of time trying to find out what it was hoping that it would turn out to be another weed appropriate for a butterfly garden. This turned out to be a very frustrating task. I browsed and searched several university sites, I googled and then I discovered the Ontario Weeds site. I now know that I transplanted pokeweed! We have quite a bit of it growing around the edge of our property. John spent a long time trying to get rid of a pokeweed patch at Mom’s. At one point he thought the shovel might break, the tap root on the largest plant was huge. So why didn’t I recognize this weed? The ones at the edge of the property are ten feet tall and I just never pictured these nice little seedlings turning into such giants! I pulled them all out tonight and now have a large bare spot in the garden. I won’t be moving anymore plants until I know what they are!

If I like a “weed” I will continue to plant, encourage and coddle because by definition they aren’t really weeds at all.