Blargh

So it finally happened. My credit card, or, more precisely, the number, got jacked. I got several calls from the issuing bank on Memorial day Monday telling me that the card has been deactivated because of activity not matching my usual patterns and coming from overseas. Great. Of course, I am not on the hook for these fraudulent charges, and they are sending a new card out. My only concern is I have some recurring bill-pay charges that drop monthly, and I now have to call all relevant parties and give the new info, not to mention clear the old card from various online outfits. People suck.

In other news, I've been hit with a nasty sore throat. My visit to the doc today netted me some antibiotics to help clear it out, it has been ruining my past few days. The weather here has been scorching, and I've been managing, but having a mild temperature makes it that much worse.

Yesterday Jeff took his truck for emissions testing. On his way home I was talking to him on his cell phone as he stops at the post office, he tells me that he smells antifreeze around his truck. I tell him to bring the truck down to the garage, where it proceeds to puke coolant from one of the water pump gaskets. Again. This is a new water pump, but I've had problems with the gaskets basically coming apart and the coolant furiously leaking. I'm going to toss this new pump, chalking the problems up to poorly machined mounting surfaces and/or a casting that moves too much with temp changes and get something different. I've never had such issues with a simple Chevy water pump before. The original went well over 100k, this one has been in and out of the truck twice to repair the gaskets.

Jeff has been having staff problems again at work, and he's gotta weed out more bad apples. This means, of course, more work for him, but he says he can manage. It should not be so damn difficult.

My illness du jour has slowed me down on things I wanted to take care of this month, couple that with the sudden dog days-like heat wave and my energy levels are practically zero. I hope this weekend is more seasonal. More record-breaking heat for the area. But, hey, there is no climate change, right?

Captcha me if you can

This shit is getting out of hand. First is was just smeared and wavy-gravy text. Then the silly made-up words that trip up my brain's internal autocorrect. Now the obscuration of the text has been getting so out of hand to the point where I have to refresh the captcha half dozen times or more to get something readable enough to enter, much less without errors. I'll get Greek or even Cyrillic characters, shit in sub-and superscript, equations, and shit like this:



I realize that these things have been getting tougher to decipher for us because automated solving of these things has gotten more sophisticated. But this is getting way out of hand, and this is far from the worst I have encountered. I propose that for every one of these stupid-assed messes of a captcha that shows up on someone's screen, some web programmer gets an automated, open-handed bitch slap. What say you?