Did your Mother not raise you correctly?

My Dad called me once and said to expect a call from a friend of his who I barely knew he had a computer question. I said what does so and so do for a living? He said he makes custom window blinds. I said let me go get some measurements because I am sure he makes them for free too.

This all started with pagers I remember people would page and add 911 and be ticked if you didn't call back immediately. I am not going to leave a meeting with one customer or person who had the courtesy to set up an appointment to meet with you just because you typed 911 on your page.
 
People don’t think advertising their personal cell phone phone be like it is, but it do.
 
Dear Dr Bruce....you’re not an ER or trauma physician, so I don’t understand why it’s critical for you to answer calls unknown or questionable after business hours. Perhaps you’re too nice at times?

If you are nice like Dr. Bruce is, you want to help all the time. What if it is an emergency?

I understand Bruce's answering the phone. What I do not understand is how he puts up with those of us who are inconsiderate and mendacious. And yes, he puts up with guys like this most of the time. Dr. B, thank you for being you, and you have my permission and support for blowing your stack when the pressure gets too high! Not that you need my permission, though...

-Skip
 
I have never used my phone's "do not disturb" feature, but it seems like it might be helpful in these kinds of cases. It will send calls straight to voice mail if you are driving, or during specific hours. There may be other options too.
Unfortunately, at least on iPhone, Do Not Disturb is next to useless. Calls that are marked urgent are passed through. I have gotten several spam calls while driving, even though I have do not disturb enabled while driving and if I try to make a call immediately after stopping, I have to confirm that I am not driving before it will allow me to.
 
Yes, the offender in the OP is a jerk and should have better manners, but before we condemn the entire world (or at least a whole generation) let's think about it. Certainly there are manner-less folks out there, but how many calls didn't you get because people thought about the time and realized how intrusive it would be to call and didn't? How can we quantify the number of people who did the right thing - either didn't call or called at an appropriate time. Yes, we do get more calls from seemingly entitled people, but there are more people now days. Percentage-wise, it may be the same ratio.

Not condoning the behavior and yes, a lot of people need more lessons from Emily Post. Just pointing out that not everyone acts this way and shouldn't be thrown in with the ones that do.
 
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Yes, the offender in the OP is a jerk and should have better manners, but before we condemn the entire world (or at least a whole generation) let's think about it. Certainly there are manor-less folks out there, but how many calls didn't you get because people thought about the time and realized how intrusive it would be to call and didn't? How can we quantify the number of people who did the right thing - either didn't call or called at an appropriate time. Yes, we do get more calls from seemingly entitled people, but there are more people now days. Percentage-wise, it may be the same ratio.

Not condoning the behavior and yes, a lot of people need more lessons from Emily Post. Just pointing out that not everyone acts this way and shouldn't be thrown in with the ones that do.
Most people are manor-less. I mean, I have a big house and four acres, but it's not quite to manor level.
 
I think phone calling is mostly rude.

On my phone it is impossible to leave a voice message.......There is NOTHING worse than voice messages...................so slow and cumbersome.

I LOVE Google Voice! They give you a free number from any prefix that you choose. Any "voice" messages are converted to text and email. You never HAVE to listen to your messages.

I haven't given out my actual cell number in years!!! Dr "B" do yourself a favor and click on the url above.
 
I think phone calling is mostly rude.

On my phone it is impossible to leave a voice message.......There is NOTHING worse than voice messages...................so slow and cumbersome.

I LOVE Google Voice! They give you a free number from any prefix that you choose. Any "voice" messages are converted to text and email. You never HAVE to listen to your messages.

I haven't given out my actual cell number in years!!! Dr "B" do yourself a favor and click on the url above.
From the page you linked:

“To offer these services, Voice saves and processes your call, text, and voicemail information”

That’s why I’ll never have google voice.
 
From the page you linked:

“To offer these services, Voice saves and processes your call, text, and voicemail information”

That’s why I’ll never have google voice.
I have it for one old number that I want to keep alive, but 99% of the calls are spam.

As for Dr. Bruce's situation, I agree that it was rude and ignorant of the person that made the call. Unfortunately, people that do that sort of thug ruin things for everyone else.
 
Doc, with all due respect, sounds like you need an extended vacation.

BTDT...hence the reason the link in my signature is broken.
 
My Dad called me once and said to expect a call from a friend of his who I barely knew he had a computer question. I said what does so and so do for a living? He said he makes custom window blinds. I said let me go get some measurements because I am sure he makes them for free too.

This all started with pagers I remember people would page and add 911 and be ticked if you didn't call back immediately. I am not going to leave a meeting with one customer or person who had the courtesy to set up an appointment to meet with you just because you typed 911 on your page.

Geez

I’ve talked airplanes and CFI stuff with friends friends and family friends, even did a sUAS sign off for one, though he did buy me a coffee while I went over his paperwork.

And yeah, if later you had a question about blinds, now you got a guy who would be down to answer some of your questions.

Frankly I really think it’s easier and feels better to help others, especially friends of people close to you, I also think it’s often a good return in the end. Now if I’m busy, or it’s 2am you’re just not going to be able to get through to me, we have that technology ya know ;)

Still, I really don’t take offense if someone wants to ask me a question, especially if it’s related to work, heck might even get some business out of it.
 
Geez

I’ve talked airplanes and CFI stuff with friends friends and family friends, even did a sUAS sign off for one, though he did buy me a coffee while I went over his paperwork.

And yeah, if later you had a question about blinds, now you got a guy who would be down to answer some of your questions.

Frankly I really think it’s easier and feels better to help others, especially friends of people close to you, I also think it’s often a good return in the end. Now if I’m busy, or it’s 2am you’re just not going to be able to get through to me, we have that technology ya know ;)

Still, I really don’t take offense if someone wants to ask me a question, especially if it’s related to work, heck might even get some business out of it.


Not saying I never do, I do it all the time but assuming that I will is the issue. I have lawyer and doctor friends and I never assume they are going to do work for me for free.

I need some free CFIing when are you available. :) Oh and can we use your plane?
 
I feel your pain.

In addition to the random callers asking me how much it would cost "to build a Web site," with no further information provided, I get current clients who call at all hours with their problems, most of which are of their own creation.

Clients locking themselves out of their mail is probably the most common reason. Those ones tend to be regulars because they haven't mastered the science of writing passwords down or storing them in some app. They blame me for "making the password requirements too hard." (Most of them are on cPanel servers, which require 70 percent password strength by default.) So they change the passwords to "something easier" in cPanel webmail. And then they forget the new password. And then they blame me for their not writing the password down or storing it somewhere.

They get even madder when I tell them I can only reset their passwords, not recover them; so if I change it, they have to change it on all their devices. I can expect calls from each of these jokers once or twice a month, on average. I'm thinking about charging a fee for manual password resets.

There also are the iThing users whose devices mysteriously start failing mail authentication for unknown reasons from time to time. These calls always come in clumps: I'll get none for months, then dozens in a day. I suspect some sort of silent updates are to blame. I cut these clients a break because they did nothing wrong. All the settings are correct and they changed nothing, but they can't access their mail. (The only fix I've found that works, by the way, is to completely delete the account on the device, restart the device, and re-create the account.)

Then there are the ones who want to pay their bills over the phone rather than mailing a check, sending a PayPal payment, or paying with a credit card online. Those calls seem to have subsided since I started charging $15.00 to take phone payments. (I make a theoretical exception if they try to pay online but the payment page throws an error; but that's never actually happened, so it remains theoretical.)

About every other month some idiot calls me to complain that he or she is being barraged with spam after disabling the spam filter. Well, duh, as the kids say.

I also get the ones who call to complain that their services have been suspended for non-payment. Well, pay the bill, I tell them. If they argue, I hang up.

One solution I've implemented is changing my business phone number and removing it from my site. (I did sent it to existing clients.) The old, dead number still appears on other sites that scraped it. I leave it that way.

I also have off-hours forwarding turned off for that number. The only emergencies that would justify an off-hours call would be if a server goes down or a site is hacked, and I have monitoring services that would alert me to either of those things.

I also have a call-blocking app (Blacklist Plus) on my cell phone that mutes unknown calls and sends them to voice mail. It also allows me to set up rules for who can call me during quiet time. There are scads of these apps. All the ones I've tried work pretty much the same way.

Finally, I have a Magic Jack number that I use as a home phone number for businesses and others from whom I don't want to receive calls, but who demand a number anyway (mainly stores that use phone numbers for loyalty card identification). I never answer it. If I happen to notice the message indicator flashing I'll check the messages. If not, I don't. I've NEVER gotten an important call on that number, so it's not a big deal.

The nice thing about Magic Jack, aside from it being cheap and working acceptably well when I actually have to make a call on it, is that it only costs $20.00 to change the number. So every couple of years, when telemarketers inevitably get the number, I change it.

Other than family, close friends, and a very few clients, the only people who have my cell number are USAA, my local credit union, PayPal, Navy Fed, and American Express, mainly because none of them have ever abused it and they may actually have important reasons to contact me. Everyone else has one of the other numbers.

I lived most of my life without a cell phone, so I'm under no delusions that I need to be available all the time. Younger people in particular seem to find that odd. Rather than explaining it to them, I simply say that I live in a rural area with spotty cell coverage (which is true). I don't tell them that I mute most incoming calls 16 hours a day during the work week and all of every weekend.

Rich
 
I guess this is thread drift time.
I hate passwords. Why do they make them so hard to remember that you have to write them down. Who is going to write each password down on a different sheet of paper and hide all that paper in different places? The alternative is to write them all down on a single sheet and pray to whatever God you believe in that nobody untrustworthy finds it.

My solution is to create different passwords for each site and write down clues to help me remember the password.

Facial recognition makes it easier, but what if a mugger steals your phone and points it at your face.
The touch pad recognition is a little better, until that mugger cuts off your finger and takes it with him.

Perhaps a cloud based password manager might be the answer, if someone can promise me that nobody will ever be able to hack the password cloud.

The point is Rich, have a little sympathy for those of us that are password challenged. At least when you call them an idiot, say it politely.
 
I guess this is thread drift time.
I hate passwords. Why do they make them so hard to remember that you have to write them down. Who is going to write each password down on a different sheet of paper and hide all that paper in different places? The alternative is to write them all down on a single sheet and pray to whatever God you believe in that nobody untrustworthy finds it.

My solution is to create different passwords for each site and write down clues to help me remember the password.

Facial recognition makes it easier, but what if a mugger steals your phone and points it at your face.
The touch pad recognition is a little better, until that mugger cuts off your finger and takes it with him.

Perhaps a cloud based password manager might be the answer, if someone can promise me that nobody will ever be able to hack the password cloud.

The point is Rich, have a little sympathy for those of us that are password challenged. At least when you call them an idiot, say it politely.


upload_2019-3-11_12-48-25.png
 
I guess this is thread drift time.
I hate passwords. Why do they make them so hard to remember that you have to write them down. Who is going to write each password down on a different sheet of paper and hide all that paper in different places? The alternative is to write them all down on a single sheet and pray to whatever God you believe in that nobody untrustworthy finds it.

My solution is to create different passwords for each site and write down clues to help me remember the password.

Facial recognition makes it easier, but what if a mugger steals your phone and points it at your face.
The touch pad recognition is a little better, until that mugger cuts off your finger and takes it with him.

Perhaps a cloud based password manager might be the answer, if someone can promise me that nobody will ever be able to hack the password cloud.

The point is Rich, have a little sympathy for those of us that are password challenged. At least when you call them an idiot, say it politely.

Except that I called the password-forgetters "jokers," not "idiots." The ones I called "idiots" were the ones who go into cPanel or Webmail, turn the spam-filtering off, and then call me to complain that they're being barraged with spam. In other words, more to Bruce's point, they call me and yell at me, often at bizarre times, to solve a problem that even they admit they caused themselves.

Sometimes these people turn off the spam-filtering because one of their correspondents got themselves on a spam list and that correspondent's mail was being blocked, which is a legitimate problem. The thing is that in the same place where they can turn the spam-filtering off, there is an option to whitelist specific addresses, or even entire domains.

spam-filtering.jpg


There also exists an option to keep the filtering enabled but disable auto-deletion; so they'll still get the mail, but it will be marked as spam. It doesn't exactly require an Einstein-level IQ to figure it out:

auto-delete.jpg


So I have little patience for users who call to complain about being barraged with spam because they themselves turned off the spam-filtering, and are too lazy or stupid to either turn it back on or otherwise fix the problem by using one of the options available to them in the same GUI panel in which they turned it off in the first place.

I recently decided to force the spam filtering and remove the ability of users to disable it. We'll see how that goes.

The password-forgetters, on the other hand, are more jokers than idiots. I don't include in this group those who call for a reset every four or five years when they replace a computer and don't remember the password. I'm talking about the ones who call once or twice a month. They're jokers because they never think to save the passwords in a safe or to use a password manager. But they're not idiots because at least they're being proactive about password security.

I also bear part of the blame because I have password recovery disabled for security reasons. There have been times when that's been exploited, so I keep it turned off. But I rethink that decision every time a joker calls me with a password-reset request.

On a more practical note and in the interest of furthering thread drift, here's one reasonably safe formula that you can use to keep track of passwords and that requires only one variable to be saved: The most recent date you changed the password. That can be the date you opened an account or the last time you changed the password. Those dates can be saved in a text file and no one else will know the significance, yet the passwords will meet almost all complexity requirements.

{Year of most recent change} + {Some word of significance to you, like your first pet's name, with the second letter capitalized } + {Month and date of most recent change} + {A special character that you will always use}​

So if you choose your first pet's name and a ! as the variables, and you changed your POA password today, the password might be:

2019rOver0312!​

and the text entry would be

POA 3/12/19​

Save the password date change file in an encrypted ZIP file on on your computer and on a flash drive every time you change an entry, hang the flash drive on your key chain, and use a decent password manager for regular use. Even if someone stole the flash drive and managed to crack the ZIP file, all they would have would be a list of dates.

Rich
 
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If I ever started a ***** thread on the internet my mama would have whacked me. When I was growning up a tattle tale was no better than who he was telling on. We both got whacked. I guess she did raise me right.
 
Replying just to second/third the Google Voice idea. Bruce was always completely professional in every way in my dealings with him, and I can completely understand the reason he tries to keep his phone number well hidden from non-clients. I have a consulting gig on the side that has similar issues - I have many clients - some are very important and I would even take their call during dinner or when on vacation, because I am certain that if they were to call me off hours or when they know I'm not available it is really important.

Unfortunately I also have a lot of very occasional or even one-time clients (or word-of-mouth referrals) that call me, and this lot tend to call at the most inopportune times. I used to be faced with Bruce's dilemma, and have on more than one occasion had to cut them off mid-sentence with a simple "I'm sorry, I can not discuss this now, I will call you back".

Then I decided to simply move the business phone to google voice, forward it to my unpublished cell phone, and the world is so much better. GV transcribes any voicemail, and I can read it and decide when to call back. If I have any doubt about a call at all based on caller-id, I simply don't answer it. And about 80% of the time no one leaves a message. Saves me a lot of time. If they can't be bothered to leave a message (my outgoing states my business, and that they should leave a detailed message with their number) then I certainly can't be bothered with them.

I really like the pixel phone real-time screening too - but I'm stuck on a Galaxy phone for now. Maybe next time...

Good luck Bruce, and thanks again for all you do for all of us.
 
Replying just to second/third the Google Voice idea.
I have often thought about getting Google Voice. But I just can't give up that much privacy for a little convenience. And I am not a conspiracy freak. (maybe odd, but not freaky). Google tracks everything you say and everyone you communicate with when you use "Voice". And you have to give them permission for that. As is often said with regards to Google and others; "You are not the customer, you are the product".
 
I LOVE Google Voice! They give you a free number from any prefix that you choose.

I like it too, but not even every area code... 916 not available, for instance. Certainly not every exchange; the 555 of 800-555-1212.

You never HAVE to listen to your messages.

Depends on your caller’s accent. Some it can’t render...

Paul
 
you never get a second chance to make a good first impression, sounds like Doc Bruce's caller won't either, as it should be. But, I know him well enough that if the guy manages to get a clue and calls back with some small amount of respect that Bruce will try to help out, it is his nature.
 
I have often thought about getting Google Voice. But I just can't give up that much privacy for a little convenience. And I am not a conspiracy freak. (maybe odd, but not freaky). Google tracks everything you say and everyone you communicate with when you use "Voice". And you have to give them permission for that. As is often said with regards to Google and others; "You are not the customer, you are the product".

If you’re leaving sensitive information in a voicemail, or sending it in a text (shy of using something like signal) well...

If I’m sending it in a text or leaving voicemail it’s nothing I wouldn’t mind saying in a loud voice in a public area.

Also even in a phone call you got to think about where each party is and who each party is.
https://recordinglaw.com/united-states-recording-laws/one-party-consent-states/
And that’s only helps if the other person is going to weaponize the communications for use in the legal system.
 
I'd call that hysterically paranoid.

For the first part you’d be wrong, hysteria would be reading in emotion where there simply is none. Also if you want to get to the origins of that word, I’m not a woman so it doesn’t apply.


For the paranoia aspect,
Most do, till they don’t.

I mean we are still way more likely to meet our makers from having a gut and smoking or eating junk, by a very large margin too, or by some stupid oops like tripping and hitting your melon on something, vs by fire, government, animals, or the least likely; private sector violence, that said still smart to have a few fire extinguishers, head on a swivel in bear country, lawyer in your address book, and a pistol on your hip, oh yeah and eating right, not smoking and exercising too ;)

Also keep in mind as far as being worried about “big brother” goverments have killed right around 133,000,000 of their own citizens in the 20th century alone, vs 8,000,000 killed who were killed by their fellow private citizens, so if you lock your door to keep “bad guys” out but don’t view “big brother” as a threat you should read some stats
 
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