Not really. I *think* most people drive to the next-nearest big city (or rather, the outlying "shopping belts" that have developed around it) about an hour and a half to two hours away.
Big city traffic and aggressive drivers give me the willies so I've never gone there.
The next-largest city to where I live (a half-hour away) has a Kohl's and a Lane Bryant and a few of those other types of places, but it's incredibly spread out and it's depressing to have to drive longer than you are shopping if you are looking for something specific.
Annnnnnd I just found out there's a "fun run" in my town tomorrow morning. Which means EVERY street I would use to get ANYWHERE will be blocked off between 7 am and 11 am.
Dammit. Hard to get to work, hard to get out to the wal-mart (the ONLY local grocery of any size). Maybe I just get out on the highway and drive the hour's round trip to the Kroger's and shop THERE.
(There are about fifteen fun runs a year and they always block off the same streets. It's like they don't believe any of us ever might go anywhere on a Saturday morning)
On the work side: I have a manuscript that should be done and in in a bit less than a month. And an exam to write. And an exam to put together for the Science Olympiad next month. And probably something I'm forgetting.
On the slack side: I'm dang tired because the tree pollen is starting up extra early this year, and this has also been a week of alarums and excursions and I am an ocd introvert who doesn't deal well with that sort of thing.
But I can't think of anything particularly "fun" to do that wouldn't also cost a bunch of money, and I need to start being careful again about how I spend.
"the middle has been hollowed out by online shopping"
I never thought of it that way but that could be it. I won't buy clothes at places like wal-mart (unless desperate and I can get a "national" brand (like Lee) that I can more or less trust not to fall apart after the first washing).
And most of the truly upscale stores, at least from past experience when I lived in a city that had them, look at people like me (I wear a misses' size 14) and sniff and go "We don't dress YOUR kind here" - so I don't shop there.
For a few years my wardrobe was almost exclusively Land's End and LL Bean. (And no, don't give me the lecture about the Trump fan on their board - seen that, read that, saw the debunking.)
I also used to love Deva Lifewear, but they closed up shop. (As did Coldwater Creek, where I shopped when I got a bit more money)
I once had a student ask me to explain what I meant by the word "spigot," which I had used to refer to an outdoor tap, like what you would attach a hose to.
The funny thing was, it took me several minutes to come up with the word "faucet."
I have since asked people about it and apparently "spigot" is more or less a northern US regionalism. Or at least that's what I've concluded.
I love words and I find I often get asked what I meant when I use an unfamiliar one, or use one that has a second meaning. So far I've never been lectured by a boss over that, but I work on a college campus and I suspect my admins would be embarrassed to admit they didn't know a certain word.
F3: I remember several occasions when I was growing up where my dad would have to cycle through the cat's names, even, before he got to mine.
M3: probably lots of factors in play here. I know the last few times I was in a mall (quite a while back as I live in a town without one), it seemed people increasingly didn't know how to behave in public, and when people act like that, I'd almost rather just order stuff online and have it delivered to me. (I could see a day coming where we have Amazon for stuff we can wait a couple days for, Wal-Mart for things we need immediately, and very little in between, which does make me kind of sad.....I was a teen in the 80s and while we didn't live CLOSE to a mall, on occasion I got to go to one and hang out with friends.)
Also, I think the media may have not as good a grasp on just how bad the economy really is in some "heartland" towns. (We are well on our way, in my town, to having ONLY Wal-mart left as retail....)
And yeah, I know, I'm part of the problem because I order online, but when you live in a town where the only book-selling places are a small department of wal-mart or the local (conservative) Christian bookstore, you kind of wind up defaulting to Amazon for things.
Yeah, my default position, most of the time, is NOT "this person is trying to disrespect or dismiss me" but instead "They're having a bad day" or "they're worried about something else going on."
Because I know if I fail to say hello to someone it's not that I want to 'cut' them (as the old Victorians would say) but it's because my brain is so deep in whatever it's working on (or I'm so deep in whatever I'm worried about) that I don't notice the person, or their presence doesn't trigger the controlling-part of my brain to go "Hey, don't be rude! Say hello to them!"
Then again, I have known a few people with whom apparent dismissal/disrespect seemed to be a pattern. I just tried to avoid those people. (And there was one who was out and out rude to me, I just figured, "I know what you are" and continued to avoid him)
I don't want to make light of a serious concern and situation, but now I am picturing in my head something like the village-wide fist-fight in "The Quiet Man."
Only more deadly serious and lots less amusing.
I....think I'm ready to transition to being a hermit now.
Happened to a cousin of mine. He was asked to train his replacement (mostly under threat of "if you want a good recommendation from us"). He already had another job lined up (he heard rumors) so he told them to shove it.
Me? If I lost my teaching gig, I'd happily work for $45K I think. I have a Ph.D. But I'm a biologist, and about the softest kind of biologist there is (botany), so they probably wouldn't want me.
I could probably spin a sign, though. But that won't keep a roof over my head and food on the table.
I've heard of the bursting of the education bubble for at least 10 years.
I'm hoping it can delay at least another 12, at which point I will be able to retire and....well, it won't be good, but at least it won't be catastrophic for me, personally.
(I do NOT want to have to try to find a new job at nearly 50. That's the kind of thing the phrase "good luck with that" was coined for)
Which is eliminating some of the jobs referenced in the earlier part of the statement...
That said, I did hear rumors of a possibly big breakthrough in treating Alzheimer's, which I am very hopeful about (lost a couple of dear family friends to that monster)
And I fear they're just gonna BE strange for a while.
I couldn't bring myself to go in and "secretly" work on research because I was too afraid of being caught.
I probably need to work on that rule-following thing. I'm good at disobeying truly unjust rules but merely annoying ones, not so much.
That said: I did manage to take a furlough day during Spring Break and another one on Good Friday (which we actually get off even though we are a state school).
I'm salaried, so I found furlough as a concept to be really discombobulating: I am used to working until the work I need to do is done, whether that's the 40.8 hours a week I'm paid for or more. We were told NOT to do work. I am a rule-follower inveterate, and one of those people who kind of still believes there's a "permanent record" being kept on her somewhere....so to be told, "Well, you still need to complete your duties BUT you have two fewer days this month you can" just bothered me on a very deep level.
I wound up taking grading home with me and doing it on my furlough days. Because the only other option was shorting my research (not gonna do that, not in a time where "they" might be looking for reasons to get rid of you) or grade much more sloppily (not gonna short the students whose tuition is keeping us afloat) so....
I would have rather just taken an honest pay cut, but I guess they legally could not do that.
Layoffs: This is oranges and the original story was apples, but - we had big budget cuts here last year. First thing done was to offer early retirement buyouts to anyone eligible (which saved our bacon for THIS fiscal year, by consolidating offices and eliminating admin positions - though it does mean it's harder to get stuff done in a timely fashion)
Next were "furlough days," a polite fiction that allowed for pay cuts without violating our contracts. (Also, summer pay was slashed - I made half of what I usually did)
Next, a number of untenured positions were closed, and the people holding them let go. This was kind of random bad luck which departments got hit - we lost a person who had been here longer than I had but who had chosen never to apply for tenure (presumably because she didn't want the research and service burden the tenured bear).
The firings led to a lot of outcry, and for me, it was very unsettling because the person let go was known as an excellent teacher AND she had been here longer than I had (I have been here 17 years now). So they sent around a survey asking us to rank criteria as to what made a faculty member "essential" if it came to the point of doing a Reduction In Force (essentially: laying off the tenured.)
I had to read the e-mail four times to convince myself that it was purely hypothetical, that they weren't planning on axing some of us - that's how scared I was. (I am probably protected now by virtue of being a generally good teacher and teaching a couple classes that are "mission critical" to one of our majors, but that would be difficult for someone else to pick up. Still, I am doing things I might rather not do - I am going to spend my summer reviewing environmental policy to pick up yet another class for someone who is retiring- just to "prove" to the higher ups how "indispensable" I am).
I don't know that a lottery would be any better. I think for me it would be worse because I would feel as if nothing I did had any bearing on whether I kept my gig or not. (And I realize the vice-principal situation is very different, but).
I've used a word processor for more than half my life at this point and I STILL have to write "important" things (manuscripts of journal articles, grant proposals, some exams) out longhand on a legal pad first. I can't think with a blank screen blinking at me.
(I'm also maybe a wee bit of a Luddite about some things)
I confess, mine is more "You should spend at least 2x as much time revising as you spent writing the thing in the first place." Experience seems to bear me out. (Also, I can tell the written-at-the-last-minute ones: oh Bob the typos.
Once in a while - when I get to the tony natural-foods store - I can get frozen wild-caught salmon. I also keep a small hoard of cans of the tinned kind of wild-caught salmon (and I pay the premium for skinless and boneless, because bones, ew).
I don't know that I've ever had not-previously-frozen salmon, but I have had broiled, fresh-caught lake whitefish (in the same zoological family) and it was incredible....and I do not consider myself a fan of fish.
For "creative" writing I am more of a Mozart, but for science writing, I am more Beethoven. I can "write" stuff like dialog in my head very easily but for factual stuff it is LABOR.
I'm not crazy about writing up results for publication, but I have to do it, so I do. At least in this case I have all the number-crunching done and it's going to be based on a poster I presented at meetings, so at least I have a guideline of where it needs to go.
I also am a perfectionist about writing that lots of others will see, so it's kind of agonizing for me and I spend a lot of time trying to rephrase things and then get hung up on "is THIS way better or is THAT way better." The fact that there are time constraints on this (I have about six weeks) may actually, ironically, lead to it being a better paper because I will dither less.
"It's like a pie-eating contest where the prize is more pie" - I've seen that aphorism applied to tenure (I am a college prof) but I think it fits in any career where being good at what you do means you get more of it to do.
My weekend plans are work. But I'm not sad or mad. I got invited to contribute a paper to a conference proceedings. I wasn't planning to write the paper but the editor specifically asked me and flattery tends to work on me, so.
Also it counts as another publication on the CV, another little brick in the "it would be really dumb of you all to fire me" wall. (I have tenure but I am a worrier by nature, so....)
(I use Anne Lamott's "S(redacted)ty first draft" method for writing. I highly recommend it to anyone who is a perfectionist)
yeah, my state has two commercial airports, so....airlifted fish would be v. expensive. Not saying that some of the high-end casinos don't have it, but I've never seen it in the Mart of Wal or the other groceries I manage to frequent.
Maybe that's it and not so much "maybe monkfish got overfished and now isn't available" idea my mom and I were talking about over Christmas - monkfish was something they really commonly had when I was a kid in the 70s and it was the only fish I willingly ate then. But they lived in Ohio, within close enough distance of the Cleveland airport that flown-in fish was possible.
Ah, coastal privilege. (Presuming you are on a coast). Here, fish comes frozen in a brick, in a can, or caught out of a local lake. And most people don't have a taste for "fancy" fish, which is probably why I've never seen monkfish here. (It used to be cheap; now it is expensive. Too many people found out how good it can be)
Do shad and shad roe still exist? I read about them in some vintage cookbooks I have but have never seen them for sale - but then again, I never lived less than 500 miles from the East Coast.
"Catfood is the most popular fish for people who don’t like seafood"
Wonderful if unintentional commentary on catfish. (I am not a big fan of fish but I dislike catfish; for one thing it has a weird texture to me, for another, if it's wild caught, God only knows what crud it was sucking up off the bottom. For me, it's salmonid fish (salmon, trout, freshwater whitefish) or nothing. Well, except for cod. Cod is okay. And monkfish, but I haven't seen monkfish in YEARS)
(Though I would probably be more prone to dismiss canned tuna as "cat food")
And apparently a version has hit here: e-mails going around (on the campus mail platform, not Gmail, but still) claiming you have a meeting with someone and asking for your login information if you click the link.
Again, I guess it's good to be a suspicious wench. ("Hey, I don't have a meeting scheduled with that person, something's wrong")
We've had people on my campus (professors) regularly fall for what I think of as pretty basic phishing scams ("Your e-mail box is almost full! Enter your username and password here to delete unneeded messages!")
We've also apparently had a case of someone falling for the Cryptolocker scam; I heard they had to have their hard drive totally wiped.
I don't know if that means that 'highly educated' people sometimes don't have common sense, or if they trust too much, or what. I'm a pretty suspicious wench and thus far I've managed to stay safe, though once or twice I got e-mails that were "for real" and I deleted them thinking they were scams.
(Also, I keep all my really important files in a couple different places, so having to have my hard drive wiped would represent considerably less loss of work to me than it would to someone else)
I just as a matter of policy don't open any attachments I have not specifically asked for and I don't respond to e-mails with "weird" From: addresses. (Someplace in Czechoslovakia is not going to be monitoring the "fullness" of my inbox)
That said, I'm not sure a moment of inattention might not allow me to fall for the new Google scam.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Linky Friday: Out Of This World”
Not really. I *think* most people drive to the next-nearest big city (or rather, the outlying "shopping belts" that have developed around it) about an hour and a half to two hours away.
Big city traffic and aggressive drivers give me the willies so I've never gone there.
The next-largest city to where I live (a half-hour away) has a Kohl's and a Lane Bryant and a few of those other types of places, but it's incredibly spread out and it's depressing to have to drive longer than you are shopping if you are looking for something specific.
On “Weekend!”
Annnnnnd I just found out there's a "fun run" in my town tomorrow morning. Which means EVERY street I would use to get ANYWHERE will be blocked off between 7 am and 11 am.
Dammit. Hard to get to work, hard to get out to the wal-mart (the ONLY local grocery of any size). Maybe I just get out on the highway and drive the hour's round trip to the Kroger's and shop THERE.
(There are about fifteen fun runs a year and they always block off the same streets. It's like they don't believe any of us ever might go anywhere on a Saturday morning)
On “Linky Friday: Out Of This World”
I found that New Balance fit my feet badly.
I wear Nikes. Perhaps I karmically balance that by buying SAS (made in San Antonio) as my dress shoes. (I have "special" feet. It's a drag)
On “Weekend!”
I can't decide whether to work or to slack.
On the work side: I have a manuscript that should be done and in in a bit less than a month. And an exam to write. And an exam to put together for the Science Olympiad next month. And probably something I'm forgetting.
On the slack side: I'm dang tired because the tree pollen is starting up extra early this year, and this has also been a week of alarums and excursions and I am an ocd introvert who doesn't deal well with that sort of thing.
But I can't think of anything particularly "fun" to do that wouldn't also cost a bunch of money, and I need to start being careful again about how I spend.
On “Linky Friday: Out Of This World”
"the middle has been hollowed out by online shopping"
I never thought of it that way but that could be it. I won't buy clothes at places like wal-mart (unless desperate and I can get a "national" brand (like Lee) that I can more or less trust not to fall apart after the first washing).
And most of the truly upscale stores, at least from past experience when I lived in a city that had them, look at people like me (I wear a misses' size 14) and sniff and go "We don't dress YOUR kind here" - so I don't shop there.
For a few years my wardrobe was almost exclusively Land's End and LL Bean. (And no, don't give me the lecture about the Trump fan on their board - seen that, read that, saw the debunking.)
I also used to love Deva Lifewear, but they closed up shop. (As did Coldwater Creek, where I shopped when I got a bit more money)
"
I once had a student ask me to explain what I meant by the word "spigot," which I had used to refer to an outdoor tap, like what you would attach a hose to.
The funny thing was, it took me several minutes to come up with the word "faucet."
I have since asked people about it and apparently "spigot" is more or less a northern US regionalism. Or at least that's what I've concluded.
I love words and I find I often get asked what I meant when I use an unfamiliar one, or use one that has a second meaning. So far I've never been lectured by a boss over that, but I work on a college campus and I suspect my admins would be embarrassed to admit they didn't know a certain word.
"
F3: I remember several occasions when I was growing up where my dad would have to cycle through the cat's names, even, before he got to mine.
M3: probably lots of factors in play here. I know the last few times I was in a mall (quite a while back as I live in a town without one), it seemed people increasingly didn't know how to behave in public, and when people act like that, I'd almost rather just order stuff online and have it delivered to me. (I could see a day coming where we have Amazon for stuff we can wait a couple days for, Wal-Mart for things we need immediately, and very little in between, which does make me kind of sad.....I was a teen in the 80s and while we didn't live CLOSE to a mall, on occasion I got to go to one and hang out with friends.)
Also, I think the media may have not as good a grasp on just how bad the economy really is in some "heartland" towns. (We are well on our way, in my town, to having ONLY Wal-mart left as retail....)
And yeah, I know, I'm part of the problem because I order online, but when you live in a town where the only book-selling places are a small department of wal-mart or the local (conservative) Christian bookstore, you kind of wind up defaulting to Amazon for things.
On “Morning Ed: Science {2017.01.25.W}”
Yeah, my default position, most of the time, is NOT "this person is trying to disrespect or dismiss me" but instead "They're having a bad day" or "they're worried about something else going on."
Because I know if I fail to say hello to someone it's not that I want to 'cut' them (as the old Victorians would say) but it's because my brain is so deep in whatever it's working on (or I'm so deep in whatever I'm worried about) that I don't notice the person, or their presence doesn't trigger the controlling-part of my brain to go "Hey, don't be rude! Say hello to them!"
Then again, I have known a few people with whom apparent dismissal/disrespect seemed to be a pattern. I just tried to avoid those people. (And there was one who was out and out rude to me, I just figured, "I know what you are" and continued to avoid him)
On “Punching Up, Punching Down, Punching All Around”
I don't want to make light of a serious concern and situation, but now I am picturing in my head something like the village-wide fist-fight in "The Quiet Man."
Only more deadly serious and lots less amusing.
I....think I'm ready to transition to being a hermit now.
On “Morning Ed: Education {2017.01.23.M}”
Happened to a cousin of mine. He was asked to train his replacement (mostly under threat of "if you want a good recommendation from us"). He already had another job lined up (he heard rumors) so he told them to shove it.
Me? If I lost my teaching gig, I'd happily work for $45K I think. I have a Ph.D. But I'm a biologist, and about the softest kind of biologist there is (botany), so they probably wouldn't want me.
I could probably spin a sign, though. But that won't keep a roof over my head and food on the table.
"
I've heard of the bursting of the education bubble for at least 10 years.
I'm hoping it can delay at least another 12, at which point I will be able to retire and....well, it won't be good, but at least it won't be catastrophic for me, personally.
(I do NOT want to have to try to find a new job at nearly 50. That's the kind of thing the phrase "good luck with that" was coined for)
"
Which is eliminating some of the jobs referenced in the earlier part of the statement...
That said, I did hear rumors of a possibly big breakthrough in treating Alzheimer's, which I am very hopeful about (lost a couple of dear family friends to that monster)
"
And I fear they're just gonna BE strange for a while.
I couldn't bring myself to go in and "secretly" work on research because I was too afraid of being caught.
I probably need to work on that rule-following thing. I'm good at disobeying truly unjust rules but merely annoying ones, not so much.
That said: I did manage to take a furlough day during Spring Break and another one on Good Friday (which we actually get off even though we are a state school).
"
I'm salaried, so I found furlough as a concept to be really discombobulating: I am used to working until the work I need to do is done, whether that's the 40.8 hours a week I'm paid for or more. We were told NOT to do work. I am a rule-follower inveterate, and one of those people who kind of still believes there's a "permanent record" being kept on her somewhere....so to be told, "Well, you still need to complete your duties BUT you have two fewer days this month you can" just bothered me on a very deep level.
I wound up taking grading home with me and doing it on my furlough days. Because the only other option was shorting my research (not gonna do that, not in a time where "they" might be looking for reasons to get rid of you) or grade much more sloppily (not gonna short the students whose tuition is keeping us afloat) so....
I would have rather just taken an honest pay cut, but I guess they legally could not do that.
"
Layoffs: This is oranges and the original story was apples, but - we had big budget cuts here last year. First thing done was to offer early retirement buyouts to anyone eligible (which saved our bacon for THIS fiscal year, by consolidating offices and eliminating admin positions - though it does mean it's harder to get stuff done in a timely fashion)
Next were "furlough days," a polite fiction that allowed for pay cuts without violating our contracts. (Also, summer pay was slashed - I made half of what I usually did)
Next, a number of untenured positions were closed, and the people holding them let go. This was kind of random bad luck which departments got hit - we lost a person who had been here longer than I had but who had chosen never to apply for tenure (presumably because she didn't want the research and service burden the tenured bear).
The firings led to a lot of outcry, and for me, it was very unsettling because the person let go was known as an excellent teacher AND she had been here longer than I had (I have been here 17 years now). So they sent around a survey asking us to rank criteria as to what made a faculty member "essential" if it came to the point of doing a Reduction In Force (essentially: laying off the tenured.)
I had to read the e-mail four times to convince myself that it was purely hypothetical, that they weren't planning on axing some of us - that's how scared I was. (I am probably protected now by virtue of being a generally good teacher and teaching a couple classes that are "mission critical" to one of our majors, but that would be difficult for someone else to pick up. Still, I am doing things I might rather not do - I am going to spend my summer reviewing environmental policy to pick up yet another class for someone who is retiring- just to "prove" to the higher ups how "indispensable" I am).
I don't know that a lottery would be any better. I think for me it would be worse because I would feel as if nothing I did had any bearing on whether I kept my gig or not. (And I realize the vice-principal situation is very different, but).
On “Weekend!”
I've used a word processor for more than half my life at this point and I STILL have to write "important" things (manuscripts of journal articles, grant proposals, some exams) out longhand on a legal pad first. I can't think with a blank screen blinking at me.
(I'm also maybe a wee bit of a Luddite about some things)
"
Yeah, I have students with that attitude.
I confess, mine is more "You should spend at least 2x as much time revising as you spent writing the thing in the first place." Experience seems to bear me out. (Also, I can tell the written-at-the-last-minute ones: oh Bob the typos.
On “Linky Friday: It’s Been Good Knowing You”
Once in a while - when I get to the tony natural-foods store - I can get frozen wild-caught salmon. I also keep a small hoard of cans of the tinned kind of wild-caught salmon (and I pay the premium for skinless and boneless, because bones, ew).
I don't know that I've ever had not-previously-frozen salmon, but I have had broiled, fresh-caught lake whitefish (in the same zoological family) and it was incredible....and I do not consider myself a fan of fish.
On “Weekend!”
For "creative" writing I am more of a Mozart, but for science writing, I am more Beethoven. I can "write" stuff like dialog in my head very easily but for factual stuff it is LABOR.
I'm not crazy about writing up results for publication, but I have to do it, so I do. At least in this case I have all the number-crunching done and it's going to be based on a poster I presented at meetings, so at least I have a guideline of where it needs to go.
I also am a perfectionist about writing that lots of others will see, so it's kind of agonizing for me and I spend a lot of time trying to rephrase things and then get hung up on "is THIS way better or is THAT way better." The fact that there are time constraints on this (I have about six weeks) may actually, ironically, lead to it being a better paper because I will dither less.
"
"It's like a pie-eating contest where the prize is more pie" - I've seen that aphorism applied to tenure (I am a college prof) but I think it fits in any career where being good at what you do means you get more of it to do.
My weekend plans are work. But I'm not sad or mad. I got invited to contribute a paper to a conference proceedings. I wasn't planning to write the paper but the editor specifically asked me and flattery tends to work on me, so.
Also it counts as another publication on the CV, another little brick in the "it would be really dumb of you all to fire me" wall. (I have tenure but I am a worrier by nature, so....)
(I use Anne Lamott's "S(redacted)ty first draft" method for writing. I highly recommend it to anyone who is a perfectionist)
On “Linky Friday: It’s Been Good Knowing You”
yeah, my state has two commercial airports, so....airlifted fish would be v. expensive. Not saying that some of the high-end casinos don't have it, but I've never seen it in the Mart of Wal or the other groceries I manage to frequent.
Maybe that's it and not so much "maybe monkfish got overfished and now isn't available" idea my mom and I were talking about over Christmas - monkfish was something they really commonly had when I was a kid in the 70s and it was the only fish I willingly ate then. But they lived in Ohio, within close enough distance of the Cleveland airport that flown-in fish was possible.
"
Ah, coastal privilege. (Presuming you are on a coast). Here, fish comes frozen in a brick, in a can, or caught out of a local lake. And most people don't have a taste for "fancy" fish, which is probably why I've never seen monkfish here. (It used to be cheap; now it is expensive. Too many people found out how good it can be)
Do shad and shad roe still exist? I read about them in some vintage cookbooks I have but have never seen them for sale - but then again, I never lived less than 500 miles from the East Coast.
"
"Catfood is the most popular fish for people who don’t like seafood"
Wonderful if unintentional commentary on catfish. (I am not a big fan of fish but I dislike catfish; for one thing it has a weird texture to me, for another, if it's wild caught, God only knows what crud it was sucking up off the bottom. For me, it's salmonid fish (salmon, trout, freshwater whitefish) or nothing. Well, except for cod. Cod is okay. And monkfish, but I haven't seen monkfish in YEARS)
(Though I would probably be more prone to dismiss canned tuna as "cat food")
On “An insidious new Gmail phishing attack is tricking even the most careful of users”
And apparently a version has hit here: e-mails going around (on the campus mail platform, not Gmail, but still) claiming you have a meeting with someone and asking for your login information if you click the link.
Again, I guess it's good to be a suspicious wench. ("Hey, I don't have a meeting scheduled with that person, something's wrong")
"
We've had people on my campus (professors) regularly fall for what I think of as pretty basic phishing scams ("Your e-mail box is almost full! Enter your username and password here to delete unneeded messages!")
We've also apparently had a case of someone falling for the Cryptolocker scam; I heard they had to have their hard drive totally wiped.
I don't know if that means that 'highly educated' people sometimes don't have common sense, or if they trust too much, or what. I'm a pretty suspicious wench and thus far I've managed to stay safe, though once or twice I got e-mails that were "for real" and I deleted them thinking they were scams.
(Also, I keep all my really important files in a couple different places, so having to have my hard drive wiped would represent considerably less loss of work to me than it would to someone else)
I just as a matter of policy don't open any attachments I have not specifically asked for and I don't respond to e-mails with "weird" From: addresses. (Someplace in Czechoslovakia is not going to be monitoring the "fullness" of my inbox)
That said, I'm not sure a moment of inattention might not allow me to fall for the new Google scam.
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