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<dc:date>2008-11-20T01:09:58+00:00</dc:date>
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<item rdf:about="http://aplawrence.com/Misc/new-phone2.html">
<title>Finally, a new phone! by Anthony Lawrence</title>
<description>
<![CDATA[
2008/11/20<br /><br />
<p>We don't normally use the alarm clock. Why should we? I always
wake up early enough without it but if I do oversleep, so what? We
seldom have to be anywhere early.</p>
<p>Today was an exception, though. I wanted to catch a 7:00 AM
train so we had set the radio alarm. By chance it went off this
morning exactly as the announcer intoned "Good Morning, I'm Bob Oates".
I found that amusing for some reason so at least I started the
day with a smile.</p>
<p>My wife brought me to the train with time to spare and the ride
to South Station was uneventful. I got there about 8:00 AM with
plenty of time to make a 9:00 AM meeting at Back Bay.</p>
<p>There are a couple of ways to get to Back Bay from South Station.
You can hop an outgoing train that stops there; you can take the subway
(but you have to make a change at Downtown Crossing). You can also
walk. It's a couple of miles, but I had plenty of time and I like to
walk.</p>
<p>I forgot how damn cold it was.</p>
<p>I regretted my decision almost immediately. I had to keep
switching my computer bag from hand to hand to let the free hand have
a few minutes of pocket time. I couldn't think of a way to get
my head and face into my pocket, though, so I quickly developed
a headache and face pain. Oh, well: what doesn't kill us makes
us stronger..</p>
<p>A Dunkin Donuts came into view. Too soon, though: if I went
in then, I'd still be a long, long way from Back Bay. I had better
wait for the next one, I thought..</p>
<p>Except there was no next one. Is it possible there is not a single
other Dunkin Donuts all along Essex and Boylston Streets? If there
is, I missed it. My fingers hurt, hurt, hurt.</p>
<p>As I approached the Prudential Center, I pulled out my cell phone
to check the time. My frozen fingers fumbled the job, the phone
bounced down the sidewalk ahead of me. When I picked it up, it
had shut off. Fearing the worst, I tried turning it on.. to my
delight it responded but indicated that it had a very low
battery charge. Impossible! I had left it charging overnight at
home, had not even used it yet today, how could it be low? Well,
yeah, I did let it smash to a brick sidewalk, it had bounced
amazingly high before it hit again and then bounced one last
time before it came to rest. Think it just MIGHT be broken, Tony?
Duh..</p>
<p>Well, I planned to have it shut off during the meeting..
maybe we'll be OK.</p>
<p>This phone has been giving me trouble anyway. It often doesn't
want to charge. It's old. Its time has come, but I just have
had trouble deciding on a replacement. The iPhone is nice, so
is the Android.. but both are pricey.. I dunno.. there are so many
darn cell phones to choose from!</p>
<p>I arrived eight minutes early for the meeting. To my surprise,
no one else was there and the receptionist said she thought it was
set for 10:00. I checked my paperwork - no, there it was plain
as day: 9:00 AM CST.</p>
<p>CST? Oh, crap. I never noticed that. Good thing they had
free Green Mountain Rain Forest Nut coffee while I waited..</p>
<p>The meeting went fine except that the wireless internet connection
didn't work so I couldn't get emails during it. I left the phone
off as planned. We finished up about noon and I started back
to South Station. Again, I walked because I felt it would be
warmer by now.</p>
<p>It was not. My phone said I had eighteen unheard messages. Oh boy,
it's going to be one of those days. I stepped up the pace and
started listening to them. My phone started doing that low battery
warning beep almost immediately. I hurried through the messages
and felt deep panic setting in.</p>
<p>First, I had two crashed servers to deal with. Both of these
were machines I had resuscitated from similar crashes in recent weeks.
What the hell did I miss? Why were these servers crashing again?
And then there was another customer asking the same question I had
answered in email just a few days ago.. didn't he read his email?
The rest of the messages were less stressful but having so many
calls to return with a dangerously low battery upset me. I
walked more quickly with my aching, aching fingers and face.</p>
<p>I just missed the train I wanted so now had plenty of time to
kill. The wireless at South Station was nearly unusable; I managed
to answer a few emails and decided to try calling the most urgent
customers. I got their voice mail and left messages expressing my
apologies that they had crashed again and promising to be on-site
ASAP. The phone beeped ominously.</p>
<p>My train came and soon enough I was home.. well, no.. I had to
go to my daughter's house because my wife had left a message that
she'd rather pick me up there as she was close by. So I went there.
I have a key, and as it happened my daughter called and said that she
was coming home early. Great..</p>
<p>So I let myself in and plugged my computer in to recharge. It
had gone nearly dead at South Station. I turned on the phone again
long enough to get the numbers I'd need and started calling them with
my daughter's house phone. That reminds me; I had better tell her
the numbers I called or she'll be fighting with Verizon next month..
</p>
<p>I called the first crashed customer and this time I reached her.
She sounded confused. "It can't be crashed.. I'm using it!", she
insisted. My brain spun and I realized that my cell phone had
given me deleted messages. Maybe I even fat fingered it with my
near frozen digits and asked for deleted messages! Oh boy.. I
called the other customers and unconfused them, then set to work
trying to figure out who I really needed to call and who I didn't.
It turned out that I really had only two new messages.</p>
<p>I suddenly had a moment of dread. I knew my daughter was
on her way home and she knew I was there. But her husband's sister
also lives there. What if she came home early? No car in the
driveway, she wouldn't expect anyone to be inside. She knows
me, but maybe not well enough to recognize me instantly under those
circumstances. I decided I'd wait outside until my daughter came..
more cold face and head.. but better than possibly scaring someone half
to death</p>
<p>Well, no more problems. My daughter showed up, her sister-in-law
did not, my wife came a few minutes later. We drove home. The
very first thing I did after plugging in my phone to charge was
to go to the AT&T web page and order a new cell phone. No research,
no double checking, I just clicked on one they offered for free.
I'll be getting a LG CU515 in the mail sometime soon.. hope it's
a decent phone..</p>
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</item>
<item rdf:about="http://aplawrence.com/MacOSX/bit-defender.html">
<title>Unix Virus Software by Anthony Lawrence</title>
<description>
<![CDATA[
2008/11/18<br /><br />
<p>This link may be gone if you are reading this after January 2009:
<a href="http://beta.bitdefender.com/site/Beta/listCampaigns/">BitDefender
Beta Page</a>. There are (or were) two beta products there: "BitDefender Antivirus Scanner for Unices" and "Bitdefender for Mac 2009 - Beta Product Concept Campaign". The first if for Linux and BSD, the second obviously for Mac.</p>
<p>This little blurb was part of release news for Mac:</p>
<blockquote>
While a virus may not affect your Mac, BitDefender Antivirus will
detect it if downloaded from the internet or received by e-mail,
instant messaging or by any other means. Therefore, you will be
aware of it and not send it to a PC that could be infected by it.
</blockquote>
<p>No such message was in the Linux/BSD notes. Is this because
they think Mac users are more apt to insist they have no need for
an A/V product? Or because they think they need to explain
more to Mac users? Or is it that they think this would be the only
use of their product under current conditions?</p>
<p>Well, the last is pretty much the case. Mac users aren't currently
threatened by much of anything. I think we all know that's not
likely to remain true: while we may never face the disgusting
mess that XP faces, Mac attacks certainly will increase as Mac
popularity increases.</p>
<p>It is interesting that BitDefender would even bother introducing
such a product now. Certainly they have to be incurring significant
development costs and it's hard to imagine recouping them: I don't
think Mac or Linux users are going to buy A/V products just now (though
that may not be true in corporate environments).</p>
<p>Of course we don't want to pass on
problems to our less enlightened friends and co-workers, so
running an A/V product could be seen as just good citizenship.
It was in that spirit that I installed the BitDefender Beta
on my Mac.</p>
<p>Remember, this is early beta. Nothing I say here should
be taken as slander or complaint. I looked at this in
mid November; if it's much after that probably none of this
is of value, so keep that in mind.</p>
<p>The main console for this is an attractive command center
that gives access to the main functions.</p>
<img src="http://aplawrence.com/images/BitDefender.jpg" alt="Bit Defender
Console" />
<p>The "Shield" is real-time protection. For example, if I
try to copy an <a href="http://aplawrence.com/SCOFAQ/FAQ_scotec1virustest.html">Eicar test file</a>, I get stopped by this. The Scanner of course
runs through your system as you would expect or can select specific
directories to scan. </p>
<p>At the present time there is no way to exclude directories or
files from protection; they say that will be added later. The
Shield puts a significant load on a Mac: Firefox takes forever
to load with this running. They are aware of that, too. </p>
<p>But there's the rub, isn't it? I'm sure they'll improve this,
but any such product will impact performance. You
can get help from file system notifiers, but there will always
be a performance loss.</p>
<p>I honestly don't know if I would run this. It would have to be
extremely un-demanding - it's just not worth any annoyance considering
how unlikely any threat is right now. I suppose that if it
were truly unobtrusive and very cheap I MIGHT use it. But that's
pretty hard to imagine.
Things can change, though. The threats may increase, we may
need products like this. </p>
<p>But not now, right?</p>
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</item>
<item rdf:about="http://aplawrence.com/Kerio/resource-scheduling.html">
<title>Resource Scheduling in Kerio by Anthony Lawrence</title>
<description>
<![CDATA[
2008/11/15<br /><br />
<p>Resource scheduling is new to Kerio Mailserver as of version 6.6. It
is fully integrated with the Calendar system and therefore is available
in Webmail as well as the Outlook Connector. The same Free/Busy
scheduler is used as ordinary calendar events. In fact, the
resource is simply a special type of attendee.</p>
<p>Resources are created within the Kerio Administration Console
under Domain Settings, Resources. A Resource can be a Room or a
piece of Equipment. Within those screens you can specify users
who are allowed to schedule the resource and a special "Resource
Manager" who can access resource calendars and change them to resolve collisions and decide on priorities.</p>
<p>Once the resources are created, they can be accessed when creating
calendar events. Conflicts will show up as you would expect; here I
am trying to schedule use of a slide projector at a time when it
is already in use:</p>
<p><img src="http://aplawrence.com/images/kerio-scheduling.jpg" alt="kerio resource scheduling" /></p>
<p>The invitation to "tony" also shows him as "busy". User "foo" is
available, fortunately..</p>
<p>This is obviously very simple to use. You can read full details
at the <a href="http://www.kerio.com/supp_kms_manual.html">Kerio Online
Manuals</a>.</p>
<p>Unrelated to this, but also new in 6.6 is a feature I've wanted
for some time: automatic deletion of Junk and/or Deleted Items. This
can be set system wide with individual user overrides and exceptions.</p>
<p><img src="http://aplawrence.com/images/kerio-deletion.jpg" alt="kerio resource deletion" /></p>
<p><b>I am a Kerio reseller. Please see <a href="http://aplawrence.com/Kerio">our main
Kerio page</a> for more information, pricing or to arrange a demo.</b></p>
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</item>
<item rdf:about="http://aplawrence.com/Kerio/shared_folders.html">
<title>Sharing Kerio Folders, Calendars and Contacts by Anthony Lawrence</title>
<description>
<![CDATA[
2008/11/15<br /><br />
<p>Kerio "folders" consist of mail folders, calendars, contacts and notes.
Every user has their own private folders (but can share any of them
with other users) and there are also Public Folders which are
automatically available to all users.</p>
<p>Contacts, Calendar events and so on can be added to public folders
by the Administrator. <b>That's the Admin account created at installation,
not administrator accounts added later</b>. The primary administrator can
give access rights to other users if desired.</p>
<p>Users see Public folders automatically, but need to specifically
"subscribe" to other folders that may be available to them. For
example, suppose I create a new Contact list in my main folder.
I right-click on that and choose "Access Rights". I can then choose whether
I want to share that with specific users/groups or all users (or users from
a specific domain). <b>That folder won't show up in Public Folders
no matter how it is shared.</b>. A user who wants to subscribe to
that has to know that I am sharing it. They would right-click on their
top level folder or choose "Subscribe Shared Folders" in the WebMail Settings
to initiate the shared folder subscription dialog. The contact list
will then show up and can be searched when composing mail. Names will be completed automatically in Webmail if that option is set in Settings. The user should also select which contact folders to search automatically. </p>
<p>At the file system level, all of these are simply text files. For
example, on a Mac OS X system, you'll find the Public folders
at /usr/local/kerio/mailserver/store/mail/localhost/#public. Let's
say that we wanted to add a contact directly at the file system
level (by an external program, for example).</p>
<p>Contacts are simply .eml files stored in the Contacts/#msgs directory:</p>
<pre>
# ls -l ?msgs
total 32
-rw------- 1 root apl 265 Apr 7 2008 00000001.eml
-rw------- 1 root apl 310 Nov 15 11:16 00000002.eml
-rw------- 1 root apl 310 Nov 15 13:24 00000003.eml
-rw------- 1 root apl 300 Nov 15 13:30 00000004.eml
</pre>
<p>A sparsely filled out contact might look like this:</p>
<pre>
Subject: ralph
Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2008 11:16:12 -0500
Content-Type: text/vcard; charset="utf-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:3.0
PRODID:-//kerio.com/Contacts//NONSGML v1.0//EN
N:;ralph;;;
FN:ralph
X-FILE-AS:ralph
CLASS:PUBLIC
EMAIL;TYPE=PREF,HOME:ralphie@gop.com
END:VCARD
</pre>
<p>You can create 00000005.eml with the new contact. All that
remains is to rename "index.fld" in /usr/local/kerio/mailserver/store/mail/localhost/#public/Contacts to "index.bad"</p>
<p><i>I would recommend stopping the mailserver, adding the contact, renaming the file and
restarting. However, if you can be sure that no one is currently working
in this directory, you can do it with the server running.</i></p>
<p>This method could be used to programatically add a large number
of contacts from mailing lists, etc. All Kerio files are text based,
so similar methods can be used for Calendar events and so on.</p>
<p><b>I am a Kerio reseller. Please see <a href="http://aplawrence.com/Kerio">our main
Kerio page</a> for more information, pricing or to arrange a demo.</b></p>
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<title>E-Junkie Review by Anthony Lawrence</title>
<description>
<![CDATA[
2008/11/15<br /><br />
<p>While I was researching pricing and all that for my
<a href="http://aplawrence.com/psst.html">Psst - wanna work for yourself?</a>
e-book, I kept coming across <a href="http://www.e-junkie.com/?r=38926">E-Junkie</a> links.</p>
<p>You might not notice these if you aren't paying close attention. These
things almost always redirect you to the splash page where the actual
item is being sold, so you wouldn't necessarily know that E-Junkie is
involved unless you looked at the properties of the link. I do that;
and I kept seeing "e-junkie.com".</p>
<p>E-Junkie's main page tells the story: "We help you sell online".
That's what they do, and they do it well. I've used some other
selling methods in the past; E-Junkie seems to have fixed everything
I didn't like about those.</p>
<p>You can use E-Junkie to sell your own products or get affilate
payments for other people's. If you are selling your own thing like
an e-book or a video, you just upload your file or files, set
the price and the payment methods (PayPal, Google Checkout, etc.) and
that's pretty much it. They give you the code for your website and
when a buyer clicks it and makes a payment, they get an instant
download link and the money goes immediately to your PayPal or Google
Checkout etc. account. No waiting for your money, no having to
process the order manually. They have all the extra stuff you might
need: discount codes, inventory managment.. options for size, color,
all that..</p>
<p>If you just want to sell other people's stuff, you get the code
for your site and put it up. For example, if you wanted to
resell my book, you'd <a href="https://www.e-junkie.com/affiliates/?cl=38926&ev=12d38974da">sign up here</a>, put the code on your website, and wait for me
to send you money. </p>
<p>There are problems with that, but it's not E-Junkie, it's
the people selling the stuff. First, as I said, you have to wait to get
paid. More important is that the sellers are apt to screw you up
by changing things on their website. Let's say you find this great
little e-book that you really like and you want to recommend it to
your readers. You get the code from E-Junkie, and put it on your
website. When your readers click on that, they get taken to the
other site's selling page. If they actually buy, you get credited
with the sale. That's ok, right?</p>
<p>Yeah, but what often happens is that two months from now that
splash page isn't about the e-book you liked. They've changed it
to something else, moved the book page somewhere else, and forgot to
update E-Junkie. Your readers click on the link for this e-book
that you've praised up and down but they get sent to some page
selling some other thing entirely - maybe something you absolutely
would NOT recommend.</p>
<p>There's not much you can do about that other than watch who you
sign up with and check your links regularly. As I said, that's
not E-Junkie's fault, it's the other sellers.</p>
<p>
How do you know you'll get paid? If it's other people, you really
don't. Again, that's not E-Junkie's problem. They don't owe you
money; the other affiliate does. If it's YOUR product, you get
paid immediately. If other people are promoting that, it's up
to you to pay them, but E-Junkie makes that easy too - one click
and you pay them all! </p>
<p>If you've got something to sell, consider E-Junkie. It's $5.00 a month, no
bandwidth or transaction limit, no extra fees, that's it. Good deal,
good results.</p>
<p style="text-align:center"><a href="http://www.e-junkie.com/?r=38926" target="ejcom" title="Shopping Cart by E-junkie"><img src="https://www.e-junkie.com/linkimg/12d38974da221484d00933c63d33377938926/1.gif" border="0" alt="E-junkie Shopping Cart and Digital Delivery" /></a></p>
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<item rdf:about="http://aplawrence.com/Unixart/another-filepro.html">
<title>Another Filepro Conversion by Anthony Lawrence</title>
<description>
<![CDATA[
2008/11/14<br /><br />
<p>I got called in for a SCO to Linux Filepro conversion this
week. This was supposed to be planned, but the SCO box gave
up the ghost unexpectedly, so I found myself getting up at
4:00 AM on Thursday to do this.</p>
<p>They had called on Tuesday but my Wednesday was already tied
up so this was the best I could do. I had to argue wth the hardware
vendor about installing Linux. They wanted me to do it, which is fine
but I pointed out that if there were any stupid driver problems etc.
that would just delay me and that I did NOT have Friday open. I
also explained that after about 3:00 PM I turn into a drooling idiot..
well, I <i>start</i> turning about 3:00. You do not want me
doing anything that requires brains late afternoon or later.
So they agreed to do the Linux.</p>
<p>Good thing. When I arrived at 7:00 AM Thursday morning, the
owner told me that she had been there with the hardware folks until
after 8:00 PM the previous night. They'd had some problem, she
said, but she didn't know what it was. Later that day I heard they
didn't fix whatever it was until 11:00 PM! That sounds like it
might have messed up my day!</p>
<p>So, first thing was to install Linux Filepro. That's easy
if you have Filepro and Unix experience; without that it could send you
off screaming and smashing things. You need to download a license
file - that's confusing because they tell you that it is keyed to
the domain name (meaning the Linux domain, not Windows, of course) but
actually it's keyed to "hostname". Moreover, I couldn't download
it with Firefox, so I used IE on Windows, emailed it to myself, and
then used Gmail on Firefox to get the file in place.</p>
<p>The installer had put telnetd on but had not enabled it - they
need that because the Windows desktops all use Facetwin. More
on that later..</p>
<p>The SCO had done an FTP backup with Microlite Edge. That helps
SO much: I made a /oldsco directory and restored everything to that.
I used the scripts at <a href="http://aplawrence.com/SCOFAQ/FAQ_scotec1ilinuxpass.html">How can I transfer SCO accounts (passwd information) to Linux?</a>
to convert the users over and then copied their .profile files to
.bash_profile. I moved the /appl/filepro stuff into place, checked
edits, brought in printer definitions and so on, and we pretty much
had a working system.</p>
<p>Oooh, not so fast. Printing wasn't right. I had set the printer
as "RAW" in cups but it needed to be 66 lines per page. To solve
that, I put in a <a href="http://aplawrence.com/Unixart/cups_sysv_interface.html">System V script</a> like this:</p>
<pre>
echo -e "\033E\c" # Reset Printer
echo -e "\033)0B\c" # Secondary character set line draw
echo -e "\033&k2G\c" # Set line termination mode.
shift; shift; shift; shift; shift
files="$*"
for file in $files
do
echo -e "\033&l66p2e7.6c66F\c"
echo -e "\033&a4L\c"
echo -e "\033&k11H\c"
cat $file
echo -e "\033E\c" # Reset Printer
echo -e "\033)0B\c" # Secondary character set line draw
echo -e "\033&k2G\c" # Set line termination mode.
done
</pre>
<p>I cribbed the sequences from the SCO interface script (adding "-e"
to the "echo" lines for bash). That got the stuff to 66 lines per
page, but it still isn't quite right. I assume that might be
because the SCO driver passes the file through <a href="http://aplawrence.com/Bofcusm/1049.html">lprpp</a>, which doesn't exist on Linux (as far as I know
right now). Soo.. there needs to be some experimentation done on
that still. Hard for me to do from here as I can't see the results.
I've asked them to mess with it.</p>
<p>But here's the really, really weird thing. When I first thought
about this, I had a momentary brain stoppage and I just added the original
SCO interface script as a Sys V interface file. Now that's not
going to work: it needs "-e" on the echo's
and there's that missing "lprpp". Like I said, brain stoppage. But..
it DID work. That is, it worked until we rebooted and then it spit
the expected errors: couldn't find "lprpp", didn't interpret the escape
sequences because no "-e".. I'm baffled by that. WHY did it
work when I first did it?? Baffled..</p>
<p>Next problem was Facetwin. I of course had installed Facetwin on
the Linux box, but they still had their old software on the PC's.
When you tell it to connect, it says it needs to upgrade, but can't.
If you ignore the upgrade it works.. for some users. Why some?
I dunno. Some of the users who do work can do multiple Facetwin
sessions, some can't.. I don't know a thing about Facetwin, don't want to know
a thing about it either. I suggested they call Facet. The users
it does not work for can use Putty, their .bash_profile files are identical..
I dunno.</p>
<p>Of course there are some Filepro problems. They had 4.5 on the SCO
and this is now 5.6. Little things in the code like a commented out
label will break in 5.6. As they find 'em, I can fix 'em.</p>
<p>So there we are. Printing close, but not perfect. Facetwin
working for some people, not for others. A few lingering Filepro
issues that I can fix. Good enough for the moment considering
the rush job.</p>
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<item rdf:about="http://aplawrence.com/Opinion/bad-lawres.html">
<title>Bad Lawyers by Anthony Lawrence</title>
<description>
<![CDATA[
2008/11/12<br /><br />
<p>Let me first apologize to the good lawyers out there. I know
you exist, just as I know good tech support people exist. I
also know that sometimes you may get blamed where
you don't deserve censure; we see the same thing in tech support.</p>
<p>And yeah, tech support people get poked fun at. There was that
Saturday Night Live guy.. and a lot of techs could see little glimpses
of ourselves there. But you guys.. oh my.</p>
<p>My first experience with a lawyer involved an accident on Rte 1 in
Dedham, MA. My wife was on her way to pick me up at work. We only
had one car then, so this was an every day trip. Our baby daughter
was in the front in a car seat. Not a car seat like we have now,
nothing that buckled in or really would provide any protection: its
basic function was to keep the baby from rolling off the seat.</p>
<p>My wife stopped at a red light with two cars ahead of her. She glanced
in the rear view mirror and saw a car barreling down her lane. There
was nothing she could do: she couldn't go forward because of the cars
ahead, she couldn't turn left or right because of the guard rail and other
cars. It was all too fast anyway: within a second or so the car crashed
into her rear at approximately 50 MPH.</p>
<p>The car was totaled. The police later said that they were surprised
no one was killed. Linda was briefly knocked unconscious and our daughter
was thrown to the floor of the car, covered with broken glass. Linda
remembers getting out of the car and hysterically handing our daughter to
someone who had come to help. </p>
<p>The other car was driven by the 16 year old son of one of the big
Route 1 car dealers. He hadn't had a license long. He wasn't really
speeding, but something had distracted him. He wasn't seriously
hurt either.</p>
<p>Linda did hurt her back. She had a pre-existing back injury; this
just made it worse. As we later learned, she also suffers from degenerative
joint disease and has had ruptured disks since then. Who knows how
much this accident added to her misery..</p>
<p>Of course we got a lawyer. No Internet then to search for legal
counsel; we went with my father's lawyer. He of course was not a personal injury lawyer; I don't even know if that term was in use back then. He was
a "business lawyer" and I bet he had very little experience or
knowledge in the personal injury area. A month later he advised
us that we should "settle" for $1,000.00 (of which he took $700.00 for
his trouble). I felt that was low and that we should wait and see
if Linda continued to have back problems or if our daughter had suffered
any unseen effects, but he counseled us that this was a very "generous"
offer. We were young and stupid; we took it.</p>
<p>My next legal problem wasn't a matter of incompetence, just arrogance.
I did some computer work for a Boston firm. I remember their offices well:
fancy address on Constitution Wharf, oak paneled walls, expensive
looking paintings lining those walls.. I don't remember what I did
for them, but they were late paying my invoice. I called to see why
and spoke with the partner who had hired me. I asked if anything
was wrong with the work I did. No, everything was fine. I asked
why I had not been paid. He said quite directly, "I'll pay you
when I feel like it". I protested, he laughed and asked "What
are you going to do about it, sue me?".</p>
<p>Yes, he did eventually pay, but that one incident made me leery
of working for lawyers.</p>
<p>Our next foray into the legal world was when Linda made a disability
claim. As noted above, her disease got worse over time. It's
maddening to be in constant joint pain, but the worst part of it is
sleeping. You see, with this disease, you actually feel better when
you are moving around. Sitting still or trying to lie still is
much more painful than moving about. Of course there's a Catch-22:
moving too much causes more joint damage, so enthusiastic exercise may
make you feel much better (both from the movement and endorphins) but
you'll pay the price later. But sleeping is the worst: the pain would
keep her awake, force her to get up and move around. She was horribly
sleep deprived. The pain medicines she took only only added to her
mental confusion, of course.</p>
<p>If you've ever been in this situation, you surely know that it makes
you stupid. Linda had a good job as an office manager/bookkeeper and
her boss of ten years really appreciated her attention to detail and accuracy. Unfortunately, as her disease worsened, she got a new boss. He was not appreciative
of the useless bimbo who made silly mistakes and seemed unable
to remember things he told her just hours earlier. The lack of
sleep, the constant pain, the pain medicine: it all made her
a very poor employee. The quite understandable attitude of her
boss didn't help her cope, of course. He wasn't overly nasty,
but he wasn't helpful either.</p>
<p>After talking to
her doctor, Linda applied for disability. She was only a few years
from retirement, but we couldn't see how she could keep going. I
wouldn't have been surprised if she had been fired and I really
wouldn't have blamed her boss. She was really incapable of
doing even mediocre work by then.</p>
<p>Social Security and her
work disability insurer both approved her claim quickly. That
was a little surprising: we had heard that Social Security would
be "tough", but on the other hand her X-rays and her long
medical transcripts told the story. So,
all was good. She was now able to sleep later, catnap during the
day - she still has a lousy life, but is a little less drowsy at
least. The combination of Social Security and the private disability
didn't quite match her working pay, but we weren't suffering.</p>
<p>So, that was good - until her private disability company sent her for
testing and decided that she was capable of working. Of course that
was never the issue: she IS capable of working - if she gets enough
sleep and she isn't overly medicated that day. There is that little
matter of being distracted by pain even on the best of days.. I
really can't see that she could keep any job for long. Get hired?
Sure, she has the qualifications and experience. But actually
perform at an acceptable level? Not a chance. But they terminated
her insurance payments and of course we went looking for a lawyer.
</p>
<p>This time we used all the appropriate resources and found someone
supposedly versed in this field. He screwed it up royally and accomplished
nothing. We found another lawyer, no luck there, same incompetence. Very
good at sending invoices though - aren't they all? Finally we did
find someone who did know this area. He reviewed the case, said that
we definitley should win, but.. it was too late. The previous lawyers
had screwed things up badly enough that we could no longer pursue
the suit. You probably can imagine how happy that made us.</p>
<p>My most recent lawyer debacle came as a result of seeking advice
on an elder law case. I won't go into details here; if you want
you can get the rough idea from this <a href="http://oakpointcommunity.org/misc/dreams.html">Dreams</a> post. I contacted a local lawyer to see
if he knew anyone with expertise in this kind of problem; he said
that he did and gave me this other lawyer's phone number.</p>
<p>Understand that we've been involved in this mess for several years; we've
worked with several lawyers and had disappointing experiences. The
problem always seems to be that advertised expertise is not present
in fact and that the average lawyer seems to have the attention span
and memory capacity of a six year old. We found that we were constantly
repeating ourselves (at hourly rates, of course) and that our "expert
counsel" was amazingly ignorant of cases and resources we had researched on the Internet. That's why we were looking for yet another lawyer.</p>
<p>This man confirmed that he had expertise in elder law. At this
point I was of course mistrustful and suspicious, so I asked pointed
and direct questions. This self proclaimed legal expert could not
answer these to my satisfaction. Of course in that respect he was
no more (and no less) useless than our other lawyers. We finally
decided to stick with what we have and hope (pessimistically) for
the best.</p>
<p>As I said at the outset, I'm sure there are honest lawyers out
there. People who know their craft, listen to what clients say,
write it down and even review their notes prior to the next expensive
meeting. I know there are such legal practitioners.</p>
<p>I just wish they were easier to find. Don't bother telling me about the Bar Association and their referral services: been there, done that, have
nothing good to say. I don't want to paint the whole profession
with the same brush and certainly my experiences may be atypical. I
have no way of knowing that so I can only go by what I have
personally endured. And that, my friends, leaves me very jaundiced
toward the profession. I hope never to need a personal injury
lawyer again; I hope not to need ANY lawyer ever. It's more than
not wanting whatever troubles might cause that need: I don't want
to get reamed over by legal incompetence yet again!</p>
<p>No doubt there are lawyers who feel the same way about computer
techs, right? Yeah, of course there are. That doesn't change
my attitudes, though. </p>
<p>Know any good lawyer jokes?</p>
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<item rdf:about="http://aplawrence.com/Opinion/not-loving-mastercard.html">
<title>I don't heart Mastercard by Anthony Lawrence</title>
<description>
<![CDATA[
2008/11/12<br /><br />
<p>I am old enough to have lived in the days before credit cards. Well,
that's not really true: the concept goes back to the late 1800's,
Diner's Club started in 1950 and American Express started in 1958. But
Mastercard and Visa didn't take off until 1969, and until the early 70's,
most of us used cash and checks everywhere. </p>
<p>Getting a merchant to accept your check was sometimes a problem,
especially if you were out of town or out of state. I was always
amazed that my wife never seemed to have that difficulty it seemed
that she could buy whatever she wanted, wherever she wanted, even in
stores that prominently displayed "No Checks" signs at their registers.
I'd be refused straight out at the same stores that happily took
her checks.. and it was a joint checking account!</p>
<p>Well, credit cards eliminated that. My credit card was just as good
as hers. I don't remember whether our first card was Mastercard or Visa,
but by the 80's all we had in our wallets was Mastercard. Visa may
have been everywhere we wanted to be, but we weren't. We were at the gas
station and the supermarket, and we used Mastercard.</p>
<p>Until 1985, that is. That's when Sears offered us a Discover card.
We snapped that up: it had no annual fee, it gave us a higher credit
limit than Mastercard did and.. it gave us cash back.</p>
<p>Wow. Two percent back on everything we bought. That was fantastic.
Unlike most of our friends, we usually paid off our credit card in full
each month, so that 2% really was free money. The only problem
was that not everyone accepted Discover: we could use it at Sears, of
course, but other stores were slow to take it on. We did our part:
we'd always ask "Do you take Discover?" and look very disappointed
if they said "No". Well, we were disappointed: we wanted that 2% cash
back!</p>
<p>If we flash forward to today, Discover still pays cash back, sometimes up
to 5%. We use it whenever we can (unfortunately there are still places
that only take Mastercard). I use it for my business when I can, and
of course we pay off everything every month so it still really is
extra money and with all those large purchases, it's quite a significant
amount. We love Discover.</p>
<p>We don't love Mastercard. Dd you know that you can get cash back with
Mastercard too? Yeah, you can, but they don't tell you that. You
have to specifically ask for it and even then it's capped at a
yearly maximum. That's part of why I don't heart Mastercard, but there's
more.</p>
<p>Do you know about single use credit card numbers? These are great:
you get a temporary number from the card's website that will get
charged to your account, but you can use the number safely on-line
without worrying that it will get stolen. Wonderful thing, and
Discover's web site makes it very easy to do. Mastercard? For a long
time they didn't have this at all, and when they did finally offer
it, it was very clumsy and annoying.</p>
<p>But that's Mastercard in general. Whenever I've had some problem
with Discover, I've called and gotten friendly and efficient service.
Mastercard? Oh my - confusion, transfer to this one, then to
someone else, promises that don't get kept.. I can't tell you
the number of times my wife or I have hung up the phone
and muttered "I HATE Mastercard!".</p>
<p>But we have to have it. Not everyone takes Discover, and that's
particularly true for some of my business purchases. And at least
I get some money back, chintzy and limited as it is.</p>
<p>I think they have been slowly improving. I had a maddening
problem with their security department for years. Every month
I buy several thousands of dollars at one particular company. I've
been doing this for years, and for years Mastercard would freeze
my account and call me to ask about suspicious activity. I'd
patiently explain that yes, I really did make those purchases and
point out that it was the same company I had bought from last month
and the month before.. couldn't their computers notice that and
realize that it's NOT suspicious activity? Well, no, they
couldn't. That went on for a long, long time, but recently
it stopped, so I suspect their computers have been reeducated.</p>
<p>Maybe I should go look at their website again - maybe they've
unclumsied the secure purchase procedure. I doubt it, but it's worth a shot.. why, gosh
yes, it's now as easy as Discover! About time..</p>
<p>OK, Mastercard, maybe you are improving. I still carry a lot
of bitterness in my heart, but I'll try to work through it. Maybe
someday we can be lovers again.</p>
<p>Until then, I'll just keep using you. Except where they take
Discover, of course.</p>
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