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If you have kids under 15 you are most likely familiar with YouTubers.

Specifically, gamers.  

The boys are obsessed with watching other people play video games. These gamers may be most annoying people on the face of the earth. Their over the top drama used to hype up Minecraft is the stuff that creates migraines. 

But...While on YouTube they discovered Mark Rober. 

THE Mark Rober of glitterbomb fame. 

According to the profile on Wikipedia, "Mark B. Rober is an American YouTuber, engineer, and inventor. He is known for his YouTube videos on popular science and do-it-yourself gadgets. Before YouTube, Rober was an engineer with NASA for 9 years where he spent seven of those years working on the Curiosity rover at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory."

Rober only makes one video a month but the boys had not watched him before so we binge watched everything that he had created to date. 

If you have kids who says they hate science, you need to have them watch this guy. He is amazing! 

Warning: Be prepared to do some serious experiments once they are inspired! 

One of the videos he created was  Glitterbomb Trap Catches Phone Scammer (who gets arrested)

Scamming is a numbers game. They send out thousands of emails or phone calls and get a handful of responses that can earn them hundreds or thousands of dollars. We've all received the irritating phone calls and emails. Most of us ignore them but, once in a while the scammers get someone on the phone and get them talking. They convince them that they will be sending a refund and then walk them through a number of steps that ultimately gives the scammer access to the person's personal information. 

Scamming is a $20 billion industry. Scammers are warehoused in packed call centers who use scare tactics and threats to extract thousands of dollars from unsuspecting people. 

They are smart, unscrupulous and corrupt. 

They don't care if they are taking a person's last dollar. They care about making money. 

We all think that "people should know better" and we should but they are crafty. 

One of the people who assisted Mark Rober was YouTuber Scammer Payback. While I was recovering from my mastectomy I spent lots of time watching his videos. 

I'll never have the mental capacity for programming but I am very grateful for guys like this who can expose these scammers and send the authorities to their door! 

Today I received an email stating that my annual subscription to Norton Antivirus was being automatically renewed through Amazon. The email stated that if I had questions or concerns I could call the number provided in the email. 

I don't have Norton. In fact, I haven't had Norton in years. And even when I did have Norton, I purchased it through Norton not Amazon.

But just to be sure I hadn't accidentally purchased it in the past, I double checked my order history. 

Nope. No Norton. 

Because I had watched the videos I knew it was the Amazon scam described in the videos but I called anyway. 

They said all the things that Rober and Scammer Payback said they would. 

When I said that I didn't want the renewal they said they could do a refund as long as I had a computer. 

I replied with, "Is this the part where you get access to my computer and get me to sign into my bank?"

He replied, "Oh no. We send you a form to complete." 

I said, "No, no you won't. I don't know how you can sleep at night knowing that you are ripping people off!"

They don't actually take the money, nor do they actually provide a refund but they make it look like they do. Then they get the victim to send them gift cards, money orders and even cash packed with coffee grounds or wrapped in foil! 

They gift cards and cash can't be traced and coffee grounds and foil keep it from being detected by security dogs. 

The lengths they go to is amazing and they are astoundingly successful! 

Scamming is a $20 billion industry. It most likely will not stop any time soon. 

Educating yourself about how they work is the best way to keep them from working on you or your loved ones. 

Huge thanks to Mark Rober and Scammer Payback AKA Pierogi for your work. You saved me lots of money! 

Make sure to click the links and watch the videos! 

You Called Me!

I've been bailing my mom out of her computer calamities for at least the past decade.

It could be as simple as a basic email mishap or as complicated as the time she did a mail merge from an Excel spreadsheet to a Word document and somehow managed to delete the Excel Spreadsheet. Either way, despite my having at least two nephews who are much more computer literate than I, she calls me.

Unfortunately...

I don't mind that she calls me. I mind that she argues with me when I try to help her.

I end up like a raving, stuttering Italian mother with my hands waving and spittle forming in the corners of my mouth!

It's ugly.

Years ago I purchased a MacBook Pro and was able to take a break from my roll as Emergency  Technician because she had a Windows based computer and I could get out of things by saying, "I don't know mom, I have a Mac."

Well that hiatus ended when she bought at MacBook Air and chose not to take the three free lessons at the Apple Store.

I was once again her Help Desk.

Most of the time I don't mind until she argues and then I want to rip out my hair all while desperately attempting to be calm and speak in a non-techie language so she can understand what I'm saying.

Words like dohickey, thingy and hooha are used as if those things really exist.

If the computer doesn't respond when she hits a key, she hits another, and another, and another...

You get the point.

Anyway, the computer doesn't stop taking the commands, it just gets slower which causes her to press more and more keys while I yell, "Stop TOUCHING!" into the phone and my children look at me as if I were insane.

She called me the other night while trying to print her boarding pass and luggage receipt for her flight on US Airways and couldn't get it to appear in the print preview window properly.

My mother has one of the most impressive vocabularies of any person I know or have known but her love of the English language goes out the window when frustrated.

She could make a sailor blush.

I do the usual with her and walk her through the print screen stuff but can't figure out why it's coming up funky so I tell her to take a picture of the screen and send it to me in an email so I can see it.

She does as told, for a change, and sends it to me so that I can figure it out and call her back. Right before I hang up she says, "I'm going to reboot my computer while you're looking at the picture."

Yeah, um...don't do that because it negates the point of taking the picture in the FIRST PLACE!!!!

Did I mention that she has the patience of a gnat?

I finally get her to agree to stop touching things and wait for me to call her back.

I get the picture, it's odd and I still can't figure out how the hell she got there so I call back and ask her to send me the email that she received from US Airways so that I can see it and figure out how to print it.

She does and I immediately figure out that she had been trying to print something in Gmail from the top of the screen where it says: File, Edit, View, etc. instead of using the print option IN the email as opposed to the entire page. I tell her to open the email from US Airways and she replies, "Which one?"

God grant me the Serenity...

The one you just sent me.

"Where do I find that?"

To Accept the things I cannot change...

Um...your inbox?!

"I can't see it."

O! M! G!

She finally manages to find the email and I ask her to tell me what she sees in the upper right hand corner which turns into her telling me not to yell at her. I wait what feels like and eternity until she's finished and say, "Can I speak?"

I walk her through printing the email which again turns into me yelling, "Stop, Stop, STOP!!!" When she tried to change from printing 'All' pages to 'From # to #.' 'All' is the default and was selected but because the 'From 1 To 1' was visible she thought it was only going to print one page.

Dear God in Heaven...

She finally just clicked Print and lo and behold two pages appeared like magic in the top of the printer.

Mom breathed a sigh of relief and asked, "What would I do without you?"

I don't know, I just wish you wouldn't argue when you call me for help!