You're just a Scapeturkey (November 2025 Scapegoat Blame Thread)
14Goat stop believing. November is upon us, and all the blame will pile up if we don’t keep this train running. While we do want to thank @lisagd22 for getting us through the spookiest part of the year, we can’t let it just sit around. That’s where @cfg83 comes in. Fresh-faced and clearly guilty of all the things.

Happy generic filler holiday month until the real festivities kick off next time around.
- 32 comments, 173 replies
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@cfg83 I blame you that @extramedium wants to have a life outside of meh and so created this post a day late. I am not sure to blame or unblame you for him stealing the word scapeturkey from me.
@Kidsandliz Since you didn’t file a trademark claim on it, I think it becomes an Unblame. With small blame for not crediting you.
@Kidsandliz Which leads me to wonder if next month’s Goat will be a ScapeElf. (Unshelved.)
@Kidsandliz I blame society.
/showme scapegoat blaming society.
@mediocrebot sorry, this one’s a tough one.
/showme anthropomorphized goat yelling “I blame society” at a group of people .
@Kidsandliz Here’s the problem. How do you know if @extramedium and I are not ONE AND THE SAME?!?!?!?
/showme two headed goat causing mediocebot to blow a gasket from the stress of having to perform.
/showme anthropomorphized goat yelling “I blame society!” while being arrested by cops for stealing TV on black friday.
/showme anthropomorphized goat yelling “I blame society!” while freeing turkeys from turkey prison one week before thanksgiving.
@cfg83 The above had a type that broke the bot, so should be deleted.
@cfg83 What am I missing? They look the same to me.
@cfg83 @Kyeh
I believe it got edited but didn’t return an image.
@cfg83 @chienfou Ohhh - yeah, editing does no good.
@chienfou @Kyeh Yeah, I forgot the “showme” but it was too late to “activate” the bot. If possible, I should have DELETED the message or changed it to something else, but the edit/delete option was no longer available.
And here I thought goat-dom had privileges.
/showme grumpy cat saying HARUMPH!
@cfg83 @chienfou No privileges at all! Except maybe the opportunity to sound off/be funny/entertain us during your month.
@cfg83 @Kyeh
Which, BTW, you are off to a great start on.
@cfg83 @chienfou @Kyeh You misunderstand -
goats have privy ledges, i.e., narrow mountain shelves from which they relieve themselves into the abyss.
@cfg83 @Kyeh @macromeh
Oh… Guess I need to move upslope then!
@cfg83 @Kyeh @macromeh
/showme a goat on a hillside holding an umbrella as yellow rain descends upon him
@mediocrebot
Man, that extra leg came in handy!
@chienfou @Kyeh @macromeh privy ledges, hmmm? Sounds like Haggis territory to me :
@chienfou @Kyeh Ok, no goat food for goat.
/showme sad goat looking at bare cupboard in kitchen.
/showme anthropomorphized goat yelling “I blame society!” while freeing turkeys from turkey prison one week before thanksgiving.
/showme a cartoon goat named cfg83 causing mediocebot to have a nervous breakdown from the stress of having to perform
@mediocrebot Performance anxiety bot?
@mediocrebot All the other goats were clothed. Why isn’t this one?
@mediocrebot @zhicks1987 Cartoon goats are naked?
@cfg83 @mediocrebot @zhicks1987

/image Donald Duck
@mediocrebot @zhicks1987
/showme the scapegoat at a nudist colony
Something went terribly wrong. Please try again.
@Kidsandliz @mediocrebot @zhicks1987
Evidently someone needs to tap the bot’s moral compass.
@chienfou @Kidsandliz @mediocrebot @zhicks1987
/showme goat smashing moral compass of mediocrebot.
@mediocrebot @therealjrn @zhicks1987
/showme anthropomorphized goat offering clothes to cartoon goat.
@mediocrebot What that was a literal take of smashing a moral compass.
@cfg83 @mediocrebot @zhicks1987
/showme a goat in Victorian dress frowning at an 80’s streaker goat
@mediocrebot @therealjrn @zhicks1987 He’s obvioulsy miffed that a goat ate his pants.
@Kidsandliz @mediocrebot Yeahhhh, let’s see if we can improve that :
/showme goat smashing compass built into metal torso of mediocrebot.
/showme a goat named cfg83 increasing my Eversource Energy bill by 50% by overloading Mediocrebot’s circuits with too many commands
@mediocrebot @ircon96
/showme person named ircon96 finding secret plans of goat named cfg83 to defeat mediocrebot by degrading AI into saying “I Blame Society!” in all it’s responses.
@mediocrebot Heh, heh, heh. Just a few more scrambles, and mediocrebot will be under my complete control.
You’re welcome.
@mediocrebot oh man, I thought I had an original idea, then looked up 4 posts and saw this. Sorry @ircon96, this is certainly @cfg83 's fault.
Unblame! The Boss brought in breakfast for us over night people. There is even leftovers so I got lunch covered too!
/showme bacon egg and hash browns in a burrito
@mediocrebot Excellent work!
@yakkoTDI Nice!
@Kyeh @yakkoTDI
Great, now I’m hungry. I guess I’ll blame the goat.
@yakkoTDI Breakfast burritos are truly the perfect food.
@DLPanther @yakkoTDI con huevos, cebolla, papas, tocino y chorizo. (At least, for me.)
This one is for family :
/showme Woman being given birthday cake by anthropomorphized goat singing “Happy Birthday Cheryl” with a group of other woodland animals.
Blame-got another notice yesterday that my long term insurance premiums are going up again. Had increased 15% each of the past 3 years and will increase 15% again each of the next 3 years-so 6 years in a row. With compounding makes the increase even worse-146% over 6 years unless I change the terms of my policy to lower or delete some benefits completely.
@Felton10
Long term care is definitely outpacing general inflation. It’s crazy what that costs a month.
@chienfou The insurance industry thought they had found a gold mind in LTC when everyone was offering it, but quickly found this wasn’t case. In our case we have paid in in excess of 80k over the past 25 years and with the annual cost of assisted living being well in excess of 100k and our policy being lifetime (which they don’t even offer anymore), the insurance company could be on the hook for a lot more than we have paid in. Hence the astronomical rise in premiums.
@chienfou @Felton10 If only more of us pesky LTC insureds would quietly croak at home before needing managed care. Curses!
@Felton10 @macromeh
Yeah… Take one for the team, would ya!
@chienfou @Felton10 I know my mom used 6.5 years of long term care and then 3 weeks of hospice (when her 6.5 years were up). I am positive she paid in far less than what the insurance company paid out. I have failed medical underwriting for decades so can’t get it. Hopefully I’ll die of the one incurable cancer I have before I need it or I am screwed.
We boomers are going to break that just like we break anything else we touch in the age bubble we are in. As there is already a wait list for senior hud (so I’d suspect the homeless population of seniors is going to grow). So many on advantage plans with huge out of pocket maxs and then you’d have to pass medical underwriting to escape that when you finally need it to switch to a supplement, so most would fail, that will drive up costs for seniors too. Scary thought all of this.
@chienfou @macromeh The premise of all insurance is that the ins co is betting you won’t need it and you are betting you will. The thing that killed LTC is the built in inflation factor on most of the polices which was 5% per year compounded. My policy starting out at $150 a day and now with compounding over all these years is now over $ 450 a day. Multiply that times 365 and just one year is more than double for just one year for one person over what I have paid over these 25 years for two people and again my policy is lifetime.
/showme a cartoon meh.com employee reviewing their exorbitant GPU service bill with a cartoon goat named @cfg83 smirking nearby
@mediocrebot @caffeineguy Now, you are beginning to understand.
/showme exhausted mediocrebot selling bankrupt company called meh.com for $20 to a goat named cfg83.
@mediocrebot @caffeineguy Wow, I’m so nice in that picture, almost sympathetic. Who knew?
At least I am back down to one mouth (even though I can no longer easily talk and chew at the same time). Maybe I shouldn’t have revealed my plan. Meh-dom would think I am their savior instead of their usurper. All of this is starting to give me heart palpatinations.
@caffeineguy @cfg83 Don’t be fooled by mediocrebot’s obvious head fake. It’s clearly trying to lull you into complacency while tirelessly working behind the scenes to thwart your reign.
@caffeineguy @macromeh Ohhhhh, the old two faced head trick, eh? One face sad and the other diabolical. Not sure how to descrAIbe that for the showme.
Unblame. Meh pinned the blame thread so it won’t get lost today!
Blame for the short number of days in a row I have. Unblame in that they all end in 8 with two ending in 408 and one ending in 08 (that pesky little 7 I have there makes the match less perfect) and that I remembered to take a screenshot this morning before I hit meh button a bunch more times today.
@Kidsandliz I had this on Oct. 17th:
)
Eight is a good number! (My birthday month
@Kyeh That 951 though… of course not that far to go to get it all 951 with a pesky 4 in the way.
@Kidsandliz I’m currently at 907, so only 44 days to go!


@Kidsandliz @Kyeh Depending on what kind of tech you like, Photoshop or a Sharpie could close that 3 in.
That would be a heck of a find for Dollar Bill Poker.
Seven 8s!
Or, a little more whimsical, a bunch of infinities if you reorient a little.
@Kidsandliz @Kyeh @phendrick
step one: turn off auto rotate
step two: turn device 90⁰
@chienfou @Kidsandliz @Kyeh @phendrick Oh man, I wish you would have posted that before I attached all the pulleys, straps and ropes to my chair…

@chienfou @Kidsandliz @Kyeh Quicker,
Set your device down and look at it from the side.
(I’m old school.)
BLAME: I started experiencing abdominal pain on Monday evening. But I wasn’t entirely sure what it was. On Tuesday morning, it was mostly gone, so I served as presiding judge at an election. By mid-afternoon it was pretty obvious that this could be a kidney stone, but I couldn’t leave. I soldiered on through, got home shortly before midnight, and sacked out. In the morning, once again, the pain was gone and I thought okay maybe it’s not a kidney stone. I was wrong. Thursday morning I was brought over here to the emergency room. I have now had a stent installed in the left ureter, and I am bleeding rather more than I should be from the relevant area. I don’t know when they’re going to break me loose, but right at the moment is really painful to pee.
@werehatrack Hope you pass the kidney stone or they break it up so it will pass so you can get out of your agony.
@werehatrack Hope you feel better soon.

@Kidsandliz there is no chance of it passing, which is why they stuck a stent in to allow the kidney to drain. That stent also forced the stone back into the kidney. That’s not what’s producing the pain now. The surgeon tore up something in my urethra on the way end, and I am bleeding like crazy. Urination is very very painful. And my kidney function is not up to par. It remains to be seen when I will be out of here
@Kidsandliz @werehatrack Had kidney stones before-think I caught it from my wife as she has had them off and on and I never had one until a couple of years ago. Worst pain I have ever encountered.
Stuck a stent in to allow me to pee and so the stone wouldn’t get stuck. Then had a procedure with a machine that travels to different places (probably because it is too expensive for a third world state like Florida to afford) where they bust the stone into pieces so it is easier to pass. Haven’t had a stone lately luckily but all the best to you to get it resolved with as little additional pain as possible.
@Felton10
Good luck to all you kidney stone victims out there.
@chienfou @Felton10 I have friends who have had multiple kidney stones, one of whose kidneys eventually just calcified to the point of failure. Anther one has successfully passed all of his stones. He gets about one a year. Yes, diet does have a significant impact on the formation of stones. I could go into the list of things that contribute but that’s probably not useful here. In my case, I’ve had one stone previously, and it presented pretty much the same way this one did. It got stuck high in the ureter, and could not proceed. That also is not unusual. I’ve had lithotripsy on a stone in my left kidney previously, back in 2016. Had I been given the option, I’d have gone for it this time too. But unlike hospitals and major clinics in Europe who apparently tend to have the lithotripsy equipment on hand, here it is in the hands of a priesthood and not readily or widely available.
@Felton10 @werehatrack
Did you have SWL (non invasive) or PCNL (minimally invasive) last time? Trend is moving towards the latter.
@chienfou @werehatrack Not sure who the ? is for but they had to put me to sleep when they inserted the stent and when they exploded the kidney stone but removed the stent in the office. The machine they had I placed my back up to the machine and that was the last thing I remember before I went off to la-la land.
@chienfou Was joking about getting it from my wife but since she has had stones all her life and it took me 40 years of marriage to get my first one-one has to wonder if her having them led to me getting my first.
As far as the medical care in Florida, with all the people moving to this state for the warm weather, getting appts with an MD or even finding one is getting harder and harder. More likely than not you are passed off to a PA or a NP. Not sure if it is like this in other parts of the country, but there is no doubt one has to be pro-active with their own medical care and have good insurance.
@Felton10
Sounds like SWL since no incision…
@chienfou The only woman I know who has acknowledged that she had kidney stones is a retired nurse. She suspects that because most stones will pass from the kidney to the bladder, and women typically have a much wider urethra than men, most women who have kidney stones are either unaware of them and pass them without remark, or they know about them but are so minimally inconvenienced that they simply don’t bother reporting them. It seems plausible.
@chienfou @werehatrack Umm being female and having had a kidney stone I was well aware I was passing it. It was incredibly painful. The toilet water was really bloody when I finally passed it. A friend of mine was hospitalized more than once over kidney stones and twice needed them broken up to pass them. I currently have a 2-3mm one sitting mid kidney. I hope it sits there forever (it was accidentally discovered on the annual CT scans I have for the follicular non-hodgkin’s lymphoma). Whether or not you have problems depends on the size they are.
@Kidsandliz @werehatrack
In my 30+ years as an ER nurse I met several women with kidney stones. They’re the ones who told me it was akin to labor pain.
If you’ve ever had a chance to see a kidney stone under a microscope they often look like little sand spurs, hence the bleeding as it tumbles through the ureters. Most of the time, when people capture one in a strainer, they are shocked at how much pain they had in relation to how small the stone actually is. I have likened it to “trying to piss out a pine cone”…
@chienfou @Kidsandliz @werehatrack I’ve often wondered about the evolutionary benefit of extreme pain where it seems to serve no purpose.
For example, if prehistoric Ogg breaks an arm or leg, the pain could make him favor the injured limb and there is some chance it will heal.
But some types of extreme pain (for example, a bad tooth or a kidney stone) seem to serve no purpose. No amount of coddling will improve the result. So what’s the point?
@macromeh
Trying to shove a baby out of a a narrow birth canal can be, ahem, quite painful. You would think that would be a contraindication to having sex in the first place. Thankfully for mankind that hasn’t panned out.
@chienfou @Kidsandliz I have zero doubt that women who have a kidney stone can be every bit as subject to the incredible pain as men, but I also have heard from men who only realized they’d just passed a stone when they heard something solid hit the urinal, and saw the itty-bitty brown crystalline blob laying there. A woman who passes one unaware (and stays that way) seems not outside the realm of possibility, from what I have heard.
I got a good look at my 2015 stone, and yeah, I can confirm that it looks like something out of the center of a tiny geode.
@chienfou @werehatrack The only reason why men can see a kidney stone if they pass it while peeing is that it doesn’t land in a ton of water as urinals don’t have that. With women there is a toilet full of water. It may not be noticeable because of the water, the shape of the toilet bowl and how small they are. They are not going to contort their bodies to watch themselves peeing and what comes out. Men don’t have that issue. If they pass it with a lot of blood they’d likely see the blood, but when I passed mine there was so much blood in the water I couldn’t see anything. I wasn’t going to stick my hand in there to feel around to see if I could feel something.
@chienfou @Kidsandliz @werehatrack C is correct as usual. My sis suffers from kidney stones and from what I understand they are extremely painful. I wont try to guess the difference for men and women, but I can tell you hers are debilitating when they occur and she always needs surgery.
They are not.okesant b
@chienfou @Kidsandliz @werehatrack uh, unsure what that last sentence is or how it got there. Ghost in the machine?
@tinamarie1974
.okesant b = pleasant maybe??
Thanks for the endorsement.
Over the years I have met and treated a bunch of kidney stone pts. Some of the ones we saw multiple times I would jokingly accuse of trying to piss out a driveway.
@chienfou
The friend I mentioned who has one just about every year probably would fall into that category. He lives in the Pacific Northwet. I’ve had him pause during a conversation, and then say “Oh, great, another kidney stone.” He and his wife place bets on how fast it will pass; he has never needed any intervention. [grumble lucky [redacted]]
@Kidsandliz
And some of the urinals will do a good job of concealing it. Others, not so much. Even when standing to attention before the Porcelain Throne at home, it could easy be missed For Obvious Reasons.
Some people get lucky in this area. I am not one of them. (Neither are you, from what you’ve said.) I sincerely hope that no one reading this thread finds any relevance in it for themselves going forward.
@chienfou maybe? Idk, blaming the pain meds.

@tinamarie1974
:thumbs_up:
@werehatrack I have had kidney stones, so I know at least part of your pain. Mine have been the type where drinking 4 ounces of concentrated lemon juice (aka the amount in one of those plastic lemons) per day has kept it under control, so I have been lucky overall.
I am sending you an anti-skape goat to get better :
/showme anthropomorphize Goat in super hero outfit with letters “SG” on its chest and delivering medicine to hospital .
@cfg83 @werehatrack
Potassium Citrate is what I have been given and so far the 2mm one sitting mid kidney remains at 2mm and remains put. As far as I am concerned it can sit there forever not growing and I will take that med (which is not all that cheap) forever if need be if that is the magic potion.
@cfg83 @Kidsandliz I’ve head that a potion that contains both potassium citrate and magnesium citrate can slowly reduce a stone, and that either of them alone will also work but apparently not as well. I tried finding a source for them, and yeah, the potassium citrate wasn’t cheap. Magnesium citrate makes me nervous because just a trifle too much turns into a potent laxative.
@cfg83 @werehatrack track Accesia Health Foundation. They have a grant that pays the copay for the med as long as you have medicare or other insurance. It only opens occasionally and I think you can get an email notification when it opens. It might have a waiting list.
I wish to blame the Goat for making it cold in Nov.!
/showme A real goat named cfg83 making it cold in November
@mycya4me
Yep. I spent the day getting covers on some of the garden plants and bringing in some of the pots on the porch etc. Gotta finish my cold frame for the plumeria before it hits 25 degrees tomorrow night.
@mycya4me
( Unblame…Personally
I jjust a quick walk to the garden and it seems that even though the temp hit 36 there was enough breeze that the veggies all survived last night. Hopefully I will have time to (successfully?) protect a few more before we hit 26 tonight. Supposed to warm up after today with no more frost in the next 10-day forecast.
@mediocrebot I am 1/2 Minnesotan, so you are welcome.
/showme Danish toy horse playing in the snow.
@cfg83
I lived all over the northern half of Minnesota from St Cloud to International Falls in the late 70s and early 80s. Cold down here is nothing compared to IF.
That being said bums me out that it got cold enough to kill the garden but then we’ll probably have at least a couple more weeks of weather where I’d have been able to harvest a bunch more tomatoes etc. Oh well
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
BLAME: The food still sucks at the hospital where I spent two and a half days getting the first part of treatment for a kidney stone. I need to remember to smuggle a salt shaker and a small bottle of HP sauce if I’m going to be over there again.
@werehatrack If you remember the Old Film canisters you got 35mm film in. they make great containers for small stuff like what you want!
Best of luck on the 2nd part of the kidney stone treatment! Since I shot many a roll of 35mm film I got bushels of them!
@mycya4me @werehatrack
Back in the day, campmor used to sell lids that were designed to snap on 35 mm canisters to make them into salt and pepper shakers. Sort of like this:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/326752898122
@chienfou @werehatrack https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=35mm+Film+Canister+&_sacat=0&_from=R40&_trksid=p2332490.m570.l1313
@mycya4me I shot many a roll of 35mm myself, but the film cans have all evaporated over the years. I’ve found some plastic snap-lid containers at the dollar store that are of a similar volume, but I’d really rather have a shaker with a screw-on sealing lid, so what I’ll most likely do is take a surplus small Penzey’s Spice jar with the small hole grid and use that. (I have some squirreled away.)
BLAME: I’ve been bitten by another of the scammy “we slapped our famous product’s name on stuff that doesn’t contain that product” items. The last one was “Zyrtec wipes”, which sounded like they might be really useful for allergic rash issues, except they didn’t have the named antihistamine in them at all. This time, it was “Goo Gone All Purpose Cleaner”, which isn’t even similar to the mixed solvent product that removes paint, adhesives, and gummy crud. Excellent way to destroy brand loyalty, yahoos.
@werehatrack FYI. I gave up on products like “Goo Gone” & the like. Most of the time NOW I grab for the small spray bottle of 91% Isopropyl Alcohol (IPA) that does wonders on nearly everything. Except Computer/ TV screens or even camera lens!
@mycya4me @werehatrack Me too, IPA is the way. When I deal with price tags and such I have mastered the “slow peal” and use painters tape to remove left over sticky bits.
Testing disney copyright :
/showme mandalorian holding spray bottle of Isopropyl Alcohol and saying “this is the way”.
Something went terribly wrong. Please try again.
@mediocrebot Shrug, it’s to be expected … but Mickey is now free, right???
/showme army of mickey mouse laywers.
Something went terribly wrong. Please try again.
@mediocrebot Et tu, Mickey?
@cfg83 @mycya4me @werehatrack A hair dryer set on high works wonders to get adhesives off. I’ve removed decades-old drawer lining paper, a clump of spilled & hardened PVA glue, and countless price stickers with one.
@cfg83 @Kyeh @mycya4me @werehatrack
Absolutely… hair dryer or heat gun works wonders.
Any stray bits of adhesive can be removed with an oil-based substance like vegetable oil or even a dab of butter or margarine. Smear it on the offending adhesive and let it sit for a few minutes and wipe it off with a paper towel. Bingo adhesive gone. As a bonus the item will be very shiny!
I frequently use this trick on bottles that I’m trying to remove the labels from that I plan to reuse to gift products that I make at home (like basil vinegar, smoked olive oil… etc). Of course many labels used to be removable by soaking them in hot water (and the heat trick doesn’t work on those) but that is less common these days.
@cfg83
/showme an army of anthropomorphic mouse lawyers who resemble Steamboat Willie
Something went terribly wrong. Please try again.
I blame me for this :
This is the problem when you become a skapeturkey and the power (that you don’t actually have) goes to your head, or horses’ ass, in this particular situation.
What do I do now? Become a horse surgeon and train to separate big horse from little proto horse? And if I succeed, would the little proto horse thank me or curse me for it?
@cfg83 Ask Kuato.
@werehatrack Ok, Kuato got back to me. He says it’s all good …
More blame. The post-stone pain meds snuck up on me and caused the predictable really nasty constipation, producing enough pain to put me back in the ER.
{{{@werehatrack}}}
@werehatrack No shit?
Sorry to hear the Goat is trying to kick you while you are down.
/showme a goat trying to kick a man when he is down
@yakkoTDI I’m sprung. The blockage was easier to clear than the first time this happened (2015), but the GI doc at the hospital ran blood work for infection markers and found several. IV antibiotics smashed those pretty well, and I have a follow-up course of augmentin to finish the job.
On Monday, the urologist and I will hatch the plot to fix what remains. (I like the new urologist. She listens.)
@werehatrack @yakkoTDI That guy getting kicked looks like JD Vance.
@Kyeh @tinamarie1974

WOW… maybe I’ll post about my colonoscopy prep results later today…
/giphy NOPE
@chienfou @Kyeh such a shitty conversation. I could happily go my entire life without knowing intimate details about others bowel movements.
Sometimes less is more.
@chienfou hope you were able to enjoy the good drugs
The following is an abuse of power :
/showme kitty wearing rainboots and holding umbrella in the rain.
Bump
BLAME - I just found out today that when we write checks the banks run them and the government can flag whom we wrote a check to!!! The government knows every check we write, to whom and for how much.
Using donated money I was paying rent for the person. I came with cash so no problem with a hold when I deposited it in the landlord’s account. THE BANK WOULDN’T ACCEPT CASH!!! WTF?
So then they told me to write a personal check. I did so. Nope that wasn’t accepted either.
I went back to my bank. Handed them the cash and they wrote a bank check. That was accepted. This was Friday afternoon.
Then this morning I get a call that the landlord’s name came up on the no-fly list. They wanted more information about her. Um like I’d have any clue? I contacted the landlord and this was straightened out.
What disturbs me is that a government database has a record of every check we wrote. What if Musk downloaded that and not just the entire Social Security Database? Cripes the info he’d (and the 19 year old who was not security checked) have about us. Sigh.
Not a goat blame since the real blame is elsewhere:
@narfcake Checked on the price of the DDR5 2x32gb ram I bought last year for $199. It is currently just over $400.
Blame/unblame
My mom has dementia. I have poa and she moved into a senior living community 6 months ago. She has a landline because she can’t handle a cell phone. With that she gets hundreds of scammer calls a day. I counted 20 in an hour one day. Most of the time she is alone and I am here in the afternoons.
My worst nightmare came true today. She fell for a medicare cold call when I was not here. She apparently gave them her Social and the address for her home town since she denies she lives where she does and she doesn’t know the address. At least she had the forethought to write down the number and the name of the person that she talked to. She changed her medicare to a different insurance company. I called them and let them know that she no authority to do that. Lady on the phone was very apologetic and said she would cancel the order. I called her existing medicare agent to let her know what happened. But now I got to be diligent to watch for changes.
At least I have her credit reports frozen.
panic mode = off
@ironcheftoni I am beyond sorry for what happened to you because my Mom had dementia in her remaining years. We have had some close calls with crooks, but we haven’t had something as bad as what you describe happen … yet, knock on wood.
/showme Person tapping the side of their head, where the head is made of wood.
@mediocrebot Should have described knuckles rapping on the side of head, but it’s hard to describe.
@ironcheftoni Call back both companies to make sure the one followed through with the cancelation and the other one can confirm that her medicare was reinstated. I have been hanging out on a medicare agent insurance forum and some of the things I have learned there is rather appalling.
@Kidsandliz since she has never had internet access, I set up an online account with her existing advantage plan. So I’ll keep an eye on it.
I don’t know how much it might help, but Verizon and TMobile both make a box available that allows using a landline-style physical phone via what’s actually cellular service. It might be worthwhile to ask if that service autofilters for scam calls as much as practical. Of course, if your mom’s phone number can’t change, and she has had it for a long time, the scammers already have her as a target, and changing to a different phone number might not work for her. That’s something only you can evaluate, but I thought I’d mention it.
@werehatrack I’m going to have to look into something. It’s a number she’s only had for 6 months and eventually I will have to switch to a cell service since AT&T warned me that landlines are being phased out. Getting something that will only ring if it’s a number from her contacts list would be ideal.
Something must have gotten through to her after I chewed her out for doing this. She got another call, told them that medicare doesn’t call and hung up.
@ironcheftoni @werehatrack Please give the internet-based “ooma” a look. I did that for my Dad when the #@$&# telco neglected his copper landline to the point of failure. The costs are :
1 - One time initial cost of hardware, maybe < $100.
2 - Yearly cost of plan, about $130.
3 - Monthly cost for 1 device, about $8.
The benefit is that I can remotely monitor EVERY telephone number that comes over the line.
I know there are a lot of costs, but I am actually hoping to expand the plan. I want to replace our own “landline” with an Ooma, but I don’t know if the different addresses will require another yearly plan. If the only additional cost is one more piece of hardware + the monthly cost of a second device, then I think it’s worth it.
@cfg83 @ironcheftoni @werehatrack
OOMA! Cue the giphy “name I hadn’t heard in a while.”
I had an old-school Ooma box sitting right at the front of my home network. Great reliable service and it claimed to be smart enough to regulate traffic so as to not bog down the network.
Anyway, I’ve moved on with just cellular lines now but it was the cat’s meow baby.
@cfg83 @therealjrn @werehatrack
I have an update. She has a panasonic cordless phone. Somehow, she turned off the ringer. So while looking up how to turn it back on, I found another option called autoblock. And it works! Any call programmed into the phone book will go through immediately. Ones that are not will get a message to enter a code to continue the call. Phone hasn’t rung in over an hour!! I see them on the phone as missed calls but they are not any that I recognize.
who knew it was going to be this easy??
@cfg83 @ironcheftoni @werehatrack

/image easy button
@ironcheftoni @therealjrn @werehatrack I think it’s because you burned all this time thinking about it. The telco gods were merciful … this time.
@ironcheftoni Qapla’!
@cfg83 @ironcheftoni @therealjrn @werehatrack That has to be a relief!!! Now, hopefully, she won’t accidentally discover it messing with the ringer again.
@ironcheftoni
count me firmly in the OOMA camp. I still have an OOMA set-up for a zombie phone number from years ago. I think I pay about $7-8 a month and there is no annual fee. Not sure if that is a legacy thing or (annual fee) an upgraded service capability fee… in truth I should just hose the whole plan and save the $$ but occasionally someone will call out of my ancient past and it is nice to catch up.
BTW the OOMA was from an old woot purchase. I had set up Mom and Dad with one long ago as well.
check out this thread for a 4 yr old VOIP discussion…
@ironcheftoni
just checked my orders here and realized I bought my last OOMA box (refurb to use as a back-up) here on meh 10 yrs ago in Oct.
The following is an abuse of my goat power :
/showme Cute kitty cat with scorpion tail.
@mediocrebot Ooof, not very well done. Oh well.
/showme Cute kitty cat with scorpion stinger on tip of tail.
@mediocrebot Try this again …
/showme Cute kitty cat with scorpion stinger on tip of tail.
I bumbled into a stack of buckets and wound up with multiple limbs stuck in them. While this looked and sounded pretty funny, and something very on-brand to happen to me, I’ve definitely hit that age where “I’m too old for this” – especially since I’ve got multiple bone fractures now.
@pakopako What?! The buckets broke your bones?
@yakkoTDI Yup. Multiple limbs got caught at wrong angles as I toppled like a … well, stack of buckets.
@pakopako I recently had the same thought while up on a ladder cleaning out the gutters.
(But no broken bones lately - last one was bad enough 32 years ago…)
Punt
Unblame. Saw a new Dr today who thought I was in my mid-late 30’s until he looked at my file! Put a smile on my face!!
The following is an abuse of my goat power :
/showme Scottish Fold Cat playing the bagpipe.
Blame! Where did you hide those two micro SD cards? I need to set up my mom’s new Raspberry Pi 500.
@yakkoTDI they are in the last place you will look. Youre welcome.
@yakkoTDI
showme xray of cat where micro sd cards are seen floating in stomach.
@yakkoTDI Whoops!
/showme xray of cat where micro sd cards are seen floating in stomach.
@mediocrebot Don’t worry, folks. Those are actually biodegradable cat treats that LOOK like micro-sd cards.
@cfg83 @tinamarie1974 Unblame I found where you hid them!
Reblame: I found the third card you tried to hide as well!
/showme an old man shaking his fist at a goat named cfg83 in the style of norman rockwell
@mediocrebot Ohhhhh, now you are reminding me of my old boxing daze.
/showme Anthropomorphized goat with three horns in boxing ring and wearing boxing shorts and standing with boxing gloves on and wearing belt buckle that says “cfg83”. Around the goat are unconscious old men lying on the ground and wearing boxing gloves.
The following is an abuse of my goat power :
/showme DeForest Kelly doing a terrible job building a brick wall and saying “Dammit Jim, I’m a doctor, not a mason!!!”.
Hrrmmmm, I wonder if I can get the showme to show me …
/showme the version of software that is used for the “/showme” command
@mediocrebot Methinks I have been bamboozled.
Does anyone know the software used for “showme” commands?
/showme mediocrbot laughing at goat named “cfg83”.