What are you doing today?

What are you doing today?​

This afternoon I was busy sowing French marigolds and other plants. The weather forecast looks good for the coming week when it comes to temperatures. And today was also a beautiful spring day. I love gardening. Some seeds will be sowed indoors before they'll be put in the backyard in about a month from now.
 
Today I am swearing at the world; tomorrow i will swear at the republicans; wednesday i will swear at the democrats; thursday i will swear at MAGA; friday i will swear at everyone; saturday the loaches will come up to me and ask what is wrong:

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Sitting at the dentist office waiting to get a root canal...beats the pain I have been in for the past week even on antibiotics...
 
Yesterday I was in a pretty foul temper most of the day, and I'm not human in the mornings until I've showered and ingested those first two cups of coffee.

Brief backstory: Parents owned this house and the same landline number for decades now, and they've been on the scammer lists for scam phone calls for many, many years, despite the fact they'd never once fallen for any of the scams. But I have a hefty dislike for scammers due to the way they target the elderly, the vulnerable, and will rob an elderly person of their life savings if they possibly can.

I sometimes enjoy watching scam-baiting videos - Kitboga is a great one, genuinely hilarious guy, who raises a lot of awareness about the various tech support/Amazon/IRS demanding gift cards etc scams that are out there. I used to warn my folks about the common ones, and always to check with me if they were concerned about a phone call. I've wasted the time of FB romance scammers before, just copy/pasting the odd poem or lines from their own scripts back to them will often keep them hooked for ages. But haven't done that in years, since I avoid FB whenever possible anyway.

But while I've never gone full on hunting to scam bait them, they'd sometimes ring almost daily. If I was in the mood and not immediately needed, sometimes I'd have fun wasting some scammers time. Pretend to be an elderly woman and jabber on at them as they try to convince me to let them access my computer remotely (never, ever do this! Not without a virtual machine and some real tech skills, anyway), until they give up out of frustration. Or I'll play along until revealing I know the scam they're trying to pull, whatever. I happen to know a few words of Hindi, but only the swearwords, sadly. Occasionally I might try earnestly asking them if they ever feel guilty, stealing money from frail old people, what their mum would think if she knew, that kind of thing, but it rarely works, and it's just sad, so pretending to go along with it for a while before letting them know that I'm not actually an 80 year old woman who made millions breeding rare cats is usually more entertaining.

Scammer yesterday caught me way too early in the morning for me to be amused, so I only acted like an ancient cackling crone for a minute or two before revealing I know why he wants me to "be in front of my computer", that I'm not falling for a washing machine insurance scam. He's immediately furious and cusses me out in Hindi, so I return the favour, and that only makes him angrier. Not ready to disconnect the landline yet, so he called me 4-5 more times yesterday, usually he said nothing, just could hear the call centre chatter in the background. But meant I watched a couple of Kitboga vids yesterday for the first time in a while, which made me laugh and put me in a better mood!

I expected him to keep calling again today, so when the phone rang at 8am, I figured it was bound to be him, no one else calls before business hours like that, and sure enough, it was him, but different fake name, different scam, obviously same scammer. So I just leaned back with a heavy sigh and said a bad word in Hindi, almost under my breath. Anticipating another annoying day of hang ups from this dude until he gets distracted/bored/fired.

"WHAT DID YOU SAY TO ME?" Uh oh. Scammer rage.

So I switched tones completely.
"Oh! No, I wasn't saying anything to you, I was talking to my cat. I named him *bad word in Hindi* He's so cute! Come here, little *bad bad Hindi word!*" and scammer was so taken aback, he burst out laughing. Which made me laugh.

He's called back twice since then, lunchtime I was busy and said "I'm sorry, I'm in an appointment now, you'll have to call back later, George. Love ya, bye bye byeeeee" and have to briefly explain to St Peter's Hospice person why I'm telling a tech support scammer I love them, haha. Yesterday he was ringing back to back just to be annoying, but today he did wait for a few hours after I said I was busy.

Now he just called to say it's the end of his shift, and he'll speak to me tomorrow. Quite friendly and happy sounding, I think I've intrigued him by being furious and nasty yesterday, then just matter of fact but silly today. He's not actively trying to scam me now, and when I said "finishing this early? Although, I don't know what time it is in India right now", he told me the right time, said he's going home now, and I the background noise in this scam call centre was super loud with different scammers shouting at their victims, so I told him his coworkers are really noisy given it's so late, that they need to calm down.

I think I made a scammer go from loathing me, to falling in love with me, within 24 hours. New record.


"George" now calls me about once a week, he just called again, trying to get a date of birth out of me, but I protested vigorously that you should never ask a lady her age. Terribly rude thing to ask!

He did say his name was Peter this time, and I'm due a refund of £202. I asked why it's such a random number, 202? Why the extra 2? But he only giggled and said yes, 202. He knows I know it's a scam and I'm not biting, but I seem to have caught his interest enough for him to call me now and again during lulls in his workday I guess. I don't mind the once a week thing so much, at least it isn't the 3-5 times a day he did when angry. I never, ever forget though that scammers will often channel that rage when targeting and frightening confused older people into handing over money or computer access that the scammers want to steal. Infuriates me.

I've been enjoying making up a crazy backstory for my character, who is rather different from my own reality. Edna made millions selling bitcoin and now has cats, and she always has a different answer for different things. Because you know. Adorabelle Dearheart isn't about to hand over any real info to scammers, or fall for a romance scam twist, thank you. She's quite happy with her cats, dog, and pet giraffe. Named Cat. The giraffe, that is. Long story.
 
"George" now calls me about once a week, he just called again, trying to get a date of birth out of me, but I protested vigorously that you should never ask a lady her age. Terribly rude thing to ask!

He did say his name was Peter this time, and I'm due a refund of £202. I asked why it's such a random number, 202? Why the extra 2? But he only giggled and said yes, 202. He knows I know it's a scam and I'm not biting, but I seem to have caught his interest enough for him to call me now and again during lulls in his workday I guess. I don't mind the once a week thing so much, at least it isn't the 3-5 times a day he did when angry. I never, ever forget though that scammers will often channel that rage when targeting and frightening confused older people into handing over money or computer access that the scammers want to steal. Infuriates me.

I've been enjoying making up a crazy backstory for my character, who is rather different from my own reality. Edna made millions selling bitcoin and now has cats, and she always has a different answer for different things. Because you know. Adorabelle Dearheart isn't about to hand over any real info to scammers, or fall for a romance scam twist, thank you. She's quite happy with her cats, dog, and pet giraffe. Named Cat. The giraffe, that is. Long story.
You should troll this guy if he keeps calling...
Look up different examples of trolling scammers ro get ideas and if this guy keeps going after you, just mess with him lmho.
 
You should troll this guy if he keeps calling...
Look up different examples of trolling scammers ro get ideas and if this guy keeps going after you, just mess with him lmho.
I was/am trolling him, silly billy :p

I'm scambaited romance scammers before, when they've bombarded my FB account or something, just to waste their time a little, and this call centre scammer began calling me angrily precisely because I pretended to be a confused old lady and played along with him for a while, wasting his time, until I revealed that I'm not a vulnerable elderly woman after all, and that I'm well aware of the types of scams they pull, that it's disgusting to frighten and steal from vulnerable people, and we ended up cussing each other out in Hindi. So he started out calling me frequently because he was angry, as scammers often are when caught out or having their own time wasted, then became a bit more lighthearted once I stopped being furiously angry because I was too tired to be angry that day. Now he just seems to call when he remembers, or when he's checking his list of potential victims that require a call back, I guess he's added me to that list now, despite knowing I'm well aware of the various scams they pull, and that I'm not going to be allowing him access to my devices, or giving him real personal info.


I like watching scambaiter YT channels at times, Kitboga is very good and very funny!
 

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