Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

Tens of millions of Americans are eligible to get $50/month from the US government to help pay for their Internet service for the next few months. Eligibility for the "Emergency Broadband Benefit" includes people with low incomes, anyone who lost a job or significant income during the pandemic, people who are getting other benefits including food stamps, Medicaid, and Supplemental Security Income, and anyone who is already getting subsidized or low-income Internet service.

The FCC estimates that the application process should take about ten minutes, but you do have to apply. You can start at https://getemergencybroadband.org/how-to-apply/

The law authorizing this was passed in December, and the FCC now has it up and running in most of the United States.

Our Internet connection was down when I woke up. Unrelatedly, I think, I got an email from Google saying that if I hadn't tried logging in 34 minutes ago I needed to change my password.

I did that, and then spent a couple of hours trying to figure out why my iPhone wouldn't let me enter the new password, before it occurred to me to turn WiFi off on the phone--apparently if WiFi is on but it can't find the server, it just keeps looking rather than thinking "I'm a phone, I have a connection through a cell phone ocmpany."

The afternoon has been a lot better: cattitude and I went for a walk on an unexpectedly warm sunny day, I've done several of my PT exercises, and the mail brought two beautiful magnets made by minoanmiss as well as the replacement timer caps for my pill bottles.

In a few minutes, I will carve the chicken Cattitude roasted, and we will have dinner.

Also, Resistance Labs emailed to thank me for sending 29,490 texts over the last couple of months. I think that's initial texts, not counting answering replies (to either those, or texts sent by other people); it certainly doesn't count the 1800 I sent specifically for the Biden campaign Tuesday evening.

Also from that email, "With volunteers like you, we sent 150,550,128 texts since August 1st, with over 80 million in the last 30 days alone." Which really is a lot, especially for people in Florida and other swing states--and we weren't the only people texting, not by a long shot.

Bad: I got a letter yesterday saying that I owed large sums of money because I'd had my surgery done by an out-of-network doctor.
Good: When I called this morning, as soon as I said "emergency room" the person I was talking to said she would fix it for me, and resubmit it as an in-network claim. (The key point I was making, which she accepted, was that I hadn't had a choice of surgeon.)
Bad: This afternoon, I wanted to see whether a different doctor was in their network, so went to the Web. I got an error message about "too many login attempts". Called the tech support number it gave. It took 15 minutes of going in circles before the tech suggested I clear saved files, I described what I was looking at and said "firefox," and she said that they don't support Firefox. Apparently the way they don't support it is by giving a false error message. ("Please use Internet Explorer" would be useful; "Xyzzy Please restart" would at least not set a false trail.) There are enough Firefox users that the tech should have thought of that the first time we went through her resetting my password and me still not being able to log in, not the third.
Good: The doctor in question is in their network.

This morning, F-Secure told me that a program called Proxystop 3 was trying to act as an internet server, and did I want it to? Never having heard of it, I said no [in the "check next time it tries" form, not the "never" form, for now]. Then I poked around a little: Google found me a few sites that said it was from HP and harmless, but a search at HP.com found nothing. Searching the F-Secure website also found me nothing relevant, only a few hits that included the words "proxy" and "stop." (Google also found me a couple of dozen items that appeared to be newsgroup or mailing list posts in Scandinavian languages, but that doesn't actually help me.)

Do any of you know what this program is, or does?

I have an HP printer. It's been here for ages, and this message is new today.

My bank wants me to start using their online bill-paying service, enough that they'll send me a $25 gift card if I use it three times by the middle of August.

So, I went to sign up. Created a userid, ignoring their advice to add random numbers to make one that's hard to guess, because I want one I can remember. I created a password. I then clicked to actually use the bill-paying service. It wants me to create a security key, 8 to 30 characters, with the usual "nothing that can be connected to you" suggestion, and a "virtual keyboard" that seems not to allow for punctuation. Presumably, for security, I shouldn't write that down either.

I realized that I'm not up to coming up with, effectively, another password that meets those conditions at the instant, and being sure I'll remember it next week. (Suggestions not needed, I know the tricks of that trade, but I'm mostly thinking about packing, tea, and such.)

I got email from zorinth yesterday, thanking me for the software I sent him, and asking my advice on some Internet research he needs to do. I threw him a couple of pointers on how to get the answer. Had he not said it was for a school assignment, I might have done the research myself, but I hope he'll enjoy himself, even if googling is less fun than game programming.