Wrong Number Text Scams, Whatsapp. Be Careful! Almost Got Scammed!

About a week ago a got a text message from some number I didn’t recognize asking something about if I am coming into work today. I figured they accidentally got the wrong number so I told them they may have the wrong number. They apologized and said they would treat me to coffee if I was in the area. I said I was far away but thanked them for the offer.

I thought this was a friendly exchange but little did I know at the time, it was just a common set up for what is known as a wrong number text scam which the scammer will try to befriend you to gain your trust over time and then eventually try to convince you to invest money into a scheme which you will end up losing money.

Anyway so they continued the conversation and I guess I was intrigued enough or just willing to make a new pen pal so I continued to chat with them. Soon they asked me to transfer our conversation over to Whatsapp. I asked why and they said they were using a work phone that other people use. I didn’t have the app but it looked ok so I downloaded it to the phone to continue the conversation.

As the days went on she shared more about herself including pictures and videos which seemed to be real. I was still a bit skeptical so I started looking up the phone numbers and the images but nothing turned up so it seemed legitimate. 

It soon became apparent that she was very wealthy. She said she had her own jewelry business and that she also makes money by investing in the gold market. She spoke about this investing several times and mentioned that she could teach me to do it if I was interested. 

I was still considering that this was possibly a scam so I knew I did not want to invest any money, but it was tempting especially since she apparently was very good at it. She said her aunt was her mentor and taught her about investing. 

About a week in, the relationship was going well. We chatted several times a day and we seemed to be getting along great. I really thought I got lucky by randomly getting into a conversation with a stranger who just happened to be beautiful, single, and rich. Of course this should have clued me into the fact that it was probably a scam, but I wanted to believe it was true. 

Even certain examples along the way that seemed a bit odd and didn’t quite check out, I brushed off and kept believing that this could be the real thing.

I told me sister and she immediately said it sounded like a scam. She sent me examples of common scams and honestly the descriptions matched up with what I was dealing with so I started to get a little more cautious.  

I started to dig a little deeper and search for terms like “wrong number text scam” and “gold investing scam". Examples on Reddit started popping up and I was shocked by what I found. There were tons of examples of pretty much exactly the same set up leading to a scam!

It starts with an innocent wrong number text and they keep chatting back and forth to gain your trust. They ask you to move over to Whatsapp to keep chatting. They mention that they are rich from investing and offer to help you get involved with it. Once you agree to invest money with them, it turns out it is a scam and you lose your money.

I was lucky I discovered it was a scam before it got that far so I did not lose anything. I told myself I would not put any money into it in case it was a scam but I will admit, the idea of it was tempting. I was really believing this person and starting to take their advice and direction on big decisions which is pretty scary considering it was all fake.

I believed this relationship was real for about a week until I discovered the similar examples online. I consider myself a pretty tech savvy person who is well educated when it comes to tech scams. I have seen many examples of it online and taken a lot of cyber security courses as well, and even with all of that, I still managed to get pulled into one of these scams.

It is really sad that there are people out there doing this, taking advantage of people with the sole intention of stealing their money. They are preying on innocent people who are often seeking out a relationship and they exploit this for their own personal gain. I was lucky I did not lose anything in this interaction but many people out there get further into it and end up losing a lot of money.

I wanted to share this example of what happened with the hope that it will help others not fall victim to the same scam. Be careful out there. If something seems too good to be true it is! 

Facebook Marketplace – Why is it so bad? Pet peeves and frustration.

If you are looking to sell something locally, chances are you have experience with Facebook Marketplace. It is one of the most popular platforms for buying and selling items and it is run by one of the biggest companies in the world, so why is it so bad?

Is it the software itself, the people who are using it, or a combination of both? I would say it is a mix of both. 

One of the biggest issues is poor communication. Most people start by sending a generic “Is this still available?” message. I will usually reply immediately with something like, “Yes, can you pick it up today?” Then most of the time they will not even read the reply or if they do read it, they don’t reply.

My theory is that since Facebook has those quick message send options, I think a lot of people are accidentally tapping those messages even when they don’t mean to send a message. For the others, they are clearly not serious about buying the item so they don’t even reply. 

It doesn’t help that Facebook’s app is not reliable at all when it comes to functionality and communication. I just had a scheduled meet up with a buyer. I was waiting like 10 minutes and so was he, when we were both there because the messages did not go through. I was there with the app open to the chat and there was nothing. It was not until I force closed the app and then re-opened it that I saw their messages show up. 

Another thing is that people do not even read the details of the listing before they start sending messages. There have been so many times where people have said they were interested and we went back and forth discussing the item. Then finally when they agree to buy it they realize the distance is too far. I always have the location listed and still they do not pay attention. 

The rating system could be better also. I always rate after a good transaction. If it was not a good transaction I will just not rate them. I don’t like the idea that your identity is shown on the ratings because it could cause conflict or retaliation for giving a bad review. 

Overall the app could use a lot of improvement. Considering how popular it is and how big the company is, you would think they would be able to make some of these fixes to improve the product. 

What is your experience using Facebook Marketplace? Feel free to leave a comment below. 

Making mistakes is not a problem. Being dishonest about it is.

Everyone makes mistakes from time to time. It is just part of life. When we make a mistake, we have the chance to learn from it so it does not happen again. 

Sometimes when people make mistakes they don’t want others to know about it so they try to hide it or lie about it to avoid taking the blame for what happened. It is understandable when people do this because they are trying to save themselves from embarrassment or from consequence. They don’t want others to know they made a mistake because they feel others will think less of them because of it.

I would argue that this is the wrong approach and that being honest about it and telling the truth is a much better way to address a mistake. Sure if you lie about it and no one finds out the truth, you might get away with it. However if you lie about it and the truth is found out, now not only will you be judged on making the mistake but now also on lying about it which is worse.

The reason it is worse is because being dishonest is a personal choice. It is something you have control over and by lying, it also means you can no longer be trusted. Trust is incredibly important in all aspects of life. When you are trustworthy, people can depend on you and that makes you valuable. If you can’t be trusted, people can’t really take you for your word anymore and that means people will always question whether you are telling the truth or not.

When you make a mistake, it is better to just own it and tell the truth rather than try to hide it and end up making things worse for yourself. 

This topic was on my mind because I have dealt with this situation frequently at work. I will ask someone about a mistake that was made and they act like they don’t know anything about it. Then later I find out that it was in fact their mistake and they were not truthful about it. In these cases, I would much rather they had just been honest in the first place. It would not have been a big deal at all, but since they lied about it, now I know I can’t trust them, and that has a huge negative effect on how I see them as an employee and as a person in general. 

As tempting as it may me to try to hide a mistake, in the long run, it is better to just be honest about it. Mistakes happen. It is part of life and often times it cannot be avoided no matter how careful we are. It is how we choose to react when these mistakes happen that will determine if we are someone who can be trusted or not. 

When songs make us cry. Music’s ability to elicit an emotional response.

Have you ever listened to a song and it brought tears to your eyes? This happens to me sometimes and I find it fascinating that a song can bring about such emotion that it actually makes us cry. I began looking into how and why this happens.

Apparently there are several different reasons on why this occurs. For example the song could be associated with a particular emotional time or event in your life and it reminds you of that time. Another example is when you relate to the lyrics and they stir up a strong emotion within you. It could also be that you find the music to be incredibly beautiful and it just resonates with you.

For me, I tend to get most emotional when an individual overcomes obstacles and achieves a goal that have been striving for. For example when someone has been working hard at something and even when it looks like it won’t work out, they keep trying and eventually succeed in their efforts.

I will share 3 examples of these kinds of songs that bring about this emotion and make me cry.

The first is an audition by Jillian Jensen on the show X Factor. This was many years ago and to this day every time I watch it, I start bawling. The segment gives a little about her background and how she struggled growing up and was bullied about her singing. Then she gives an emotional raw performance, pouring her heart out and it is just so powerful, you can feel it. Here is her performance from that night: 

Another example is the song Defying Gravity from the movie Wicked, sung by Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande. I actually just watched this movie for the first time recently and scene where they sing this song was so emotional. It is another one of those situations where the character was ostracized and made fun of by others because she was different. Then she finally get the power and confidence to defy gravity and the emotions come pouring out. Cynthia’s vocals in the 2nd half of the song blow me away every time. 

Last example is a song many people are familiar with and that is Let It Go from the movie Frozen sung by Idina Menzel. It’s a popular song of course but it is also very emotional in the context. In the movie, The character Elsa has left her community because she was different and didn’t fit in. While alone, she embraces who she is and decides to Let It Go and not be worried what others will think of her. The song builds to a very emotional chorus that I think many people can relate to in different ways. 

What are some songs that bring you to tears? Feel free to leave a comment below.

Blog Update

I always use an ad blocker when browsing the web so I usually don't see advertisements but recently I disabled it to see what the site looks like here with ads. To my surprise, there were tons of ads! Way too many. There were more ads than content!

I went to check my Google Adsense account to see how much money if any was actually being made from all these ads. Turns out the amount was very small. Were talking maybe a few pennies a day. My last Adsense payout was almost 2 years ago! And Google does not let you cash out unless you get to at least $100.

 I realized that for the amount of ads that were spamming my site, it was not worth it to be making just a few cents per day. I would rather just not have any ads and give the reader a much better experience on the site. So as of today I have removed the ads and closed the Google Adsense account. 

I don't post as much on this site as I used to, but it still has a lot of articles going back many years and the old articles still get traffic so at least now these articles can be read without being bombarded with a bunch of ads. 

How to get food out from in between your teeth?

It can be very annoying when you get some food stuck in between your teeth so I thought I would share a method that I use that usually works for me. This is for when you get something hard wedged in between back teeth and dental floss by itself is not working. 

This happens to me if I am eating something like tortilla chips and a hard part of the chip gets wedged in between my teeth. 

First step is to try dental floss to get it out. Most of the time this works, but sometimes the food is too hard and stuck in there that you can't even get the floss in there to clear it.

When floss on its own does not work, I get some water and use to to swish around inside my mouth. Take a gulp of water and swish it around vigorously in between your teeth. Try to focus on the area that has the food stuck. Repeat this process a few times with a few gulps of water.  

Then get the floss and try again to floss it out. Hold the floss firmly and try to move it back a forth a bit if it still does not get through. But be careful not to push to hard because you don't want to hurt your gums with the floss.  

If it still does not work, go back to the water and swish more water around. For stubborn pieces of food, you may have to do this several times. The water helps break down the food. Sometimes I have had to do this as much as 10 times, but eventually it always works and the food comes out with the floss after swishing the water around to help break it down.

Good luck and feel free to share any tips you have on getting food out of your teeth. 

Beelink SER5 Pro Mini PC Review - Initial thoughts

I recently decided to purchase a new PC to replace my Lenovo desktop tower that was about 9 years old. I still liked the Lenovo but it was starting to get sluggish and freeze up under normal use. The current mini PC's are much faster and they are very affordable so I figured it was about time for a replacement. 

After doing research I decided to go with a Beelink SER5 Pro mini PC. It has a Ryzen 7 processor, 500GB storage, and 32GB of RAM. Overall cost about $300.

When it arrived, I was surprised how small the box was. It is amazing that a computer replacing a big desktop tower can be so small and it still has plenty of ports for connections. 

Setup and updates did not go as smooth as I would have liked. It had trouble updating to the newest version of Windows 11 so I had to go directly to the Microsoft site and download an installer to help and that worked. Then it said the Radeon drivers did not match so I had to update those.  

Upon using it for a while, I noticed that even though the PC was pretty quiet at idle, the fan would rev high whenever I would open a program or perform a simple action. It felt like the computer was stressing more than it should be for simple applications.

I did a bunch of research on adjusting the fan settings as many other people had mentioned the same issue. Finally I found the solution which was to go into the processor power management settings and move the "Maximum processor state" down from 100% to 99%. This made a huge difference and now the PC is much quieter and the fan does not rev up and down like before.

Overall the performance seems to be pretty good. It starts up and shuts down pretty fast and runs programs pretty well.  

One thing I don't really like is Windows 11. It is new to me, but so far I have found it not very easy to use or at least, it has quirks or limitations that make it not user friendly. For example the scroll wheels on everything are too thin and seem to want to hide all the time. I have adjusted settings and looked for ways to fix this but so far, none have helped without going deep into modifying registry settings which I don't want to do. 

Simple actions such as viewing programs installed seem to require more clicks that necessary and it is not intuitive to get to them. Reaching simple buttons such as a power button requires several clicks and mouse pans to get to it. 

There seem to be several different ways to get to similar settings such as power settings, and when adjusting one, it will modify and limit the other and since they are in different places, this makes it confusing. 

Some security settings are turned off by default and it is not clear as to why or what effect they have on the system. I found myself having to do tons of research online just to figure out what all these setting are for. 

Despite the initial struggle of getting started and the learning curve of Windows 11, overall I am pleased with the system. I will update this review later with more details over time to see how it performs in the long run. 

Update 8-29-25:

I have been using the computer for about 4 months and so far it has been pretty good but I have noticed 1 issue. Every so often when I press the power button to turn it on, the light goes on but it does not start up. I then have to hold the power button down to force shut down and then press it again to start it up. Not sure what the issue is, but it is a little worrisome that it does not always boot up reliably. Other than that, it seems to be ok.