Then, I had to work on my oldest Alienware, an old X51-R3, to get it ready to give to my oldest son, who is in dire need of a half-way decent computer. He has been for years, so I made him a deal. If I could install Windows 11 Home on it for him, I would send it to him. All he has to do is plug everything in and go. Which may sound easy, but for him, it may be a bit of a challenge.

After doing some end-arounds around Microsoft in order to install Windows 11 on this older machine, it's ready to go. It's a good thing I'm good at this kind of stuff. It seems, Windows 11 now requires a minimum amount of newer hardware versions in order to be installed and this old Alienware X51-R3's processor was just under the minimal limit. Once I got the operating system installed, you would never know what's under the hood. I think it's just another excuse to make us all buy new computers every so often. All I have to do now is put it into a proper shipping container and send it to Florida. Which I bet will cost me a pretty penny. But, it's for my son, so what am I to do?

It took me a week and a half to get my servers up to par for the next two years, until I need to update the patches again. To which I put in some long hours to get it all done. The primary security certificate is good for five years, so I can relax for a while.

Then it was time to start my other projects. I took time out last week for a podcast, which I kept somewhat short due to my work schedule. Then I started on my long overdue web site upgrades. Which I finished today and I uploaded everything to my web site hosting platform in Italy. You should take time out from reading this to look around at the changes I made. I hope people like them.

Along with all of this, I've been fighting off tons of online book marketing scammers ever since I signed up for a Goodreads account a few weeks ago. My email inbox has been flooded with emails from Nigeria, although they don't tell you they're from Nigeria. Most of them are easy to pick out as obvious scams, but I ran into one that was new to me, and I bit because of the sophistication they deployed.

It started off with another unsolicited email from a gmail account, that purported to come from an American author from Atlanta, GA. She asked the same questions as the rest. She wanted to engage with me about my book at first, then she wanted to recommend this, supposed, book marketing wizard, who had done so much for her to make her famous. She told me that I just had to see if he could help me. I thought, what the hell, I can have an email conversation with someone to see what they were selling.

And that is where everything fell apart. This guy told me about this grand plan to set up special coding on my book distribution sites, and he would do some super coding on his end to advertise my books to the world. Then when he gave me the price tag for these "special" services, I balked and said no. I can't afford that. I was content to let it go as just another scam attempt.

Then this author got involved and told me that she pleaded my case to this special marketer and now, he would do this special coding for what I thought I could afford. I still balked, but offered $200, thinking he would say no, if he was legitimate. But no, he jumped on it and we arranged for me to send him the money. At first, I wanted to use my business Paypal account, but it wouldn't go through. I thought that's funny because if this guy is working in the U.S., and using a U.S. bank, there should be no problem. That's when I discovered, using this secure transfer app he recommended, that the money went to a bank in Nigeria. No wonder PayPal failed. No western bank or western money transfer platform will let you send money to a bank or a person in Nigeria. They're all black listed. That's when I had the sinking feeling that I was being taken to the cleaners. But, it gets worse.

After I sent the money, he sends me some garbage html code wrapped around a story description that was obviously written with cheap AI. It only had a vague representation of the story in the book and the html code was something any elementary coder could whip up in a few short minutes. I called him out on it and that's when everything fell apart.

I received another reply that I now owed him another $1600 for his services, saying that by giving him what I could afford initially, it was just a down payment for the whole program. Of course, I immediately told him to terminate his services. I had not agreed to that in any way, and I have the email threads to prove it. He keeps insisting that I owe him this money, even after I told him I went back into all of my distribution platforms to scrub his garbage code out and replace it with something a lot better. He complained that I owed him this money if I continued to use his code, which I'm not anymore. Even then, I only had it mounted for a few days before discovering the scam.

Then, with all of this emailing back and forth going on, I start getting more emails from this Jenn Lyons, about trying to work out a deal. About how good this guy is and that I would be missing out on something that's supposed to be the next best thing since scrambled eggs.

This Jenn Lyons does have an online presence, both with her own author's web site and an account on Goodreads and Facebook. Although no one's posted on that Facebook page in several years. But Goodreads appeared to be active and the profile picture is of a middle-aged white woman. Which is what convinced me to send this Nigerian clown some money.

I received another reply the other day, telling me that if I wanted a refund, I needed to give this Nigerian my bank account information. I obviously told him in a business like manner, to go stuff himself. I most certainly would not be stupid enough to give him my bank account info so he could supposedly refund my money. I offered to provide my PayPal account, or he could use that same transfer app he gave me before that I used to send him that initial sum. But, he has decided to keep the money. No surprise.

In his last reply, he told me that he added the money to my account and that I owed him more money in order for him to proceed with the advertising campaign. I, once again, told him that I would not be sending any more money and that he could check, because I had scrubbed all of his coding from my platforms. He can't accuse me of using any proprietary digital products now that aren't paid for in full.

I don't expect that this will be the last I hear from them, as they're starting to sound a little desperate. I will give them credit for persistence and running one of the most sophisticated and elaborate scams I've come across to date.

Since I never signed any contracts, nor did I ever say in one of my emails, that I agreed to pay this large sum of money for his services, there is little they can do to come after me legally. Especially since the money I sent went to Nigeria, and most of us know what happens to any money sent to anyone there. You can kiss it good-bye.

There is no legal paper or digital trail obligating me to pay any money, and any American solicitor would just laugh or smirk at me for being conned out of my $200.

I'm writing about this so should anyone ever encounter a similar situation where someone with a relatively famous name sends you an email out of nowhere, asking you to buy into something, run away fast. Bump that email into the spam folder and forget about it. Which is what I'm doing with these people now. The only reason I've carried on with them this long, is because I was stupid enough to buy into the idea that this was a famous real author genuinely wanting to help a fledgling author like me.

I'm willing to bet that Goodreads profile is probably fake and is being used to lure other authors in to hook them, like they did with me. I even sent a DM through the Goodreads profile to this Jenn Lyons, and she acknowledged to me that she read it. Which was why I bit into this premise in the emails, that they would be kind to me and provide their service for the sum I offered up front. I should have known better, in hindsight. I certainly do now.

I dared them to try and bring any legal action against me in one of my replies a few days ago but there was no response to that. So, that tells me something too. I think they know they can't come after me in the courts, so they want to keep threatening me with a lack of finishing the project. To which I say, good. All I want them to do now, is leave me alone. We'll see.

In other news, I ordered a computer part from Amazon a couple of weeks ago. A new hard drive for another computer I'm repairing. I found a hard drive from a Chinese company in exactly the size I need, at a much better price than any American made ones. Then, I got the first email from Amazon a few days ago, telling me that there was a problem with shipping it to me as scheduled and that it would be delayed until Yesterday. It was originally supposed to arrive last Wednesday, then it was going to be Thursday, then yesterday, Saturday. I received another email yesterday, telling me that it has been delayed again, until a now, unknown date, and did I still want it? They will send me another email with a new delivery date, so they say. The fact that Amazon keeps asking me if I still want it is suspicious.

After the second shipping delay, my first thought was Trump and his tariff war with China has caused this. I bet, because it's a hard drive memory chip that's in high demand these days here in the U.S., it either got held up in China or customs here in the U.S. China has been banning the export of their memory chips lately, and, there's a possibility that the American importer can't or won't pay the extra import tariff tax.

If I'm forced to buy an American hard drive at triple the cost, I'm going to be pissed. Just to give everyone an idea of what I'm talking about, I'll give you a comparison. Dell Computers wants $469 for a 1 terabyte hard drive with the specs I need. The same one from a Chinese company on Amazon is only $161, if I can still get it. Which I'm beginning to have doubts now.

My only other option might be this local computer repair company I discovered a couple of weeks ago. It's run by a Chinese family and maybe, if I lose out on this Amazon delivery, he might have one that he'll sell me for cheaper than the Americans. I'll wait until I hear the final word from Amazon before I venture down there to ask. The one time I stopped in for a small something, he did tell me that he sells M.2 hard drives. Something to keep in the back of my mind as I try to wait patiently. Maybe if I bring my Chinese wife with me, he'll give me a good price? Stranger things have happened. They even might attend the same church together. You never know.

The local Chinese community here is pretty close knit, from what I've seen, so maybe there's some hope for me yet.

All because the United States has a senile old man as president and everyone who's anyone in his political party is scared to death of him. This is what will eventually bring the United States to its economic knees pretty soon. Likely within the next few months or early next year. Once Trump goes after the free and fair elections, plus the fallout from the war with Iran, and the tariffs really sink in hard, the recession will be upon us hard.

As I said in last week's podcast, I've survived several recessions before and I'll likely survive this next one too. But, overall, will the people of the United States survive another one that may actually be worse than 2008?

Once I get my computer up and running, I won't care that much. I'm as prepared as anyone can be these days. The only thing I'm slightly worried about are future food shortages, if we end up with a depression era recession. We'll see. I hope not but things aren't looking so good these days.

If all I have to worry about are computer part shortages, I'll manage. But, if what the economic predictors are saying comes true, we're all going to be worried about more than delayed or cancelled computer part orders next year by this time.

That's what's on my mind this weekend as we get ready for another chaotic work week. I hope everyone is keeping their heads down and working to survive another week. I know that's what I'm going to be doing.