Ageism

I met a man today. I was strolling around my garden with Mogi, and my first coffee of the day, when he came to read my gas meter.

On the way out, the Gas Man made a smiling comment about Mogi, my pint-sized chihuahua cross, and we got to talking about dogs:

Be sure to get my good side

A lot of conversations start with dogs in Warrandyte. The Gas Man has two Rhodesian Ridgebacks.

One thing led to another, and I soon discovered that the Gas Man spends most of his working life walking the hills of Warrandyte, checking meters. I’ve walked some of those hills, and they are bloody steep.

I must have looked utterly horrified, because the Gas Man quickly explained that there were very few places where he could [safely] park his car, so in between parking spots he had to walk. On really hot days he’s ‘allowed’ to start at six am so he can finish by about 1pm.

I looked at the Gas Man and saw someone in his mid fifties, with a weathered face and a bit of a paunch. He was cheerful and well-spoken, but he looked older than me, and I’m 66.

“You haven’t considered a career change?” I asked.

The answer shocked me. No, he hadn’t considered getting another job because he knew that if he left this one, he’d never work again. Ageism.

The Gas Man is doing the kind of job men twenty years younger would hate. What’s worse, he’s going to have to keep walking the hills of Warrandyte until his body fails, or the company decides he’s not efficient enough any more. I can guess what happens after that because it happened to me too. You apply for NewStart to ‘tide you over’, but no one wants to employ you, so you scrape along until you finally qualify for the pension.

Why does no one want to employ you?

I’ve thought about this a lot. I imagine that in physical type jobs, older workers are seen as less ‘strong’, or perhaps even as a liability – e.g. what happens if they have a heart attack on the job? Given how many physical type jobs are already automated, why employ an older person when there are hundreds of younger ones available?

White collar workers are in a slightly different boat. We may have experience and skills, but will we be able to learn the new technology? More importantly, will we expect to be paid commensurate with our skills and experience? And what happens if we get sick? The statistics show that older people fall prey to all sorts of debilitating illnesses. Better to hire someone with lower dollar expectations and a longer [working] life expectancy.

And then there’s the perception that older workers will retire soon so why bother training them up?

I’m not saying that I have had personal experience of these scenarios. I haven’t. Most of my experience is of silence. You send off your CV and nothing comes back. You ring up a few places to inquire if they received your CV, and there’s a kind of embarrassed ‘oh, we’ve got you on file’. That translates to, ‘yes, we probably got it and binned it straight away’. I have very good qualifications, but the earliest ones date back to the 1970’s. You can’t hide that.

No one admits to ageism because it’s ‘illegal’ to discriminate against someone based on age, but it does happen. More importantly, the bar to employment is getting lower all the time. I shudder to think what will happen when the workers of the ‘gig’ economy become too old to maintain that frenetic pace. Age may be ‘just a number’, but it’s a very important number.

When the Gas Man went on his way, I finished my coffee and dragged out the lawn mower. If he can walk up and down our hills, rain or shine, five days a week, I can do a bit more mowing, even if I my bones do creak a bit. Motivation can come from unexpected sources.

Have a great day, my friends,

-hugs-

Meeks

 

Poor sleep is NOT inevitable [with ageing]

I’ve been a night owl for most of my life, but once asleep, I’d sleep for a solid eight hours and wake refreshed. In recent years, however, my sleep has become progressively worse, with eight hours becoming six and much of that ‘broken’.

Me…without the spots

I thought, “Well, I am in my sixties…”

That resigned thought joined a host of others as more physical niggles set in. Arthritis in my big toes? Check. The beginnings of arthritis in my right thumb? Check. Deteriorating eyesight? Check. Reduced energy? Check. Reduced ability to think? Kinda. I can still do mental gymnastics first thing in the morning, but by late afternoon my mind and body cries out for a nana nap… -sigh-

I solved the problem of the arthritis [at least for now] by eating a bowl of Morello cherries with plain yoghurt for breakfast every day. The Morello cherries [also called ‘black cherries’] contain ‘…anthocyanins – plant pigments that have powerful antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.‘

The Morello cherries don’t cure the arthritis, they simply reduce the inflammation. And they do it without destroying the lining of your stomach like most chemical anti-inflammatories. Most importantly, they will keep you pain free if you keep eating them. Plus they are delicious.

I owe the late Bob Hawke for the tip about the Morello cherries. And no, I’ve never had a direct line to Bob Hawke. 🙂 Like many others, I  watched an interview in which he mentions that he controls his arthritis with Black Cherries. I did my research and discovered that Black Cherries = Morello Cherries and they really do work.

[Note: you can find Morello Cherries in glass jars at most Coles, Woolworths and IGA supermarkets. The cost is about $4 per jar.]

The eyesight is still a problem as I need three hands and a strong magnifying glass to thread a needle…BUT, I think I’ve solved the sleep, energy and brain power problems. And they all boil down to one thing – avoiding ‘blue light’ for a couple of hours before bed!

“Blue wavelengths—which are beneficial during daylight hours because they boost attention, reaction times, and mood—seem to be the most disruptive at night. And the proliferation of electronics with screens, as well as energy-efficient lighting, is increasing our exposure to blue wavelengths, especially after sundown.”

https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/blue-light-has-a-dark-side

If you go to the Harvard Health website [see link above] you’ll see a picture of someone lying in bed, reading from an electronic device. That used to be me. I’d hop into bed, get comfy, turn on my Kindle Fire and read for half an hour or so.

Reading in bed is a habit I’ve followed since I was about eight years old. It never occurred to me that changing my reading material from books to the Fire would have any negative effects. After all, I’d spent years reading my ordinary Kindle without any ill effects. Trouble is, I didn’t realise that the Kindle Fire screen is back lit with blue light while the ordinary Kindle has no back lighting.

I’d still be struggling with poor sleep, and all the ills that flow from it if not for Navigator, an online friend with life long sleep problems. His problems are slowly disappearing thanks to a simple change of routine and some Melatonin tablets. I figured if the ‘cure’ works for him, it might work for me too. I don’t take the Melatonin [yet], but I have been turning off the pc, a bit earlier and reading an old fashioned book for the last couple of weeks. And it’s working. Honest!

My next step will be to get a special filter for my pc. Apparently you can set it to change the backlighting from blue to a kind of sepia at sundown. You can also get prescription glasses made up with an inbuilt blue light filter, but as you’d expect, they’re kind of expensive.

Anyway, if poor sleep is something you’ve been living with for a while, try to reduce the amount of blue light from electronic devices, especially in the evening. You may find that poor sleep is not a function of your age at all.

Cheers

Meeks

#Pension age for Australian women

I never thought I’d be reliant on the pension when I got to be ancient but…there you go. Life is what it is. So when  can I go on the pension, exactly?

65.

Oh, my Mum was much younger than that when she went on the pension, but I guess there are a lot more of us Baby Boomers now, so I guess it’s fair that the government [both Libs and Labor] would want to draw out the pension age.

Last time I checked, pensioners receive at least $100 more per week than the unemployed. $100 per week is $5,200 per year and more than $50,000 over ten years…

But wait! News just in: starting from July next year [2017] the eligible age for the pension will go up by six months every two years until it hits 67.

67?

Bangs head on desk. I can’t bear it. What if ‘they’ move the goal posts again? I may never get the pension…

-reads the criteria again-

Hang on a minute. It doesn’t say the pension age will go up by six months every six months! It’ll only go up once every two years, so…

-uses her fingers and toes-

It’s okay! I’ll only be 65 and a half when I become eligible!

-faints with relief-

All jokes aside, I did completely misread the eligibility criteria, and I know I’m not the only one so here’s a much easier to understand table of how the increase in the pension age will work:

The arrows are mine, the info. is from the Department of Human Services.

As a woman of a certain age -cough- I’m safe. Unless something radical happens in the next couple of years, I won’t have to wait until I’m 67 to get the pension, which is a huge relief. Now if only I could win the lottery and not have to rely on the pension at all…

Anyone know where I put that Tatts ticket?

cheers

Meeks

#Microsoft, #Windows10 and #Office 16 vs my privacy

‘They’ say that we give away our privacy with both hands these days and thus, do not deserve to have it protected. Bullshit. We’re given no choice. Trigger warning – angry woman rant ahead.

Due to work, I had to buy a cheap laptop yesterday. It came with Windows 10 installed, and I bought the Office 16 suite to go with it [also for work]. I have now wasted the better part of a day just trying to get what I paid for to work.

First Windows 10.

Even though it was pre-loaded, the first time I fired up the laptop, I had to wait through a number of very slow ‘welcome-ish’ screens. It was so slow, I actually thought the laptop had hung on me. But no, just Microsoft at its best. [Oh and you can’t get out of these loading screens either].

Then, once the loading screens were done, I had to do some customisations. Microsoft pushes VERY hard to make you accept the ‘express’ option. DO. NOT. DO. IT! You will understand why after you select the ‘customise’ option. Essentially, this allows you to see exactly what is hidden behind the super convenient express option.

I can’t remember how many pages of customisation options there were, but they were all controlled by odd little slider buttons, and all of the sliders were set to ‘on’ by default.

To change the slider from ‘on’ to ‘off’, simply click on the left-hand side of the slider. It should now show as ‘off’.

What should you turn off? Everything. Literally.

I think I turned everything to off except maybe the last one that had to do with language and which version of English I wanted to use. Everything else was just sneaky data-mining. Or setting you up for all sorts of advertising and big brother type nonsense. I kid you not, you do not want any of those options set to yes. EVER.

Microsoft Edge

I have always hated the Microsoft browser so I used Edge only long enough to download Firefox. Once Firefox was installed, however, getting Win10 to accept it as the default browser was not at all straightforward or intuitive. To make using something else harder perhaps?

It can be done, just don’t expect it to be logical.

When you open the browser of your choice you will get a dialog box asking if you want to make it your default browser. Click yes.

You will now get a settings window that shows options for music, pictures and browsers etc. In this window, Edge will still be shown as the browser, and there is nothing to clue you in how to change it.

To permanently change your default browser, click on the Microsoft Edge. Only after you’ve done this completely unintuitive step will you be able to see any other browsers you have installed. Select the browser of your choice, answer any other questions thrown at you and you can finally surf the net how you want.

And finally Office 16.

This may not be news to everyone else out there, but it was to me: when you buy Office these days, you do NOT get a box with DVDs and manual inside. Instead, what you get is a small cardboard card. That’s it.

On the back of the card is a silvered strip similar to what you get on a scratch-it card. The writing on the card is tiny and up the very top in very tiny writing is the information that you need to scratch off the silver to get at the product code for the product you have already bought.

Right…

So now what?

I dutifully scratched off the silver and then looked for step 2. Hmm… I guess everyone else knows how to do this shit except me. I hate you Microsoft.

Finally, I noticed that inside the start button, [on the laptop not the scratch-it] the window, or whatever the hell it’s called, for Office was a different kind of colour to the other ones. Not greyed out or anything that intuitive, but different. So I clicked it and Win10 displayed a dialog box with three options, one of which was ‘activate’. Eureka!

I clicked the activate option and that’s where steam really started coming out of my ears. You see, despite having paid for Office 16, I’m not allowed to get Office 16…not without having an account with Microsoft first.

Not that big a deal, you say?

Yes, it is because in the past, when software came in boxes with proper instructions, registering your product was optional. Then Microsoft made it such that using your product depended upon activating it [but I don’t think you had to register?]. Now, you can’t even download something you’ve paid for without giving Microsoft a great deal of personal information:

• a valid email address [okay, this is kind of normal]
• name, country, date of birth? Why date of birth? Do people born before the millenium forfeit their rights or something? You do not need this information Microsoft. 😦
• and sex. Male, female, unspecified. I chose unspecified because I do not want advertisements tailored to old ladies….and three-headed hermaphrodite was not an option. 😦
• and phone number. This truly had me screaming at the walls. Lots of companies want your phone number these days, but they don’t dare penalise you if you don’t supply it. As someone who cares about personal privacy, I do not hand out my phone number to every shitty company that asks for it. HAVING to hand it to Microsoft to get what is already mine?

And that is roughly where I left things for today. I just can’t take any more aggravation. I’ll deal with Micro$hit tomorrow, once I’ve cooled down.

Not happy Jan

Meeks

 

 

 

 

up the pc or laptop, you will have to go through a lot of customisation crap.