chisue, you if you have a Whole Foods near you, you must try their dark chocolate salted caramels. They are better than any I've ever eaten before no matter the cost. They are fresh, I've tried to hunt down where they come from and its a chocolate company in L.I. NY. Please, try these. They are hidden in Whole Foods, no one knows they are even there. They are fresh in a clear plastic container with Whole Foods name on it. In my store they are stuck in a corner in the produce department. They are the best caramels I have ever eaten and I've bought the best. I always loved the Ghiardelli and bought them. But found the Whole Foods ones and thought I'd try them. OMG! Jane

I used to have multiple Yahoo email accounts back when Yahoo clubs and IM were popular in the early 2000s. I had German, Italian, and French accounts (*.de, *.it, and *.fr), and I decided to pretend to be a woman (Thérèse D'Extase) for my French Yahoo profile, and she was also a dominatrix. Unfortunately, this attracted too many friend requests from men in Switzerland and France. I did have a fair number of friends through my German and Italian profiles, but I did get tired of chatting in German and Italian (sometimes at the same time), although I did find it good practice for switching between languages at the drop of a hat - something that I am not the best at doing. I had a long chat in German once through one of the German Yahoo groups only to find out that he was in Los Angeles and American. I lost interest in Yahoo after they stopped supporting clubs. My brother and I had a club called "Venice Beach Bros" and we did meet a few local people through that club, including Bathtub Girl, who used to have podcasts from her bathtub in Venice, just a few blocks from our house. After a while, I found the Yahoo popup IMs to get annoying. At that time I was also doing web design and hosting, and I managed POP email accounts for our clients. I really prefer this time of email to the free email, partly because it allowed me to save emails on hard drives.

Well, I found out this morning that Comcast had a major hack a couple MONTHS ago, over 30 million accounts affected. I read it on a site, Comcast never notified customers, which in my book makes it even more egregious. I wondered what was up with the password change stuff going on last month, of course phone rep didn't say a thing. So that's probably what's causing all the spam. And who knows what else. It's like a full-time job keeping up with one's information anymore, it seems every day some major company is hacked. I put a fraud alert on my accounts because of the recent health care system breach -- a few large healthcare systems got hacked this past summer in SE Michigan. Is the convenience of technology worth it? Call me a dinosaur, call me what you will, I don't care -- I grew up in the days before the internet and IMO no, it's not worth it. I'd gladly go back to snail mail and {gasp} waiting a week or two for something, and if somebody stole your purse yea you'd worry about losing maybe a couple hundred bucks and your credit cards, but we didn't worry about identify theft and all that for the most part. (I'm sure it happened but probably only rarely, now it's just so commonplace). We had problems, sure, but I'll take those low-tech problems any day over all this mess that's been created. "Seriously, take action and get a new gmail address." Yes, I definitely have to do that don't I, especially in light of the breach.

FOAS, far be it for any of us to judge, and I know I certainly will not. I fully support parents or grandparents keeping up with family members in any way they can for safety reasons. A couple of examples: My DD always tracks her daughter (our DGD) when she is driving from/to her new home in Kansas. She is now 26 and has lived there almost 2 years now since grad school but we still worry when she’s driving alone, given all we hear about human trafficking. DGD is aware she’s being tracked and knows she is loved. Last summer one of our grandsons finished his freshman year of college and wanted to travel and camp/fish/tour out west. The kid would rather fish than breathe. He rigged his truck with a fold-down camper, solar panels, propane, water, his fishing gear, food, and his black lab and off he went. Our son bought satellite phones to communicate with him and they would talk every night even when there was no cell service. All went well and he camped solo in some very remote areas with no one around. Peace of mind for everyone was key. There was one funny story associated with all this one night but I won’t bore you all with it. Again, this kid is so sweet and good, he knows all this was done with love and care for his well-being. He will be doing an engineering internship this summer, so no chance of a repeat for a while.