Two Weeks with No Facebook

December 18, 2012 — dorkydeb

If you follow along with me on Facebook, you already know that I’ve decided to take a little break from Facebook after today.  I think I’ll probably return after the first of the year.

I really like being able to keep in touch with my friends and family (and yes you guys too – I count you as friends also). And I know that I’ll be tempted to return, due to all the super awesome people that I am going to miss. But I am seeing so many things on Facebook these days that I don’t wish to see. It’s just turned into a rather upsetting experience, with the bad outweighing the good.

I don’t think I’m going to go into details about what I consider “bad”, because it involves several things and I don’t want to make anyone feel bad or anything.  And yes, I do understand how to control my friend’s list, and what shows up in my feed, etc.  But some things go beyond that.

I hope that after my two week break, I can come back to Facebook and be a little more careful in terms of which friend’s posts show in my feed, etc.  I mean, I leave some people’s feeds there because I care about them a great deal, and I want to see their posts about their life, etc.  But when a large percentage of what they post is just something that stresses me out or I find upsetting, well… then I probably need to keep them on my friend’s list, but block their posts from showing in my feed.  Even if it means I might miss something I really want to see. Because I don’t get on Facebook to be annoyed, stressed out, sad, or worried.

In the meantime, I am trying to rest a lot and hopefully recover from a major MG flare up that hit me last Friday. And I just want to try to keep things as low stress as I possibly can, since stress is such a huge negative with MG (proven to raise the blood levels of the “bad” autoimmune antibodies that are out to get me).  So… that’s my goal.

I am going to continue to post on my blogs, if I feel up to it.  And I’m hoping I’ll finally find time to get caught up on reading more of my friend’s blogs.

:)

Posted in Announcements, Facebook, Technology. 4 Comments »

WordPress.com Glitch Or Maybe Not…

March 17, 2012 — dorkydeb

I suppose this post is more of a vent/rant than anything, but this is really annoying me. I finally try to carve out a little time to sit down and try to catch up on commenting on some of my friend’s blogs…. I try to do this, and WordPress.com is apparently doing something REALLY annoying.

Allow me to backtrack for just a moment.

Years ago, I started blogging on wordpress.com. I later moved the majority of my blogging to self-hosted accounts, that run using WordPress.org software.

When I visit friend’s wordpress.com blogs, I leave comments with my name/email/and URL  of my self-hosted site.  This has never been a problem in the past.

This evening when I tried to do that, I continually got this error page:

So basically, WordPress.com is no longer going to allow users who self-host to use their email address (that has been associated with their wordpress.com account) to leave comments that direct to their self-hosted blog.  They are trying to force us to log in with our WordPress account.

NOT COOL.  Not cool at all.

I don’t want to log in using my WordPress account. For a variety of reasons, one of them being it directs to the wrong place.  I put different URLs in the field, depending on who’s blog I am commenting on. For example, if I am commenting on another nature blog, I will put the URL of my Nature Blog. If I am networking with other autism bloggers, I put the URL of my autism blog. And for most other things I use the URL of this blog.  So what I want there, depends on who I am talking to, of course. I don’t want to be locked into one default URL through wordpress.com.

I got around it, by using a different email address, one that forwards copies to my main address.  And, interestingly enough, when I followed the link to confirm that I was subscribing to follow-up comments on my friend’s new blog post, I was sent to a page trying to convince me to create a free wordpress.com account for that email address.  IF someone did that, then once again, they would receive the error page I received above and be unable to link to a variety of blogs of their choosing. WordPress is well-aware that many bloggers have more than one blog, so this is a bad move on their part.

If you are one of the bloggers that I follow, and you see me suddenly leaving comments that have a different email address and no user profile pic..  you know why.

Perhaps I am missing something, but to me it looks like WordPress either has a glitch that needs fixed, or they are being inconsiderate to wordpress.com users who also are wordpress.org users by removing the flexibility in comment posting that we have always had in the past.

Posted in Blogging, Rants, Technology. 3 Comments »

Funny Tech Support Call

December 5, 2011 — dorkydeb

I know there are 500 other things I need to get caught up posting on, but I wanted to tell you something funny. A couple of days ago, a massive flock of crows came onto my family’s property. I had never seen such a large flock before. There must have been 200-300 of them. They covered the 2 acre bottom around my parents and grandparent’s houses, and there were far more in the trees.

I attempted to sneak outside with my camera, knowing full well that it was likely an exercise in futility. Crows are highly intelligent. I like them. Many years ago my uncle rescued two of them that were orphaned and hand-raised them. They were awesome! So smart, clever and funny.  But one thing you’ll learn about crows, and you’ll see this if you watch them – is they always have look-outs posted. And around here, crows are pretty jumpy.

I had no sooner stepped out my back door, than I heard the look-out crow call to alert the others.  I was busted. Most of them flew. I managed to catch this shot of a few of them still on the ground:

I had not seen the giant flock of crows since. So I thought they were just passing through, until today. Today I needed to call a company to ask about whether a particular item contained any latex. (I am severely allergic – as in, cannot have it in the house at all, allergic.) My plan was for this item to be a present for my children. So I made the phone call from outside, so that my kids would not hear me.

I waited forever on hold for technical support and then a nice tech guy came on the phone and right as I was about to try to explain the reason for my call….

the massive flock of crows reappears from across the mountain.

A quarter of the sky above me turns black and it sounds like ALL 300 of them are caw-caw-cawing as loud as they can go.

It’s one of those things that you really have to be there for to appreciate, but trust me when I tell you it was RIDICULOUS and very loud.

It was all I could do to get through my question without busting out laughing, while trying to speak loudly enough to be heard over top of the crows!

And yes, I did realize the irony in the crows not letting me photograph them, but catch me outside on the phone and they aren’t afraid of that AT ALL apparently.  LOL!

After I finished my question and he answered me, etc. I said, “Oh by the way, this was about a present for my kids. So I came outside so they would not hear me discussing it. That is why you have heard everything from barking dogs to a giant flock of crows in the background.  Sorry about that.”  LOL!

Thankfully he was a very friendly/helpful guy and a good sport about it all.  He laughed too.    :)

Posted in Around the house, Funny, Photos, Technology. 7 Comments »

Adults Arguing on Facebook about SpongeBob

November 4, 2011 — dorkydeb

I saw this on Facebook and thought it was so funny, I had to share.  I hope this isn’t one of those things that only I see the humor in. But it made me LOL – literally.

(I removed the photos and names.)

So here we have a simple little announcement from Kindle, and adults arguing about SpongeBob on Facebook, even resorting to telling each other to “Shutup”.  :)

And yes, the argument is still going on, long after I took this screen shot.  LOL!   :)

 

Posted in Facebook, Funny, Technology. 2 Comments »

25th Anniversary of the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster

January 28, 2011 — dorkydeb

Today marked 25 years since the space shuttle Challenger Disaster.

On this day 25 years ago, I was a little kid in elementary school. Unlike today when space travel takes place and there is barely a blip about it on the news, back then a space shuttle launch was big news.

But this particular launch had attracted even more attention than usual, due in large part to the fact that a school teacher named Christa McAuliffe had been selected to go on board.

I remember all of the teachers and the principal talking about it beforehand.

The day of the launch they gathered us all in the school cafeteria to watch the launch live on TV.

It was a pretty awesome moment.

Until it all went wrong.  I remember all of us there in that big room, watching it all live.  The teachers had focused so much on the topic leading up to the launch and we were all pretty excited to be getting out of class to watch it happen live on TV.

Then 73 seconds after the launch, the space shuttle started to break apart, creating a disaster that resulted in the death of all seven crew members right before our eyes.  I remember the sick and saddened look on our principal’s face.

I remember the silence that fell over the room.  The worried glances from teacher to teacher and teacher to principal.  Then someone turned off the TV and they sent us all back to class.  Teachers scrambled for something to give us to do, to fill the time frame where we were supposed to have been cheering on this mission. There was little talk of what happened. In fact, I don’t remember getting the full story until I got home from school that evening.  But everyone knew what happened.  And it was really sad.  Seven brave people lost their lives that day. Seven families lost their loved ones.

All too often we forget to honor and appreciate those that make sacrifices for others, we should remember them today and always.

~

Posted in History, R.I.P., Technology. 2 Comments »
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