It's been so long...

     ETA: I did not blog once, not even ONCE in 2021! That is so so sad. 

... I don't even know how to write a blog post anymore. 

The cell phone has truly ruined a lot of things in my life, and the first and foremost was blogging. When the blogger app stopped being updated and I couldn't write blog posts from the phone and I needed to use the browser to read any blogs was the beginning of the end. I basically stopped coming to my beloved blog and reading the blogs of friends who kept on blogging. 

I started following people on Instagram instead and using stupid Facebook more -- particularly to keep in touch with all the people whose blogs I loved to read. Sigh...

Blogging changed my life, but those years are long gone. The very world is different from those "glory years" of blogging from 2004-2010. I feel very sad coming here and writing this "lame" post. All people care for now are good looking images and photos (Instagram style). Of short tweets -- but my ADHD makes it impossible for me to be on Twitter, it's too overwhelming. If I can't keep track of the posts I can't handle it. And with ads and tons of retweets it's way too much, I stopped trying to be on Twitter years ago. 

And it's sad because at least one of my remaining blogging friends, Jamie, uses twitter and shares her latest posts there. OK, I am actually writing this to procrastinate finishing two exams that I need to print/ copy, and edit online for Wednesday. Sigh... It's dark outside and I'm still in my office. 

But deep down, I miss blogging something fierce. It just doesn't make much sense to continue when the community that existed here is gone. I feel old and out of place in the digital world when 17 years ago I felt I was in the forefront. Oh well, that's life. 

P.S. The second half of 2021 was crazy - we bought a new house, prepared the old one to sell (hardest thing we've done in a long time, moved out in a slow, drawn out process, and sold our house of over ten years. We don't ever think about it, or miss it, it's like those 10 years are way in the past. Isn't that crazy?)

OMG, I miss writing so much. I should come back. Maybe I will.

The Year of Losing, Forgetting, and Breaking Things

Sigh...

All I do is sigh... it must be aggravating to people around me. Good thing I haven't been blogging then, maybe. About that, I was mystified to still be able to use the old, never updated, Blogger app on my old iPhone 5 an actually post a few words. The major downfall for blogging for me (and probably everyone else who no longer does it) was finally getting a smart phone in 2012. The Blogger app helped a bit, but when it wasn't updated anymore, it was another huge blow.

Occasionally, I still "write blog posts in my head," but since I spend way less time on computers (mostly because I hate laptops and I have one for work) and too much time on the stupid phone, I have all but abandoned this cherished space. I feel very sad about it... and yet, I don't do much to fix it.

One thing I will have to write about is the impending beginning of being an empty-nester about 9 or 10 months from now when my oldest leaves for college. I may, or may not blog about how I am sad that he and his girlfriend broke up (precisely because of HER moving away and going to college).

Today, however, I just want to write about how this year my ADHD is just "killing me" with all the stuff I've lost (and mostly found), and forgotten, and broken. It's becoming extremely upsetting, not to mention also costly!!

I admit it's an annoying topic, but it's what's defined 2019 (I was going to write 1999!!!) so far. And I don't know WHAT to do about it!! I really don't. Taking medication (much like consuming any caffeine) is problematic for me. I can't sleep well, I don't feel hungry and just don't eat, so it's not a good option. Other things (such as Bullet Journaling) don't help much either. In any case, not to bore you with the details, the most aggravating things that happened were:

• I "lost" (in truth misplaced) my pretty journal (Katie Daisy's 2018-19 planner) inside my house for about three months. I even bought a new one (a good thing because I can now use the pictures for framing or decorating other things). It was with some books under the piano in my living room.(spent like $9)
• I brought this brand new book (if you don't want to click, Ruth Chou Simon's Beholding & Becoming) and took it to our church camp out to show to a friend. Then I forgot it on the blanket where my friend was sitting, got busy with other things and only remembered it at the end of the day -- but there had been a sudden rain and the owner of the blanket (not my friend, someone else) had tossed the book into a random camping chair. Not only was the book gone for two weeks, but it had gotten wet and dried all bent. I had already bought another book when it was found as well... (spent $15)
• Two days after also misplacing the book, I was driving to work while wearing my beloved amazonite gem necklace (made with locally mined and polished stone), but it was on wrong, so at a red light, I removed it, intending to put it back on the right way at another traffic light, but there wasn't enough time. So when I parked the car, I was in a hurry to go get the bus, I just got off the car, forgetting the necklace was on my lap. In between classes, when I went to the bathroom, I noticed I didn't have the necklace and remembered with alarm I probably had let it fall on the ground next to the car. Of course, when I walked back to my car in a hurry again (I was driving to Washington D.C. to meet up with a friend from Brazil!) I completely forgot to look for the necklace. So... two days later, when I parked in the morning, there it was, broken down by the cars which drove over it. :-( It took me two weeks to buy another one and I'm happy with the new one, but I'm $25.00 poorer. 

[maybe insert depressing photo of the broken necklace on the road]

• Just last week on Tuesday I forgot a pencil case at church, but thankfully my husband found it for me yesterday.

I wonder what I'll lose next. I have also misplaced and found a bunch of pens, but I'm getting mad at how I keep misplacing or forgetting things. I'm sure it is also related to my age. In two years I'll be fifty. Sigh...

Yeah, so, at least I finished a whole blog post, even though it's mostly negative, like some of the previous posts I wrote this year. Only 11 posts so far, I'm sure it's a new kind of depressing record for this little blog of mine.

OK, hopefully I'll blog again soon. 

Lost notes recovered

Last week, on the first day I went to University #2 (where I now exclusively work, we'll keep University #1 for my husband's place of work, my former "adjuncting to no end" grounds) I finally deleted U#1's email account (ou outlook) from my phone so I could add U#2's email.

I felt triumphant, and symbolically, it was my last act, it was when I finally cut the cords with that institution.

Except that the next morning I discovered that the bulk of my iPhone Notes were GONE!! Hundreds of some really important notes: favorite recipes, stats from my sons' well-child visits from the past three years, passwords to my kids' iPads, notes from my ADHD therapy. It was all gone.

Well, not really! It was all stored in my outlook email account with U#1 and I found them all safe and sound a few days later. There was one problem: how to recover them? I knew that if I deleted the email account for U#2 and re-established U#1 I'd get them back, HOWEVER:

1) I don't need U#1's email anymore, I only need U#2's! (the iPhone doesn't allow two Outlook/Exchange accounts on the same phone).

2) How would I transfer the notes to another account, like "iCloud" once I got them back? I couldn't find an answer to that online.

So...

I spent a few hours COPYING each date and note by hand to several emails to myself on gmail and, this morning, for good measure, I also saved them by year (2014, 15, 16) into Word documents. I intend to copy and paste several of them back into Notes, since I need them, I just know that this will be time consuming.

I had lots of fun copying the VERY RANDOM notes I had and was even able to find a few songs I'd heard on NPR and frantically recorded the program and the time on my Notes (if it's on Morning Edition or All Things Considered it's VERY easy to find the songs they play a few seconds of).

Yeah, one of those things that only a completely OBSESSED person like me would do, no? Yeah, I'm crazy, I know. But I like myself this way. ;-P

P.S. hyperfocus helps A LOT with these random useless tasks!

broken browser

I'll blame the not blogging on the broken browser... :-) which is 100% true given that it just crashed again. You see, I have two (ok, actually five) Google accounts and I need two browsers, one to be logged into the blog's account and the other to my regular gmail. That is the problem and why I need two browsers (until now Chrome & Firefox, but I'm using Explorer right now -- this is a PC, BTW).

And I can also blame it on the fact that I was preparing a guest lecture on Brazilian music until 2 am. last night. (It turned out great, BTW... Brazilian music is truly one of my greatest passions, I wish I could teach it more).

I assure you that I tried writing a blog post yesterday, but the browser just wouldn't cooperate.

OK, boring tech problems out of the way... on to more posts!

Best (Relatively Useless) News Ever!

In our family we are all addicted to the internet. OK, someone of us actually uses it mostly for work and the others use it mostly for fun and a bit for work (maybe a lot for both in my case).

Problem is, for the past four and a half years, since we moved to this house, we've had really, really bad Internet connection -- DSL.

Yesterday we got a letter in the mail that told us that now we'll be able to have real high speed internet at our house!!!! For REALZ!!!

The bad part is that we have no idea how much it will cost, and we're wondering if it'll be an arm and a leg. Sigh... But we'll gladly pay it. I mean, those of us who use it mostly for leisure are happy to pay for it. :-P

We are truly happy for this, though. Especially my son the YouTuber. I will tell you more about his channel soon. Shameless son-promotion. Maybe he'll earn some money!

My laptop is back!

We picked it up last Saturday from the friend who had come from Canada to visit his brother & family. I was really glad to have it back! 

And I bought an aqua case for it and a rainbow keyboard cover! I don't ever want to get it mixed up with another laptop!!

LinkedIn and... Birthdays!?

What?

Has LinkedIn become WORSE than facebook and is now emailing me about people's birthdays? What in the world?

Subject of the email: "Say happy birthday to .... so & so" 

I don't even use my linkedin account for anything (marginal academic that I am) and I'm leery of the fact that purportedly it can be used to allow cybercriminals to have access to me, so maybe I should just delete it?

Do you use LinkedIn at all? Does it help you be in touch with colleagues & friends?

P.S. What label should I have for a post like this? Social Media Woes? I'll be thinking about it...

For Once, Apple "delivered" ;-)

I have this half-written post in my drafts folder in which I'm mad at Apple and basically giving up on its computers. I wrote it only a handful of days ago, actually, mad at the situation with my photos!

Why the slight change in perspective, you could ask? Well... Because my once "top of the line" iPhone 5 just had a battery replaced for free by apple today because it had a faulty one that qualified for free replacement! YAY! 

Great "gift" on the 2nd anniversary of me getting the iPhone. I joke that since 7 is my number -- ;-) anyone out there born on 7/7 as well? Too bad it wasn't in 1970! I turned a disappointing six on 7/7/77 -- my next iPhone will have to be the 7! ;-)

We'll see about that! It will all depend on whether our AWESOME "alternative" carrier Ting will take it! Meanwhile, I'm more or less in peace with Apple, but I still need to find a way to back up TWO YEARS of photos held hostage in iPhoto in my laptop. 

From Gates to Jobs & back to Gates

Last week we finally broke down and bought a desktop computer -- our second Dell and our third desktop ever, the first one was a Gateway that we bought in 1998 and used for eight years! Our old Dell from 2006 was obsolete and had become useless since it couldn't go online after we moved to this house in 2011 (there's no phone jack in our office!).

After buying my very first Macbook Pro back in 2012 I thought that our new computer would be an iMac, but unfortunately we can't afford that. In addition, after two years as a Mac user, but not a Mac "convert," I was becoming increasingly frustrated with my inability to back up my photos (I still have 25,000+ photos that I have to dig from the dungeon that is iPhoto in my macbook and save into an external hard-drive and to another computer -- ARGH!!).

I enjoy a lot of features of the macs and I'm addicted to my iPhone, but, ultimately, I still prefer to use a desktop over a laptop (much more ergonomic and easier to type, etc) and we desperately needed a new computer in the house now that the boys are into Minecraft (we're very late adopters into most everything! ;-), so... back to PC-land!

I will confess that working on this desk with this old monitor again does bring some unpleasant flashbacks of those crazy dissertating days (hey, YEARS!)  from 2005-6 and 2008! The worst part, I suppose is that I still feel 100% like I would do it all over again!! Sigh...

Because of this latest project I will probably spend lots of time sitting at this desk and typing in this keyboard in the next week or two, so I think I'll have many more feedbacks. The truth is that I really really missed working on a desktop in these past three years! I had an iMac in my office at U#2 and I used it as often as I could, but I was pretty much tethered to the macbook at home.

I still want to own an iMac, but I don't see us being able to afford one any time soon. Sigh...

OK, last, but not least, I suppose my fondness for desktops can be compared to my preference for books over e-readers (not that I've ever used a Kindle), but I suppose that's a pretty uneven comparison. Gotta go do some more translating now!

P.S. hopefully now I will be able to post more photos. And let's see if I'll miss Apple!!

P.S.2 I had some trouble installing Office, but I must say that Microsoft's customer support is pretty stellar! And I don't think I ever have to pay extra for it, like with Apple Care. Ha! I'm sure I'll come back to this subject again, should I create a label for that?

What the All-Nighter Taught Me or... I think I've really "converted" ;-)

My son is thrilled. He was the one who got me/us into Apple products to begin with.

I'm still upset that what ruined what could have been a perfectly productive "all-nighter" was the fact that I don't know how to deal with Safari & the way that sometimes the window just disappears to the side because I'm still not adept at all the Apple "tricks." However, working for a few hours on my old Dell laptop demonstrated, that I have definitely become a Mac user. Sigh...

I'm still annoyed at times with iPhoto, but I'm mostly learning to put up with it. ;)

So, after 3.5 hours of sleep I'm up and trying to be productive. I put a load in the wash and I'm getting ready to put at least two more (hoping that the thunderstorms that are possible in the afternoon won't come our way -- we line dry, remember?).

Anyway... I still much prefer desktops to laptops, though, and I can't wait for the time when we can afford to buy an iMac.

As for the photo book, I haven't had the courage to look at it yet... I know I will need several hours to finish it. The worst part is that my husband and son, typical men, thought I was ridiculous to try so hard "just because of 20 bucks," sigh...

I told them -- and it's true -- that it wasn't/isn't just the $20, I need a deadline to finish this book and any reason is welcome to me. I only work under pressure, master procrastinator that I am. Sigh...

OK, I'm glad I'm back into the blogging groove. There are tons of things that I've been wanting to blog about, as always. So... I hope to be back soon! (if the photo book & all my laundry and household duties don't kill all my mojo ;-).

Shutterfly is Awesome, but it SUCKS Big Time Too :(

I stayed up all night & now can't even go to sleep because I'm SOOOOO upset at Shutterfly.

I had a $20 coupon that my friend gave me and was going to expire yesterday, so my plan was to finish the South Africa book by 3 am (California midnight) so I could use it.

I was working well on my Mac, but then all of a sudden (MY FAULT, I must say), I couldn't edit the photos well the way I wanted (couldn't rotate, make them smaller or bigger -- my fault because I forgot to press the "customize" thing, I think), so I moved to the PC. The problem for later was that I left the browser open with the version of the book I was working on open on a tab.

Things went well on the PC and I was almost done with the book (albeit after 3 am), so I moved back to the Mac.

HOWEVER, something weird/funny happened in Safari and the window I was working on disappeared to the side & I couldn't get it back.

Can you believe it that I went to the other tab that was open with the OLDER, version of the book from FOUR hours ago and I clicked on SAVE????!!!

How in the world could I have done that? Now I have to redo ALL the changes that I spent four hours painstakingly implementing on the PC and in the last few minutes on the mac again.

I cannot believe that I did this to myself. I can't even remember some of the things I wrote & some of the designs I created for certain pages. I had also added more photos. I think I'll be able to figure it all out, but this is just too upsetting. :(

I'm writing this post so I can calm down and, maybe, go to sleep. My plan is to call Shutterfly tomorrow and beg that I can still use the 20 dollars coupon (this book is 100+ dollars & I need that coupon + the 50% discount) because of what happened. Sigh... I'm hoping hoping hoping they'll be nice and let me use it.

Maybe it will be just easier to keep going now and try to sleep during the day. I'm so high on adrenaline right now. The problem is that I'm just sick and tired of this book and I was ALMOST DONE. Really... I was so close!! And I also liked the results a lot. :(

I'm sorry to bother anyone who is reading this with this boring "tale of woe." I can't believe I don't blog good things that happen, but feel compelled to immediately blog stressful situations.

It's blogging as therapy... Thanks for listening!

P.S. The title of the post doesn't make much sense because I'm didn't even talk about Shutterfly being bad -- it sucks at times because it doesn't automatically save (like google docs or blogger) and it doesn't save the latest version always. That's it.

Back to Life?

Today my husband took my laptop (which I had tried to turn on again yesterday) to the repair shop and... lo and behold, it's back to life!

K was joking that they are making electronics that are like the human body now -- that can regenerate themselves. Not really, but maybe almost? :)

What a relief!! I've ordered a new adapter for the external hard-drive and I hope that it'll soon be working as well!

I Fried My Laptop Last Night!! :(

I still can't believe I did that!!

Now that I called Apple Care and I know that I have to take it into a store or authorized provider I can blog about it.

I was freaking out this morning (I couldn't go back to sleep at 6:30 am), but my husband talked some sense into me and I calmed down. Sigh...

What happened? It all started with my urgent need to find some older photos that are stored in an external hard drive (Seagate brand) that hadn't been communicating with the laptop anymore...

I tried to plug it in even though the power slot was completely damaged (as in coming off damaged). I received a warning that said that said that the USB port was drawing too much power and had been disabled.

Foolishly, I plugged it into the other USB port and "fried" the compute who went off not to come back on again... Sigh.

I think I won't be able to have the photos I need on time to order a photo book for my son's teacher's retirement party, but I'm hoping I can recover the photos (primary concern) and other files.

What saved my life?

Having started to use Dropbox just a short month and a half ago!!!!!

The final exam for Monday, the proposal I need to submit ASAP to the department are all in Dropbox. Cloud storage rocks!

I will have to use my husband's laptop which is now the only computer in the house. I wish we could afford buying a desktop right now (an iMac), but we can't. Paying debts is the highest priority.

Have you ever "fried" your computer? What was the outcome?

P.S. and I have never been more thankful for the iPhone as well. Last, but not least, Apple customer care rocks!

I Don't Want My Photos to Be Hostage to Apple and Lousy iPhoto!

I desperately need some feedback from former/current PC users who became or also are Mac users who like to look at their photos and organize them, or, at least, some sympathetic ears. ;-)

feel free to completely skip this post if you don't care for talk about the storage and management of digital photos. Boring stuff, I know.

(And Jo(e), I know you're a Mac user and an avid photographer, but maybe you never used a PC so you won't know what I'm complaining about. Sigh...)

I would be a relatively happy Mac "switcher" if it weren't for iPhoto and for the ways that Apple devices completely hijack my ability to simply view and sort through my photos and to back them up in regular external hard-drives which I paid good money for, but which it refuses to talk to. :(

Let's back track. Although I take tons of photos and I'm CRAZY for photos, I'm a plain Jane when it comes to digital photography (maybe that will make a difference in my narrative compared to those of you who are seasoned photo "processers," etc).

What I mean by that is that as a lifelong "plain" PC user, I have always disliked any photo management software that either came with the computer or even online ones such as Picasa (though I used Picasa begrudgingly to post online albums) so I never used them. I simply opened the files with photos in my cameras and cards and pasted them into files which were then organized by month, by year and also, within the year, by theme (e.g. my garden, cats).

Whenever I viewed my photos I always used the plain "windows explorer" (not the browser, I don't know the correct name) viewer that is standard on the PC. It would be the equivalent to Preview in the Macs, although it's WAY WAY WAY better because it let's me simply click the arrow to the next photos, something impossible to do with the Mac previewer -- one is always forced to go to iphoto (which I hate) to do anything with the photos.

Apart from having a hard time to merely view the photos in my MacBook, I don't like that my photos are "hidden away" in iPhoto and not immediately available for emailing (e.g. it's much harder to attach a photo to an email in the Mac) or viewing. If I save any photos to a "pictures" folder (e.g. when getting them from the internet or a friend) I have to import them to iphoto so I can properly view them because one can't really view photos on the "preview" window (only one by one).That's ridiculous!

The other problem is that my laptop refuses to talk to these external hard-drives I bought (one of them for 100 bucks!). How could I know that I needed to buy a special external hard-drive that would talk to Macs? And I can't even return the open device now, and I can't backup my photos, which is something I need to do to feel at peace. Sigh. (I know that the hard drive part is my fault because I should have researched, but then, again, one of the hard drives I already owned talked perfectly fine to my laptop, but one day they stopped talking, just like that. Sigh...).

I could go on and on about these and other issues, but I'll stop complaining and "publish" this post.

If photo taking and organizing weren't such a central part of my computer use, this wouldn't be an issue, but it IS a huge problem for me right now!!! And I have noticed that I take photos much more sparingly now that I feel that Apple has hijacked my photos forever. I feel truly depressed about all that. :(

Is there any hope for me? Is the only way out sucking it up and getting forcibly used to loathsome iphoto? I hope not!

Because Getting "Almost There" is Not Enough!! Apple Allows Google Maps Back

Last night my iPhone 5 took us ALMOST to the hotel we were going to spend the night in. "Almost there" at 10:30 pm when you're exhausted is pretty aggravating! Thankfully we had seen photos of the hotel online and we were able to recognize it on the other side of the road after we drove around a bit.

Interestingly enough, when K opened his laptop inside the room, the first piece of news he saw was that Apple had relented and allowed its devices to have Google Maps again! I was elated to hear that and surprised at the timing of our trip & the news.

The very first time I used my brand new iPhone's map feature, it almost took me to Whole Foods as well. I already knew it was a defective feature, so I didn't think anything of it, especially since I could plainly see the error and the store in front of me on my left and not 300 ft. ahead on the right as my phone was telling me.

The next two short trips were uneventful and precise -- and when K first saw the Maps in action he was delighted with the interface. Last night's frustration, though, made it clear to us that it's unacceptable to have this feature make so many mistakes. I will be downloading the Google Maps app soon!

Relief

Thanks for your support regarding the last night's post.

I have good news for you! The hard drive may be "done," but after I wrote my post last night I remembered that I won't actually lose anything because that laptop has two hard drives, C, where the operational system is installed and D where all my files are. D is not affected by failure of drive C.

Phew!!!

Now, I have no idea when I'll be able to access the files that I need right now. :(

Possibility of Hard Drive Failure -- First Time EVER

And if I weren't emotional enough right now, we are facing something that never, ever happened before to us since we bought our first computer (a Gateway desktop), back in 1998.

My old Dell laptop's operating system is failing and it is warning us to "Immediately back up your data and replace your hard drive because a failure is imminent."

As you know, I have a new laptop, but I have not had time to back up all the stuff in my old one (only my teaching files). There is not a whole lot of stuff there that I don't have backed up, but there is enough to make me really sad and pretty stressed out.

There are lots of photos from the trip to Brazil that were not downloaded anywhere else but on that computer. On the last day in Brazil I put some in my mom's computer, but not all. And I think I don't have all the photos from last year and this year backed up in the external hard drive.

I know, DUMB me!!

For practical purposes, though, (since photos only have emotional value) there are other things that I need right not and that are only in that computer and nowhere else -- the recent versions of my CV, some recent academic work and, a pretty annoying loss if it materializes, my translation into Portuguese of one of my published essays that I was going to submit tonight for publication in Brazil in an email that is mostly written and that just needed the attachments.

That's now I found out that there was something horribly wrong with the laptop. I had used it yesterday to show my friends some photos (from the external hard drive) and also all night from Thursday to Friday when I was preparing a conference presentation (it was an amazing conference last Friday, BTW).

Last night my youngest son was playing on it and he starting getting upset that it was crashing. This morning the same thing, and there was much screaming and complaining about the computer, but I was busy cleaning the kitchen, getting laundry out of the washer and hanging it outside, so I didn't go check what was wrong.

Then, when I needed to send the email to the journal editor in Brazil I finally picked up my red laptop and, lo and behold, there was this warning screen on it. What is it that people call it? The black screen of death or something?

I just needed to blog this. I know I've already written too many posts today, but I need to get this out there.

Have you lost a hard drive? What did you lose? How was it?

And I'm still in disbelief that this is finally happening to us. :(  We've had nearly crashing computers several times before, but before they crashed K backed them up and reinstalled the operating system, so we never had a problem. I know, very very lucky, 14 years without problems. There was bound to be a first time, no?

Sorry for the annoying post(s)!

Soakin' up Super High Speeds with Fios

We're visiting friends close to Philly and they have *real* high speed internet  while we're stuck with a ridiculous DLS connection at home!  :(    :P

I have already uploaded and ordered all the photos that my mom wanted me to print out for her and I can pick them up at Costco before the weekend is over.

I am now uploading 700+ photos from our South Africa trip to Shutterfly so I can start making our photo book. Something tells me it will be a really pricey one! ...sigh.

(This week I had a coupon code for a free book there and I made a book as a gift for my youngest son's former teacher using photos I took of her and her students in the past two years. I think the book is super cute and making it got me in the mode for making more books).

I know I should be in bed, but I just can't help but enjoy really speedy internet while I can.

Tomorrow I have to go shopping for stuff my friends and family in Brazil "ordered."  

Goodnight, iPad!

I'm a big, HUGE fan of smart parodies, particularly of beloved books, such as Goodnight Moon (I thought that the Goodnight Bush parody was hilarious), so here's another one for me, this one really really relevant (good thing we don't do TV at our house. It's mostly the laptop, the iPad & iPod touch). I have a hard time letting go of the computer... and the boys spend more time than t hey should in their iPad, so I guess we need to watch and internalize!

Exasperated with Blogger & Internet Browsers

This is a "throw-away" post, a small rant when there's so, so much more that I want and wish to post about... in any case... here it goes. Consider yourself warned. ;-)  (all three readers of my blog)

You know, I feel really stupid for not having switched to Wordpress yet and the latest trouble with Google (my son feels upset now when he sees me checking my email and even more upset if I ever open Google +) makes me want to consider ditching Google altogether (although I really love their email service and I've been with them forever*).

My latest problem is not a big deal, but it's still REALLY super annoying. I use the blogroll in this blog as my "feed reader" and I click on people's blogs on my sidebar once they're updated. There's just a small problem -- if I leave my browsers open (Firefox & Chrome are my browsers of choice), even if I close the blog's tab and reopen a new one next time I logon -- my blogroll simply doesn't update or reload, no matter how many times I press the re-load button!!!

Do you know what I can do to avoid that? Do I have to close all browsers and shut down my computer whenever I'm not using it? That sounds unreasonable!

In the first few times this happened, I went and opened Explorer and... voilá! there was the blogroll, freshly updated (which kind of ruled out a problem with Blogger). HOWEVER, today I tried that (and explorer has been closed for a few days) and it didn't work!!!\

So, yeah... I'm getting really annoyed. And I know it may be my fault and I'm really a dumb computer user & stuff, but still... whatever.

Thanks for listening. I feel WAY better now. phew!! ;)

Edited to add: of course the minute I publish this blog post and click on "view blog" -- there is the blogroll, updated! Well, I guess the universe is trying to tell me to blog more often, what do you think? :D WHATEVER!

*I haven't been able to figure out how long it has been! There are thousands of emails in my inbox and I don't have time to waste clicking back to my earliest emails and figuring out when they were sent. I'm sure I'm just DUMB and there must be a way to do it. I went to my profile and poked around & found nothing. When was gmail created? I got my account soon after. I checked, it came out in April 2004... that means that Linton has had a gmail account since right after he was born --> see? Back then we didn't