Comments and Visiting

I should mention I am having visiting problems again for several weeks.  I use Feedly.  On Safari, I can't get a comment to get through.  I save them to Word and try later, but it isn't working.  Sometimes it works, but I have to manually enter my site name, email address, and blog address every time, and even that only works "sometimes".  Maybe I am spoiled and most people have to do that, but I haven't had to for past years.

On Firefox, Feedly won't show the bloglist.

When I try to reset my account to log into Feedly directly, Google stops me and says I already have an account there through them.  And it doesn't work.  I can read, but can't reply.

The Laptop usually lets me get through, but there are 2 broken keys.  I can live with the Z key taking careful work, but the H key is maddening.  Still, it is a safe place for my bloglist file while I try to fix it on Safari and Firefox.

I am coming to hate Google as much as I used to hate Windows.  I think a lot of my problems these past 2 years are caused by my Google. account.  It is convenient, but seems to want to take over.  It might also be the Apple iCloud.  Similar takeover problem.

The guy who visited to add RAM (to 16) said that Mac O/S Monterrey "sucks up storage space".  I have a 1 TB internal drive and 75% unused, but I think he meant RAM.  My Mac is a 2018, which might sound old, but a Mac Help Forum says that isn't a problem.

I've made sure to update all my apps everywhere, so it doesn't seem to be an issue of old versions.  But something is going very wrong here.  Nothing is really working right.  2 days ago, the Mac Mini stopped waking up from sleep mode at the touch of a button.   Now I have to manually turn it off and then back on.  That is NOT GOOD!

Don't worry, I'm not asking for detailed Mac help here.  I'll ask more questions at the Mac Forum.  But it sure becoming more frustrating.  I have questions because I don't know enough about computers and I am frustrated because I don't know if it is hardware or software.  And if I just bought a new Mac Mini, I would still just have the same software to transfer.

Time to go annoy the Mac experts some more.  Actually, they are very helpful and kind.  It's just (probably) that I don't know how to ask the questions right.

But I really want you all to know why I haven't been leaving comments...

Blogging

The best computer response to a sent Comment  is:  "Your comment has been posted".

The second best is:  "Your comment is awaiting moderation" (well at least it got through).

The worst is "Oops there is an error".  Well, thats why we usually remember to copy it first!

LOL!

Hair 2

OK, I am nothing if not persistent.  Megan asked for a picture of me with my ponytail.  I didn't have anything that old digitized.  So I looked through old photo albums.  No luck.  There was a basketful of un-albummed but also not digitized photos and I really hesitated to go through them.

But I knew I had a specific picture "somewhere".  

So...

I found the photo!  Scanning it was easy.  Finding and sizing and saving it was horrible.  I ended up with 13kb, 590 kb and 5MB versions in my download folder.  Took a while to get at them.  But what's a few hours when you're retired?

So here is finally a right-sized pic of the ponytail...

BTW, oddly my hair grew back over the years.  Grayer but fuller.  Either better diet or less stress when I retired.  :)

Politics

 I have given some thought to the comments I received on the previous post.  In once sense, I do apologize.  I shouldn't have discussed politics among friends.  

I AM very political personally, but I usually keep that to some discussion boards dedicated to controversial subjects.  And I would be wise to simply drop it now.  

Well, who ever said I was wise?  I do want to reply.  

A commentor replied...

“The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice,” McConnell said in a statement released after Scalia’s death. “Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.”.

 

And indeed many Republicans agreed.  Some even said they should be quoted about that in the future if the situation came up again.  It has. and they are reversing their positions for political convenience.

 

I don't care if a politician or individual is Republican or Democratic or Green or whatever in their views.   We all have the right to our political views.

What I abhor is hypocrisy.  If you support "A" today, you should support "A" tomorrow.  Even if it is not convenient or beneficial.  I do, and it is sometimes rather painful.  

For example, Senator Mitt Romney declared that he supports Trump naming a new Supreme Court Justice now just weeks before the election.  Well, he said the same thing when Obama wanted to name a Supreme Court Justice in an election year (though that was 10 months before).  But that was basically consistent and honest.

 

The commentor also expressed  (about the Kavanaugh Hearings) "If you don't think that was atrocious and vicious and senseless I don't know what I can say. I watch the hearings from gavel to gavel and it shames me how some people used politics and smearing lies on such a man with fine character."

 

The hearings focussed on contradictory statements made by Kavanough, not his character or "smearing lies".   

 

Kananugh had written previously that “I am not sure that all legal scholars refer to Roe as the settled law of the land at the Supreme Court level since Court can always overrule its precedent, and three current Justices on the Court would do so.”

 

Yet he told the Senator hearings he considered Roe “settled as a precedent of the Supreme Court".

 

You can't say both.  That was a hypocrisy.  

 

My personal objections to Donald Trump are many.  In an ordinary year, they would be about political views and programs.  But he has gone beyond  "political views and programs".

 

He has admitted he wants to become President-For Life. He is deliberately damaging voting systems by slowing down the US Mail and directing supporters to eliminate ballots, directing his supporters to vote once by mail and again at voting booths, suggesting armed supporters to intimidate voters, suggesting that he will not accept election results, and wants the courts and the Senate to overturn oting results.

 

The newest idea is that if he can delay voting results long enough, College Of Electors will be tossed out and State Legislatures will decide.   Most of which are Republican-controlled.  But that might cause even conservative Supreme Court Justices to gag.

 

That's why he wants a new Supreme Court Judge in place BEFORE Election Day. One more might go in his favor...

 

OK, I've said enough.  But I felt a response was owed... 

Comments About That Unusually Helpful AOL Tech Person

Comments came up about how unusually helpful the AOL tech was and that she didn't want company recognition...

I had dealt with at least 6 AOL techs over the last couple months.  I'm not saying they weren't helpful to the degree required for their jobs.  But if there was something I couldn't do or understand, they lost patience quickly.  So they didn't go out of their way to help.  They were following AOL rules.  One is paying $5 per month per email account that they could verify.  Another was that I had to know the previous passwords which were on the dead Mac Mini.  They pretty much just tried to get me off the phone to get to the next customer.

I should mention that the previous ones might have had trouble because I didn't have a 2nd phone for sending a code to, or call waiting set up.  I did contact my service provider (Verizon) to set that up.  It just took a button click on My Account and then discovering there was a button on my phone labeled "call waiting'!  Well, you don't see what you aren't looking for...

When I talked to this latest one, it was obvious she was not so concerned with AOL rules.  She didn't ask if I had an paid account for each email address.  She asked if I had passwords, but when I said I didn't (and explained why) she said "then we will set of new ones".  She was patient after asking questions that I didn't fully understand.  She answered some questions she didn't have to bother answering.

An example was "what is the difference between POP and IMAP accounts"?  She explained that POP was easier for AOL but did not allow recovery of email files while IMAP took a little more work, but allowed recoveries.  When I mentioned that my working email account was POP, she said "well let's fix that first".   And she did.

She was on "remote control" over my computer by then.  She explained what she was doing at each step.  After changing my primary email account from POP to IMAP we went to the marksmews email.  She didn't ask if I had a monthly payment account, she just went about setting it up as IMAP.  To do so, she generated a master password on her end and told me to enter a password of my own afterwards to change it.  And she specifically said at all such times that she had turned off her vieing so that she couldn't see my new password. 

OK, that might have been untrue, but I was trusting her.  I think she was being honest.  Besides, I'm sure anyone at AOL could see my passwords if they wanted to.

So she had my cavebear email changed to the safer IMAP format and the marksmews email set up the same way.  She asked if I needed further assistance.  I mentioned a 3rd email accounnt.  When she asked why have 3 accounts, I explained it was one general email and one each for 2 blogs (cats and gardening) just to keep them separate.

She laughed and said she admired organized computer files.  I didn't mention that I keep so many folders of various kinds that I used to drive the computer guys nuts at work when they had to solve a problem.  They make sense to me and that is all that matters.

So she went about setting up my yardenman email (gardening) as Imap and went through the process of creating a temporary new master password at her end *sending a temporay code to my call-waiting) and then going off-viewing while I created a new one for myself.

All in all, it was a wonderful experience.  I have never in my life had a better experience with a computer company tech.  So why did she decline to let me thank AOL on her behalf? 

Well, during our hour-long chat, I mentioned that she was unusually helpful and did she really enjoy doing this?  OK, I would expect any company agent to express a positive attitude whether they actually enjoyed their job or not.

She seemed actually happy to help people get problems fixed and to be the one to fix them.  So parts of being happy at what you do are hard to disguise.  She seemed to REALLY enjoy what she was doing.

I get that.  When I visit my favorite gardening forum, the first thread I go to is the "Questions" thread.  Some guys love cars, some like sports, I was gardening as a preteen.  So it has been 60 years...  I love to answer gardening questions!  I get positive pleasure from helping other people garden well. 

So, apparently, the AOL tech rep I spoke to feels the same way about computers.  I think that she knows that she is breaking AOL rules by helping people without asking for payment programs or pushing add-on "pay-for" services.  It just gives her pleasure to help others with her expertise.

An aside...  The internet has been the greatest opportunity for people to share their individual knowledge since the invention of the mass-printed book.  Before the printing press (invented in symbol-driven China, but much more applicable to European letter systems), scholars had to write individual letters to the few others they knew about things they had discovered (expensive, slow, and uncertain of delivery).  After the printing press, scholars could write whole books available to all who could buy one (it still wasn't cheap).  But 1,000 books reached more people than a dozen short letters.

With the internet, we can reach a Billion people if they are interested and nearly for free.  So sending answers to questions (whether computer, gardening, cooking, etc) into the internet is basically "books cubed".

The AOL tech woman is one of those.

Cat-Blog Comment Problems

I may have A solution for some of us who have been having problems leaving comments on blog sites!!!

As many of you who mostly visit my Mark's Mews cat blog know, I have had on-and-off problems leaving comments at blogs.  It has driven me to distraction sometimes, but mostly, I worry that my blog friends will think I never visit them.  It was so bad that I couldn't even get Preview of my comments to show up, never mind sent.

I kept trying.  Sometimes I could comment for weeks and then suddenly I couldn't.  I don't know about you, but I have Statcounter.  Its a simple free program that shows you some very general data about visitors to your site.  If you recognize a visitor, you can label them so you see a friend's name.

I'm not pushing it.  It has some flaws.  It doesn't recognize every visitor (mobile phones maybe).  But it gives me a general idea of how many people visit the blog.

So, if some of my friends have that too, they see that I visit but never leave comments.  When in fact, I am trying like crazy to do so, sometimes several times at a single site I visit.

I thought I fixed the problem once by switching my feedly.com reading list from Safari to Firefox, and indeed it worked for a while.  But it would always stop in a few weeks.

Recently, I was looking around at some app settings after yet another frequent upgrade from Firefox, and I REALIZED SOMETHING (all caps to get your attention).

My Firefox was a Beta version.  You can tell by clicking on "Firefox" in the upper left corner and then clicking "About Firefox".  That tells you the version you have.  A "b" means Beta. 

I'm generally willing to go with a Beta version for the improvements, but I started to wonder about that.  Betas are not final versions and have flaws.  And also (and I think this is the most important part), other apps haven't adjusted their programming to the Beta version yet.  Apparently, at some point in the past, I agreed to receive Beta versions of Firefox.

Think about that.  My Firefox Beta app is ahead of the regular sites who sometimes have to make some adjustments!  That takes them some time.  And during that time, there may be programmibg conflicts.

And it seemed to me that the last time I updated the Firefox app was just when I stopped being able to comment on blog sites.

I had a hard time finding info on the Firefox Beta Program, but I eventually found a discussion of it by people like me who were trying to get off it.  Firefox didn't make that easy.  It seems they get a lot more information about your usage in the Beta Program than they can if you use the Regular versions.  And they share it with other companies.

I finally figured out that the solution was actually simple.  All you have to do is download their current regular version and move it to your apps folder.  I don't know about Windows, but in Mac it asks you if you want to replace the previous version.  Click YES.  Your bookmarks will transfer and you will be off the Beta Program.

I did that a few hours ago and immediately tried commenting.  I knew the instant I typed in a comment that it was different!    My avatar showed up.  Preview worked.  Publish worked!

My comment went through to the site.  And all I did was change from the Firefox Beta Program to the Regular Program...

I hope that works for anyone sufferring difficulties commenting...

A haiku of joy...

A problem of late
Became a problem no more.
I can comment now.

Hope this helps anyone else as it has helped me.