Tag: computer woes

Ah, Cripes! More WordPress Problems

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

I have a post today about “Self-Esteem Games,” and it seems the comments are disabled for this post. I have no idea how that happened, let alone what to do about it. How do I un-disable comments? Search me! I looked it up and all I got was some malarkey about installing some kind of plug-in. All I know about plug-ins is, the last and only time I tried to install one, it let me in for hours and hours of horrendous technical problems.

Trying to contact a WordPress Happiness Engineer, all I got was “email us.”

Oh! And our oven has stopped working, and the “Check Engine” light is on in Patty’s car, we don’t know why, and how I’m going to get anything done this week beats me.

Looking for somewhere to hide…

All right, now it’s fixed. They sent me an email and told me how to fix the problem, and it seems this was successful. That leaves the oven and the car, and a big fat eye doctor appointment on Tuesday that will chew up the whole day. My coping mechanism seems to have broken down today, along with a lot of other things. I am not at liberty to mention serious health problems that have suddenly cropped up for friends and family members.

I’m in Computer Hell Again

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Image result for images of devils with pitchforks

I hadn’t even gotten my pants on this morning when my wife announced we were back in Computer Hell. This time it was the email: no one gets in, no one gets out. The experts wrestled with it for three hours before admitting they were stymied, no can do, wait till tomorrow and someone else will try…

Gee, it’s hard to edit the stuff they pay you to edit when you can’t get it out of the email.

Ooh, look at this! Windows wants to do an update. Right now!

And they want to merge human minds–if they can find any–with computers.

At Odds With My Computer

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

I’m not going to go as far as the frustrated man in this video, but I’m sure I know how he feels.

Yesterday Firefox stopped connecting with anything, and I do mean anything. By evening it was denying me access to my own blog: displaying nothing but a page totally blank except for a WordPress logo.

So I switched over to Internet Explorer, and there discovered that “Volume control for youtube has been disabled.” All my hymns and other videos were now in pantomime. I can’t find any hymns done in semaphore, nor any readers who know semaphore. Patty fixed that problem for me.

But why had the volume control been disabled? “Well, heck, we just thought it’d be cool to mute all your videos…”

Now I’ve switched to Google. I would rather not have done so, but it’s getting so that you need a different browser for each and every operation. It’s like buying a car that will only run on gas from Amoco and cannot be driven on any street with a “G” in its name.

To me it’s beginning to look like the whole computer world is nothing but a high-tech Dogpatch, with software designed by L’il Abner. Only his might work better.

Not to mention being stuck at the Social Security office all morning and into lunchtime, trying to finalize the paperwork needed for Aunt Joan’s continued care at the nursing home. We have been told it’s all but finished now. We have been told that before, but this time maybe it’s true. This has taken, so far, six months, about 25 pounds of paper, and innumerable trips to different banks and government offices. If they’re trying to drive us crazy, they’re doing a mighty good job of it.

Can I please get back to work on my book sometime?

A Facebook Fix (I Hope)

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

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Well, the latest hassle with Facebook was this: the Share button at the bottom of the post stopped showing little white numbers that indicated how many times, if at all, the post was shared. In fact, going all the way back to the beginning, all the little numbers disappeared from all my posts. What? Did they somehow get un-shared, years later?

Today WordPress advised me to change Share button styles to a style that still seems to be working–and voila, the little white numbers are back. This means you can actually succeed in sharing these posts on Facebook. I think.

Turns out I was not the only blogger to report this problem to WordPress. They’re working on it now, and I hope they solve it. This blog had a record month in March, but since bombardment with Facebook problems began, our views and visits are way off. *sigh* That’s frustrating.

So, if any of you are so inclined, try to share some of my recent posts, and let’s see if that resuscitates my referrals. For which I would be much obliged!

Still More Computer Hell

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

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Yesterday, last night, and probably today–all devoured by computer hell. By Malwarebytes every five minutes flashing onto the screen its demand to be updated. By outgoing email not going out, or just getting bounced back at us, undelivered. That’s goin’ to make it very hard for me to submit my articles and do my editing.

This machine needs an exorcist.

And who’s the galoot who says we oughta-gotta-gonna merge our minds with computers by the year 2020? Huzzah! Then we can all have long-term and short-term memory loss, basic functions all screwed up, reduced to hopeless babbling–yeah, it does sound like Hell.

So far the chaos has not yet reached into this blog, so I will continue for as long as I can. If I disappear, you’ll know it’s because the computer has murdered me.

Computer Hell Again

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Well, now the accursed machine won’t let me post to Facebook at all. While I try to do it, watch the poor ant try in vain to cross the circle drawn around her in blue ink. I hope that at the end of the experiment the human releases the ant from this dilemma. Right now, I think I know just how the ant feels.

So let’s see if it works…

P.S.–I think it’s the scent of the ink that has confused the ant.

Aaaagh!

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

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So we want to merge our minds with computers, do we? That way we can all be not only stone-stupid, but totally crackers, too.

After our online banking got all bollixed up, our email stopped working. It took Patty quite a while to fix that. Then I tried to submit my weekly Newswithviews column. No dice! We had to restart the computer; then it worked. Then, as I attempted this blog post, the whole fatzing thing froze on me. Again, restart.

Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, this day has turned into a monster.

Now I will try to attach a picture to this post. You will understand if I don’t expect it to work.

I will be amazed if I can actually make it to cat video time later.

Good News, Bad News

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Image result for images of the cellar beneath the cellar by lee duigon

My neighbor, Harlem, for whose recovery from cancer many of us prayed, tells me his experience had been written up in one of the medical journals. He’s feeling stronger by the day, putting back on some of the weight he lost, and wants to play some hoops when the weather gets a little warmer. I gave him a copy of The Cellar Beneath the Cellar to celebrate. Now we’ve got to find a basketball.

Meanwhile, this blog is giving me fits today.

Thursday’s usually my best day because that’s when my Newswithviews column is published, and it generates a lot of referrals to the blog. But not today. Not even one. Everything seems to be in working order, so I’m at a loss to understand the problem.

Ditto Facebook. As an experiment, my friend Susan generated two referrals this morning. They worked–which leaves me unable to explain why there are only those two and no more. The more I try to understand how social media work, the less I understand about the whole business.

And they say they want to merge our minds with computers??? That just may be the stupidest idea ever conceived by smart people.

Eureka! (Maybe)

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

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Calloo, callay, oh frabjous day! My Facebook referrals are back.

When Archimedes, in the course of taking his bath, suddenly realized he could calculate an object’s weight (or something) by the amount of water it displaced, he leaped out of the tub and shouted “Eureka!”, which means “Hot dog!”

I can’t quite do that, because I don’t know that anything I’ve tried actually did the trick, bringing back Facebook referrals to this blog after I got mysteriously disconnected from FB last weekend and have gotten hardly any referrals all week long. Maybe some of you folks out there accomplished it by sharing one of our cat videos on Facebook. I don’t know. All I know is, they’re back today, returning as inexplicably as they disappeared.

My father had no object in his house which he didn’t understand. Whatever it was, if it stopped working, he knew how to fix it. And if he didn’t know, his kid brother, Uncle Ferdie, an inventor, would be sure to know. I used to love to watch the two of them take apart the television set and fix it. Dad never had to send it to the shop.

Well, my own apartment is full of gadgets whose workings I couldn’t explain if my life depended on it. And I daresay I’m not alone in that respect.

And so, at least for the time being, my nagging Facebook problem has been solved–how, I just don’t know. But if any of you readers did anything to solve it, you have my thanks. It wasn’t a big problem, but it was certainly a nagging one.

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As the Facebook Waterhole Runs Dry…

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

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Well, I’ve tried just about everything to get back my Facebook referrals to this blog, and so far, nothing’s worked. This is Day 6 of the Great Drought of referrals, which I think was brought on by my getting disconnected from Facebook on Sunday. WordPress tells me I’m reconnected, but there ain’t no water in this waterhole.

One last thing to try. If some of you would be so kind as to share some of my posts today with a few of your Facebook friends, I could check from time to time and see if that makes anything happen. That, unless anyone can come up with anything else, will be the last throw of the dice. I have no idea what has caused this problem, nor has anybody offered one.