Day: September 28, 2019

If at First You Don’t Succeed, Give Up

Fandango20 Comments

Warning, unless you’re kind of geeky, you may want to not bother reading this post. It’s a rant about technology.

In order to try to fix my Visual Editor issues (see this post and this post) that surfaced after I downloaded iOS 13 for my iPhone, I did some good, old fashioned research on the internet and came across this article.0CEF3D35-FA4E-4DEC-A88B-FBE20009B720The good news is that, following the directions in that article,  I successfully rolled back the iOS install and reinstalled iOS 12.4.1 on my iPhone. And the better news is that I’m composing this post on the Safari browser in WordPress.com and it’s working exactly the way it did before I installed iOS 13. Yay!

But the bad news is that the reinstall of iOS 12.4.1 used a backup image of my iPhone from November 2017, almost two years ago. So any apps I had downloaded since November 2017 were missing. And for all of the other apps I loaded onto my iPhone since then, I am basically having to start from scratch.

It just wasn’t worth it. So I decided to reinstall iOS 13.1.1. Fortunately, I had saved a backup of my iPhone on iCloud right before I rolled back to 12.4.1, so when I reinstalled 13.1.1, my entire iPhone was restored, including all of my apps.

And the one thing I learned, now that I’m back to the new iOS, is that the issue with the WordPress Visual Editor in my iPhone’s web browser is also back, and it’s apparently the fault of Apple’s new iOS, and is not due to WordPress.

Bottom line, after spending virtually all afternoon and into the evening doing the rollback and the reinstall, I’m right back to where I was before I started. Talk about a huge waste of time!

Rant over.

Weekend Writing Prompt — Ultimatum

Fandango8 Comments

D36DDA6B-7942-4EE9-9640-8D67FDB29B06I take umbrage at that. How dare you give me an ultimatum? What kind of person are you to sit there in your languor and tell me what to do? I worked long and hard on my presentation and your initial reaction is to put a time cap on it? You can take your ultimatum and stuff where the sun don’t shine.

(62 words)

D288DA84-F609-4EC1-AC44-1641AC60F588 Written for Sammi Cox’s Weekend Writing Prompt, where we are challenged to write a poem or piece of prose using the word “ultimatum” in exactly 62 words. Also written for these daily prompts: Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (umbrage), The Daily Spur (person), Ragtag Daily Prompt (languor), Your Daily Word Prompt (presentation), Word of the Day Challenge (initial), and Daily Addictions (cap).

Android Users — I Need Your Help

Fandango25 Comments

If it ain’t brokePerhaps you read my post yesterday in which I whined about updating my iPhone to the latest operating system (iOS 13). I also updated my iPhone’s WordPress app, which the “Happiness Engineers” at WordPress claimed was “optimized for iOS 13.”

The abridged version of what resulted from these updates is that when I attempt to use the WordPress visual editor within WordPress.com (not the WordPress app for iOS 13) on my iPhone using any web browser, it can only display three or four lines of text before I have to start scrolling to see more text.

This is what I see in my browser for this post using the visual editor.Visual Editor glitchI even downloaded iOS 13.1.1 last night to see if that would fix the problem. But it didn’t.

So, here’s my ask. If you use an Android phone and have the latest, greatest version of the Android OS loaded, I’d like you to try this:

  1. Open up your web browser on your Android phone
  2. Log into wordpress.com
  3. Start to write a new post
  4. Can you type more than three or four lines without having to scroll down?
  5. Let me know in the comments below
  6. Thanks

By the way, the way I’m dealing with the visual editor glitch in my browsers is to write my posts using HTML, where my raw text does show up. Have you ever had to use HTML to compose your posts. It’s not fun.HTML editor

SoCS — Learn to Live With It

Fandango12 Comments

Linda G. Hill is attending a Writers’ Festival this weekend, but Dan Antion, from No Facilities, is filling in for Linda because, as he pointed out, “the prompt must go on.”

So, for this week’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt, Dan has challenged us with using the words “ent,” “ten,” and “net.” As far as I can tell, there is no standalone word “ent” in the English language. The letters ent do occur in words such as dent, or bent, or sent, for example. And in multi-syllable words like temperament.

“Ent” also is part of the name of a medical specialty dealing with disorders of the intestinal tract, enterologist. And let us not forget about the otolaryngologists, doctors who specialize in the treatment and management of diseases and disorders of the ear, nose, and throat. And such doctors are informally referred to as ENT physicians.

And that reminds me of a personal story. After suffering from tinnitus (ringing in the ears) for about ten years, I finally decided to go see an ENT specialist. He examined me, sent me for all kinds of different tests, and finally called me in for a consultation. “So, doc, what’s the deal? Is my tinnitus treatable? Do you have a cure? Is there a pill or a shot that will shut down that infernal noise inside of my head?”

The ENT doctor looked at me and said, “The net of it, Mr. Fandango, is that, while we know what tinnitus is and can confirm that you have it, we really don’t know precisely what causes tinnitus and there is no known cure for it.”

“So what am I supposed to do, doc?” I asked.

He sighed, got a serious look on his face, and said, “Net net, learn to live with it.”

Oh, one more thing. If you are a fan of J. R. R. Tolkien, then you know that Ents are a race of beings from the Middle-earth who closely resemble trees.Treebeard the EntMy personal favorite Ent is Treebeard, who, according to the wizard Gandalf, was “the oldest living thing that still walks beneath the sun upon this Middle-earth.”

FOWC with Fandango — Umbrage

Fandango20 Comments

FOWCWelcome to September 28, 2019 and to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). It’s designed to fill the void after WordPress bailed on its daily one-word prompt.

I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (US).

Today’s word is “umbrage.”

Write a post using that word. It can be prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction. It can be any length. It can be just a picture or a drawing if you want. No holds barred, so to speak.

Once you are done, tag your post with #FOWC and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments.

The issue with pingbacks not showing up seems to have been resolved, but you might check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, please manually add your link in the comments.

And be sure to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this prompt. You will marvel at their creativity.