Day: September 1, 2020

The End is Near

Fandango10 Comments

The end is nearIn the midst of those anxious times
He took rather draconian measures

And ordered the destruction of all books
To discourage an omnilegent population

He made the people feel uncertain
About the future of humanity

And when he preached “the end is near”
He was opening the gateway to hell

Written for these daily prompts: Your Daily Word Prompt (anxious), Ragtag Daily Prompt (draconian), Word of the Day Challenge (omnilegent), Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (uncertain), Jibber Jabber (end), and The Daily Spur (gateway).

Fifty Shades of Gray

Fandango14 Comments

“Your undershirts are getting a bit dingy,” my wife said.

“So what?” I asked. “They’re undershirts, for crissake. I wear them under my shirts. Nobody sees them.”

“I see them every time I do a wash and they’re really gray,” my wife said. “And for your information, people can see your undershirt collars when you’re wearing button-front sport shirts. Your collars are dingy gray.”

“Whatever,” I said. “I don’t need to spend the money on new undershirts. And nobody is going to be grossed out from a peekaboo view of dingy undershirt collars.”

“That’s what I thought you’d say,” my wife said, “so I bought you some new undershirts and I want you to see something.” She grabbed my hand and led me to the bedroom, where she had one of my old undershirts laid out next to one of the new ones she just bought.Undershirts“Okay, I see what you mean,” I said, knowing that further resistance was futile.

Truthful Tuesday — My First

Fandango17 Comments
Truthful Tuesday

For this week’s edition of Truthful Tuesday, Frank, aka PCGuy, asks…

What was your first experience with computers?

Okay, I’m going to skip my college course in COBOL programming and having to deal with flowcharting, code sheets, 80-column punch cards, and an IBM mainframe 1401 computer.

Instead, I’m going to jump to 1982 when I bought my first personal computer. It was an original IBM PC.Original IBM PCIt came with an 8088 Intel chip that ran at a whopping 4.77 MHz. The operating system was PC-DOS, it came with two 5 1/4 inch floppy disk drives and no hard drive. I upgraded it with something called an AST Six Pack, which added a clock and calendar so you didn’t have to enter the date and time every time you logged on, plus some additional RAM, a parallel port, and a serial port. Then I added a 10 Mb hard card, figuring that a 10 Mb internal hard drive would last me a lifetime. I also bought an RBG color monitor from Princeton Graphics.

From the software perspective, I got WordStar for word processing, VisiCalc for my spreadsheet, and Microsoft Flight Simulator for fun. I soon added a blazingly fast 300 baud Hayes modem and discovered online bulletin boards and, eventually, something called Prodigy, on online subscription service that was a precursor to America Online (AOL).Prodigy Online ServicePersonal computing has certainly come a long way sonce the early 1980s, hasnt it?

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Fandango39 Comments

You may recall that back on August 21st I wrote a whiny post about how upset I was that WordPress was forcing us to use its clunky block editor by essentially decommissioning the classic editor. In that post, I announced that, after the end of August, I was going to take a bit of a hiatus from blogging.

So now that August is over, am I actually going to take a hiatus from blogging? After all, I’m still quite pissed off at WordPress for retiring the classic editor. Because I use an iPhone for my blog, and because the block editor is not exactly optimized to use on an iPhone, I have to jump through proverbial hoops in order to create posts, whereas with the classic editor, it was a piece of cake.

I’ve discovered that the WordPress app for iOS for the iPhone does still have — although I don’t know for how much longer — a version of the classic editor. I call it “classic lite” because it’s missing some key functionality that I typically used on wordpress.com on the Safari browser on my iPhone before that version of the classic editor got the ax.

So what I have to do now is create a draft of my post on the “classic lite” editor on the iOS app and take it as far as I can before I save it. Then, if I need to fine tune it further, I, go to wordpress.com on the Safari (or Chrome) browser, log on to “fivedotoh.com/wp-admin,” and use that version of the classic editor to polish up the draft post as necessary in order to get it just the way I want it. The “/wp-admin” classic editor is better than the block editor, but it’s still more challenging to use on an iPhone than the classic editor that WordPress recently retired.

Bottom line is that it’s taking significantly longer for me to compose, preview, edit, and publish my posts because it now requires two different versions of the classic editor instead of just one, as it did before all this shit went down a few weeks ago. Even so, I’ve decided that I’m not taking a hiatus from my blog. I’m going to slog through it. I will do my best to continue with my prompts until it just becomes too onerous to go on.

Thank you all for your kinds words, support, and encouragement throughout what I call my ordeal. Maybe WordPress will deign to revive its classic editor for those many of us — especially those of us who primarily use our smartphones for blogging — who are not happy about being forced to use that damn block editor.

FOWC with Fandango — Uncertain

Fandango34 Comments

FOWCWelcome to September 1, 2020 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 “uncertain.”

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. Please 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.