Day: May 24, 2021

Disappearing Notifications

Fandango28 Comments

Where did all my notifications go? I just went to my notifications tab on my iPhone (via the iOS app) and saw only six notifications for the entire day today. Yet earlier today, a long list of likes, comments, and links were displayed. And according to my stats, I should be seeing almost 100 likes and 20 comments. But instead I see only four new likes, one new comment, and new one link. WTF?

Is anyone else experiencing this? Or are the happiness engineers out to get me because I’ve complained to much?

Anyway, if you liked any of my posts, commented on any of them, or linked (via a pingback or in a comment) and I haven’t acknowledged you, it’s because my notifications seem to be gone with the wind. Sorry about that.

Share Your World — May 24th

Fandango22 Comments

Today is Monday and that means that Melanie has graced us with another edition of her Share Your World challenge. I decided, rather than trying to come up with pithy titles for my SYW posts, I’d follow Melanie’s lead and just add the date to the title. So away we go…

What are you most proud of in the last year?

Well, first that I, and no one I know in my family or my real world friends, contracted COVID-19. And second, that despite threatening numerous times over the past year to leave WordPress after they forced the block editor down our throats and because of bugs in the iOS app (for the iPhone) that remain unfixed, I’m still here.

If you see a puddle on the ground, do you walk around it or give in to the child within and splash about?

At my age, walking around them is my preferred way to deal with puddles. That said, we are suffering a severe drought where I live and I think, if I actual came across a puddle, I might be tempted to jump right in and splash in it.

Do you feel free? Why or why not?

That depends upon what you’re talking about. I do feel free to speak my mind (or to post whatever is on my mind). But I suppose there are some things that I don’t feel free to do because of the potential adverse consequences to what I might do if I felt entirely free to do whatever I wanted to do. I’ll leave it at that.

What life skills are rarely taught but are extremely useful?

How to manage one’s money. I remember one of my first supervisory jobs and I was asked by the head of “Personnel” (now known as “Human Resources”) to talk to an employee about her having written a bunch of bad checks. I called her into my office and had that discussion with her. As background, the company we worked for offered a “free checking account” as one of the employee benefits. Of course, what that meant was a “no-fees” checking account.

Anyway, when I called her into my office to ask her why she was bouncing checks, she was totally befuddled. “I can’t be bouncing checks,” she said. “We get free checking because we work at this company.” Apparently she believed that “free checking” meant that you could write as many checks as you wanted and it was all for free, including being free of having to have enough money in said checking account to cover the checks written.

After that incident, the company changed its nomenclature in the listing of employee benefits from “free checking account” to “no-fees checking account.”

This incident happened decades ago, and I use this as an example of the failure of our educational system to prepare students to function in the real world after they leave school. Maybe things have changed over the years, and students to do get exposure to the basics of money management these days. I certainly hope that is now the case.

What am I grateful for?

I am grateful that yesterday my wife and I were able to invite around a dozen and a half family and friends, all of whom were fully vaccinated, over to our place to celebrate our grandson’s first birthday.

Blogging Insights — Learnings

Fandango5 Comments

For this week’s edition of Blogging Insights, Dr. Tanya wants to know…

What are you learning (or are you still learning) from your blogging experience?

Most recently I’ve learned how to conquer the block editor, which isn’t the disaster that I thought it was, but that I strenuously resisted for almost a year.

I use the WordPress iOS app from my iPhone for my blog, and the version of the block editor on the iPhone is what I call “block-lite” because it doesn’t have all of the features and functionality that the one available on laptops or desktops does. But that’s okay because neither did the iOS app classic editor, which I called “classic-lite,” have all of the bells and whistles of the full-fledged classic editor. But I can get by with the “lite” version of the block editor because I don’t really do any fancy things with my blog.

Another thing that I have learned is that the developers at WordPress focus more on rolling out new “features” and “functionality” that few of us casual (i.e., non-business, non-commercial, non-professional) bloggers need or want. But they don’t spend nearly enough time fixing bugs in the current functionality, bugs that drive many of us crazy.

I’ve also learned since migrating to WordPress from two previous blog hosting sites (Blogger and Typepad), that the community of bloggers here on WordPress is what keeps me going, even with the frustrations that I’ve expressed ad infinitum over the years — in particular, this past year — in my posts. Were it not for you all who read, like, and comment on my posts, I’d have been long gone from blogging.

Fandango’s Flash Fiction Challenge #119

Fandango13 Comments

Welcome to “Fandango’s Flash Fiction Challenge.” Each week I will be posting a photo I grab off the internet and challenging bloggers to write a flash fiction piece or a poem inspired by the photo. There are no style or word limits.

The painting below is from British artist David Hockney.For the visually challenged writer, the painting shows a gray haired woman wearing a blue dress sitting in a chair. To her left, on the opposite side of a green credenza on wheels is a man in a suit reading a book.

If this week’s image inspires you and you wish to participate, please write your post, use the tag #FFFC, and link back to this post. I hope it will generate some great posts.

Thanks to all of you who have participated in these challenges. Your posts have been very creative. Please take a few minutes to read the other responses to this photo challenge.

Please create a pingback to this post or manually add your link in the comments.

FOWC with Fandango — Mermaid

Fandango27 Comments

FOWCWelcome to May 24, 2021 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 “mermaid.”

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.