Day: September 2, 2022

TGIF — It Is a Prompt

Fandango13 Comments

Paula Light, at Light Motifs II, wrote today, “Did you know that my TGIF is actually a prompt? I guess I haven’t made that clear.” No, you didn’t, Paula. But now that I know….

Let me start by saying that it’s relatively late on Friday night, but it’s still Friday, so I suppose it’s not too late to say that I’m grateful for a few things this Friday.

First, the generator repair man came over this afternoon and replaced the faulty control board in the generator, tested it, and gave it his blessing. And the timing couldn’t be better because over the next week, temperatures are going to be in the triple digits every day, with the forecast calling for the high to reach 109°F on Labor Day.

The electric company is already talking about potential rolling blackouts during peak usage hours over this next week, so if we are, indeed, subjected to a blackout and the generated kicks in as it’s supposed to now that it’s been fixed, I’ll be a happy camper.

The other thing that I’m grateful for this Friday, is that my wife, broke a bone in her right foot on July 15th. Before that happened, she used to get up early to take the dog out for her morning constitutional and let me sleep in until around 7. But since she broke her foot, I’ve been getting up at around 5:00 in the morning to take the dog out, and it’s taken a toll on me.

Fortunately, although she’s not yet at 100%, her foot has healed enough for her to be able to put a shoe on the foot in question and to take the dog out for her morning business. So I’m back to sleeping in until around 7 am, and that extra couple of hours of sleep in the morning now that my wife is doing better, has been a godsend.

Hopefully, in another two weeks or so, she’ll be able to walk regularly again and with no pain.

So yeah. TGIF!

Mellow Yellow

Fandango11 Comments

If I had to define the term sycophant
I’d use you as my example.
You blindly follow him,
You embrace all of his lies.
You excuse his insanity
And believe he’s got you covered,
While he’s lurking in the shadows,
A honed blade in his hand
Prepared to stab you in your back.

No, I’m not being satirical.
You’re like an ostrich with your head in the sand
Or a turtle who retracts your head into your shell
When faced with facts that conflict with your opinion.
Why can’t you see him for what he is?
A crook, a criminal, a conman, a phony.

I need a break from you.
I need to get stoned.
Because I’m just mad about Saffron
Saffron’s mad about me.
They call me mellow yellow
Quite rightly.

Written for these daily prompts: Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (define/blade), E.M.’s Random Word Prompt (sycophant), Ragtag Daily Prompt (lurking), Your Daily Word Prompt (satirical), My Vivid Blog (turtles), and Word of the Day Challenge (saffron).

Fibbing Friday — What Are These, Anyway?

Fandango9 Comments

Di (aka Pensitivity101) and Melanie (Sparks From a Combustible Mind) alternate as hosts for Fibbing Friday, a silly little exercise where we are to write a post with our answers to the ten questions below. But as the title suggests, truth is not an option. The idea is to fib a little, a lot, tell whoppers, be inventive, silly, or even outrageous, in our responses. Since Melanie is still temporarily out of commission, Di is back and she gives us some more words to define.

1. What is a bandana? The name of Roseanne Roseannadanna’s first born child, Bandana Roseannadanna.

Roseanne Roseannadanna

2. What is a rum baba? It’s a beverage made with non-alcoholic rum for infants and toddlers. Think of it as a virgin Piña Colada.

3. What is a marinade? It’s a financial aid package for the wealthy residents of Marin County, just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco.

4. What is an asset? It’s a cosmetic surgical procedure for those who wish to tighten up or improve the contour of their butt cheeks.

5. Who was Apollo? A boxer who fought Rocky Balboa.

Apollo Creed

6. What is meant by BYOB? “Boy, you outta bathe.”

7. What is a pekingese? A euphemism for a peeping Tom.

8. What is a crockpot? A crackpot who is high on crack cocaine and is using a slow cooker to brew it? (Do people “brew” crack? I have no idea.)

9. What is meant by upbeat? It’s the dyslexic version of “beat up.”

10. What does it mean to recycle? It’s when you ride your bicycle to your destination, and then turn around and recycle back to where you started.

The Problem Persists

Fandango54 Comments

First, let me apologize, as this post is a bit of a rant about WordPress.

Prior to downloading what was then, in November 2020, the latest update (version 16.0) to the WordPress iOS app, I never had a problem liking and leaving comments on other bloggers’ posts. That was almost two years ago and, despite dozens of exchanges with numerous Happiness Engineers, the issue still persists. It’s got me, like the guy in the iStockphoto picture above, pulling my hair out…what little of it I have left, anyway.

What is the specific issue? Well, I’ve posted about this numerous times, including here, here, here, and here. But as a quick recap, I noticed that I could no longer, from either my Reader or my Notifications, “like” some other bloggers’ posts nor could I leave a comment on them. It was as if, even though I was logged on to WordPress via the app, the app didn’t recognize me as a logged-on WordPress user when I went to those sites.

After doing a lot of troubleshooting on my own, I realized that I could like and leave comments on posts where the blogger’s address had “.wordpress.com” in it. But for those blogs that didn’t have “.wordpress.com” in the blog address — even my own blog, which is “fivedotoh.com” — I could not like or comment on them when I visited them.

In my back and forth with various Happiness Engineers, I was told that the bug had been identified and replicated and that the app development team was working on a fix. I was also told that the issue was complicated by some security changes that Apple made when it launched iOS 14.0.

In order to leave a comment on blogs that don’t have “wordpress.com” in the address, I need to enter in my name, my email address, and my blog’s URL, after which I’m taken to the WordPress iOS app login screen to enter my password. Only then will my comment be posted. On other blogs I’m told I must log on in order to leave a comment, even though I already am logged on to WordPress. And when I try to log back in, it still won’t let me leave a comment. Very frustrating.

Flash forward to today. The iOS app from WordPress I have installed on my iPhone is version 20.5.01 and the Apple iOS app is version 15.6.1. I have eagerly awaited each of the updated releases to the WordPress app in the hope that the bug will have been fixed, only to be disappointed when I discover that it’s still there. 

So, after nearly two frustrating years, and countless assurances by Happiness Engineers that the issue will be fixed, it still hasn’t been fixed. WordPress has a very large presence on the internet. Apple is one of the major technology (both hardware and application) providers in the world. You would think that, between WordPress and Apple, they would be able to figure out a way to fix this very annoying bug so that the WordPress app could work just as it did prior to release of version 16.0 in November 2020.

I’m not holding my breath.

Fandango’s Flashback Friday — September 2nd

Fandango26 Comments

Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.

How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Friday Flashback post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.

If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on this day (the 2nd) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.

This was originally posted on September 2, 2017.

Climate Change

IMG_2584

This is not supposed to happen here. The high temperature in San Francisco yesterday was 106 degrees. That broke the old record of 103° for the city. And the previous high for San Francisco on September 1st was a mere 90° in 1952.

According to the National Weather Service, this highly unusual heat wave is supposed to continue through Labor Day. In fact, they said today may be even hotter than yesterday, possibly setting a new record high temperature for the City by the Bay.

Worst of all, like most residences in this typically cool city, my house is not air conditioned. Not even a single room air conditioner. Just a few ceiling fans. And when the temperature outside reaches 106 degrees, all ceiling fans do is circulate hot air. It’s not much cooler inside a home with no air conditioning than it is outside.

Well, hopefully this heat wave will abate in a few days and San Francisco can get back to its more typical high temperatures in the mid- to upper-sixties at this time of the year.

Written for today’s one-word prompt, “continue.”

September 2, 2022 update: Here we are, five years later, and the heat is still breaking records. I no longer live in San Francisco. Where I live now, in the East Bay, which is normally hotter than San Francisco, we’re experiencing a major heat wave. It reached 101° yesterday, and today it’s supposed to “cool down” to the upper 90s. But here is the latest forecast for the next six days starting tomorrow:

Well, at least our home here on the East Bay does have central air conditioning, which should help us deal with this heat wave. Unless we have another power outage, that is.