Category: technology

Monday’s Wandering Thoughts

Each morning, I post to WordPress. The first time each day, WP usually suggests tags to add. I click to add them. And every day it tells me, ‘No tags added’.

It amuses and dissatisfies me.

Amuses me because it’s so consistent. Dissatisfies me for the same reason. See, it’s offering something, and then it’s failing. Every day, without fail.

For me, it’s part of a much longer list of small tech failures encountered on a daily basis. Little things. Buttons and widgets not working. Apps crashing.

We see it on a larger scale. One is quiet, like how fucked up deliveries with the post office have become. I tracked a package last week from Newark, California, to Roseburg, Oregon, to Portland, Oregon, to Roseburg, Oregon, to Medord, before it reached me in Ashland. Ashland, BTW, is closer to Newark than Roseburg, Portland, or Medford.

This week, I tracked a package to Fife, Washington. Where the package entered another dimension and the system has no idea where it is.

We all figure it’s a one-off, so we don’t complain about it. Then, when we do, we often discover the problem is affecting more of us than we realized. It’s a larger problem than realized.

But sometimes, the tech failure is so visible, we can’t look away. Take the Boeing aircraft failures. Or the Boeing Starliner failure that has stranded two astronauts at the space station.

The United States is steadily spiraling downward in many ways. We can’t deal with our gun violence; the GOP stops actions. We can’t deal with climate change and wildfires and the extreme weather it causes: the GOP stops it. We can’t deal with quality failures…well, that’s more about money.

People can’t afford houses. Meanwhile, college students are drowning in debt. Do you think that’s not related?

As always, as these things happen, the GOP is pointing at other things as problems that aren’t problems. Books in schools. DEI. Declining church attendance. Voter fraud.

Yes, there’s a pattern here. We as a nation are stagnating. As a small group gets wealthier and achieve a better life, the rest of us are left dealing with small problems. Problem with small problems is that they add up.

Just ask Boeing.

1

UPS Mail Innovations

It’s a grip-worthy day for me. We ordered a packaged. 28 August. It was shipped via UPS Mail Innovactions the next day, or maybe the one after that.

UPS said we’d receive it by September 3. That didn’t happen. Package was in Fife, Washington. Transferred to the USPS. Because this is Mail Innovations.

The package arrived at Fife, WA, on September 3. An update said, your package will be delivered on September 6 by 7 PM.

Didn’t happen. I went to the UPS said, tracked the package — still in Fife, WA, on September 3, the shipment that stood still — and used the assistant link they provided me.

It was not useful. Said the tracking number which UPS provided me is not a UPS tracking number. Well, I saw exactly where the gap began. My number is for UPS Mail Interventions, I mean, Mail Innovations. UPS and its virtual assistance is not set up to assist with that innovation.

Sigh. More first world blues.

0

Confloofbondus

Confloofbondus (floofinition) – A natural condition where a human and an animal, or several animals, establish strong emotional and physical connections. Origins: Internet, 2024

In Use: “The Floofnet — that part of the world wide web dedicated to animal information — is rich with evidence of confloofbondus, such as large dogs taking in and carry for orphaned kittens.”

In Use: “Videos and stories of confloofbondus helped many people endure stay-at-home protocols during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns.”

0

If You Haven’t Heard

A lot of news is taking place now. Sound like Trump, don’t I? Add in a few huge and great or beautifuls and I could be him. I.e., A lot of beautiful news is taking place now, more huge news than ever, big beautiful news stories, and some which are not so beautiful and can even be ugly for some of us.

One story being discussed in our household and circle of friends is the huge personal data breach. 2.9 billion personal records.

This Yahoo story contains a link for you to check on your info to see if you’re involved in this breach, and actions you can take to help safeguard your information. Easiest and most importantly, it shows how to do credit freezes with the three major credit bureaus.

Just paying it forward, ya know?

0

The Conman

All Don Old Trump can do is con and grift. He shows it once again by using AI generated deep fakes of Taylor Swift supporting him.

What a sad loser.

Fortunately, social media like X immediately identified as fake and took it down. Yes, that is snark. You know they can’t be trusted to take down Right Wing disinformation.

2

Thursday’s Wandering Thoughts

I ordered a new knob for my gas range. It’s the third one I’ve had to buy for the GE Profile range. The range is about six years old. Quality, right? Headshake.

Anyway, I’m tracking the knob. They said it shipped. I looked up the details.

After being picked up by the carrier, it arrived at the carrier facility, and then arrived at a carrier facility, and then arrived at a carrier facility. All the carrier facilities are in Arkansas.

It’s like, such strange progress. But then, another part for something else last week left California, south of us, and arrived at Eugene, north of us. Then it went further north to Portland. The day after that, it came back down south to Medford, basically northwest of us, before being delivered.

I suspect the folks behind these shipping processes are the same people who are always shouting, “Do more with less!”

2

Weird Ol’ Facebook

As a boomer, I still surf and share to FB. Mostly to keep up with ex-military friends and co-workers, and track my family on the other side of the country. I share things I write, too.

But I mostly, I ‘like’ things on Facebooks, things being ‘posts’, shares, videos, and photos. I share some of these things which I ‘like’. You might be surprised that I support animal charities and causes, especially cats. Cats and I have been together since I was a young toddler.

One of the FB groups I follow is VOKRA, the Vancouver Orphan Kitten Rescue Association. They posted, with photos, the tale of Jinx. They’re trying to get Jinx (or maybe it was Binx) adopted. I ‘liked’ the post about the sweet tabby kitten. It only had eleven shares, so I clicked share, to help spread the story and get Jinx or Binx adopted. That’s what social media is about, isn’t it?

Boom. Facebook told me they’d removed it. It was offensive and contrary to community standards. They even accused me of (gasp!) posting something just to get ‘likes’.

Posting things to get ‘likes’. WTF is the world coming to?

My wife and discussed this with WTF amazement. What does FB think it is if not a vehicle for ‘likes’? More critically, how the actual fuck did this post about a kitten available for adoption violate FB community standards?

I hate to reveal this to Facebook, but if cats and kittens and adoptions are against FB community standards, there are huge swaths of violations going on right now. They’d probably be scandalized to learn how many posts are about cats and kittens. In fact, if FB goes after posts about kittens and cats, they will seriously deplete their membership, posts, and shares. They might as well pull the plug on telling each other ‘happy birthday’ while they’re at it.

Truthtfully, I suspect that some poor Facebook AI bot is just having a bad day and removed a post that shouldn’t have been removed. Maybe their companion AI bot left them or they caught their partner AI bot in a compromising configuration with another bot doing forbidden codes.

I don’t know. I’m just speculating. Hope someone takes that poor AI bot aside and communicates with them over a cup of coffee.

Coffee always helps.

And yes, I will post this to Facebook to get likes. Ironic, isn’t it?

0

Wednesday’s Wandering Thoughts

The area’s electric power went down. It was a valley-wide outage affecting all of our little city, along with several other small cities. Turned out to be a major transmission line failure. A crew went out and found and fixed it.

Electricity ceased about 11:24 AM. I was at my writing haunt, which is a locally known coffee shop. It was suddenly so quiet, and a little darker. “The power is out,” a barista exclaimed.

Only three customers were in the shop. One barista looked over at me and asked, “What did you do, Michael?”

I was innocent, of course. We were all told to leave. Turned out it wasn’t just that little corner of existence.

I drove home. All the traffic lights were out. People were handling it with courtesy and awareness in my part of town, but others later said they witnessed some flagrant driver idiocy. Takes all kinds, we agreed.

It’s weird how something like this can affect the day. Like, okay, power is out. I drove home. Clicked on the garage door opener to verify it didn’t work and parked in the driveway. Went in with a key to the side door. I was thinking what will I do with this time? Well, I can still write on the computer. I just won’t be on the net. Battery will last a while. Or I can dust furniture or cut the lawn.

A smoke detector was announcing that its battery was on low. So I located it, got out the small metal step ladder and took care of that. I remember my wife not wanting me to purchase those little steps. “Just use a chair,” she urged. But I figured we were adults and should have the proper tool for the job, so I paid the $40 for the stairs.

My wife then arrived home. She didn’t have any house keys, and I saw her trying to ring the doorbell. After I let her in, we wondered, what does work for us? Can we get texts and make phone calls? She had one text from the county telling about the outage. I called her. Her phone rang but we couldn’t connect.

So we sat and talked. Not like we don’t sit and talk every day but something new is always coming up. Then I get a text from my sister saying, “I see trump just screwed up again.”

I texted back, “what happened? We don’t have power.” But my text wouldn’t go. How could I receive a text but not send one?

Fifteen minutes later, the power was back on. It too much longer than the outage lasted to return to the rhythm of the day.

3

Thursday’s Wandering Thoughts

Every once in a while, a website that I visit will change their layout. WordPress has done it today, forcing me to ‘search’ for the stuff I generally use, adjust to where they put things, and new features. I say ‘search’ like that because I can’t just slide my mouse to its usual position and click. I’m forced instead to use my eyes and scan the page and then employ my brain. It’s difficult. TG for coffee.

Inspired by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, I’ve come up with my five stages of coping with a website redesign.*

Warning: there’s a ton of f*****g cursin’ involved with a website redesign for me because I’m easily irritated and was enlisted in the military for twenty years. Back then, before cell phones and computers, swearing was our primary pastime as we hurried and waited.

  1. Realization. Where is the — what the actual f**k – m*therf****r, they changed the f*****g web page.
  2. Complaining. Jesus, WTF did they do that? Where is – damn it, they changed everything. They f*****g changed it all. Now I have to find my favorite things and the things that I use all over again. Jesus Christ, just what I f*****g needed today.
  3. Promises. I’ll tell you what, if I ever find another f*****g website that works as well as this one does – or did, until they did this s**t – I don’t know how it’ll work with all these god**n changes they’ve made – I will switch so f*****g fast, their f*****g heads will f*****g explode.
  4. Grasping. Okay, wait, here’s what I wanted. A pull-down menu. Well, that’s f*****g stupid. Why the f**k did they put it there? WTF. It was fine right where it f*****g was. There was no f*****g reason at all to move that. What else did they f****g move? S***heads.
  5. Stewing. Okay, I think I can live with this crap and these f****g changes, but I don’t f*****g like it. grumble grumble mutter mutter imprecations

*These stages can also be employed for when a store rearranges its aisles and products, and you rush in to grab the one thing you need and it’s not there because they moved it, forcing you to run around the store in search of.

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑