Tag: web

Mild Rant

Mindlessly net surfing, I encountered stories that mildly attracted me, just to see what they were about. They were probably among twenty stories of this kind that I encountered. These two, though, pressed my Rant button.

Take One: Atlanta home demolished

That’s what it says on the Bing search page. MSN, AP News, USA Today, and others are covering the tale with headlines like this one from AP.

The Associated Press

The Associated Press

Woman returns from vacation to find Atlanta home demolished

Makes it sound to me as if the destroyed home was the place she was living in. But no.

From the article: ‘“It’s been boarded up about 15 years, and we keep it boarded, covered, grass cut, and the yard is clean,” she said. “The taxes are paid and everything is up on it.”’

It’s been vacant and boarded up for fifteen years. While I admit that someone made a big mistake and demolished a vacant, boarded up home by accident, and that would be upsetting, I think the way the story is projected is wholly misleading.

Take Two: Former Teammates Now Opponents

Yes, this is what’s on ESPN/NFL’s page: a story about two NFL quarterbacks.

TEAMMATES TURNED OPPONENTS

DOLPHINS-EAGLES: 8:20 P.M. ET

Inside the complicated rivalry of Tua Tagovailoa and Jalen Hurts2dTim McManus and Marcel Louis-Jacques

The way this story is presented, they make it sound as if the NFL isn’t full of college teammates who get drafted by NFL teams and end up playing against one another.

This article focuses on Jalen Hurts and Tua Tagovailoa, quarterbacks who played at Alabama. Hurts was the starter. With a record of 28-2 and a national championship, he was highly regarded and respected, and definitely capable. But Alabama was being shut out. So he was pulled and Tua was put into the game.

Gosh, that never happens in a football! Coaches are always very careful about these things, putting players’ feelings and reputations above winning (yes, that is snark). I can’t think of any other time that a player who wasn’t doing well was benched so another player could be tried, neither in college or the pros. (Yes, that was more snark. It’s a snarky kind of day.)

Fast forward to this year. Hurts now plays for the Eagles and lost in the last Superbowl and Tagovailoa quarterbacks the Miami Dolphins. The two will meet again when their teams play today. Hence, the story.

Yes, I read both stories. Fortunately, they’re not major events. Sure, it’s upsetting to the woman to lose her vacant other home this way; I’d be pissed, too, if someone went to the wrong address and tore the place down. And the way the company has handled it (so far) does nothing to redeem them. But no one was hurt.

Likewise, the football story was a small distraction in an otherwise war-weary and politically numb world, a story significant or meaningful to some serious fans of the teams or players involved, but net fodder for the rest of us.

And yes, in a way, I’m doing the same thing: posting net fodder. But I’m doing it to distract myself from doing other things.

Hope it wasn’t too boring. Cheers

1

Tuesday’s Wandering Thoughts

The net can be a dizzying roller coaster. Bad news headlines, followed by humor on a friend’s blog, then disastrous breaking news, chased by sweet floof photos, which give way to dire predictions, trailed by fascinating new scientific or historic findings, war and political updates, and book reviews.

I ride throughout the day, breaking off to soothe myself with my personal writing, and then releasing all the pent tension with a relaxing game or two (or four). You know, Wordle. Spelling Bee. Sudoku.

How different from my youth. We watched television together in the family room — ‘in color’ — so it was a consensus choice. Five channels were available: PBS, the big three, and one UHF channel that washed in and out on a sea of static. Sitcoms (“Green Acres”), dramas (“Gunsmoke) and thrillers (“The Man From U.N.C.L.E.”) entertained us, or the Movie of the Week, delivering Psycho, Seven Days in May, and The Sound of Music, among a plethora of others.

Then I consider how different my mother’s childhood was. She was a little girl in Turin, Iowa, during the Depression and World War II, eating popcorn and listening to a radio with her family, or going to the hardware store to watch “I Love Lucy” on the only television in their small town.

Reaching further back, I struggle with visualizing how it was in my grandfather’s youth. He helped establish Turin a few decades before Mom was born. Guess I’ll surf the net about it and see what I find.

Once on the roller coaster, getting off it isn’t easy.

0

Friday’s Wandering Thoughts

Maybe it’s just me, but whenever I see a cuddle puddle of sleepy kittens in a photo or video on the net, there’s usually one staring suspiciously at the camera.

0

Saturday’s Wandering Thought

Websites seemed to be growing worse. Almost since the inception of the web, there was clickbait, slugs, ledes, and headlines to invite surfers to click and browse. Too many of these were outright misleading, trying to sensationalize political divisions and celebrity behavior.

Grammar declines. Punctuation mistakes, yes, and typos, which can happen, but some sentences are read several times before the fact is accepted that the sentence is I&I – incomplete and incoherent.

Now, bad links are blooming. Click on a link and it takes you to the wrong place. Is hijacking back? It seems like just weak execution. Whatever it is, it’s another modern, first-world annoyance.

Don’t get him started on the pathetic search results which are often returned.

0

Tuesday’s Wandering Thought

Tuesday found another tech irritation gaining momentum. Apps and search boxes always tried finishing his typing for him. They were often wrong and usually a distraction. Almost as bad was when he shoved his mouse aside to clear a view of what he was typing, only to have the cursor land on something else, amplifying whatever was in that box, whether he was interested or not. The pages were just messy with annoying ‘helpful’ distractions.

2

Floofphile

Floofphile (floofinition) – Person who is enthusiastic about animals.

In use: “The Internet may not have given birth to floofphiles, but videos of kittens, puppies, baby hippos, birds, lambs, goats, and so on, certainly encouraged a growth

2

Spoiled

I know it’s another Princess and the Pea complaint, but don’t you hate it when the ‘net is so slow that you can click a link, go make a cuppa coffee, drink half of it, select new music, peruse the newspaper, and then return to the computer in time to see the page load?

These things always trigger corollary suspicions: is it just my provider, or this location, a flawed router or modem, a computer issue, DDoS attack or virus, the web site, the browser…?

Bah. Too damned spoiled, aren’t I?

0

Flooflanthropist

Flooflanthropist (floofinition) – 1. An animal who protects and promotes the welfare of other animals. 2. A person who seeks to promote animal welfare, especially by generous donations.

In Use: “Parallel to the worldwide web’s rise has been a growth of flooflanthropists who reach out to rescue animals and find them homes, especially in the wake of disasters.”

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑