Saturday, June 5, 2021

Jason To The Rescue


I get scam emails. Such as messages that say my email account is completely full and soon they won't be able to jam any more letters in it, but if I click here they can straighten the whole thing right out. The email will appear to be from my ISP Admin but if you check on the actual address it will say something like bambi@bonerville.fishnet, and in any case I'm no random clicker. Not me. I know that much.

That's about all I know. So when I got a letter from an outfit warning me that Google would soon terminate Feedburner for email subscriptions to Murrmurrs, but that they'd be happy to take over the job for me, I didn't click on anything. Especially since it was signed by "Marina, the Happiness Manager." Happiness Manager. That just sits wrong. I always thought "fulfillment" was a little fancy for the shipping department, too.

But I did check around for the fate of Feedburner because although I don't know what it is or how it works, I do know it's involved with getting subscriptions to my blog. For email updates and the RSS feed too. I don't know what an RSS feed is but I know I have one.

I feel the same way about my spleen.

Turns out nobody even agrees on what RSS stands for. Could be either RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication, or maybe Ripe Squid Suckers. It takes my typing here and squirts it into your phone. I need it if I'm going to communicate with you all. And Feedburner manages my RSS feed. Guess what? Sure enough, I found out Feedburner's going into Maintenance Mode in July. Someone will be sweeping up for a while but nobody's at their desk anymore. I have no idea what any of this means.

One of the problems with the internet is a whole lot of companies got rich by figuring out dummy-proof ways of wielding it. They made great Out Of Box Experiences so all you had to do was plug in your new toy and it played with itself. You didn't have to know any dang thing to operate it.

So when things went wrong you had to go to your rental house next door where you keep your stock of young people and have them come over and fix it. You'd lean over their shoulders and ask what they were doing and they'd say something like "Oh, I'm just pinging your server" and you'd holler at your husband and say "Hey Dave, come look! Jason's pinging!" and he'd say "I always figured him for a pinger." Later we'd watch him walking down the street and wonder if he was still pinging. How would we know?

At least Jason knew how it worked. Now Jason's kids can send a pizza to their friends in Stockholm in five minutes, all paid for, but they don't know how it works any more than you do. This stuff is so slick you do not have to use any of your brain cells at all. Your brain cells are getting farther and farther apart from each other all the time. It's downright breezy in there.

Does it matter? If everything works by itself, does it matter if we get in a car that drives itself across the country and we can motor right through the Grand Tetons with our noses buried in our phones? I think it matters. I'd like to have more of a grip on things. And see the Tetons.

So I went to the Feedburner website and discovered it has all your-all's email addresses in it right where I can see them and maybe I should look into copying them down, in case I ever publish a novel or something and want to tell you about it. Also at the Feedburner website? I have the options of Buzzboost, Pingshot, and Chicklet Chooser. I do not know what to make of that.

I'm not touching anything. I'm taking my spleen on faith too. At some point, not that long from now, my spleen will go into Maintenance Mode and then give out altogether. I'm just glad in the meantime that I can't reach any of its option buttons.

29 comments:

  1. Sometimes I manage to fix something on the computer by sheer luck (it certainly isn't by know-how.) My PC was running very slow, and as it is an older model, I thought it would have to be replaced -- which I dreaded. So I started downloading some files I wanted to keep but don't refer to very often into thumb drives. I deleted other files entirely. I jettisoned downloads that I no longer needed. When I restarted my computer, it ran quickly again! I was so happy that I didn't have to buy a new computer! All I had to do was get rid of some crap! Good thing, too, because I have no access to young people. And if I started trolling about for young people that are strangers to me, it would undoubtedly sound like a variation of the "want some candy, son?" or "will you help me find my lost dog?" ploy and I would be visited by law enforcement.

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    1. Are you sure it wasn't just that you restarted your computer?

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    2. No, because I did that time and time again before I deleted files. It was definitely the files, or something that was IN one of them that slowed it down.

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    3. I don't know what's in my desktop, Old Sludgy, but I think it might be macaroni.

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  2. It used to be much more difficult in the old days. The pioneers used to have to write in code. I don't know what HTML stands for either. A couple of days ago I got a call on the landline from a man with an Indian accent, telling me his name was Sam and he was calling from BT (British Telecom) Open Reach. I told him he was not called Sam and he didn't work for BT. He said "F*** you" and I said "F*** you too". End of call.

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    1. Well, it was nice that you and 'Not Sam' exchanged pleasantries before ending your call. The niceties are so seldom observed these days. :D

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    2. Oh that Sam...he calls us quite often, usually announcing his call with "Good morning, Ma'am, I am here about your broadband which is not working. how are you?"
      An Indian friend taught me a rhyme in Hindi, but I think it might be rather rude so you might be wise to stick with eff off.

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    3. You should have beat him to the fu.

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  3. I had a landline call this week different from anything I'd ever had before. The voice told me that I am eligible for a second hernia surgery that would repair, and I quote, the "mess" the first surgery had made. I'm not a sound sleeper so I'm pretty sure that I've never had a first hernia surgery, awake or asleep.
    I've watched all of the IT Crowd and I now know how to fix computers. Have you tried turning it off and then on again? Works almost every time.

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    1. I can't tell you how many times I've tackled various problems for, like, an hour or two before it occurs to me to do just that. And it works.

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    2. I don’t know if your landline phone will do this, (Hell, I didn’t even know our’s would!) but we can choose a set of numbers to receive calls from. None others get through. If the landline rings, it’s family. And, when a website requires my phone number to take my money and send me a widget, I can give them the landline number. Works for now. It’s like trying to engineer your bird feeder to discourage squirrels.

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    3. I'm pretty sure I don't have a landline anymore. I haven't completely fished the wires out yet. I unplugged it for four years and didn't miss it but I was still reluctant to cut the cord. Then I realized that's classic hoarding mentality.

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    4. I have a landline for our alarm system, but never answer it unless I feel cheeky. Anyone I WANT to hear from gets my cell number. anyone who calls on the landline is a stranger. (Especially since I used an alias in the phone book to avoid paying extra for an unlisted number.) Anyone who asks for Ms. Manderly does not know my real name, and I can play with them with impunity.

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  4. One tiny nit to pick: I think that rather than "your all's" email addresses, it should be "all y'all's" email addresses. Speaking as a Yankee who's been living in the South for almost 50 years now...

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    1. Personally, I'm even okay with "all you bitches" e-mail addresses. 'Cause it's all just words. And in any case, i know that Murr posts on Wednesdays and Saturdays, so I don't need a reminder.

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    2. And you do know the bit about the person who turned around at "y'all" but wasn't the one being spoken to, and so the speaker said "If I'd meant 'All y'all' I'd've said 'All y'all."

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    3. Is it Pittsburghese or Applachainese to say "y'urn" instead of "y'all"?

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    4. Y’urn’s yeller. But you already knew that.

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    5. Pittsburghese is “yinz”

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    6. Reminds me of a joke that ends "Naw, that's her'n."

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    7. I remember that joke, heard it on The Blue Collar Comedy Tour.

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  5. I have no idea what feedburner is either, but I have most of my favourite blog addresses written down somewhere.

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    1. I never get advice out of these posts because my audience skews SO OLD.

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    2. AW!!! I resemble that remark.....

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    3. Hey, *I'm* SO OLD, but I just rewrote the RSS generator for my personal feeds. The aged still have some tricks left.

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  6. My apologies if I have already posted this - something to say when you answer a call from a suspected telemarketer - "Hi! You're on the air!"

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  7. I got that notification too. Given that only two people had subscribed to my blog that way, I just sent them email letting them know what was happening, and deleted the widget from the blog.

    "It's always something," as "they" say.

    One handy website for long-term bloggers, brokenlinkcheck.com, will scan the web address you give it (for free) and report links that don't work any more. All it takes is a reorganized or renamed website and suddenly I have a bunch of links that barf if clicked!

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