HAVE A NICE DAY – Garry Armstrong

I was exiting our local supermarket, hoping I’d gotten everything on the list without any frivolous spending. I didn’t see the wet spot. In the blur of a second, I lost my balance, fell backward and cursed loudly. My reflexes are still Gyrene sharp so I braced my fall with my hands but still landed hard on my bony bum.

Embarrassing, irritating and painful!

I looked up as shoppers passed by me. I’m not sure if I was grinning (an automatic TV News reporter instinctive reflex) or wincing. I know I was still groaning and cursing my clumsiness.

A thirty-something woman stopped to observe my dilemma. She had big blonde hair, an Olympic-sized bosom, and a provocative smile. I was transfixed between my fall, efforts to get up and returning a steady gaze to the lovely passerby.

“Have a nice day, honey, ” she gushed in pseudo-Marilyn Monroe honey-dripped tones. She was quickly gone as I struggled to my feet.

Now, I was angry. It wasn’t the first time I’d undergone such an embarrassing public accident. What’s the matter with people these days? How did they get like this? I am living in a world I don’t recognize. Do you recognize it? Is this some bizarre parallel universe?

ZIPPITTY DOO DAH – Marilyn Armstrong

RDP Saturday – ZIP

Garry has a sweatshirt from the 2013 World Series Red Sox victory. It zips up the front. Last week, it stopped zipping.

I got it to work again, but I think it is on its final legs as a viable zipper. I suggested to Garry that maybe he should wear it open and not zip it. Meanwhile, I improved his mental position in this world by getting him a new 2018 Red Sox World Series Champion sweatshirt — which doesn’t even have a zipper. It’s a pullover.

The good news? The zipper will never wear out.

The bad news? He wears hearing apparatus and eyeglass and he has to remove everything before he puts on the sweatshirt. It looks really good on him and I’d show you a picture, but I forgot to take one. Next time, okay?

Zippers are great until they aren’t and the price you get charged for replacing a zipper often exceeds the price of the clothing in which you are replacing it.

They should use better zippers. Or reinvent zippers so they last longer and zip more smoothly. I mean, really, they are upgrading EVERYTHING else, whether we like it or not. How about fixing zippers?

Also, maybe pave the roads?

IMPOSE, THEN UNIMPOSE. MEANWHILE, GREED IS GOOD – Marilyn Armstrong

FOWC with Fandango — Impose

WordPress was trying to impose Gutenberg on this site. Aside from it being full of bugs (which they are trying to fix, but they should have fixed them before releasing the application!), it’s an excessively complicated format for a blog. Maybe for designing a book, but this isn’t a book.

I’m not writing a book. I’m blogging. Gutenberg did a lot of things to this site that left me unable to blog.

I will not bore you with a list of issues, including the inability to properly format a photograph or for that matter, FIND a photograph to format.

Eventually, I discovered that you could use the Plugins function to reset it to the Classic Editor. Then I discovered you can’t use the PlugIn function unless you are on a business plan. I’ve been Premium for six years. I don’t have a business and never will and on top of that, we’re on Social Security and there’s no money to pay $25 a month to blog.

So I wrote to them. You can still get quick results if you figure out where to go. To be fair, I also begged because I could probably figure out the “new plan” but I don’t WANT that plan and Garry and Ellin, our two “not very tech savvy” writers, would never figure it out.

Also, seriously, how complicated do you need to make a blogging text format app?

So to actually get help:

1 – Go to WordPress.com

2 – Click the blue “help” button on the bottom right. Send an email with your issue.

In less than an hour, they had reset me to the classic editor. You see, the problem is that — aside from the bugs and there are more of them than I can count (not all of which affected me, mind you, but which mostly affected users like me with very big blogs — in other words, long-timers) — I quite literally begged them to fix this. He fixed it and dumped Gutenberg and now I’m back to the editor I have always used.

I was ready to pull the plug. It changed all the fonts on my headings and changed the size and formats of the headings. It wouldn’t call up any of my graphics or allow me to use former posts. I tried changing templates, and it was even worse. Chaos.

So they fixed me and they did it fast! As far as I can tell, they are promising to leave classic editor available indefinitely. That’s what they are saying because, as it turns out, the new format is way above the needs of most bloggers. I’ve even got “Copy a Post” back.

Sometimes, if you grovel, you get what you want. But not allowing plugins for anyone but business users doesn’t bode well for where WordPress is heading. They are going all out for bigger money, even though they are already making a lot of money. Apparently, not quite enough.

The new motto for WordPress?