I miss the early days of blogging

The other day two separate discussions occurred in different areas of my life that made me long for the glory olden days of the Internet when blogs were just starting to become a thing.  Therefore I was really excited when the subject of this month’s  ChicagoNow Blogapalooza*was “write about a person, place or thing that you miss.”

* One hour each month when the bloggers of ChicagoNow blog about the same topic sent out at exactly 9:00 p.m. CT by Chicago Tribune Overlords ChicagoNow Community Managers.

Blogs started out as Weblogs or online journals.  I was late to blogging because the idea of putting my personal journal online seemed risky.  While I had switched from a handwritten journal to a computer file in the 90s, I didn’t see the point of going online.  Why would I want to share my intimate thoughts with strangers?  I didn’t realize that 1) it was an efficient way to store my story for posterity and 2) the internet is so big that putting your diary online is the equivalent of shouting your personal secrets at a rock concert at Soldier Field: only a few are going to even hear you let along pay attention.

As I was saying blogs started out as ramblings on people’s personal “home pages” until animals like Blogspot, WordPress and Typepad came along.  At the same time, people who wrote blogs figured out ways to make money from their blogs by allowing ads and getting a fuckton of pageviews.  This was essentially the splitting of the atom as far as the blogosphere was concerned.  Gradually the line between blogging and regular media started to blur.  What was once a fun way to end your evening suddenly became a second job.

Blogging is a lot of work.   Most of us are like SAHP, we don’t earn a salary but the rewards are immeasurable. ChicagoNow is kinda like Hogwarts for Bloggers.  ChicagoNow has given us a chance to hone our magic skills and flex our writing muscles while providing positive feedback, best practice advice and lots and lots of support. To that end, you have post, like, share, tweet, rinse and repeat.

Promoting your blog is almost if not more work than writing posts. Technically you don’t have to promote your blog and you certainly control the level of effort you put into it. However, I feel since ChicagoNow gave me a platform from which to post, the least I can do is attempt to bringing pageviews so that the Mothership Tribune Corp doesn’t kick us to the curb. [So please subscribe, share & like the fuck out of my blog!  Seriously, I’m asking for a like, not a kidney.]

It’s funny how when no one read my blogs I wrote all the time and wished for an audience.  Now that I have one, I sometimes find it hard to find energy to write.  I say energy because I have tons of ideas and topics I want to write about but often lack the energy to write a post.

That’s because I have other things that take up my time like my day job, projects around the house, and attempting to get back into marathon running shape.  Also, I’ve learned that hammering out 500+ words on a post is one thing, but it helps if there is a good picture to go along with and if I can through in a good SEO headline all the better.   Yuck, that is a lot of work and sometimes I’d rather not bother.

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Facebook Life Hack: An alternative to de-friending

Updated: When I started working on this post, it was as a compliment to my other Two for Tuesday post. However, after doing some diligent fact checking…okay I went to grab a screen capture and found that my information is now obsolete. Apparently Facebook changed things again!

Still the point in this post still stands. There are alternatives to simply unfriending/defriending someone just because they annoy you on Facebook. Note: the Facebook Action is properly called Unfriend, but it is referred to in social media jargon as de-friending.

People in the Facebook World tend to be reactionary. Over-reactionary in fact. Unless you only have single digit friends and they are clones of yourself, chances are one or more of your friends have a slightly different viewpoint, philosophy or Belief System on everything from key subjects (abortion, death penalty, politics, even sports team) to non-issues like whether ketchup belongs on a hotdog.

When you unfriend someone on Facebook this is what happens
1. That person does not appear on your Facebook friends list
2. You can see each other on Facebook search
3. You can still message each other
4. You can read the other person’s wall
5. You can still re-add each other as friends

Source:  http://sociolatte.com/difference-between-unfriend-and-block-on-facebook/

You probably never even realized that your friend feels differently than you because in real life, you don’t connect over your differences, you connect over common ground. You aren’t friends with Fred from your Softball League because you respect that his stance on government spending, while vastly different than yours, is well thought out and articulated. You’re friends because he can field a double play, picks up the first round and played wingman for you that time.

When you unfriend someone on Facebook this is what happens
1. That person does not appear on your Facebook friends list
2. You can see each other on Facebook search
3. You can still message each other
4. You can read the other person’s wall
5. You can still re-add each other as friends

Source:  http://sociolatte.com/difference-between-unfriend-and-block-on-facebook/

Then you find out that he doesn’t see something like the George Zimmerman Trial, Malaysian Flight MH17 or whatever current event is cluttering the news wires the same way you do. To each their own right? Except he also cannot seem to shut up about it either. If you defriend them on Facebook, you might regret it later when you see them In Real Life.

So if you want to not see rants from Uncle Racist or Cousin Tree Hugger or just not have your feeds cluttered with social political bullshit during the upcoming mid-term elections, you can hide the person from your feed.

I’m not sure if this can be done easily from a phone or tablet app so you might have to log into a good old fashioned browser to do this, but trust me: it’s worth it.

Step 1) click on your friend’s profile (or alternatively, hover your mouse over your friend’s profile)

Step 2) highlight Get Notifications

Step 3)  Choose the level that fits your needs: All Updates  |  Most Updates  | Only Important

Note:  as mentioned above, this refinement doesn’t work anymore.  Typical Facebook!  Back in the day, you could hover your mouse and choose See Less of/See More of a person.  Then they had Notification Settings.  Now you have to do an all or nothing.

I did find a workaround along with a few more great hacks at BuzzFeed, including a way to clean up your news feeds.  Click here while logged in to Facebook and you will be taken to a page full of friends you haven’t interacted with in a while. Click all of the ones you want to see less in your News Feed.

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Facebook Life Hack: How to handle those stupid Chain Posts

Has this ever happened to you? You are reading through your Facebook feed, sorting through all the cat pictures, memes and status updates that are much happier than the people are In Real Life when suddenly you see a strange or unusual status on a friend’s status. Without thinking you like or comment and the next thing you know, that friend PMs you to tell you you have to post something similar.

You know that by clicking “like” to my boobs post you entered into the 2014 Breast Cancer Awareness Campaign… If you haven’t already played, you have to pick one of the 14 statements, below and post to your status. Don’t be a spoil sport choose your poison, and change your status 1 – Damn diarrhea 2 – Just used my boobs to get out of a speeding ticket 3 – Anyone have a tampon, I’m out 4 – How do you get rid of foot fungus? 5 – Why is nobody around when I’m horny? 6 – No toilet paper goodbye socks! 7 – Someone offered me a job as a prostitute but I’m hesitant. 9 – I’ve decided 2 stop wearing underwear. 10 – It’s confirmed.. I’m going to be a daddy/mummy. 11 – I really don’t know how 2 tell anyone and I’m sick of hiding it I’m gay. 12 – Guess it was 2 good 2 b true I’m pregnant. 13 – Just won £900 on a scratch card 14 – I’ve just found out I’ve been cheated on for this past 5 months. Post with no explanations.

We’ve all been there. Now the obvious thing to do is de-friend them. But maybe they bring some value to table in some other way or it would make holiday dinners awkward and you never know when they might leave you something in their will.

You may already know this trick but in case you don’t, here’s how you comply without looking like an idiot to the rest of your Facebook feed (or any more of an idiot than you already are if you are…me):

Step 1) Copy and paste one of the status options as instructed.

Step 2) Before posting click drop-down where it says Public:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 3) click on Custom

Step 4) type in the name of the friend that asked you to do this insane chain post

Step 5) Post away.

Only that friend will see that status but to them it will appear as if you sent it to your entire feed.

You’re welcome!

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Dear Comcast: Please play nicely with others before the government makes you

By now you may have heard about the recording of Ryan Block, former Engadget editor and current executive at AOL, trying to cancel his Comcast service that has been making the rounds in the past few days. If not, please find 10 minutes to listen to this clip.

Sound cloud Comcast Recording.

Note: This recording picks up roughly 10 minutes into the call, whereby Block and his wife had already given reasons and explanations for canceling.

So! Last week my wife called to disconnect our service with Comcast after we switched to another provider (Astound). We were transferred to cancellations (aka “customer retention”).

The representative (name redacted) continued aggressively repeating his questions, despite the answers given, to the point where my wife became so visibly upset she handed me the phone. Overhearing the conversation, I knew this would not be very fun.

What I did not know is how oppressive this conversation would be. Within just a few minutes the representative had gotten so condescending and unhelpful I felt compelled to record the speakerphone conversation on my other phone.

… it was clear the only sufficient answer was “Okay, please don’t disconnect our service after all.”).

If you’ve ever called customer service you probably went through something like this. In fact, this story resonant much with cable subscribers because we have all been through this experience at one point or another. Every cable customer has their horror story, it’s almost a rite of passage like a bad trip to the DMV.

Our cable was acting up back in April. On certain stations, we could not get a clear signal when watching a desired program. The commercials came in fine however. We only have Comcast for Internet. But Comcast bundles their Internet with a basic cable plan and I had the rabbit ears on the other TV, so I checked the forums for the error message we were seeing on our screen (I’m a geek, I do things like that).

Essentially, we needed a new receiver. I went to the 10th Circle of Hell Local Comcast Center and swapped my old one for a new one. Unfortunately, this only temporarily solved the problem. Some days the receiver wouldn’t even turn on! I called and after providing my address, phone number and my wife’s social security number (blatant Identity Theft issue), the customer service rep told me that a service tech would have to come visit, but there would be no charge for this and she would document it in my account.

Guess what? I know you are surprised that we got charged for the visit. I called to complain and went through the same “security procedure” of providing my address, phone number and social security number (to be fair, only the last four digits). Now my wife is the one who opened the account so it is her social they want. Even though I’ve called dozens of times with her in the room and have provide it, I don’t have my wife’s SS# memorized. And I’ve asked and have been told by Comcast People that my SS# has been added to the account but it has not.

So the one time I call when my wife is not home, I had issues getting past the verification process. Let’s think about this for a minute. I provided my address and my phone number, which is on the account. I’m calling to complain about a charge for a service call. Yet the customer service rep is not empowered (or smart enough) to resolve my issue because I cannot provide a third piece of identification: my wife’s social security number.

I asked for a supervisor and the customer service representative refused to put me through to one because she could not verify my information. Let’s think about that for a minute Comcast! If I am a bad guy trying to hack my way into someone’s account, wouldn’t I really want to speak to a supervisor? Wouldn’t you want me to speak to a supervisor?

I finally looked up my account number and was able to bypass the social security issue — although she told me that I would have to go to a local Comcast Center to get my social security number added to the account. Now suddenly she could talk about the charge that I was complaining about. She said that it was a valid charge. I told her there should be some note in my file that I wasn’t to be charged and she said there wasn’t any such thing.

I asked to speak to a supervisor. Apparently they were all busy and/or unavailable. Let’s think about this Comcast: you have a Call Center with unavailable Supervisors. You need to fire some people and hire some more head count.

Once she realized that I wasn’t going to go away without talking to a Supervisor — and apparently they are not allowed to hang up on us — she said she would credit me half the amount of the service call. So I said,

“can you please send me an email stating that so that I have some proof since obviously the last Customer Service Rep told me something and I have no way to prove it.” She replied that she was unable to send me an email.

Seriously Comcast! I have to give this bitch my social security number but she cannot send me an email? Not even to the address you have for me on file with your fucking ISP!

So to get to the point of this post. Comcast, you suck. Big time. You deserve to have the government come in and audit your financial assets and over regulate what you can and cannot do.

Some more stories:

• Former Comcast employee explains why the retention agent was so aggressive
• And here.
• Why it is so hard to cancel.

Please, Please, Please share your Comcast Horror Story in the comments below! The more people that complain the more likely Comcast will finally throw us a bone. If you had a good experience with Comcast, I’d like to hear that too, it would give us some sense of hope.

 

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Day Care already starting to Disappoint and we aren’t even signed up yet

Everything is Awesome if you give us a $4K deposit

Among the many things we need to figure out with respect to having twins this fall —  that we are hopelessly, hilariously behind schedule on — is finding day care.  Good Day Care Centers are hard enough to get in with one child and when you have two, it naturally decreases the odds.  This is one of the many things we were supposed to start on much early than we have.  Apparently some people get on Day Care Wait Lists before they are even pregnant!

So my wife did some research and found a well rated place not too far from our home.  I work in the suburbs and my wife Nightingale works downtown at Northwestern Hospital.  This Day Care would work for both of us because either one of us could drop the brats off at day care on the way to work and whichever one of us had the better chance of getting through rush hour traffic could pick the little germy projectile-barfing poopsacks up after work.

We contacted them and asked if they had any openings and if they had a sibling discount.  They replied that they did have openings and asked if we wanted a tour, ignoring the question about sibling discounts (Yellow Flag #1).  In all fairness, they did include copy of their deposit policy which may or may not cover sibling discounts but obviously explained the best way to pay them.

We agreed to a tour and they offered last Friday but unfortunately we were going out of town so we asked if we could do it the next week.  Of course, that is no problem, how about Tuesday?  Tour scheduled.

Alas we received the following email roughly 24 hours before our scheduled tour.

Hi Nightingale!

Unfortunately, we filled one of the infants spots last night, and now currently only have one spot open for the time you need care.

If another spot opens, I will contact you right away to schedule a tour.

I’m sorry for the inconvenience!

Thank you,
Norma Jean
http://www.awesomechildcare.com

Naturally we are slightly second guessing ourselves just a tad.   Like what if if we somehow managed to delay our trip to Michigan to toured them Friday morning and put down the $4K required deposit to hold the spot for our future germy projectile-barfing poopsacks?

the point of this post isn’t to shame a day care center (hence my not identifying them by name).  Just want to make everyone aware that this is a potential issue that could crop up.

I guess this is more pragmatic then having us come for the tour and then tell us that they don’t have a spot, or waste the time on a tour on parents who most likely will end up somewhere else.  Still, maybe the Pollyanna in me feels like they could have been less harsh by offering us the option to tour the place anyway, on the off chance a spot opens up.  I’m guessing that people in this business run into this particular scenario all the time and it’s just the cost of doing business to them.  As long as the number of people needing Day Care is higher than the number of slots available, they can afford to turn customers away.
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HDBaseT: Ditch your media cords forever

Have you seen those commercials for ATT U-verse wireless receivers? For some reason, these annoy the heck out of me. Probably because I grew up in a big city with a fairly decent Over-the-air selection of tv channels so I’ve never had cable in my life*. The commercials also conveniently leave out that you still need a power source for the TV and presumably the receiver so you still might have some limitations where you can watch television. But there might be a way after all.

How great would it be if you could use a CAT5 cable to connect devices like TVs, Stereos, Roku, Xbot and PS3 instead of HDMI? That is what the HDBaseT standard is meant to do.

HDBaseT is a connectivity standard for whole-home and commercial distribution of uncompressed HD multimedia content. The cornerstone of HDBaseT technology is 5Play™, a feature set that converges uncompressed full HD digital video, audio,100BaseT Ethernet, power over cable and various control signals through a single LAN cable. source.

HDBaseT not only caries the transmission of uncompressed high-definition video and audio like HDMI but it also adds power, home networking, and some control signals all over a common cable with a standard connector. This could be the next connection technology you use to daisy chain your systems together. Well sign me up Sally!

How does it work?

“HDBaseT uses an asymmetric method, sending video, audio, Ethernet and controls from source to sink, but only 100Mb are transferred back (Ethernet and controls). Unlike conventional data communication which is a symmetrical application by nature, with required a bit error rate (BER) of at least 10 to the minus 12, the asymmetric nature of HDBaseT is based on an innovative DSP engine and an AFE (Application Front End) architecture.”

“A special line coding scheme was developed to provide a better transfer quality to some kinds of data (audio, controls, Ethernet) without the need to ‘pay’ the protecting overhead for the video content which consumes most of the bandwidth.”

HDBaseT uses a proprietary version of Pulse Amplitude Modulation (PAM) technology, where digital data is represented as a coding scheme using different levels of DC voltage at high rates. This enables the 5Play feature-set to be maintained over a single 100 m CAT cable, without the electrical characteristics of the wire affecting performance. Although HDBaseT uses the same coding technology as Ethernet and even has an Ethernet channel, its packet-based technology is different from the traditional Ethernet packets. HDBaseT simply relies on the same physical cabling which provides the inherent benefits of the cost-effective CAT infrastructure.

Life be a whole lot simpler if we could use just one type of cord for almost every electronic device we own. And if we were not limited to how we place things like furniture based on where an electric outlet was in our room. I think Cable Ready devices were meant to bring us in this direction but of course the cable companies won’t unscramble their signals because of piracy concerns. HDBaseT would be a step in the right direction especially for people who aren’t building a home from scratch. The only potential downside is this tidbit from the FAQ:

Q: Are all HDBaseT certified products compatible with any/other HDBT certified product?

A: That should be the case, and this is why the Alliance created the certification program. However, keep in mind that with extending signals, there might be interoperability issues that are not related to HDBaseT and were not meant to be identified as part of the certification program. HDBaseT is an important part of the solution, but it is part of the larger whole.

For example, Vendor A can design certain RS232 commands that work only with its own products. Vendor B uses different RS232 commands and in fact might interpret a “Power-on” command as a “Power-off” command. If you connect the two devices using HDBaseT, they will probably not work properly, just as but we all understand that the same issue will occur when the devices are connected without HDBaseT.

You will probably still need a really long extension cord to power up at least one of your devices if you decide you really want to watch the Super Bowl in the barn.  But at least that annoying kid from the commercial won’t be around.

[* I do have Comcast Cable for internet which comes with basic cable bundled into it.]

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Five baffling Twitter scenarios I will never understand

At the risk of sounding like one of those old people who doesn’t grasp the latest — hey you kids, get off my lawn — technology, I just don’t understand Twitter. When it first came on the scene, I didn’t understand why you wouldn’t just send a group text to all your friends. Then I realized that group SMS was just the beginning.  Twitter was designed for so much more.  Like most successful Next Big Things, has evolved over time and adapted much from its original iteration.

For instance, in the early days the protocol was to follow back anyone who followed you.  But since then that has changed from a almost permanent Reciprocal Follow to a more fleeting Courtesy Follow with a shelf life of a week or less.  A friend told me once that people will unfollow you if your don’t tweet often enough or aren’t interesting enough.  Talk about pressure. You get un-friended for posting too much on Facebook and un-followed for not tweeting enough on Twitter! Well this brings up two questions that were on my mind.

1. If you have double digit following, how do you know who isn’t tweeting enough?
2. Why would you follow me, and then unfollow me a week later?  It’s not like anything I tweet would infer that I am God’s gift to Twitter (that title is reserved for @JenRemauro.

So I asked those Great Oracles Google, Wikihow and my kid cousin. It turns out, like anything else, there are those who try to game the system. It seems the latest (or perhaps I’m just late to the gate) thing is to follow someone and then unfollow them for no reason at all a few weeks later so that you build up your followers while keeping your feeds clean because muting someone would be too much Level of Effort.

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Finally, I can only ask that you follow me on Twitter @icarus2013.  I will never un-follow you (not first anyway) nor will I use any of these twitter reindeer games.

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Thank you for reading and I hope you will comment below. Here’s the part where I beg for stuff because we get paid in likes, shares, re-tweets and feedback. Please also do any and all of the following:

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