Sunday, May 31, 2015

The Sanctity of the Page Like and Reciprical Page Like Purity

Over at ChicagoNow, we periodically have these Lovefests where our Fearless Leader asks everyone to post their blog's url or Facebook page or twitter account for the purposes of adding more likes and help each other out.

As you can probably imagine, you get a lot of people posting their stuff, and not as many people reciprocating the love. Bigger problems in the world, I know.  #firstworldbloggerproblems.
 
I don't recall how it is worded every time, but the most recent thread specifically said "let's start a thread with our pages to add more likes and help each other out."

A few of us have had private discussions about this and I've confirmed that I'm not the only one to go out and Give-a-Like and not get a reciprocal like in return.  Again,  #firstworldbloggerproblems.

Some people, apparently believe in the purity and sanctity of the Page Like and only want to like content that interests them and not clog their feeds with a bunch of noise.  I get that, even though it is well established that Facebook and Zuckerberg determine what you see.  And if you really want, you can configure things not to appear in your feed although FB will change that six months later and you might have to do it again.

I also understand that you might post your info and wait to see if you gain any likes before you reciprocate.  I can see that someone who got burned once or twice would wait until they get some likes before dolling them out.

On the other hand, it takes a certain type of person to deliberately post a "hey like my page" comment without any intention of reciprocation.   If you're not willing to help your fellow blogger out by doing something that literally doesn't require getting off the sofa, what does that say about you? 

I've tried to look at this from the other side and I can only think that maybe they somehow feel that helping another blogger might be taking potential readership away from their own content?  I think this is called a zero-sum game, which blogging certainly isn't.

I should point out that this latest round brought 25 new likes to my page but perhaps only because I went to every page listed and wrote "Liked.  I would appreciate a reciprocal like" and included the link back to my page.  Public shaming?  Perhaps, but it worked.  Between that and a few personal notes to friends begging them to throw me a like, I'm closing in on 400, which is nothing in the grand scheme things.

Most everyone complied and one person even noted that they had already liked my page a long time ago.  Another person had to point out that I had already posted a similar message about a year ago.  I looked and saw that I had and while she said she would like back, she clearly didn't so I guess I removed my like.  Kinda petty on both our parts I suppose.

Update:  it has occurred to me, in hindsight, that it is possible the person liked my page as their page, which is something you can do logged in as your Facebook Fan Page instead of your normal account.  The thing is, this doesn't do the recipient any good.  Your like count doesn't increase nor does your internet presence expand, as far as I can tell.

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Garages and Metrosexuals

Before: a lot of wasted space
I'm way behind on posts here because of the twins.  I always envision writing posts for this blog when I'm WFH on Fridays, but every Friday the day gets away from me. 

I did get closer to finishing one of this year's major projects.  I said that I wanted to install some Proslat Slatwall across the barren south wall that is on the opposite side of my work area. Well Woot had a sale and so I took the plunge and ordered the 8X4 pieces.  I had to get the 4X4 pieces off Overstock.

It took a friend and me all afternoon to put them up.  The learning curve on these things is high and the directions lack a lot of instructions.  That's probably because there are many different ways you could implement these panels.  If you want to see more pictures, there is a gallery with a slightly different write-up here.


You always know how you should have done it after it is done and if I had to do this again, I would have insisted that we get  both cars out of the garage and lay all the piece down flat parallel to the wall they were going up.  Alas, what's done is done and it is a garage after all. 


I tried to line up other guy friends but alas everyone is busy in this day and age and no one really wants to spend their precious free time helping someone build their garage up.  I've heard rumors that guys use to do things like this in the past but I think the Sensitive Men for the 90s and the Metro-sexual Movement and other modern platforms have isolated guys from one another.



After: a lot of pretty wasted space (until I fill it with more things)


Saturday, May 30, 2015

Monthly Request to help increase my numbers

My apologies for being so behind on posts this month.  Between my day job at TopFive, my professional blog and managing my Facebook Page, not to mention Moose and Squirrel, creative time comes at a premium.

It's hard to manage all of this with any level of consistency and that isn't anything new.  If you click the Next Button at the top of this blog, you will encounter hundreds of abandoned blogs by people who have just given up.   Most of the giving up is because blogging is hard work.  I suspect a significant factor is the lack of audience interaction.

If you don't want me to give up, please following Mysteries of Life  on Facebook and/or Twitter you don't know what you're missing:



There's more to it than a bunch of links to posts. It's a little heavier on humor and lighter on stream of consciousness rambling compared to this site. And I'm obligated to try to boost traffic and build a base of readers and all that stuff. So do it.

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

The Ring has been found

Where the ring usually lives when not on my finger
 This morning I selected the pants I wore two weeks ago and it fell out of it.  Now I not only checked these pants pockets a hundred times, but all the pants pockets of all my clothes.  That the ring didn't fall out in the last two weeks leads me to come to the only logical conclusions it could be:

Either ghosts or time travel is involved.  Or perhaps writing about the ring cause the Cosmic Tumblers of the Universe to shift.  Imma gonna hedge my bets and say ghosts are still involved somehow.

Monday, May 18, 2015

I've lost my wedding ring

I'm so pissed off right now.  My wedding ring has been missing for five days and it's totally my fault. When I get home, the first thing I do is change out of my work clothes, and place my wedding ring on the wing of this Archangel Michael statue I was given as an RCIA present 15 years ago.

However, last Wednesday I decided to continue working on something in the garage.  I figured Nightingale would be home any minute so I might as well wait for her and help unload Moose & Squirrel from the car. 

I have a vague memory of removing my ring and putting it in my pocket because I was working with a drill.  However, that memory - of putting it in my pocket -- could just be a vestigial remnant of  some other memory since I do that all the time.  Yes I know that vestigial and remnant are synonyms and thus redundant.  That's just how pissed off I am: I'm breaking grammar rules!

[I don't break many grammar rules but over time language is updated. It evolves and changes, and we know this because none of us say thou in our daily speech. ]

Because we are currently so sleep deprived, it is getting harder to function.  That means some things just don't get written to hi memory in our brain.  Nightingale will ask "what time did we feed Moose & Squirrel last night" and I honestly cannot remember.  It might have been 2 am.  Or that could have been two days ago. 

So it is quite plausible that the memory of putting my ring in my pocket is days or weeks old.  Just an old memory file that was accessed when I asked my brain to search on "where is my ring'.

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

So this happened

But at least my drafts folder is getting cleaned up:  I'm way behind on posts here because of the twins.  I always envision writing posts for this blog when I'm WFH on Fridays but every Friday the day gets away from me.

If I'm to keep up with my goal of ten posts a month, then I'm gonna have to start hammering some out quickly.

I mentioned that Moose and Squirrel are essentially sleeping through the night. Except when one of them is sick and cannot breathe through their snot clogged nose.  Or one is teething.  Or if they suddenly decide that they didn't eat enough during the day when food was offered so they want a 3 am snack.

And sometimes even when the kids either sleep through the night or go back to sleep quickly, Nightingale or I don't and then we are miserable the next day.  Now imagine a week where this sleep deprivation goes on, interrupting your REM cycle and  zapping any semblance of energy you might have for the next day.

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Nightingale's Trail Blazer had been acting up for a long time and was pretty much on its last legs around Christmas time.  We had an emergency repair while in Grosse Pointe and we really hoped the car would survive until after we sold her condo.  No such luck.

Last month it went from bad to terrible, skipping worse altogether. So we decided to get a Chrysler Town and Country minivan.  We considered a Dodge Journey but Nightingale decided the sliding doors of a minivan trumped the coolness factor of a vehicle that wasn't a mom car.


I had a strange dream. I was working back at the No-Name Software Company and one of my bosses from TopFive was actually my boss there.  There was an incident and he or someone wanted me to get in trouble for it but because I did technically follow the proper procedures and had vetted/documented my part, there wasn't anything they could do.