Tag Humor

Try to remember

Michael 12 Comments

I often amaze myself at some of the things I remember and some of the things I forget. I reminded myself of the odd things I recall over the weekend while putting on a pair of walking shoes. I have always, or for at least  since I was 5 or 6, put both shoes on then tie both shoes. I know some people will don one shoe and tie it, then do the same with the other. (Can you actually “don” a shoe or does don imply something going over you rather than something you put yourself into? Hmm. I’ll look that up sometime and probably turn it into a blog post.) (Anyway…) I also always put the right shoe on first. I wonder if that’s because I’m left handed, but maybe not because I’m not exclusively left handed. I write, eat, and paint with my left hand but I play sports right handed. I can bat in baseball either left or right handed but it doesn’t much matter because I’m not that good at it from either side. My forte on the ball field was behind the plate, and there I wore my catcher’s mitt on my left hand and threw with my right. Things with a racket like tennis, ping pong, badminton, and probably pickle ball if I ever took that up, I play right handed, but I wonder like with a baseball bat, if I could handle a racket in either hand. I golf right handed but since I really don’t see the point of golf, that was very seldom and very long ago. Of course the piano is played with both hands so I fit right in there. Where was I again? Oh yes….

I often amaze myself at some of the things I remember and some of the things I forget. While putting on a pair of walking shoes I suddenly, without warning, reminded myself why I put both shoes on then tie them. Years and years and years and years and years ago (I am getting up there!) as I was putting on the right shoe and then tying it, then the doing the same with the left shoe, an older, wiser one told me I shouldn’t do it that way. I had never thought of it and by then I probably had no preference, being only 5 or 6 at the time. But the older brother of the boy across the street who I always played with cautioned us against such reckless dressing. I can still hear him. “What happens if you get halfway through and a fire starts right behind you. You’re going to run out of the building and into the street with just one shoe on. If you put both shoes on and then tie them, if you get halfway through when that fire starts and you run out of the building, you’ll have both shoes on. But you better stop to tie them as soon as you can or you might trip.” Now, he was all of 10, maybe 11 years old, twice as old as we were. How could we not heed advice like that for a lifetime. And I still don(?) both my shoes then tie them.

On the other hand, last week I was in the store in front of the light bulb display. Lightbulbs are getting very complicated. There are fluorescent, halogen, HD, LED, and very once in a very great while, an old fashioned incandescent. I needed to replace a bulb in a lamp that I would typically put a 60 watt bulb into. Bulbs today don’t come in those old standard wattages we learned as youngsters. 100 watt for reading, 25 for appliances, 5 watt for night lights, 60 for everything else except the three way bulbs which never seemed to work anyway. Now they are odd numbers like 17 and 23 watt when they’re even marked in wattages. More often, light bulbs now are labeled in something called lumens. What’s a lumen anyway? Spellcheck doesn’t even know from lumens! When that trend started a few years ago, I took the time to learn the equivalent desired luminosity for each typical lamp and its intended use. But now, standing in front of rows and rows of light bulbs, could I remember what number I needed in lumens? Nope. All I could hope for was that one of the cartons would say “60 watt equivalent.” Seeing none that were, I moved on to the next item on the list. Shoelaces.

Now, did those shoes have 3 or 4 holes?

Everyday be fun, fulfilling, and meaningful because there is fun, fulfillment, and meaning in everything we do! We know, and we said why we believe so in the most recent Uplift! Take a peek. It’s only a 3 minute read.

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“The End” is not as near as it once was

Michael 18 Comments

I’ve noticed a disturbing trend that’s been going on for years, and it’s mostly most disturbing (mostly) because I’ve not noticed is before, yet it’s really mostly out there, like more than it isn’t. What you asked? Go ahead and ask, I’ll wait. What? Oh I’m glad you asked. “The End” is missing. That practice that once was a staple on movie end title cards, and in books on their end pages of declaring the end as “The End” is ending, in fact, seems to have indeed ended, and nobody is in a hurry to bring it back.

It may seem a silly thing, in fact it most probably is a silly thing, but that “The End” wrapped things up neater than solving a locked room murder. It closed the book, as it was. It put the stamp of a job well done on a job well done. There was no mistaking when you got to the end that it was the end. Any cliffhangers, unanswered questions, or unresolved loose ends, were more often the result of your not having paid attention to some seemingly unimportant detail than it was to the author’s or screenwriter’s lack of imagination or meticulous care to continuity.

It seems to me, the disappearance of “The End” occurred quite simultaneously to both print and film media, not unlike the unexplained (although welcomed by me), change of printing copyright dates in Arabic numerals rather than Roman numerals. (If you’re intrigue by that, check out my post here. It doesn’t explain it but I do have fun talking about it!) (But back to “The End” which I’m sure you’re now hoping we are getting close to as far as this post is concerned.) I noticed, or I think I noticed, “The End”’s demise in books and at movies because I’ve been on an odd quest (yes, odd even for me) of attempting to read the source material of all the old movies I am so addicted to. I want to see if the observations I made last year about movies based in books in the early days of the Hayes Code were more universal than just those handful of stories i mentioned

Even the most casual of casual readers knows that I much prefer movies of the 1930s, 40, 50s, and in a pinch, very early 60s to any other dreck put out since, but that’s just my opinion. Why do I say “attempting to read” the sources of the screenplays of those early movies? Because the source material is not always 1)known, 2)published, or 3) available even if it is both 1) and 2). But in those cases I have found a source that 1), 2), and 3) and the material ended in “The End” (or the more exotic “Finis”), so did the film. Those that did not, neither did they, and they did not about the same time as movie credits expanded to included everybody who happened to be in Hollywood at the time of filming, perhaps to make up for the lost screen time and then some by not including “The End.”

And so I suppose I’m going to have to watch more and more 60s and maybe even 70s vintage films to see exactly when movie producers decided it was more important for us to know who drove the catering trucks than that the movie is over, now please go back to your real lives.

And now, please go back to your real lives.

-The End-

Bonus points if you can identify the movie from the end title card below.

Do you plan so much you never get around to doing? When you do, are you overly concerned about what others think about what you’ve done? The most recent Uplift! explores why it is better to just do, and then do some more! Approximate reading time – 2 minutes.

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A real job for Artificial Intelligence

Michael 7 Comments

A few months ago I came up with a few suggestions for how to work Artificial Intelligence into our lives. I have a few more, starting with making some sense of my WordPress subscriptions.

Most of the blog posts I read, I read in my email. For me it’s just easier as I can read a post, review the morning headlines, read a post, see which neighborhood was the scene of a shooting, read a post, check out the daily specials at Keurig, Lowe’s, and the local garden center, and then wrap up breakfast with a read of one more post. Last week I noticed my mailbox was quite thin on blog posts.

Given that it was Memorial Day week, the official day of remembering mattress sales, propane grill specials, and summer vacation deals, I thought a little more than nothing about it and assumed some of my favorite bloggers were taking a needed break. As the week went on, a few posts popped up, but the offerings were not even close to meager. A quick check on the WordPress Reader revealed some of the posts were there, but not in my mailbox, the couple that showed up in mailbox were not there in my Reader feed, and three lucky souls had their blogs in neither place. A quick back search through my subscriptions found them still active. Further investigation found I was no longer subscribed to many of the blogs and I began the arduous process of figuring out to which I was still subscribed, of those which was I still to receive notice, and of those was my contact information intact and correct.

So if you noticed some bizarre activity like me subscribing, unsubscribing, or maybe even doubly subscribing to your blogs, I offer my apologies while I continue to rebuild my subscription list.

And I offer, blog subscription maintenance as a fantastic job for some overachieving AI assistant.You know, maybe that’s the only one for this week.I mean, if it can figure out WordPress, it’s done plenty to earn my respect!

Can you be happy without being joyful? Can you be filled with joy and not be happy? The most recent Uplift! takes a closer look at these emotions.

Approximate reading time – 4 minutes

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Do it for the dog

Michael 12 Comments

This weekend I got to do something I haven’t done for probably close to 20 years. Stay alone – overnight – away from home – with a dog! [woof]

Throughout my adult life, there had always been some sort of animal living with us. (Considering some family members you could say that has been true for my entire life, but that’s a different post for a different day.) When the last dog who had my name on her license as owner went to that big off leash park in the sky, I was already battling Wegener’s and was having difficulty keeping a strong hand on the care part of the care and feeding of pets. I knew my limits, and pet owner was not within them.

Not so though for my daughter who continued the tradition and is and has been for many years the proud dog mom of a now maybe 6 or 7 year old pointer/husky/yeti. There have been times that I have been called upon to provide doggie day care services and have successfully and enjoyably fulfilled those duties, not to mention the meeting the daily expectations of proud grandpop to the grandpup. But when the daughter needs dog sitting of the extended overnight sort, I am not the one called into service. Not that I wouldn’t, I just couldn’t. Let’s say if I were to take the dog for his evening or morning stroll, and upon spotting a follow member of the canine community, or one of the more feisty neighborhood rabbits, and he so decided to pursue fellow canine or feisty rabbit, he would never be accused of being in violation of the leash laws, being firmly attached to a strong, appropriate length lead. It would nevertheless be a questionable defense as it would be very unlikely that the other end would still be firmly attached to my right hand.

Thus, when the daughter anticipates overnight travel (that doesn’t involve an airplane (he doesn’t do well much higher than ground level)) she considers pet friendly destinations or arranges alternate billeting for the pupster. For this occasion she was unable to secure either and I was called and asked if I felt up to just one night with the little fellow. “Of course I can” I replied and oh so nearly convincingly told myself I could do it. Given that she has a fenced in backyard and I don’t, and that the dog, although getting older by the day, still thinks of himself as young and energetic, it was decided I would visit him rather than he stay with me.

And that is how I found myself, Saturday morning, packing an overnight bag including laptop (with drafts for 2 articles and a speech all due within the next month) and heading out the door for the quarter mile walk to the daughter’s domicile. And straight into a pouring rain. A veritable downpour. A like “pair up the animals and ready the Ark” type rain. Concern for the environment be dammed, I headed straight up the driveway and plopped myself behind the wheel of my car for the short but soggy trip, and even that seemed not quite up to the challenge but I don’t own a boat. I felt right then that the next 36 hour period was going to be a mismatch. Unfortunately, when I could be accused of either hyperbole or understatement, I tend toward understating.

To make a long story short (I know, too late), he enjoyed our time together immensely! He was at his tail waggingest, face lickingest, muddy pawed jumpingest best behavior, which for him, are all the things that exhibit good behavior. He never tried to take advantage of an unsuspecting keeper and ate very little of my meals off my plate when his bowl was filled with yummy kibble (and only when I wasn’t watching), did not hide the television remote too well among his toys, and let me have the pillow in bed Saturday night which was only fair since he was using my legs as his. All in all he seemed to have enjoyed my company.

Me? Well I did get to unpack my laptop though never actually opened it, only had to go outside once to forcibly drag him back inside when he refused to come in after treeing some unsuspecting woodland creature, and discovered the desktop cup warmer I got my daughter as part of her Christmas stocking last year works really well. I guess you could say I seemed to have enjoyed his company too!

Well, that dog story was a good story of perseverance. Sort of. Here’s a better one in the most recent Uplift! We know we can do it, whatever the “it” may be, but someone else feels we can’t, but we will try anyway. Because the realty is we believe in ourselves. And reality is more important than feelings. Approximate reading time – 3 minutes

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Ode to a toaster oven

Michael 10 Comments

Let’s say you’re the not yet born offspring of parents who already have a young boy and girl. I know, I know. That’s a very traditional and somewhat old fashioned and arbitrary gender assignment, but stay with me for a while. You hear these parents discussing your future.

“We already have one of each. What are we going to do with another of either?”

“Maybe if we try hard, we can make it something else.”

“What else could there be?”

“Well, it’s the twentieth century. Surely there is room for a third option. Perhaps a blend.”

“Yes, yes perhaps so, and don’t call me Shirley.”

I imagine that is how the toaster oven was invented. (Okay, so I have a pretty vivid imagination. How do you think it came about?)

I can almost hear this conversation in the appliance aisle of any big box or discount department store. “Stay away from that shelf. We already have a toaster and an oven. Why would anybody want to clutter their counter with something that’s not quite either and not quite different?”

Well, I’m here to tell you, there are lots of reasons why. Warming croissants, reheating home made pot pies, roasting chicken breasts, even toasting bagels. All sorts of things too large for a toaster (which might work well for drying out a slice of bread) or too small to warrant turning in the oven (which works best as a storage space for large pots and pans that modern kitchen designers fail to make space for), and aren’t cold coffee (which the reheating of is the real and only reason to own a microwave oven).

I personally think the toaster oven is the unsung hero of kitchenism, and since this is my blog, I get to decide who are legitimate heroes and that kitchenism is a legitimate word. Really, when you think of all the money that goes into kitchens, why isn’t more spent on toaster ovens. Money? When you think of all the thinking that goes into kitchens, why isn’t more spent on toaster ovens.

Almost nobody thinks about toaster ovens. If you do an internet search for the “history of toaster ovens,” you will turn up a lot of responses for “toasters” but none for “toaster ovens.” On the other hand, if you just search “toaster ovens” you will get hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, and a couple more, models to buy. They will sell you it but not tell you about it. Seems rather mercenary to me.

Oh, the poor toaster oven gets less respect than Jack Roy. (Go ahead, look it up. I’ll wait.)

(Welcome back.)

The keys to successful and happy life are to concentrate on the little things, stay interested in what you love and sweat the small stuff! In the most recent Uplift! we explore way to do just that! (Approximate reading time – 2 minutes)

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A day in the life

Michael 14 Comments

Has anybody else been blogging long enough to remember when the “my day” posts were popular? A blogger, typically with pictures, would take his or her (or its) readers through a pictorial tour of a particular day. Typical or atypical, both were fair game. Typically, both were quite boring.

Oh look, here’s my chai tea to start the day. I haven’t had coffee since I found out about the fair trade laws and how few roasters comply.

Oh look, here are my clothes laid out for the day. They look so small laid out in the bed. It must be due to the 487 pound weight loss I recently experienced.

Oh look, here is my designer cockapoo. I would have preferred a schnoodle but the breeder said I have to wait at least 7 months and even then he couldn’t guarantee a champagne schnoodle, so little “Doodle,” the champagne cockapoo, came home with me. Doesn’t he look a dear when he has to go wee wee.

And so on and so on throughout the day.

I never considered doing a “my day” post. First of all, any one of my days, typical or atypical, would bore the most ardent reader. For example, let’s take a look at my last week.

Sunday, I went to breakfast with my daughter. Typically we do a Sunday lunch, one of us hosting and cooking. Because I was scheduled to move Wednesday, most of my kitchen was packed, but because I was going to be unavailable for much of Monday and Tuesday, I needed her help packing the last of the “all but the most last of the last minute” items, so it made more sense to eat early and eat close to me, then we’d work together until everything was packed as planned. So for Sunday, my photos would be of my eating a local diner special, cheesesteak omelet (which was very good!), and then putting stuff in cardboard boxes. Yawn.

Monday, I worked. Snapshot of me at the computer reviewing charts for 10 hours. Double yawn.

Tuesday, I waited through 1&3/4 of the 2 hour arrival window to meet the internet service provider technician at the new location who did the install of the lines and modem, then wait through the two hours for him actually to do the install. After that, I rushed to the old apartment to disassemble and pack the computer pieces. Yawn and a half.

Wednesday, moving day! The only part of the whole day that I remember is the movers hoisting the living room sofa up onto the patio, one fight up from ground, to take it through the patio door because it wouldn’t fit through any other door.  That would have made a good video had I known where my phone was while it was happening.

Thursday, because I was scheduled to work Friday and Saturday, priority was given to unpacking, re-assembling, and connecting the computer, and second priority to making the kitchen cookable and the bedroom sleepable.  My sister came to help and we could have gotten some action shots of her emptying boxes or me unthreading 135 feet of various cables. I did take time that evening to go to my Toastmasters club meeting. With all that was going on, why would I take off for two hours of prime unpacking time. Because they’re fun meetings with good people and because I deserved it!

Friday and Saturday were work days. See Monday.

Sunday, we were back to our normal Daddy Daughter Lunch dates with lunch prepared in my new kitchen and more unpacking by the two of use, assisted(?) by her dog, after. Maybe we could have gotten a decent picture of me making chicken enchiladas but mostly another yawn day.

So now you see why I never did a “my day” type of post. And if you’re still here after hearing about “my week,” hehe, my plan worked!

Have a good week!

Life lessons from hockey? Yes, hockey holds many lessons on how we can be better people. From courtesy and respect to people and time management, the most recent Uplift! explores how hockey could be the best life coach ever!

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I’ve been had

Michael 5 Comments

They’re out to get us!

In the course of 12 hours on Saturday I got 45 legitimate, expected emails. I thought that was a lot. That’s why I counted them. But there they were and there they were all with a reason for being there. They were headlines form the two local papers and headlines from the Associated Press and from Apple News and updates from two magazines I subscribe to. Three were from clubs or associations I belong to. There were five from Word Press, three new blogs from those I subscribed and two were stray “likes” to older posts of mine. A few were from stores I routinely order from, one was a delivery update on an order I am expecting. Oh yes, and there were even a handful from real people checking in. I had accounted for 45 emails that didn’t surprise me by being there.

Unfortunately during that 12 hour period, I had received a total of 141 emails. Sixty of those were shuttled to the Junk email box. That left 36. Those 36 were hanging out in my regular Inbox but weren’t expected to be there, nor were they from legitimate correspondents. Yes, they were spam. And not the tasty kind Hormel packs into those neat little tins. These were not only spam, they were phishing schemes designed to wheedle personal information to leverage my embarrassingly low financial accounts. Well, 28 of the 36 were phishing schemes. The other 8 were just annoying.

And just to make things a little more interesting, of the sixty emails that were sent to the junk folder, two were from my electric company following up on the power outages created by the storms during the previous week. Yes, the people who created the rules for our spam filters thought that I would be interested in “Real Russian women looking for love” but not in service updates from a legitimate public utility. [sigh]

Why do I bring this up now. Well, a couple of things happened that make this all a little more interesting. I don’t recall if I mentioned in a recent post but I am in the midst of a move, a personal relocation, a “pack everything you own into 80-100  itty bitty boxes and some strangers in a big truck will get them to your new abode” activity. One of the related activities is notify everybody who routinely sends you real mail – banks, insurance companies, magazine publishers, and such – of my new physical address. The last time I moved, all that sort of stuff had to be done in person or by phone. Now, many of them can be done on line. In the process of updating all the personal information profiles in all these sites are requests from them to add, confirm, or change any emails I’d want from them. From most I prefer no email correspondence. In fact, in most instances, I prefer no correspondence from them. Of course there were some companies I had not had a previous “internet connection” (tee her) and had to complete their profile including an email address along with a local street address, and all of them with the obligatory, “check here to confirm you have read and understand our 574 page statement of privacy practices.” Now I’m wondering if one of those that I so blithely clicked my way through was informing me they would be selling their mailing lists to the highest bidder. And maybe even the second and third highest bidders as consolation prizes.

Yeah, they’re out to get us, and I’ve been gotten.

Into everyone’s life rain falls. We can’t control what happens in life but we can control how we respond. That’s why in the most recent Uplift! We suggested that when life gives you lemons, make banana bread! Read about it here!

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Something I said?

Michael 9 Comments

I was speaking with a friend who was stuck for something he couldn’t remember. “Oh, you know. It was something you said, you must remember.” “Something I said?” “Yeah, something you said. Oh, we were at, umm, give me a minute, hmm hmm hmm,” and that point he started humming. Humming.  A tune, a little ditty, a song. It could have been my imagination stemming from his comment “something you said” added to the fact that I and just gotten out of the car and the David Benoit song, Something You Said, was playing on the radio, but I was certain that was the tune he was humming. Whatever it was, he had hummed his way to remembering. “Yeah, I got it. You said…” and off we went into our conversation, that to be honest, right now I don’t remember at all. Maybe I should start singing to myself and it will come to me.

All sorts of people, from the giants in cognitive sciences to everyday bloggers, have written about memory. There are tips and tricks to tackle, vitamin pills to pop, herbs to brew into faux teas, and almost none of them work…except for the one that works for you. I’ve heard that if you want to tell somebody something and you don’t remember what, go back into the room where you first thought of it and it will come to you. I’ve heard if you recreate the original environment in which something happened, it will comeback to you. Cook something from your past, look at pictures from your past, all great ideas except…how do you know what room to go back to if you don’t know what you want to remember? How will cooking Grandma’s almost famous pear butter help you remember where you put your insurance card and car registration the nice police officer just asked for? If you remember that you forgot something but you don’t remember what it is, how will you know what environment to recreate? You could be reliving your third date with the second person you dated in your first year of grad school when you should be soaking in a hot tub on the back patio with fireworks booming over the city just on the other side of those trees.

It is said scents are a powerful memory aid as is music, but I think those are more for abstract memories. You smell something and it reminds you of something you did or somewhere you went. A particular song jogs free a recollection of a specific event or a special, or even not so special person in your life’s past. But if you want to remember where you put the combination to the suitcase locks that you use maybe once a year, sniffing all the pineapples in the produce section isn’t going to loosen that bit of information, not even if you want the suitcase to pack for a week in Hawaii.

No, for that kind of memory jogger, I believe we’re stuck with the classic folk remedies and you might as well get to retracing those steps and rebuilding that scene. Actually, there is something to those methods, and to my friend’s humming interlude, that is far superior to the “fling everything in the air and see if you can spot what you’re looking for coming down” method of remembering – they all force you to calm your mind.

I’m no cognitive scientist so I’m likely wrong about this, but I don’t think it has anything to do with where you are, what you’re smelling, or what size kettle Grandma use for that pear butter. Think about it, when you retrace your steps. What are you doing? You are saying to you self, “Self, look around and see what seems special about here,” or, “okay, Grandma had 3 really big pots, now what color were they?” or, “why did I tie this string on my finger?” All of them are other ways of saying, “calm down and think. You can figure this out.” It doesn’t matter whether those old wives tales are true because they aren’t actually jogging your memory. But it matters that for you, there is a truism among them because it is the one that gets you to calm yourself and allow you mind to pull that memory into your consciousness.

So the next time you need to remember something, just tell yourself, “I can do this. Let me think calmly and rationally. After all, it was probably something I said.”

In the most recent  Uplift! we explore not just wanting to help but actually doing something to help, being passionate about being compassionate!

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https://youtu.be/BQE0pZbhG10

One thousand and then some

Michael 8 Comments

Okay everybody, this is, this really is, this absolutely is, the day we’ve been waiting for. This is the day I post RRSB #1001, as in one thousand and one posts, the start of a new millennium of mish mosh! Some how I have managed to publish one thousand versions of absolute nothingness, sometimes not even bad enough to be called drivel, but other times incredibly profound. And now, it’s time to start again

A thousand posts may not be much to those who post daily, or to those some people who post 2 or 3 or 4 times a day! But for me, what started out as twice a week and even that got to be too much so I dropped it to once a week missive, that is a long time. A long time that started on November 7, 2011.

Where were you in November 2011. I was working at a job I loved that I promised myself would be my last job, I would stay there forever. Well it was my last job and forever came less than 3 years later when health issues and the desire to live trumped the desire to work. I was with a semi-partner who I thought would be with me forever and likewise, forever came less than 3 years later, when health issues and her desire to have a life trumped my desire to just keep on living.

That was okay on both counts. Eleven and a half years later and I’m healthier than I had been, smarter than I had been, and certainly wiser than I had been. I discovered that I didn’t have to be working to be useful but found useful work anyway. I discovered a daughter I had never spent enough time with and that spending enough time didn’t mean all the time, but what we called back then “quality time.” I discovered a handful of friends who added more to my life than I could ever give back to them and that love was shown to me by the ones who would call every week or every day or twice a day, just to make sure I was doing okay, had everything I needed, or just to say, “Hi, now don’t go getting lonely.” I discovered a true love of my life who indeed will be with me forever, just not in the way I envisioned “with me” would happen. And I discovered people who love each other can reach out and touch each other without ever having to touch each other.

Among those one thousand posts were stories of frustration at the little things that shouldn’t be frustrating like people who can’t count back change when the cash register display isn’t there to tell them how much to give back. There also were stories of motivation and how everything I ever knew about how to be a gentleman I learn from hockey. There were those of inspiration and how people would rally behind me in undoubtedly my time of greatest need and although she wouldn’t give me the shirt of her back, she would give me her kidney. There were stories of silliness like how the happiest place on earth is a dollar store. There were predictions of what people would do when (or at that time, if) the pandemic ended. There were moments of absolute terror when I revealed that I believe in miracles not knowing how it would be taken, then of absolutely relief that I could reveal that I in miracles and I don’t care how it was taken because I had to say it and I said it for me. And there were even tales of true wisdom when I posited if you’re willing to say you love pizza, what’s to stop you from telling your friends you love them? (And yes, there were a lot about that groundhog, too.)

What will I do for my second thousand posts. Well, for starters, I’ll have at least one recalling the first thousand. After that, stick around for a few years and we’ll discover them together.

And that’s what I think. How about you?  

It takes work to grow and protect friendships from falling apart. In the most recent Uplift! we suggest three steps to maintaining and growing friendships.

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As I Like It

Michael 11 Comments

Guess what? Today is not the day we’ve all been waiting for. Maybe next week.

Lately I’ve had a lot of random old posts garnering new “likes” which is nice that people find something in an older blog post that still generates a smile today, but is also a little disconcerting because I don’t think there are real people behind all of those thumbs ups. Why would I question their validity or even reality you reasonably inquire? Well…

I seem to get these random “likes” in waves. Someone (or perhaps “someone”) will like a post from 2017 and within a week, 20 other people (or maybe “people”) have liked the same post. It is possible the “someone” made mention of that post in his/her/their/its/one’s blog and all the “people” who follow him/her/them/it/one all rushed over, read it, and liked it just as well and wanted to make their (whew!) own acknowledgment of likedness. (No, that’s not a typo.) Then the following week, a post from 2020 suddenly captures the attention of a dozen random readers (or “readers”).

No sooner do the “likes” start popping up that new “followers” hop on board the RRSB bandwagon. Of course they could be real people. If they are, they really should reconsider their blog name. Perhaps they are just trolling for followers of their own and forgive me questioning the sincerity of Icangetyoudiscounttraveldealsdotcom, but really, he/she/they/it/one can do better than that!

Please know that I have nothing against people liking my posts. “People” liking them is another thing. I’d rather have 2 people like a post than 22 “people” liking it. Nor do I scoff at followers. I can use all the followers I can get. Tracking followers isn’t as easy as one might think. According to WordPress, my blog has 938 followers but my average visitor rate is 121 views. My blog posts are distributed in their entirety in the email blasts that accompany the online publication, so an email recipient can read the entire post and never enter the blog site, thus not be counted among the readers. I doubt that means 817 people are reading this particular blog in their emails every week. In fact, I know it doesn’t. The follower count never goes down. People unsubscribe, leave the platform, mark the emails as ‘junk,’ or otherwise give up on reading blogs – in general or mine specifically [sniff]. When that happens, it happens, but it isn’t reflected in your followers. This blog has been running for 7&½ years. Over that time, subscribers have given up on it but who knows who or how many.

If tracking followers is difficult, tracking “likes” should not be. People read a post, their like it, the click on “like.” Occasionally they click on “comment” and, umm, comment on it. I can pretty much be sure those are real people. Advancements in AI notwithstanding. And typically within a week, everybody who is going to read a post and either “like” or “comment” on it, or not, will have done so. But then every now and then, something strange happens in the world where posts never go to die. Are there really random people who genuinely liked “Remotely Technological” from August 2018?Perhaps, but 27 random people?

Sounds more like “people” to me.

Although our days are finite, they offer us infinite opportunities. Even when you feel there aren’t enough hours in the day, there is always enough time for what’s important. Ask any turtle. Better still, read about it in the latest Uplift!

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