I have a love/hate relationship with techies. In my experience, 60% of them are condescending twits who seem to relish making people feel as though they are idiots. Worse, about half of them, I’m convinced, don’t even know what they are talking about.
Then there are the good guys. One in my office helped me discover that the podcasts I had played were eating memory on my hard drive. He showed me where it was stored, and better, how to empty my recycle bin.
I don’t think of myself as particularly adept at technological stuff. The highlight of last year, from a pure techie viewpoint, when I was able to solve Ken Levine’s problem with Blogspot; see the comments.
Blogspot I’ve used so long that I have actually figured out some of its idiosyncrasies. For instance, when you get comment captcha letters and numbers that are unreadable, you can click on that circle near the box and get another set of letters and numbers. Often, letters too close together – I cannot tell the difference between mn and nm, e.g.
One of the ABC Wednesday team has noted difficulties going to some sites. I’ve noticed that I have much better luck visiting Blogspot blogs using Firefox or Google Plus, rather than Internet Explorer.
Facebook continues to confound me. One day, I got one of those notices of places I’ve supposedly been to recently. Two of them were in places in Illinois, in 2010 (that’s “recent”?) that I’ve never been; the last time I’ve been in Illinois in 2008.
I complained, on Facebook, about Facebook asking me how I was “feeling,” as though it really cared. Someone responded how wonderful FB was to keep in touch with others. That wasn’t what I was addressing; I was talking about that faux concern for my well-being.
***
A few tips for the clearly incompetent non-profits using social media.
There is a clash in WordPress 3.5, where the page-tag will affect the scheduled post results. So that YouTube video or similar item you’ll need to publish in real-time, rather than a schedule.
There was a story about a female child pornography suspect. The story didn’t make me laugh, but a comment string did.
Commenter: This seems a bit… not BoingBoing.
BoingBoing: I’ll let you know when we decide to take editorial direction from random guys on the internet.
Another online encounter that tickled me, also based on tragedy. Film critic Roger Ebert wrote about the death of a photographer killed in a vehicular accident while trying to stalk singer Justin Bieber. Ebert, surprisingly, referred to the young man as a paparazzi; I was the first of a few people who noted that paparazzi is actually the plural of paparazzo. Another commenter wrote: “Mr. Green, Poparazzi is gourmet popcorn popular in Texas. Would it then be grammatically correct to call a single kernel of their popped corn a poparazzo?”
🙂 The layer of “particularly creepy” for me: how many PEOPLE ask me how I’m feeling when they care as much as FB?
I know a tech guy that others think is condescending in my department. I don’t think he is at all.
I feel the same about most of the same topics you have written about Rog. Facebook is always telling me I have missed all this stuff, as if it cares!!! It is true after a while at blogger we learn some of the little tricks.
I would’ve put a higher percentage on the “condescending twits”, but, yeah, it’s a lot of them. And the whole facebook “greeting” is definitely weird, though I’m sure they consider it something like a writing prompt.