blogging Archives - Page 11 of 22

Almost on the BBC

International code 44 and all that on my message machine.

I had written this blog post on March 28 about the Adagio, attributed to Albinoni, which also appeared in my Times Union blog the same day. On the latter, I received this comment on April 4 at 7:30 a.m.:

Dear Roger,
I’m making a programme for BBC Radio 4, Soul Music about Albinoni’s Adagio. This series looks at those pieces of music that never fail to move us.
I would love to know more about your choir mom.
Please would you be kind enough to email me with your number so we might have a chat.
With many thanks
Lucy

ALSO, I had written this blog post on April 2 about Marvin Gaye, which again appeared in that day’s TU, and generated THIS comment, also on April 4, at 9:02 a.m.:

Hello Roger, Great article. I’m trying to get in touch with you for a radio programme I making- could you drop me a line please and I’ll explain more.
Milly

I wrote to both of them, letting them know that they had both contacted me, and where the posts had first appeared. Milly wrote back: “Yes I work with Lucy- sorry to trouble you twice! Thanks for getting back to me.” I replied, “I’m not ‘bothered’, just surprised!”

Then I received a telephone call from Lucy on April 6. International code 44 and all that on my message machine. Unfortunately, I was not home. I wrote her back the next day, but never heard back, I gather for time/logistical reasons.

I was only slightly disappointed, but then I thought: “I was considered by the BBC. Twice!”

Moreover, both the granddaughter and the daughter-in-law of Arlene Mahigian, my late choir mom, were touched by the piece.

So it’s all good.

Meta: the case of my missing blog

What was MUCH more upsetting was what would not be retrievable: about 170 items in some form of draft, including at least a couple dozen blog posts that were complete, but unpublished.

When I went to the dentist to get a cavity filled back on the morning of Wednesday, April 16, I knew I’d feel pretty crappy afterward, so I took off the whole day. That afternoon, I tried to get rid of an alarming amount of spam – 770 and growing every minute – caught in the Akismet, fortunately. Eventually, though, I couldn’t access my blog at all.

I had suffered an outage earlier in the month; the vendor said it was 18 minutes, but I believe it was longer. The NEW problem, though, was for what turned out to be 15 +/-2 hours. I knew at least a few people noticed that my ABC Wednesday link was not working.

This got me thinking: what if the server never came back up? I wasn’t particularly bothered by the loss of the items I had posted over the last nine years.

The first five years still exist at my old Blogger blog. My current blog exists on the Wayback machine, at least through February 8, 2014. Some of my recent blog posts I posted again on my Times Union blog. There would be loss, but it would be minimal.

What was MUCH more upsetting was what would not be retrievable: about 170 items in some form of draft, including at least a couple dozen blog posts that were complete, but unpublished. THOSE I could NOT get back.

This prompted me to restart my shadow blog at rogerowengreen.wordpress.com. I’d initiated it after I decided to give up my Blogger blog, but it wasn’t as pretty as I thought it’d be. Frankly, I didn’t think I could copy from a WordPress blog to another WP blog, or maybe that wasn’t an option five years ago. I figured out how to copy my entire rogerogreen.com blog to my rogerowengreen WP blog, despite the size maximum for such a transfer having been exceeded. Yay, me!

Now I compose in rogerowengreen WP and then copy it to my main rogerogreen blog. This is a bit of an annoyance, especially when I have to make corrections, but it isn’t as much a pain as trying to recreate a few dozen posts from scratch.

This also addresses the issue of what will happen to my blog when I die. As long as WordPress is allowing for free blogs, I guess it’ll reside there for whatever time we have before the electrical grid goes kablooey.

One last thing: I’m still generating a ton of spam in Akismet, several hundred every day. I used to look at the items in my spam folder when it was a dozen or two daily, but now it’s onerous. So if your comment didn’t make it to my blog – and it’s been years since I’ve blocked one – it probably got caught up in the electronic junkyard.

Blogging revolution #9

I try to let the blogging go, but then the heart will want what it wants.

Nine years of blogging, every day; nine trips around the sun. This is remarkable, or remarkably crazy; the line between the two is paper-thin. There were weeks this past year when I could write only one or two posts. It was almost never out of a lack of content ideas, but rather a lack of time. Then there’d be an outpouring, usually at 4 a.m., when my mind was swimming with the thoughts I wanted to write.

It’s rather like the pushmi-pullyu of Doctor Doolittle, described in Wikipedia as a “‘gazelle-unicorn cross’ which has two heads (one of each) at opposite ends of its body. When it tries to move, both heads try to go in opposite directions.” I just recalled that I had a little plastic pushmi-pullyu when I was in high school, for some obscure reason.

Sometimes I try to let the blogging go, but then the heart will want what it wants. I want/need to communicate, and I feel rather cranky when I have things I want to write but can’t seem to find the opportunity. So the subconscious wakes me in the middle of the night. Regular morning blogging is SO much better for my sleep patterns.

I’ll attempt one more year of daily blogging, and, as I noted last year, I’ll stop. I think I will. Maybe I’ll repost some things I wrote in my first year when no one was reading my blog anyway once or twice a week. Or not. We shall see. But stopping altogether is not an option, and in any case, that’s still 12 months away.

Oh, if you see a typo, feel free to mention it. There was a piece I wrote about the word tittynope last month. Even had a graphic of the word. And yet I typed tittymouse, undoubtedly affected by the word titmouse; fortunately, I caught it before it published. On the other hand, I might get all colloquial sometimes: “And I done so well in high school math” made sense to me, in the context.

Anyway, the obvious from the Beatles white album.

My first Facebook unfriend

I noted that I would be putting my Black History discussion up on this blog, NOT the Times Union newspaper blog. And someone asked me why. I said, “It’s just not a safe place.”

I expected that the first time I would bother to unfriend someone on Facebook would be because of some great, substantial, important issue. And it wasn’t. It was Because Facebook.

I wrote, on Facebook:

FACEBOOK wrote to me:
Why am I not seeing a movie?

If you aren’t seeing A Look Back movie when you visit facebook.com/lookback, it may be because you have not shared very many things on Facebook. Depending on how long you’ve been on Facebook and how much you’ve shared, you’ll see a movie, a collection of photos or a thank you card. (I have pics.) I am SO NOT disappointed.

And someone, who I friended, because she is a friend of a friend, wrote:

“And who gives a…”

It occurred to me, at least in Facebook World, maybe some people might have cared, since LOTS of people I knew and weren’t aware, were posting their “movies”, none of which I have actually seen yet. I wanted to explain why I had not. So the response didn’t anger me but annoyed me enough to zap her. It was just negative energy I didn’t want. I thought the CORRECT response to something on FB that was not of interest to one is to ignore it; I do it ALL THE TIME.

Whereas some I DO know passed along this nonsense about Obama having the flag lowered for Whitney Houston, but not for Shirley Temple. (In fact, Republican governor Chris Christie had the flags in New Jersey lowered for Whitney.) Because I had a relationship with him, I asked about it, and he only forwarded it because he was showing how ridiculous it was.
***
I gave my Black History Month presentation at church, based on my February 13 blog post, and I noted that I would be putting it up on this blog, NOT the Times Union newspaper blog. And someone asked me why. I said, “It’s just not a safe place.”

I would undoubtedly, get more comments there than here, but a LOT more argumentative comments. I don’t mind discussion, but I loathe rants. And conversations about race almost inevitably turn into rants, usually having nothing to do with the original topic. Or, in the alternative, a twisting of one’s words. No thanks.
***
Speaking of rants: OK, not really a rant, but this musician I follow on Facebook wrote:

Why do people take such pleasure in being ahead of me? That car that just HAS to nudge past me as we approach the Thruway tollbooth, that guy whose pace quickens as we both approach the door to Chipotle…are their lives so devoid of triumph that this registers as an accomplishment? Are they banking those eight saved seconds for a rainy day? Or is this some hardwired, ancient simian instinct, a fear that the monkey in front of them will get the last banana?

I so relate. I’ve noticed this when I’m trying to leave the bus and someone’s trying to push past me to get off first, not trying to catch a connecting bus.

The days of whine and hosers

This will be a breakfast blog* post, just for my friend Dan:

30 December 2013: Took the bus to work early so that I could get my monthly allergy shot and not miss much work. There was a woman on the bus who was complaining about everything, sitting near the front of the bus. She was fairly loud, and about every fifth word was a vulgarity, no exaggeration. Worse, there were two or three women in that section who were listening to every perceived slight or projected hassle with rapt attention. After I got off the bus, I was SO relieved. My working theory is that some people LIKE to listen to others complain – I suspect they also watch those argument-driven reality shows such as The Real Housewives of Peoria, or wherever – but I found her exhausting.

31 December 2013: We went an hour southwest to Oneonta, NY. Two years ago, for First Night, it was about 50F (10C) at 5 pm. Last year, it was 34F (1C). This time, it was 14F (-10C).

First, we went to the new home of my parents-in-law. I mean, it’s new to them, and it’s nice, though they are still in the midst of unpacking. Sometime after I got there, I tried to post my blog post on ABC Wednesday, but I couldn’t GET to my blog. But I didn’t have time to investigate.

The trip to the motel was an adventure, with this sudden snow squall popping up. Do you know how there’s a covering at motel entrances? We were getting pelted by snow and wind WHILE WE WERE UNDER THE COVERING. It probably looked cool to watch, if one weren’t IN it.

Finally, after the wife and I got to the motel, I called the blog service provider. The blog problem wasn’t on his end; it was the dumb blogger who failed to update the Akismet, and my blog was under attack from Chinese spam. 20 minutes later, it was all fixed. Thanks, Shawn, and sorry!

That evening, went to venues with The Daughter, while The Wife went with her mother, and her father was off on his own. Among the acts were these Indonesian dancers, a woman and two children, whose music was not loud enough in the large room, AND who competing with the fire eaters just outside.

There were also belly dancers, and I was impressed, not only by their skills, but by the fact they didn’t have perfect bodies but put themselves out there; only one you would call slim. One of the young woman in particular, who my wife had seen months earlier, had particular confidence and charm. If there were snarky remarks, I didn’t hear them.

1 January 2014 (very early): The Wife and I stayed at a hotel, went to sleep c. 11 pm. Around 4:30 a.m., some folks were pounding on a door down the hall, complaining in a too loud voice about the fact that they had been locked out of the room. This went on for at least ten minutes.

Then it came to me: the absolute perfect putdown for these clowns. “You know that resolution you made not to be an a**hole this year? Well youve already broken it!” These things NEVER come to me in the moment.

But then I thought, in my foggy, exhausted haze, “Do I want the very first thing I say in the new year to be cursing out some strangers?” Instead, I opened the door, and said, in the most polite voice I could muster, “Hey, there are people trying to sleep here!” The crew mumbled some apologies, and eventually, we went back to sleep.

2 January 2014: Back in Albany a day early in anticipation of a snowstorm, which came. Shoveled a couple of times. The landlord next door hasn’t provided his tenants with a shovel, so they are always borrowing ours.

Went to the grocery store, listening to someone talking joyfully about being fired from her job, and from her retelling, I could see why. Everything was THEIR fault. She didn’t even bother sitting through the exit interview: “Am I fired? Then I’m outta here!”

3 January 2014: Shoveled the walk for the third time in the morning, when it was a balmy-2F (-19C). Got to work, and my computer would not connect to the network, so I couldn’t use it at all. Apparently, I’m at least the third person in my office to experience this. But the guy who could fix the problem was on vacation. His assistance came over in the afternoon, and after a few hours got me into my own computer at about 3 pm. My wife had TOLD me to stay home…

*Dan claims Ramblin’ with Roger is a breakfast blog, one a person reads at breakfast. I initially thought he was suggesting that I write about what I had for breakfast – I seldom do – but now, when I have a bunch of little bits that don’t warrant individual posts, I refer to those as breakfast posts. Like this one.