I finally got around to going to Gmail to check my mail today and was informed by Google that my Google account had been disabled for TOS violations. Yes, I was a bit surprised by that, seeing as I send out about two emails a week, if that many, and I give no web site, human, or anything else any sort of access to my Gmail account.

In order to get my account back, I had to hand over my cell phone number to Google, which I have to say, I did not want to do. That was the ONLY option available for verifying it was my account. I either had to let them send me a text message or a voice mail to my cell phone. This actually annoyed me more than having my account disabled for who knows what reason. As tight as I am with my Gmail account, I am a thousand times tighter with my cell phone number, which Google now has its hands on. Booooooo.

Once I finally got back into my account, there were about a hundred “delivery failed” notices for emails I did not send. Spam for some online Canadian pharmacy … sent to everyone in my address book. Wonderful! That’s just what I needed, and I am sure anyone who’s email server didn’t block the offending email needed it too! ARGH! This wasn’t how I’d planned to spend my Sunday evening.

I don’t know how someone got the contents of my Gmail address book. Like I said, I don’t share it with any web sites that want it (including not at all with Facebook), and if someone somehow managed to figure out my password, they deserve some kudos. My passwords aren’t guessable, aren’t words, and tend to be LONG. Additionally, my password recovery question is one even my husband or Mom couldn’t answer. So I am at somewhat of a loss to determine how my address book was used to send out spam emails. From my point of view, it sort of feels like a breakdown of security on Google’s side of things.

Anyway … if you received a spam email from my Gmail account, it wasn’t me, but I’m sorry. I can’t tell if any actually got accepted by anyone’s email program, but looking through the delivery failure notices, it doesn’t look like any got through to anyone who might be reading this or keeping up with me in any other way. I don’t have all that many addresses in my address book, and it looks like every last one of them failed to be sent. All the same, if you did get one, I am sorry. No idea how it happened, no idea how to keep it from happening again. I guess we just move on, yes?

If anyone reading this did, in fact, GET one of these emails and still has it sitting in their spam box or trash bin, could you forward it to me? Might help me figure out what happened or at least from whence the emails were originally sent, and I would like to know.

And I am still not at all happy about having to give Google my cell phone number. Not happy at all.

I’d like to know how it is that Posterous is just now getting around to receiving and posting every photo post I have made since Friday. That was a little annoying to clean up, seeing as I had already posted them other ways, having given up on them ever getting to or being posted by Posterous. But who to blame? My phone service or Posterous?!

Grrr.

I’ve been experiencing issues with my web site hosting today, which is why you haven’t been seeing any new posts. Not that there’s been much to talk about anyway. I’m sure the problem will be sorted out shortly, and then maybe I can spend some time babbling.

Well, what do you know? The daily digest of my Tweets finally posted on my blog again. I only spent most of Sunday afternoon banging my head against my desk trying to solve some kind of weird PHP plugin incompatibility that started the day I upgraded the plugin. It had been causing the daily digest of my Tweets to not post to my blog. Heaven forbid anyone miss out on reading my Tweets.

I finally became so frustrated when the fix everyone said was working for them did not work for me, I downgraded the plugin to an older version. Of course, I couldn’t remember which one I had upgraded from, but I knew it was a pretty large version number leap. I picked one at random that stated the daily digest option had been removed from experimental status (it’s back in experimental status with the newest version). This has apparently solved my problem.

This is why I refuse to upgrade the plugin that crossposts my blog to Livejournal, for fear of some fatal error throwing a kink into the Just Orb Broadcasting System. The thought of having to crosspost manually like I used to do it makes me think about jumping in front of a bus. I’ll be testing the upgrade in my sandbox site before I just willy-nilly start hitting “upgrade automatically” buttons.

I only wish I hadn’t wasted most of a Sunday trying to fix the problem on the newest version. But I do get into problems, especially when I know it’s one that can be solved. This one will be solved by greater PHP minds than mine. I could have used the time more wisely continuing to clean up the templates for the site and contemplating a site redesign. Or, you know, coming up with more interesting things to post on my blog than plugin incompatibility woes.

Now that I have spent too much time working myself into a terribly grumpy mood by fighting a nasty clog in the bathroom sink (I have yet to win that war) and spent too much time sitting here waxing woeful over geeky web site stuff, I do believe I should go to bed. I have to buy a new plunger tomorrow … and some Dr Pepper.

Since I’m going to be on the road and away today and possibly tomorrow, I imagine there will be a good deal of Tweeting and other post-by-phone methods of boring you all to tears with the minutia of my existence. I don’t have my blog set up to post each Tweet (and the daily digest doesn’t seem to be working), so if you want to keep up with all my Twittering, you can find me at Twitter or read them in the sidebar at my web site. And they’ll all be posted at Facebook as well, if we are connected over there.

I’m not saying you have to be interested, because I have no idea if I will be interesting or not, but until I work out my Twitter communication problems, there’s a lot of 140 word babbling that hasn’t been getting to my web site in a particularly useful way. I’ve actually been doing a lot of Tweeting lately. I think I am becoming addicted!

More coffee is brewing, and then I guess I better plant my butt in the truck and get rolling. My mom and my dentist await my arrival in Fritztown, and I wouldn’t want to disappoint either of them by being late. Well, not too late. As far as my mom is concerned, I’m pretty certain she already thinks I’m late, because I’m not there yet.

I have done it. I have taken control of my online existence. I have fed the ouroboros his tail. The circle is completed. I am now able to post audio, video, photos, and text to Twitter, Facebook, Livejournal, and my own blog all at one go. No muss, no fuss, easy as I please from anywhere in the world with cell phone towers. Additionally, I can post to just some places or groups of places or filter what I post at those places. And no damn expensive data plan necessary!

Ever see the movie Hackers? When Cereal Killer is broadcasting on the hacker network and he says “I kinda feel like God” … yes, that is kinda how I feel right now.

Woo hoo!!! I have Posterous to thank for it. Great service, and I hope it lasts. Why, I think I’d even pay a little every month to use it, but for now, it’s FREE. How cool is that? I did have a few problems getting it all set up, but once I did, it all worked like a charm, as evidenced by the previously posted photo of Sasha that went absolutely everywhere at once. Everywhere … at once.

With all that said, it’s highly likely I will be terribly annoying today as I try things out with all my new god-like posting abilities. I doubt I will end up doing massive crossposting from my phone too much once the newness wears off, seeing as I am so infrequently out and about and wanting to post things, but now I freaking CAN, if the mood strikes. I really can’t tell you how excited I am about this. I’ve been trying to get this all worked out for ages.

In other news, I had to log into the T-Mobile web site to get some information, and that was when I noticed that our phone bill wasn’t lower as it was supposed to be when our new contract kicked in. Somehow, they are screwing us on the family plan messaging. I thought we had that straightened out, but now it looks like maybe they canceled our unlimited family messaging altogether while simultaneously charging us for unlimited messaging (in a really odd way). There isn’t much we can do about it until the next bill comes out and we finally see what the hell they have done. I expect there will be some kind of insane muddle involving speaking to idiots at customer service when all is said and done. I do love the T-Mobile service. It’s very reliable and works everywhere I need it to work, but their billing department seems to be staffed by monkeys on heroin.

And now I think I’ll have my second cup of coffee, a little breakfast, and make out the shopping list. Even though I slept very poorly last night and would really not go shopping today, we need some of those things that are total requirements for continued existence. I’ll just have to caffeinate myself as much as possible, get the shopping done as quickly as possible, and then … a nice nap (or two).

The only problem I have at the moment is that I haven’t figured out how to attach categories to the Posterous crossposts at LJ and my blog, but if it’s possible, I’m sure I’ll eventually figure out how.

This very morning, I have finally discovered how to send photos to the internet from my phone … without the expense of a ridiculous data plan. Neither my cell phone service nor my cell phone makes it easy to do, because I am certain they would much rather get more money out of me, but I knew it was possible, and I finally got it worked out. Yippee!

At the moment, I can get photos and text directly to Facebook, TwitPic, and Twitter. The last piece of the puzzle is getting the photos to crosspost to my blog, which will then (hopefully) also crosspost to all the places those posts go. There must be a way to accomplish it, and I bet I eventually figure out how to do it.

For now though, I am just tickled to be able to get photos on-the-go to the places I can. Very cool! My online empire continues to grow.

Today Twitter … tomorrow, the world!

Should you find, after upgrading your version of Wordpress, that attempting to publish a post results in it not publishing and a page being displayed which reads “your attempt to edit this post has failed” and asks you to try again, I have found a way to make that stop happening.

1. open the file post-new.php found in the wp-admin folder
2. find the line that says wp_enqueue_script(‘autosave’ ); and type // in front of it to turn it into a comment rather than a command
3. save the file and replace the old one on your ftp client

This disables the autosave of the posting page. Not having autosave on does mean running the slight risk that your browser will crash, the electricity will go out, or some other crisis will leave you having written a thousand words and not having a single one of them saved, but in my eyes, it’s worth that slight risk not to have to jump through hoops to get my posts to publish the moment I hit the publish button.

And if this is the only problem I am going to have after upgrading, I’d say it’s gone very well. I should have upgraded ages ago. The new backend is very nice!

Only one small moment of complete panic, but I think I just successfully upgraded my blog without anything breaking. Well, I guess we’ll find out for certain once I make this post!

Now all I have to do is get used to the entirely new interface on Wordpress. Looks nice, but considering how huge the jump was between the version I was using and the newest version, there are –to say the very least– massive amounts of changes to everything on the back end of my precious blog. I’m sure I’ll adapt.

Guess I’ll post this and see what explodes when I do so.

I am about to upgrade my Wordpress installation, so at any moment, my entire blog could freak out. Rest assured, I will panic and fix it by day’s end, if something should go horribly wrong.

The circle is not complete. The ouroboros can’t catch its tail.

There continues to be a chink in the continuity of my online empire.

I believe the creation of a secondary Twitter account is necessary. Because, you know, I use the one I have so very, very much.

::snort::

I’m going to be making some changes to the way all the various bits of my life on the internet are woven together. Nothing too major, I don’t think. I doubt any of you would even really notice, but if you did, I wouldn’t want you to think I didn’t like you if I stopped following you on one service or something like that. Because it just means I have other ways to communicate with you that work better for me. I’d like to avoid any unnecessary drama about who’s following who or befriending who and whatnot.

I promise that any changes I make to the way my online life and real life intersect will be for the better for everyone. Most people will likely be hearing more from me and not less, and it will be the things they want to hear. Now that can’t be a bad thing, can it? Who doesn’t need more Orb in their lives?! Better yet, I’ll probably end up hearing from many of you more often as well.

I just don’t want there to be any drama about it. OK? I promise, I’m not breaking up with any of you! We’re still BFF’s 4ever!

So you’ve been warned. If you discover you are bothered by the fact I have put you on a different filter or stopped reading your Tweets or taken you off my friends list (or whatever it is wherever it is), please contact me privately about it. I bet you will discover that you are still able to do so in more than one way. Instantaneously too, which means I’m not dissing anyone or angry at anyone or hating on anyone. I swear.

I wake up this morning to discover there are Americans who believe very strongly that Andrew Joseph Stack, the man who flew a plane into a building full of people in my city, is a hero. I don’t even have the words to describe my disgust at the moment.

Anyone reading these words I am typing right now who feels this guy was a hero, should remove my bookmark from their browser, unfriend me, or do whatever it takes to make sure they will not be able to read the words I am sure to come up with later in the day. I do not think Andrew Joseph Stack was a hero of any kind, and I am certain to be explaining why in great detail at some point in the near future. If he’s your vision of a proper American patriot, anything I have to say will only make you angry. Furthermore, if you believe that any American trying to kill other Americans is doing something heroic, I won’t be arguing with you. I will simply be removing you from my online existence by whatever means I can.

This announcement is going out to all locations where my words are carried, so everyone has now been warned and has the opportunity to take measures to avoid having to hear me denounce their oh-so-courageous “hero” heroism.

I haven’t announced this publicly yet, but I might as well. I joined Facebook a few months back. Yes, it’s true. I finally gave in and signed up. It eventually became impossible to avoid doing so.

I didn’t announce it publicly at the time, because I wasn’t sure how I would use Facebook, or if I would even use it at all. Though it has been suggested to me otherwise by a few brave souls, this was not some kind of attempt to snub the readers of my blog or avoid interacting with them. I just wanted to settle in and see what Facebook was about and how it might fit into my online life before I added a whole slew of friends and felt overwhelmed. I may be a total geek, but I do get overwhelmed when adopting new online services of the social networking variety.

It wasn’t even, as someone insisted, me trying to keep people from discovering my “real” name, which, I might add, is actually on my web site in several locations. I am not especially anonymous on the internet. Never have been. I just prefer to use my nickname, because more people call me Orb than call me Lora-Lee. The only time I use my “real” name is when I have to or around family,^† but I have never hidden from my real name or tried to keep it some dark secret. My real name was in the search engines before I was even online. It’d be impossible for me to hide from it without far too much effort on my part, and I am lazy about that kind of thing.^††

With that said, I did mean to announce my having joined Facebook over here sooner, but the holidays got in the way. I simply forgot that I hadn’t. So without further ado, if you have a Facebook account and want to add me as a friend, all you have to do is search for Lora-Lee Blalock and add me. Though I will mention that if it’s possible I will not recognize you by your real name or whatever name you use on Facebook, you might want to mention that in your friend request, and then give me time to adjust to knowing you by another name (just as I have had to adjust to seeing my real name associated with me, which was weird at first).

I have found I use Facebook quite a lot. In fact, it’s open in my browser just about all day, whether I am at my computer or not, and I post status updates a few times a day. Silly stuff I likely wouldn’t post over here to avoid cluttering my blog with short little posts of unimportance (the same reason I don’t Twitter much either – need to disconnect. The long posts of mundane unimportance are, I would imagine, annoying enough. Sometimes I post links there before I get around to posting them here (where I can babble endlessly about them), and sometimes those links never make it over here for lack of time (babbling endlessly does take some time). I also tend to post photos there that never make it here. Anyway, I’m active over there, and I am also easy to get in touch with there, seeing as I am there so much.

A couple things you need to know. I am hopelessly addicted to a few of the Facebook games. If game posts annoy you, I hope you have learned how to hide them on your feed. If not, ask and I will tell you how to do it. Also, I don’t rant over there, and I avoid political arguments. If anyone attempts to engage me in heavy political discussion at Facebook, I will simply not engage. I will ignore. Even I need a place to be more lighthearted and less fighty. It’s where I go to look at photos of my friends’ babies and have fun. I plan to keep it that way.

And finally, if you feel snubbed because I announced my having a Facebook account only to a select group of close friends before posting it on my blog publicly, I am genuinely sorry. No snub was intended. They were the people who were pestering me to get an account there, and to be honest, I never expected my existence over there to last long or amount to much. I was doing it to make them happy and to get them to stop pestering me on an almost daily basis. Well, I found I like it over there, and I do use it a lot, so here we are with the official public announcement of my Facebook existence.

How is it that I am one of the most “open book life” people I know, and my online “persona” being exactly how I am if you sat down to have coffee with me, I am constantly being accused of being manipulative or deceitful or in some other way NOT the same person online as I am offline. All I can say is that if you think my not announcing a Facebook account the moment I created it was somehow a planned event or me trying to hide something, well, you haven’t been reading my blog long enough or you just haven’t been paying attention. Also, it’s possible you may need to get a life. It’s a Facebook account, not some matter of national security.

1. † Though even my family doesn’t use my real name. No, they all call me Lori, except for Lin. I would not, under any circumstances, ever call me Lori to my face, unless you are elderly and are one of my direct blood relations. I can’t stand it. Really. I’m serious about this. Don’t even do it in jest. I do not respond well. [↩]
2. †† The easiest way to keep the facts of your life straight is to always tell the truth. I have always answered every question posed to me about myself, and I suck at being anonymous. I am not an anonymous sort of person. I am who I am, whether I am online or off. [↩]

Every two years when our cell phone contract comes due for renewal, there’s much excitement and angst about the new plans and phones. This year it looked like I might finally be able to send emails, which would mean being able to send photos and lengthier posts to my usual posting locations from anywhere on the planet, but my hopes and dreams of placing the last brick in my online empire have been squashed by T-Mobile and a limited budget.

Oh sure, the new unlimited family plans are great and cheaper, but if we want to do email from our phones, it’s going to cost $30 a phone a month. Um, yeah … not happening. In fact, that’s pretty damn ridiculous. Lin and I would be paying $60 a month for both our phones to send emails, and we don’t even pay that much for our broadband internet access at home.

So no posting things to my blog from my phone for at least two more years. Boo. Hiss. I guess now I can look at the free phones and pick out whatever I want whether it has email capability or not. Not that I need a new phone. I still love my old phone, but I’m not turning down a free phone. I rarely turn down anything someone wants to give me for nothing. I’ll just have a spare phone.

Still, I find myself excessively disappointed about still not being to post cell phone photos to the internet while on-the-go. I know I would do it a lot too, but $30 a month is a bit too much to pay for that ability. WAH!