Category: administrivia

Brief note: I’ve been tweaking content because some of this hasn’t been updated for a while. Still got work to do in that area but I like how it’s shaping up so far. Also fixed some things with the layout so that, if you’re here in the blog section, you don’t see some elements occurring twice. I prefer looking at websites from my laptop, but I know a lot of you are on phones, so I have to keep the phone layout in mind too. (When in doubt, I cue it up on my own phone to see how it looks.)

Also wanted to direct your attention to the new page in the menu. My father sent some money but it’s not going to last long, so I’m leaving that up til the crisis passes, or I move out of my current situation, or both.

Stress and I don’t mix well. I wind up more scatterbrained, which just makes the situation worse. I need to get back to work on my own personal infrastructure to maybe improve matters, but I wanted to peek in and let y’all know some of what’s going on.

For a long time, I have been following All Day I Dream About Food on Facebook. Suddenly, recently (maybe in the past month? not more than two months?), Carolyn blocked me. She had posted a recipe with Cajun sausage in it and I had commented on where to look for real Cajun sausage. I am not sure if that offended her or if she looked at my profile and decided I was a horrible person (I make no bones about finding the concept of “gender identity” to be complete bullshit and Carolyn’s Canadian, and we gender-criticals call that country “Tranada” for good reason), but it was weird either way because I had followed her for literal years and we’d always been friendly. I’ll never figure it out, I’m sure.

All I know is that when she blocked me from her page, it broke a whole lot of links in my Saved Links section on my Facebook. And then I couldn’t remove them, either. I would have had to delete the whole category, and I had a whole lot of other links in that category.

So my weirdo Internet OCD kicked in and I thought, Nope, fuck this, I want a bookmark section where I don’t have like a third of my stuff blocked by an idiot. Sorry Carolyn, but it was really stupid of you. Anyway, and although moderation on Facebook has gotten a good bit less insane since they got scared of Trump*, the risk that I will someday lose my account is never zero. The possibility that I might start over with a new account someday is also never zero. So if I’m going to continue to save links, I need to do it somewhere else. delicio.us is gone. A whole lot of other stuff is gone. A website I found that allegedly stores and organizes bookmarks ate several of my links without preamble. Surely there is a plugin that would do the job on WordPress.

Okay… not really. I found one, but… it sucks. So if you noticed I had a bookmarks page and that it was weird, that’s what that was. I was trying out the plugin and it failed me.

I did hit upon a solution, though, at least temporarily. And that is here. Have fun.

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*I hate Donald Trump, but when you are facing serious bullies and the only thing that scares them is a bigger bully, you celebrate whatever win you can get.

How to contact me by phone:

1. The number in the footer on this website is a Google Voice number. I think you can call it like a normal phone, but I’ve never used the app for a voice call, so I can’t promise I’ll be able to pick up timely. Or, I might be busy. It does happen.

2. Therefore, your best bet is to text me on that number.

3. If you have never texted me, or if you have not texted me since summer 2024, tell me who you are in your first text.

4. If you claim to be someone I know, be prepared to prove it. I think a few of you have changed phone numbers since 2021.

5. Be prepared to be ignored, blocked, and deleted if you can’t follow simple instructions. Or if you’re a dick.

Additional note: I am in the Pacific time zone of the United States (GMT -7 in summer; GMT -8 in winter). Plan accordingly.

So, I have a phone number down in the info at the bottom of this website’s layout. It is a Google Voice number, meaning it does not ring my phone, though I do get notifications whenever someone contacts it in some way. And I’ve had a voicemail and a text message in the past three days, which is weird; I go literal years with no notifications of any kind usually, other than random spam.

I suspect the voicemail was from someone who dialed a wrong number, because I’ve had this thing for months and it sounded like someone had just recently given the person the number they thought they were calling. Just in case, I’ve texted them back to let them know they dialed the wrong person. My luck it was a landline, though it doesn’t hurt to try. But I don’t know the other person’s circumstances, so I’m posting this here in case here is where they got the number from.

The main reason I have the number on my site at all is so that people who know me but haven’t kept up with my number can still contact me. Primarily it is there for my kids. I am not counting on the older one ever using it, but it’s possible the younger one might at some point. In any case, regardless of who it is, if they’re someone I know then they can’t say they had no way to reach me. This is particularly important as I have not been in a good place to acquire a post office box, though if I ever get around to that I’ll add the address to my contact info here as well.

I cannot fathom why anyone else would want to contact me by phone without so much as an email introduction first. But if you’re wanting me to respond to you, I’m going to need a bit more to go on than “hello.” Google Voice doesn’t seem to have caller ID apart from showing me the originating number. I know you can google phone numbers, but that doesn’t often produce any useful results.

It goes without saying that anyone who leaves me nasty messages will be blocked. That hasn’t happened so far, but you never know. I cannot say whether I will do the mature, sensible thing and pretend nothing happened just so you don’t get your kicks, but if I am immature and non-sensible, very likely I will post your phone number too. Hey, it could be a burner. But maybe it won’t be. You like it? Me too. Let’s not even go there.

I wouldn’t even bring this up as a possibility, but I’ve had too much weird shit happen to me in half a century. I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t try to cover all bases.

Speaking of which… and this is a shot so long it’d land me on Pluto. If you’re the big man, better be ready to prove it.

He wouldn’t. But if he did. Just saying.

Oops. I had left comments on. Got a spam comment, is the only way I caught it.

Sorted. Every post prior to this one will have a message on it after the main body of the post that says you have to be registered and logged in to comment, but you won’t be able to actually do that. From this post forward, I don’t think it’ll even have that message.

I used to love allowing comments and having people to talk to, and I would even hear from people I knew, but I was hypersensitive and trigger-happy and sooner or later someone would try to start an argument or a debate in my personal space and it would usually annoy me or piss me off. And then there was the occasional troll. So it’s just not something I want to deal with anymore.

Update on the Facebook thing. It’s more like a 90/10 on interactions and maybe 80/20 on looking at it at all.

Predictably, the person who often chats with me on Messenger is still doing so and only one other person has reached out whatsoever. One.

We do understand that friendship is a basic human need, right? I’m not very clear on the thought process here. I just know what it looks like. I’m not a mind-reader, y’all.

Well, okay though. Survival is even more basic a need than friendship. (Though I could argue that friendship aids survival.) I suppose I had best get to work on that and maybe the rest of you will catch up and maybe you won’t.

I ought to quit Facebook for its “friend” designation alone. Intellectually we know it isn’t REALLY “adding a friend,” but that language still automatically triggers unconscious expectations and it can gum up the emotional works if you’re not careful. Or maybe that’s just me.

I was serious. If you want to keep me around then you want to start reaching out to me. I’m done with the passive consumerism masquerading as “social interaction.” It is nothing of the sort.

Though this isn’t just about Facebook. When you can interact with people in person and they still don’t give a shit about you, that’s pretty demoralizing after a while.

Okay. Enough drama on the “administrivia” category. Also, I tweaked a couple things here at the site. Nothing important or affecting functionality. The end.

This is a sort of “administrivia” for both here and my social media.

I am on a sort of hiatus with Facebook. I would say it’s about a 95/5 split of staying off Facebook vs occasionally liking or commenting, respectively, and I’ve written no new posts since the one about my old house in Columbus.

If you go to my profile and notice you can see maybe two posts (not counting announcements that a profile or cover photo has been changed) but you can also see we’re still Facebook friends, you went on the Restricted list. If you don’t know what that is, google “Facebook friend restricted list.” We’re still Facebook friends because I still like you and want to keep you around. However, apparently neither of us is getting much out of the interaction and I am at a stage of debating next steps with myself. Likely I will leave the status quo in place for now; I may even add more people to Restricted status. It is not a compelling enough decision that I have to settle on it right now.

There is a difference between friends and friend lists. I need friends, not friend lists. One can have mutual benefit without having friendship. That is an incredibly lonely way to live. I don’t know what to do from here. I can’t even ask, because people can’t have these conversations without flying off the handle and assuming the worst.

So, one criterion I’ll likely refer to, if I even stay on Facebook (more on that in a minute), in order to decide who to keep around is who starts conversations with me. I now have Messenger installed on my laptop and running even when I don’t have Facebook up in my browser. I’ve had it on my phone for ages. If you actually want to talk to me and not just react to shit that you get notifications for like you are getting a hit of heroin, you know where I am.

Because you can say “well, we can’t really be friends if we don’t know one another that well yet” all you like, and I will still point out to you that there ain’t no fucking way we’re ever going to get to know one another if I only ever hear from you when you want that mutual benefit. I’m not a fucking appliance. Figure it out or fuck off.

If you feel I haven’t made enough of an effort in your direction, you certainly have the right to criticize me in the same vein. That’s fair. And at least then it would be a real interaction and not that stupid haha react I’d love to shove up Mark Zuckerberg’s left nostril sideways.

(Does a round shape have a “sideways”? Do I fucking care? Just wondering.)

Now. As to whether I stay on Facebook. I have no idea. I’ve toyed around with alternatives like getting back on MeWe, but no one would go with me. You’d rather complain about Facebook than leave Facebook. I’m on Spinster, but most of you wouldn’t go there. I’m on X, but I don’t use it much. (The current 0 tweets are because I deleted what little there was.) You know what? I’d rather just hang out with people. Can I hang out with people? Can I have a real life again finally? Please?

I won’t even get drunk and flash my tits. You should be glad. My biopsy scars do nothing for my personal aesthetics.