Martha's Ramblings

So why is that?  It’s because of all those external ad servers!  More all the time.  Sometimes there are so many ads on a site it’s hard to find any content.

I know folks need to pay the bills, but give me a break, enough already! First there is intelli-text with those irritating boxes that jump up and obscure what you want to see. It’s not just personal sites either. Even CNN uses intelli-text!

I read a lot of stuff online, but sometimes it gets frustrating when I have to wait for all those ad servers to finish loading.

Just a few that I have waited for today:
Downloading data from apimg.video.ap.org
Downloading data from core.videoegg.com
Downloading data from cdn.eyewonder.com
Downloading data from s0.2mdn.net
Downloading data from puma.vizu.com
Downloading data from ads.yldmgrimg.net

There were more, but they loaded so fast I couldn’t read them all.

Today I am waiting and waiting………Trying to view Environmental Graffiti! The bar at the bottom of my browser says ‘Waiting for dig.com’.  Why? I have no idea!
Now it says Transferring data from scribol.com…’ Waiting for zulu.tweetmeme.com… I just don’t have time for all this ‘Waiting for’, so I will pass on this today and just mark those feeds as read. maybe I will try again later, but probably not.

Martha

Does a mattress double its weight due to dust mites and their debris?  Folks that sell mattresses tell us it will. They go on to say it will double the weight in 8 years (or 10 depending on the ad).

I don’t think so! And I am not the only one not buying into this myth, either.

The Straight Dope sets us straight.

I didn’t really need someone to tell me it wasn’t true, but it’s nice someone did!

Marketing folks will latch onto any myth if they think it will help them sell something. Buyers beware!

Martha

Another example of why our schools are so far behind other countries.  The people running the show have no common sense as evidenced by this incident, Toy gun leads to Florida boy’s expulsion.

Read more of the idiotic ‘zero policies‘ enacted by the idiots running the schools.

Rules need to be enforced, but circumstances must always be considered. Is it any wonder our kids are not competing with the world?  They think and rightly so, the powers that govern their lives make no sense, so why should they care?

I read about this stuff in total amazement that we trust our children’s education and futures to such total stupidity.

Martha

This list could be really long, but I will try not to get too wordy. I have to admit, sometimes I do dumb things as well. But then doesn’t everyone?

One really dumb thing people to is park their expensive cars on the driveway because the garage is full of junk worth maybe a few hundred dollars. Dumb!

If a person drives 20 miles to save 3 cents on a gallon of gas, that’s dumb!

Another really dumb thing people do is buy stuff from spam emails.  If no one bought anything from spam, before long there wouldn’t be much spam. Of course there would still be some unwanted emails from Grouply and so-called social sites, but that is a drop in the bucket compared to the spam we get now.

A really dumb thing people do is sign up for those so-called social sites without knowing or understanding what those sites will do. The part I have a problem with is importing all those users’ contacts from their email programs. Yikes, what a spam collectors dream!

The latest dumb thing I did was delete the wrong file from my Documents.  It held all my email for Windows Live Mail. I am consoling myself with the fact that that I think Windows Live Mail is buggy anyway, and most of the emails were really not worth hanging onto. I was planning on uninstalling it anyway.

I think I will take it easy today so I won’t do anything dumb.

Martha

Never give your email password to one of these sites!  While you are signing up, read everything very carefully! Do NOT get in a hurry and just keep clicking ‘Next’ without reading! This can cause you to send ‘invitations’ to everyone in your address book and make a lot of folks really mad at you!

If you belong to a Yahoo Group and you give one of these sites the login and password to your email account,  this social network (including Facebook) will spam the Yahoo Group and maybe most of the members.  This kind of stuff will, of course, get you banned as most folks don’t like being spammed, especially the group owner/moderators.

You can join one of these groups without offering up your email security (password).  Most if not all have a ‘skip this’ option.

If you think about it, how do you know what those sites will do with your email password?  I know, most of them say they won’t store it.  That, my friends, may be a big fat lie!  If they don’t store it, then why do I keep getting reminders in my email that someone has invited me to join them on Facebook! They at least still have all those email addresses so they can spam everyone over and over again all the folks who don’t join them on Facebook!

Another thought; who’s to say someone who has access to that spammer’s delight of a humongous email database might decide to ‘cash in’ and sell that list?

So if you have foolishly given that social network the login and password so they can access  your address book, at least undo the damage and change the password to your email account. And while you are at it, make that password really hard to guess to prevent a scumbag from hacking your email account!

Martha

I resisted the urge to post a lot of stuff. Those times I wanted to berate folks for all of the terrible emails they send about politicians.  Most of them are very vitriolic and have little truth to them.

I resisted the urge to post what I think about sites like ‘Why Mommy is a Democrat’ or other such nonsense. (Damaging young children’s minds, well never mind.)

I wanted to write what I thought about politicians in general. (You probably feel the same way.) But I resisted the urge because I couldn’t say what I thought without using some too colorful words.

I resisted the urge to write my opinions of Obama, Palin and the current governor of Texas.

I wrote about what the media does for things in general, but I didn’t post it. Most folks probably don’t care anyway.

I didn’t post how I feel about emails with religious stuff.

Since I didn’t post all that stuff, I think by now folks may figure out, politics and religion are taboo subjects for me to post ON THIS BLOG.  I may make another blog so I can really vent!

Martha

Somewhere between Gmail and Outlook, an email vanished. I looked everywhere, but to no avail. Since I always check Gmail in the AM before I open Outlook, I did see the email so I know it was there.  It came yesterday into Gmail but it never came into my Outlook which stays open all day once I open it.

So where did it go?  All of the other messages received in Gmail downloaded into Outlook, but not this one. It’s not in the Inbox or the folder where it should have filtered. Not in the junk maik folder, the deleted folder or anywhere else. It just didn’t download.

So now I am wondering.  Did all of the extra stuff Google has added to Gmail ‘break’ something? Or is Outlook having hiccups?

So now I start to think, I have seen some replies to emails that I don’t recall seeing.  Hmm, I will check my Yahoo mail online.  (I have two email accounts that download mail into Outlook.) I know I turned the spam filter off, but just in case I looked. There were 41 legitimate emails in the Spam filter! Is Yahoo playing a ‘gotcha’ on me?  (I think Yahoo is broken.)

I reset the settings, so now I will check to see if more legitimate email goes to the spam filter.  I think too much is happening with Google and Yahoo, each wanting to be a ‘Social Network’, and stuff may be getting broken along the way.

Martha

All of this Social Networking stuff is totally beyond me.

OK, I guess it has it’s uses, like keeping up with family and friends that don’t have time (or the inclination) to communicate with everyone, but I don’t understand why I need to know about all of the strange creatures someone has found playing a game, or all of the other peculiar things that folks do with these games.  I certainly don’t need to know one of my friends is now friends with someone I never heard of.  I don’t need to know that one of my family members made a comment about one of those folks I never heard of. But I confess, I have a Facebook account.

And for the life of me I don’t understand why I should ‘follow’ some web site on Twitter or why I should want to be a ‘fan’ of some other website. I don’t ‘follow’ anyone and I certainly don’t want anyone ‘following’ me.  I think that used to be called stalking! I had a twitter account, but I cancelled it.

I keep getting invitations from some people I have never heard of, wanting me to be their ‘friend’ and join them on some weird website for some specific purpose like ‘studying’ or whatever. I left school along time ago, so what do I need to ‘study’ now?

My Gmail account wants me to ‘Buzz’.  What on earth for? My email is supposed to be private, so why does Gmail want me to share it with everyone? I don’t know everyone! (And I don’t want to, either!)  I still use Gmail, but I turned Buzz off.

Facebook wants me to let everyone in the world know what I post. Why? Does Facebook think I am so wonderful that everyone in the world is eagerly waiting for me to say something marvelous?  I am afraid they are all going to be very disappointed. Marvelous and me are not something that goes together.

There is a lot of other stuff that makes me think I may be an old fogey.  I don’t like cell phones!  I have one, but I don’t use it much.

I see folks everywhere with cell phones in hand. What are they always taking about?  What they had for breakfast?  Who knows, but when I am out in public I don’t care to be overheard taking to anyone.  I don’t want to hear them talking either, but there they are yakking away, oblivious to their surroundings and who might be listening.

The Old Fogey

You probably have had some of these programs.  Some but not all are free and everyone likes free.  Some free programs aren’t really free.  In order for them to install, you have to agree to some stuff you don’t want.  There may be an option to un-check it if you don’t want it, but some of them will install it anyway. I always look to see if it did install and a lot of times I have to uninstall the unwanted junk.

Foxit is bad about this.  I love the reader and I know the folks at Foxit need to make some money so I guess this is how they do it. Because it is so much better than Adobe I just have to watch and uninstall the stuff I don’t want.

I recently had an email program update. Incredimail is a good email program for folks that love the eye candy in email.  I use it just for testing an a test computer as a lot of folks sometimes have questions about it. When the update downloaded and before it installed, it wanted me to change my home page. I have no reason to make Incredimail’s site my home page so I ticked no and guess what, it changed it anyway. Naughty Incredimail!

I use Snagit, a wonderful screen capture program that is so much more than just a screen capture. Snagit isn’t free. But Snagit wants me to use Internet Explorer.  If there is an update, it takes me to their site always using IE.  I don’t use IE. I use Firefox. It really ticks me off when a browser opens that is not my default browser unless I choose to open it.

I don’t want every program on my computer to run at Startup.  But most times I don’t get to choose.  After the program installs I have to first check to see if there is a way to disable that by looking at ‘Options’ (if there are any) and usually there is no option to stop it loading at startup.  So I have to go to msconfig and disable the program from loading at start up there. Why every program writer seems to think I want my computer to be bogged down by programs running in the background, I don’t know.

There a lot more of these misbehaving programs out there, I am sure.

I’m not the only one who feels this way!  ‘Legal Software More Annoying then Most Viruses‘

Martha

Never, ever! This makes me want to jump through the screen and slap the perpetrator silly!

If I want my browser full screen, I, not anyone else, will make it full screen.

Extremely annoyed,

Martha