He who laughs last, thinks slowest.
If you're getting this, it means that you haven't changed your Feed yet. Don't forget to go here and bookmark and or subscribe.
I tried to put an image in for fun, but the editor crashed! (several times)
Come on TypePad, you've got to be kidding, this is a paid service, lift your game!!!
This is a slight update/edit of an earlier post. I just came here to do a bit of housekeeping and realised that it's over between us. So as of now, I've moved out of the blog I shared with TypePad and have moved in fulltime over at Wordpress' place. So don't forget to change your bookmarks, favourites and feeds.
Anyway, in an effort to make things a little easier, I'm giving you the link to update your feedreader (you don't have to delete my existing feed, I may post here occasionally but I won't duplicate the posts), so all you have to do is click on the picture.
If you don't have a feedreader (why the hell not?) and you just want to bookmark the new blog, just click on this picture and it will take you there, from there you can add to Bookmarks (Firefox), add to Favorites (Internet Explorer) or if you are a Mac person, do whatever it is you do...
I can't help but think that much of the time and effort that should have been spent on adequately testing the new editor has been wasted on making sure that the new GUI looks different to the previous version. In doing so, you've joined the ranks of Microsoft by deciding that production is the ultimate test environment.
There are numerous reasons why a new version of a product is released:
In the case of the new Editor that was recently implemented, NONE of these have been achieved, so I'm baffled as to why you would treat your loyal costumers so poorly by implementing such an obviously poorly tested piece of software!
For a start it takes up to a minute just to load the damn thing, i.e. just to get the screen up ( and that's on highspeed broadband) but once it's loaded, the fun really begins. We have this nice new font facility that allows us to use different fonts, except that whenever you use it, any previous font changes are lost. But at least you can change the colour of individual text, oh wait...that was the old editor, this one changes the colour of the whole fucking paragraph, and the only way to correct it is through the HTML editor.
Ah yes, the HTML editor. Why the fuck would you decide to use a new set of HTML codes when the standard ones work just fine? And while we're at it, did it take much effort to present the text in the HTML editor is a single run-on jumble of text and your arcane codes that's almost impossible to decipher? That really is some slick product design you've got there.
And I just love the way that including images in a post has been made that much more challenging by ensuring that whatever I have entered as the Default settings for my blog are erased every time I change screens, thereby giving me something to do while I think about what I write next. Oh, and when the icon for 'No Wrap' shows the text starting underneath the image, it would be nice if that was actually where it was placed, rather than starting it to the right of the image.
Including links isn't much better either, while the new entry popup looks a bit better, it would be handy if placement of the popup was such that the "Remove" and "Ok" buttons were actually visible on the screen instead of me having to scroll down to get them out from underneath the taskbar!
I'm quite sure that I'm not the only one experiencing these frustrating and needless obstacles to writing a post, except of course for those lucky enough not to have had this piece of shit inflicted upon them by some half assed team of developers. You should be ashamed of yourselves for implementing such a poorly tested piece of software.
And so, after spending twice to three times as long on a post, wrestling with an extremely slow, non intuitive, poorly implemented 'improved' editor, the final joke the developers have on us is when we try to exit. No matter how many times that I hit 'Save' I get a message box warning me that my changes have not been saved, and do I really want to leave the page [OK] [Cancel] ? So now I have to click a button on an erroneous error message just to get out.
In desperation I have tried to use Scribefire (which is an editor that actually does work), but again have been thwarted. While it still works with TP, and will still publish, it doesn't see the posts written by the new editor, (thanks a lot guys).
I've asked to be rolledback to the previous editor, but have been told that I am now on a different platform, and anything I've written since the rollout will be lost. Fine, it's been such a pain in the arse to actually write anything since the rollout, I won't lose that much data anyway because I haven't been able to write much.
And as if all this isn't galling enough, the responses I get from the helpdesk all tell me that they appreciate my patience during this period! WTF?! Are they being funny?? I lost patience a week ago. I'll tell you what I'd appreciate, I'D APPRECIATE FOR YOU TO EITHER GET THIS PIECE OF SHIT WORKING PROPERLY, OR GET RID OF IT!!!!!
Your Loyal Friend
Willowtree.
ps. I just got this AFTER I saved THIS post...
Update** Rather than just sit and stew about this, I decide to be pro-active. You might find this interesting.
I've always been one to keep a low profile, blend in with my surroundings, go unnoticed in a crowd. The reason for this is twofold, a) I'm basically a shy person who dreads attention (despite some of the things I've done), and b) my father who was neurotic drilled into me from the day I could walk, that I should be like the Shadow.
So what I wear is a bit of a dilemma for me here in the country, I could wear the uniform* of Akubra hat, Dryzabone coat, and Moleskin pants and RM Williams boots (if you don't believe me, check this out), or I could wear what I've always worn:- baseball cap, shorts, t-shirt and thongs (the footwear you dirty perverts!). So while I'm physically comfortable with my fashion choices, mentally it's another matter when you stick out like dog's balls on a cat.
Apart from the uniform costing three times the GDP (GNP for the Yanks out there) of a small nation, I've always felt uncomfortable dressing up as something I'm not (except when I go out with my tranny friends, that's different), so I just stick to my citified clothes and live with the stares of amazement. This means that the people who don't know me think I'm some sort of freak because I wear bizarre clothes (and yes, where I live 'bizarre clothes' means anything that isn't part of the uniform), and the people who do know me think I'm a freak because I let the dogs inside the house (which is considered even more bizarre than wearing strange clothes).
So it's been a bit of a struggle to fit in here in banjo county, but imagine my excitement today when I saw this on my way into town (it was at the end of my property)...
At last I'll be able to cement my place in rural society by alerting the owner that one of his calves has been hit by a car, thus allowing him to check his fences. So I swung by his place and told his wife (now, I don't do my good deeds for reward, but hey, if they want to give me stuff that's fine too). She said that she'd call him on his mobile (cell phone), and I continued on my way to do some shopping.
When I got home there was a message on my answering machine. It was Brett (the owner)
"Hey WT, next time I'm around your place I'll have to give you... [yes! score! here's comes the meat tray!]... a farmyard book. [WTF?!?! what's he talking about?] That's not a calf, that's a pig."
Well fuck me! Now I really feel like a country boy (not!), however in my defence, it was the same size as a calf and there are a bunch of calves in the paddock next to the road there.
It would have come from one of these as there are no pigs around my property (this picture was taken a couple of years ago, but funnily enough, they are parked directly across the road from where the pig was laying. click if for a better shot of the rigs that they use)...
* I'm serious, everyone wears this outfit, it feel like I'm walking through a school yard every time I go into town.
** This was a bit of a linkfest, sorry.
Now these pictures show some real class!!!
As you would be aware, pets, like people, have distinctive personalities. Here are two clips (both boring in the extreme, but at least they're really short) that illustrate the difference between Bentley and Belle.
There are two major differences between the dogs (we won't include Buddy because he is entirely different to the beagles):
I had some mango ice cream the other day that came in a bucket which required either an engineering degree, or access to Lara Croft (tomb raider) to get the damned thing open! In fact I almost gave up eating ice cream out of frustration before I even tasted the stuff. It has one of those lids that was almost impossible to see where join was, so obviously I was interested to see how the dogs would handle the problem. I must add that it was empty by the time I gave them their turn.
This first clip is of Bentley trying to get into the carton, it had been rinsed so there wasn't much of a scent. If I had put some dog biscuits in it he would have kept at it until he had the goodies, rather than just pushing it under the table and simply leaving it there.
I figured that he would go back to it in a while, and as long as he was interested in it, Belle would keep her distance (she's scared of him, with good reason). So I went to watch a bit of TV. I had only been on the couch for no more than a minute or two when Bentley showed up, so I thought I better go see how Belle was doing with it. This clip is what I found. I didn't see her actually open it, but I can assure you that there would have been no finesse involved.
Last night just as I was about to go to bed, I noticed that there was documentary series about the 60s that about to start, I was tired so I recorded it for viewing today. This afternoon, I remembered what I had done, so I rewound the tape and hit the play button. The tape started with some of that self promotion crap that you get on public television between shows, so I decided to make a cup of coffee rather than fast forward it.
As I was waiting for the jug to boil (hey, I'm an Aussie, we drink instant, deal with it) and generally putzing around the kitchen, I could hear the TV, but wasn't really paying attention to it. Slowly the white noise crept into my conscience when I could hear a Southern American accent telling me that he had ordered his forces to attack because of blah, blah, I tuned out again, blah, blah blah clear and present danger, followed by voice-over announcing that this was later proved to be a lie.
What I assumed to be a newsreader, delivering a news update, had caught my attention, "Ah-ha!" I thought with all the smugness of someone who is always right. "They finally nailed old Dubya! But How did they prove he was lying?" So I stopped what I was doing and turned to watch the TV. I was shocked, confused and somewhat dismayed to see that it was Lyndon Johnson addressing the nation with the news that he was escalating the Vietnam conflict....When will we learn.
Ha ha ha!
I'm sorry, I'm not laughing about the tragedy of war. As I was typing this, I was listening to the news, it seems that a court case in Sydney has just been declared a mis-trial after racking up costs of over five hundred thousand dollars becasue one of the defense lawyers noticed that a few of the jurors were writing their notes not only horizontally, but vertically as well. When she quietly snuck a look, she saw that they were all playing Sudoko! The judge asked the foreman about it (who was one of the ones playing) and she said that the testimony was boring, so after three weeks and 185 witnesses, the (drug trafficing) trial was declared a complete stuff up! Ha ha ha! You gotta love our respect for the law.
