spam – Retirementally Challenged

The theme for Terri’s Sunday Stills challenge this week is “Under Construction. It seems as good an excuse as any to dip my toes back into blogging after taking much of the summer off. Part of my absence was construction-related, but lazy summer days and lack of inspiration are mostly to blame. Although I have continued to enjoy reading other blogs, I couldn’t manage more than three posts of my own since mid-May.

Deck Construction

We actually did have a rather large construction project this summer, which took a lot of my time (full disclosure: it took much more of my husband’s time). Our 20-year-old deck was starting to show its age, so we decided—just when costs ramped up, and supply chains broke down—it was time to repair and re-surface it. The good news is that we found a nice young couple who wanted the old material, so we avoided sending it to the landfill. The bad news (besides cost and availability) is that the project was more work than expected (more full disclosure: it’s still not 100% done).

We are happy with the way it turned out, though, and hope it will last at least another 20 years (seeing as we’d be in our 80s then, I imagine that we will decide to ignore any flaws and grow old with it). In the meantime, we are enjoying our new deck and slowly forgetting the effort it took to build it.

Blog Construction

Even though I haven’t been writing many posts lately, I have made a few minor adjustments to my blog.

One that I should have done a while ago: after reading a head’s up on Hugh’s News and Views, I added some copyright verbiage at the end of my posts and made it a recurring block. I also plan to routinely watermark certain photos. I doubt if this will stop anyone determined to steal my words or images, but I hope it will stop some. I am not happy when I find what I’ve shared on my blog appearing elsewhere.

Another change was suggested by Terri when we had a blogger meet-up a few months ago. I believe that I “may” have been whining about all the spam comments my blog was getting. WordPress does a good job filtering them out, but I still look at each one before deleting to assure that a diamond hasn’t gotten swept up with the dregs. Her suggestion of turning off comments after a post is over 120 days old has helped immensely (thank you, Terri).

Travel Plan Construction

My husband and I are planning a road trip later this year and we are looking forward to getting away for more than a few days. Although our itinerary won’t take us anywhere we haven’t been before, what will be different is that we are driving our electric car. We’ve driven the EV on some mini-trips that have required one mid-point stop for re-charging, but this will be the first trip where charging will be part of the planning process.

We love our electric car, and it is perfect for our day-to-day driving needs, but its 260-mile range won’t get us to our destination on a single charge. Driving an EV on an extended trip will take a bit of planning but there are a lot of online tools and fast charging stations available, so we see it as adding to our adventure. Since there is an increase interest in electric cars—including, unfortunately, a lot of misinformation—I plan to share our experience after we return.

Thanks for the inspiration, Terri, it’s good to be posting again.

It started off innocently enough… I was minding my own business, reading the blogs that I follow and making my usual clever, pithy, and well-reasoned comments. Suddenly I noticed that my nuggets of brilliance were disappearing. I’d hit Post Comment and *POOF* they were gone. After trying over and over and watching my comments evaporate each time, I gave up and began to search for a solution.

At first, I thought that some of my comments were waiting moderation, but it was happening even on the blogs that I comment on regularly without trouble. Since it occurred on my iPad as well as my desktop PC, I was pretty sure my usual nemesis, Microsoft, wasn’t to blame. Now, here is where I start missing the perks of work: an IT department, and, if not that, at least having access to a team of internet savvy co-workers. Since retiring, I am my IT department.

I searched the googles with no luck. I explored the WordPress forums to no avail. Finally, I reached out to WordPress’s “Happiness Engineers,” hoping they could live up to the promise contained in their title. Fortunately, Chrissie, Happiness Engineer extraordinaire, came to my rescue and determined that, for some reason, my comments were being marked as spam. Why? she didn’t know, but now that I knew what was happening, hopefully, I could find a fix.

My next step, according to my new best friend Chrissie, was to contact Akismet, plead my case, and have them break me out of spam prison.

What is Akismet, do you ask? Well, I’m glad you asked…

Akismet, according to their website, is a service used by millions of websites. It filters out “hundreds of millions of spam comments from the web every day.”

That’s hundreds of millions of spam comments… and at least 20 of my non-spam comments.

After running a few tests and submitting my DNA, the court of Akismet finally determined that I was wrongly convicted and released me, albeit with a warning:

“Sometimes commenting quickly can mimic the behavior of a spambot, which leads to your comments being marked as spam. To help avoid this happening in the future, you may want to slow down the rate at which you are submitting comments.”

How I, a three-fingered typist at best, could have exceeded the comment speed limit, I have no idea, but I’ve paid my dues to society and have learned my lesson. Now that I’ve tasted freedom, I have no desire to return to spam prison.

By the way, lurking among the various Viagra ads, scammer come-ons, and nonsensical word salads in your spam folder may be one of my innocent comments waiting to be set free.

And, let my experience act as a warning: don’t exceed the comment speed limit least you find yourself thrown in the can.

Tag: spam

Constructive Musings

Doing Time in Spam Prison