Category: Mercury Retrograde

Tech rant

The Grass is not Always Greener – #Tech Woes – From #Rogers to #BellCanada and Back

Published on by dgkaye94 Comments

I think this may be a rant. But after the day I had Monday with more technical madness in the midst of mad mercury retrograde, I should have known better than to book such a major move-over in this phase of madness.

After all the problems I’ve had with Rogers, I’d been promising myself to move over to Bell. After spending a few hours with a Bell rep, they finally put together a satisfactory package for me for all my services. The install date was this past Monday.

An installer, minus a personality, showed up. He had little interest in my questions and made an electrical room out of my kitchen without explanation, didn’t make a new box in a more appropriate area to put the wifi and the rest of the wiring mess, set up TVs that didn’t have my programs I ordered and no idea where to even look with over 1500 channels, told me ‘they’re there’, didn’t test my landline, finally just walked out without saying he was leaving, and no info, contract number, anything. By this time, he’d been there 4 hours – minus the 2 hours he disappeared somewhere.

I then proceeded to call Bell and tell them how horrid my experience was, no TV working, and they asked if my ‘new’ phone number was working? What?????????? I didn’t order a new phone number, they were supposed to port over the old number – again, terrible service. I was screaming at this point telling them I want their shit out of my home and I’m going back to Rogers, and then after 2 hours with nonsensical people who clearly don’t know their jobs. I hung up on someone.

I immediately dialed Rogers. I had to make sure they didn’t put through the cancel order, and they gratefully, hadn’t yet. I rehooked up my Roger’s equipment – TV, Wifi, landline and told them my grief, adding that I’d already added the Bell Sim card to my mobile, but I wanted to come back to Rogers if they could match the Bell price I got. They matched it minus 5 more dollars, plus more gigs and unlimited data and are sending me a new Rogers Sim card tomorrow.

I think I lost some (more) hair over this event that finally finished after 11pm. I missed lunch and dinner, took a Valium, and finally passed out reading. Needless to say, I will put up with the outages more than I can put up with incompetent people. In fact, I noticed, my last Roger’s Bill was $50 cheaper than the regular bill. Turns out that was a credit for the July outage debacle. As my husband would say, “It’s better than getting kicked in the ass with a frozen boot.”

©DGKaye 2022

Mercury retrograde

Mercury Retrograde Begins – Again!

Published on by dgkaye66 Comments

I have written about the planets and how Mercury Retrograde wreaks havoc in our lives before, particularly affecting communications, plans, relationships and more. It’s the time when Murphy’s Law kicks in – when anything that can go wrong, will go wrong as it emerges its ugly head and comes into effect. Well, welcome to this new cycle of trouble-making Mercury, which has arrived in full force.

Mercury comes to us approximately three to four times a year when it appears. It begins to appear as though it’s going backwards when orbiting the sun. It usually lasts for about three weeks, with a couple of add on days for good measure – three to four days before it begins, and the same after, known as the ‘shadow’ period. This year we are ‘gifted’ with four retrogrades – hang on to your hats! Well, it began yesterday and hasn’t wasted a moment of bestowing its gifts in my life already. You can read here about this retrograde and how it will affect you and your astrological sign. But whether or not it comes in your sign, just know, it really doesn’t spare anyone in some way or another. It officially begins today, but almost everyone I know has had a taste of it already this week.

Let me start with my awaking to a feeling of impending doom yesterday. I awoke with that feeling, turned on the TV and found the breaking news that the Queen was dying. I began writing a post that my insides were begging me to write about our beloved Queen, and within two hours later, she passed.

As I was having my own personal mourning period over the loss and talking to a friend on the phone, my internet and landline died too. I ran to my cell phone to try and call back the friend who I got disconnected from and found NO CELL SERVICE. Yes! It wasn’t the power, but AGAINNNNNNNNNNNNN Rogers network, which I only recently wrote about the huge communications outage with Rogers – Canada wide! I vowed to change over to Bell Media, and as procrastinating as I am, have not yet managed to get to that part. Well here was a good kick in the ass to remind me to GET RID OF ROGERS!

As though that weren’t enough, I’d yet to get a chance to call my bestie in England as I’d missed her call, and it came in just after the Queen passed. I then found another message I missed about a very good friend of mine and my husband’s being back in hospital again with his chronic breathing issues – courtesy of him catching Covid in early 2020, which has taken him to several hospital visits ever since. He suffers asthma and the Covid gave him many complications with it afterward. I then discovered another missed message from my friend I made in Mexico, Shelley, who I recently spent a week visiting her home about two hours east of where I live. Her and her husband had other friends over from Toronto this past Labor Day weekend and and were hit with their friends in their car by a suicidal drunk driver and almost killed.

I then proceeded to get dressed to get out and find some wifi again and in the process did my daily routine of stepping on the bathroom scale before I got dressed, and somehow managed to nick the corner of the scale on a wall while placing it back. And the scale died too. This retrograde looks like it’s going to be a doozy for me and some of the people in my life and it’s only officially day one.

One thing I’ve learned in life is to NEVER say, ‘What else can go wrong?’ Because I feel like that question invites an answer. So thanks for letting me vent. And please be careful and diligent during this VERY unpredictable phase. Consider yourselves warned.

If you are interested in learning more about how we are affected, this article below is quite succinct:

https://www.rd.com/article/mercury-in-retrograde/

Mercury Retrograde explained in simple terms:

©DGKaye2022

Mercury retrograde

Hello Mercury Retrograde 2022

Published on by dgkaye87 Comments

It’s a new year and a clean slate, and hopes are high that this year will be the end of the Coronavirus as we know it. But the fact remains that we are globally, high in virus and numbers, due to the the recent appearance of Omicron. We can all hope that as this virus continues, it will tamper down, lose it’s hurricane strength, and hopefully, no new strains will mutate. And in the meantime, because the world is already in chaos trying to stamp out this virus, we’re about to have our first Mercury Retrograde of 2022. Crazy times 2.0. It begins January 13th, lasting until February 3rd. But these dates are not inclusive. Like a full moon, retrogrades begin their ‘retroshade’ effects within a week or two of its arrival date, and can linger just as long after completion. And I’m already experiencing the shakeup.

When Mercury retrogrades, it is said that this is because retrograde indicates the planet is moving backwards, when in actuality, a faster moving planet passes Mercury in its pause, leaving a feeling of going backwards. Mercury travels around the sun in 88 days and takes a retrograde 3-4 times a year. Since Mercury is the closest planet to the sun, its orbit is shorter than earth’s. It’s like Mercury has to slow down to let other planets catch up in-between its cycle around the earth. Things that occur during this period can make us feel exactly like things are moving backwards as Mercury pauses and other planets pass by. This first retrograde of the year will be in Aquarius. There will be four Mercury Retrogrades this year, all of them in air signs (yup, that’s me). Signs most influenced by these retrogrades are the people who have their sun or rising signs the same as the sign each retrograde falls into.

Mercury Retrograde Chart for 2022

January 14 – February 3 starts in air sign Aquarius, ends in earth-sign Capricorn
May 10 – June 2 starts in air sign Gemini, ends in earth-sign Taurus
September 9 – October 2 starts in air-sign Libra, ends in earth-sign Virgo December 29 – January 18 in earth-sign Capricorn
December 29 – January 17 2023

Refresher Course: Mercury Retrograde

How does this affect our energy levels?

We can expect to have more or even less energy during this period, mostly of the nervous, unsettling or over-zealous type, causing possible bouts of anxiety. Each MR will fall in and affect particular signs more so than others.

What kinds of things are affected by a Mercury Retrograde?

Mercury rules our daily activities – technology, communications, contracts and relationships. When the planet is in retrograde we can expect glitches, delays and miscommunications in all of the above areas as Mercury is the ruler of communications. Extra vigilance should be paid to planned dates, appointments, signing contracts, editing, buying, selling, researching, negotiating, wills, documents, deeds, leases, and more. Most often affected are, computer issues, transportation and travel. It’s a period where we can expect the unexpected. In plain terms, when a planet is in retrograde, the planet takes a nap. And while it naps, it’s like it relinquishes its duties and the territory it usually stabilizes can run amok. This period is typically a good time to take a pause ourselves from big decision-making and a good time to reflect, journal, re-organize and re-evaluate our intentions, as well, it’s a good time to re-connect with people and/or projects from the past. As you may have noticed in the previous sentence, anything to do with ‘re’ as in redo, revisit, etc. is good to keep busy with during the MR period.

~ ~ ~

And here I am, in the thick of a Mercury Retrograde. As I pretty much, limped through 2021 with a sick husband and then his ultimate dying, which left me in numb and shock and grief, and my consequent going through everything we lived and shared together and two months later, moving, and of course, all of this while living in a secluded Covid world, all that has kept me going these past few months has been to get the hell out of Dodge and spend a few months out of the dread of another cold, sunless, lonely winter, and get to Mexico.

Am I concerned about traveling in a pandemic? You bet your bottom dollar I am. This is particularly the time where I’m getting excited to go away, but I’m not. I’m feeling a surge of anxiety while constantly weighing the pros and cons of my traveling. I know I’m triple vaxxed and extremely cautious around people, but I know many on vacation sometimes forget they’re still living in a pandemic, often forgeting masks and social distancing. I have a girlfriend down there since November who I keep in touch with to get the scoop on what’s going on down there. Mexico was actually doing not too bad before the rash of carefree Christmas vacationers visiting there helping spread the germs. And as much as I feel armed with safety supplies and three jabs, I’m concerned about if things get even worse instead of calming down after the holiday rush.

Air Canada has already changed my flight three times before it flat out canceled my flight last week (thanks so much Mercury). They took off their daily direct flights into Puerto Vallarta and made them all into connecting flights to gather more passengers, leaving only two direct flights at this time, weekly. After making two phone calls – each with its own four hour wait until a human picked up, I managed to get on a direct flight again, leaving three days earlier than my original flight date. I was confirmed on the phone I’m booked, but it’s been a week now and I still haven’t received written confirmation.

Besides the airline kerfuffle, this event also entailed my trying to get hold of my agent in Mexico to first find out if the unit I’m renting was vacant for my early arrival. Thankfully it is, but I’m quite unsettled that more cancellations are coming, and the prospect of what if things get worse and I get stuck in Mexico when I’m supposed to return? These are a lot of heavy concerns floating in my uncertain mind in the already shady period of Mercury Retrograde, leaving me with uncertainty of things to come.

On the pro side, I’m not sure I can endure another long, lonely winter without sun again. I thrive in sunshine, and there are only so many times and methods in my toolbox I have to remove myself internally from the darkness around me. It’s getting real old and I need to get out of here!!! So, oh yes, Mercury Retrograde is already alive and well in my travel plans, and no doubt there will be more to come before this period gets roaring and then comes to an end. So I’m caught in this net of wondering if I’ll get to Mexico, if I can stay Covid-free, and if I’ll be able to get back home. I feel almost guilty about getting excited to go and apprehensive about preparing and packing for this trip. My long awaited vacation is living in a big question mark at the moment. I feel like I should be preparing to go, but also must be prepared not to. Nothing like trying to sit down on both sides of the fence. In my heart, I’m going, but in my head I am ever so vigilant on keeping an alert to whatever this retrograde has in store for me. It’s all quite unsettling to say the least, and that is proof that Mercury Retrograde is already warming up.

I will keep you all posted on the status of my trip. In the meantime, be forewarned and prepared for the first Mercury Retrograde 2022!

©DGKaye2022

Tech rant

Techno Madness Woes – #WordPress Editor, #Facebook and Some Tips!

Published on by 58 Comments

This is kind of a rant, but some good information for those of you who may be engaging with technical snafus yourself.

Mercury retrograde

 

I don’t know about you guys, but this Mercury Retrograde has been nothing but agro. Seems the tech gods are all over each other outdoing each other, overriding each other’s technology. And who pays for the madness, bloggers do for sure. I know about the tech snafus that have been plaguing me, and have heard the condemnations from others.

 

bitmo Tech update

 

I’ll begin with the ‘new’ Facebook layout – about hijacking my page as I knew it. And judging by the many bad reviews I’ve read along the way in my searches to ‘bring back the old Facebook’, I read lots of disgruntled complaints with others looking for their own fixes and sharing what works. About a month ago FB started their rollout of the ‘new’ and NOT improved FB. It’s stark white background. . . No, let me rephrase that – it’s blinding! Everything is moved around no headers show, and there is ‘apparently,’ an option where you can put the background in ‘dark mode’. But of course, when one day my FB screen suddenly went glaring white on me, I seeked help from a few writing friends who informed me they had the option to change the screen color. Nope, I didn’t, and after an hour of searching, I read that not everyone might get the screen option til later. Well, how about you leave my damn screen alone until you’re out of beta and forcing it on us? Just a thought. My eyes were sore after five minutes looking at the screen.

So naturally, I had to search for ‘there must be a way.’ I found a Chrome extension called ‘Revert‘. I added it and presto! Old FB was back . . .until a few days ago. Then it was instant fade to white and the extension stopped working. After more searching around I found the alert Chrome had posted already saying that the extension won’t work anymore because FB has overriden the extension. But they left a hopeful message saying they were determined to come up with a fix. Waiting.

In the meantime, my gal pal Sally Cronin informed me about a little trick she’d been using to avoid the ‘white plague’. She discovered if you have a ‘group’ page on FB and you’re an admin on the page, and if you go to the page, there’s an offering to ‘go back to old layout’ for 48 hours. I’m on my 3rd – 48 hour refresher now, and Sally has been on it for weeks. We’re both hoping it keeps working until there’s a new fix.

Oh, and one more thing about FB – a notification popped up as my screen was morphing from old FB to shades of white, saying that by November 5th, FB will be taking away our titles on our ‘Pages’ – translation for authors – our author pages. So, our “Professional Skills”, will be removed from our Page. So what? Secret identities now? Lol.

 

If anyone wants to read the lowdown on all the tweaks Facebook has done, Lifehacker.com has an in-depth description with diagrams and all. 

 

Wordpress Woes

 

I’m self hosted, so I had – ‘had’ being the operative word, control over NOT changing over to WordPress Gutenberg Block editor. I added the ‘classic editor’ plugin when I heard ‘stirrings’ of losing the classic editor, so I WAS fine. But it’s like one guy’s technology must be superior to another’s again, like FB overriding Google Chrome’s ‘Revert’ extension, rendering it now useless. By keeping the classic editor, I had to find a fix for a temporary plugin to keep the other plugins playing nice until the code writer of my SEO program came up with new code to keep up with the WordPress big upgrade about a month ago. Crazy, and so much wasted writing time when you’re spending it Google searching instead.

And so yes, I’m stubbornly fighting off that new block editor, of which I have zero interest in learning. I just wish it wouldn’t keep interfering now with the way it will now no longer allow me to add line spaces. Yes. Our blogging freedoms seem challenged when we try not to conform.

I don’t have time to learn a new computer language. I’m already trying to learn proper Spanish (as opposed to the broken Spanglish I use in Mexico) using Duolingo, which I highly recommend btw, and that will be another post to come. But I digress, now, for my latesty discovery:

After the big WP update a few weeks ago, once again things weren’t working the same – mainly, my choice of line and paragraph spacing had evaporated. Lots of blogging friends have been complaining of weird shenanigans with their blogs lately. But the worst of it is putting together my Q & A interviews that won’t allow me to leave space  – and alas, I found the cure for adding my own spaces – two dots and white font!

After surfing around for fixes for hours one night, I discovered an easy fix for spaces. There were various methods offered that required code, and I’m not even going there. And finally I learned why I could no longer space my articles out the way I choose, it’s because of some glitches where the ‘new’ WP block editor is treating my writing page as though there are invisible assigned blocks. Kind of like it’s trying to bust in on my classic editor.

Say what? Enough of this crap! I took the easy fix – the one for laymen learning – hit enter at the end of a line then type in 2 periods – like this:  .. Then highlight the 2 dots and change the font to white (not purple like I’ve shown for demo purposes). Then hit enter and voila! A line space created. Want another line? Do the exact same thing. And it is for all these incidents and more that I highly recommend everyone PREVIEW your blogs before you post them. Amazing the funky things that show up NOT, like line spaces I have to fix – and of course, add lines.  Example again:  2 dots .., highlight them in white .. now they won’t show but they’ve taken up a line. Hit enter and repeat til your heart’s content.

Just Sayin'

 

And a word about word . . .

Word pisses me off. Every year they update the version and make it worse than it was the year before when it was already worse from the year before that. Microsoft, PLEASE stop changing the ribbon!

Okay, I’m done now. Thanks for listening to me rant as this mercury mania takes over my life. And I hope my findings may help someone else.

 

*I’ve added a note here to the original post. I wanted to mention to fellow bloggers that WordPress has also been hiding SOME blogs I follow regularly. First I thought, maybe a few have taken a week off, but no, they haven’t. I just popped over to the WP Reader and clicked on some of the blogs I follow but aren’t getting notified about. It seems WP has taken the liberty to ‘unfollow’ some of my favorite blogs! I’ve just re-followed. Check the reader for blogs you aren’t receiving notifications for and reset them!

 

Got a Facebook or WordPress woe you’d like to share?

 

©DGKaye

bitmo live laugh love

 

Fun Wow!

A Day in the Life of this Retrograde

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Seriously, you can’t make this shyte up. I just had to share the craziness of how Mercury remains well at work in my life.

 

This is an episode of yesterday’s visit to the dentist. It demonstrates how communications get misconstrued, change comes suddenly, and the usual surprise of something that is going to cost money. I’ll give a little backstory to the lead up.

 

Me and my husband have gone to the same dentist for twenty years. When we first found Dr. B, it was while we were living in our condo and Dr. B was newly opening up shop a mere 5 minutes from our home. She’d sent out flyers to the neighborhood to promote herself and gather new business. This worked out great for me as my long-time dentist had recently announced he was retiring, and hub had a dentist far away he didn’t care for. Through the years we moved several times and some of our homes had us living a good 45 minute drive from Dr. B’s cozy office, but we kept the same dentist. When we moved to where we live now, we were back to a 5 minute convenient drive.

Throughout the years I’ve made friends with new hygenists coming and going as well as receptionists. But Marcy was a constant throughout the years, Marcy was always part-time, Saturdays, and very efficient. Going to the dentist for me was a social event chatting with the girls, including Dr. B and often staying way longer after my appointment finished, for chats.

We go to the dentist every 3-4 months, and at my previous appointment I booked for the next appointment which was to be for June. Nancy was the receptionist there for years and very efficient at reminder calls and rescheduling and so forth. But two weeks before my booked appointment in June, it wasn’t Nancy, but part-time Marcy who called midweek to inform me that Dr. B. was moving her office in July, so she was calling to tell me about the relocation. Apparently, the kerfuffle began a month after my previous appointment in March. So in April Dr.B was informed by her lessor that the medical complex had been sold so everyone in the plaza was getting booted with 3 months notice.

Me and Neem (my hygenist and friend) surmise Dr. B knew it was coming because conveniently she’d bought herself her own building over a year ago and built a new very mode dentist practice, knowing the boot would eventually happen because real estate in Toronto here is very precious and stores and plazas are being torn down left and right to put up more condos. Condos, condos, condos!

But I digress, so anyhoo, Marcy gave me the scoop and I questioned why she was there during the week instead of Nancy, and apparently there was some unpleasantries taken place between Nancy and Dr. B about the relocating notice. Marcy told me she was now working a few days a week plus her standard Saturdays. And so I asked her where the new place was located.

I will mention that Nancy and Marcy both live close enough to walk to work. Marcy gave me the address of the new location, which I knew the area well because it was 2 minutes from my dad’s old family business. But I also knew the area was an industrial area and across from the University so it was a traffic cored area. Not thrilled to say the least after being so conveniently located for years, I weighed out the facts, remembering she’s a great dentist and the girls who work there are always great, so decided we’d try it out and see how we felt about the new location, so I made the appointment, a double for both hub and myself since it was no longer conveniently located, which previously permitted us to go separately when it best fit our own calendar, plus I knew hub would definitely get lost going their on his own the first time. So Marcy booked hub with Neem and Dr. B would clean my teeth at the same time. But, that’s not how it all actually turned out.

A day after I make the new appointments with Marcy, I get a letter in the mail announcing Dr. B is closing the office because the building has been sold, and asking that we let her know if we want our dentistry records sent to another recommended dentist office with 4 dentists right in the plaza of the condo we first lived in – again a 5 minute drive to where I live now, and virtually, a 2 minute walk from where Nancy and Marcy live, or we should call her new office building for booking future appointments.

Now I knew my June appointment was moved just the day before to the new locale so I didn’t pay the letter any mind till I looked at it again yesterday to get the phone number from to add to my phone because the email I received the day before confirming our appointments from Marcy, left directions, and after the labyrinth we’d go through we were instructed to park in a particular area, and call her, then she’d come outside to give us a parking pass and proceed to show us where we were to park. I will mention, it was 34 degrees celcius, more like 40 with the humidity.

Well, I left hub in the car to meet Marcy halfway, and instead of standing in the heat, proceeded to walk into the office. She was still busy at her desk. A family of 3 walked out as I entered and commented, this set up of parking and coming from afar was not worth it. In that moment I was silently nodding in agreement to myself. While Marcy was finishing up with payment from a patient, Neem came out and grabbed the parking pass and took me outside to show me where to park and where to leave the pass on the dash then we chatted for a few minutes about what the heck is going on with the location, and that it wasn’t convenient for many long-time patients. While we’re chatting I’m watching 2 police officers having a field day writing up tickets for illegal parkers. Neem lets me know that this place is too far for her with a now commute of almost 3 hours a day for a 5 hour shift. She said she’ll stick it out until the snow comes and is pretty sure the winter will help make her decision to leave. We also talked about the letter that I found weird.

Neem proceeds to tell me that the letter was a mistake, it was an option for those who wished to stay in the area, but apparently quite a few were taking that option. So I said I may check out the suggested dentist office as well, and ask a few questions about their services, and maybe I’ll end up going there too. So Neem says, if I go there, would I mention her availability to whomever I speak to because she wouldn’t mind working there too. Then she went inside and I ran back to the car with the pass and drove with hub to the parking lot, and we grabbed a beautiful handicapped spot right facing the front of the office building. We were instructed to place the pass on the dashboard, and return it to Marcy when we were ready to leave.

Pass was in place on the dash and we walked across the street and when we walked in the office Marcy greeted us. We chit chatted, my husband’s phone rang so Marcy and I continued to chat, then Neem came to call me in and stopped to chat with us too. We had a few chuckles of the craziness going on with the move, and I asked where Dr. B was because she was doing my teeth and Neem told me no, Dr. B wasn’t coming in today (as she had her own mercury madness to contend with),  so Neem would be cleaning my teeth and someone else would be cleaning hub’s teeth. My arms flew up as I was a bit disappointed that nobody told me this or I may have booked for another day because as much as I love Neem doing my teeth, I had a few questions for the dentist, and hub was complaining of feeling a lot of sensitivity in one of his teeth – both requiring Dr. B to have a look. But we were there and after all the kerfuffle and having finally parked the car, we stayed.

The dental rooms were partially open concept – 4 rooms with half walls. I could see hub diagonally located across from me. Neem and I are gabbing (as best as I could respond with tools in my mouth) about making plans to get together socially. Then 2 minutes later, while Neem is working on my teeth, I had a revelation and pushed her hand away, and darted out of the chair. I shouted to my husband kitty-corner to me, Did you put the handicapped license on the dashboard?

He replies with garbled words with an instrument in his mouth, “Shit, I forgot.” I knew it! We were so frazzled with the parking pass, and placing it on the dash, we both forgot to pull the handicapped license from the visor and place it on the dashboard to avoid a steeeeeeep ticket for illegally parking in a handicapped spot. It already happened once before, my hub was fined in front of his doctor’s office for not placing the license in a perfect eye level place for a police to see it, which I fought and won, and thought I’d drilled the lesson into him. But, apparently, we both forgot this time, which has never happened, and I had a flash of those cops writing tickets while we were waiting for the parking pass, and I didn’t recall seeing the license on the dash, so I panicked. If those cops were still ticketing, this could be a $500 fine, and this time there’d be nothing to fight because it wasn’t about how the license was positioned, but that it wasn’t there at all.

I jumped out of the chair, ran over to hub to grab the car key and ran like a bat out of hell to the parking lot. And gratefully, no ticket! I opened the door and grabbed the license from the envelope and placed it precisely on the dashboard, smacked the door shut, and ran back to my chair. It was hot.

When I came back, Neem presented me with a lovely gift, a whitening kit. She told me she told Marcy she wanted to give me something in appreciation for how long I’d been with Dr. B and all the crap I went through already. I finished getting my pearly whites cleaned and checked up on hub, and found he has a cracked crown causing his discomfort, which in turn will have us going back soon again when Dr. B is there for hub to get fitted for a new crown. $$$$.

Yup, Mercury Retrograde supposedly ends tomorrow, but I know from experience, it will take its sweet time leaving as it lingers and wanes for another 2 weeks. Till then, I’m lying low!

 

©DGKaye

 

 

Mercury retrograde

Strange Happenings In This Mercury Retrograde – Technical Woes

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I don’t know about you people, but this Mercury Retrograde is wreaking havoc in many aspects of my life – especially everything technical and digital.

 

Mercury Retrograde is the phase in the planets where planets pass each other, and the more going on, the crazier things get. Let us add to this Retrograde the full moon with a half lunar eclipse and we have a recipe for crazy time.

Mercury goes into Retrograde 3 – 4 times a year. This means that Mercury appears to be running in the opposite direction of the earth as it orbits around the sun. As Mercury moves slower than the earth it leaves us with the illusion that it’s moving in Retrograde.

Mercury rules communications, technology, and transportation systems, so it’s really no big surprise that in these times of Retrograde that many plans – travel, communications, and technical devices are affected. And I can say with certainty that I’ve had my fill of this edition!

We are told to avoid signing legal documents, making travel plans, buying a home or to refrain from making expensive purchases during the Retrograde phase. But life goes on and many aren’t aware of the crazy snafus occurring, only that ‘weird things’, delays, and cancellations of plans are common fallout of this phase.

I for one cannot waitttttttttttt for this Retrograde to be over! I won’t bother getting into the mishaps I’ve endured in these past few weeks, but I will mention some of my technical woes I’ve encountered – ironically, only beginning when the Retrograde was surfacing.

 

Strange happenings

 

 

So here are some of the hair-tearing experiences I’ve been dealing with on a daily basis since early July:

My laptop needs an exorcism big time! It has developed a new habit of freezing up on me where I have no option but to do a hard shutdown and reboot. Intermittently, my laptop likes to just close all tabs in the middle of doing anything or just go to a black screen, forcing me to do another hard shutdown and reboot. This is still ongoing and happens approximately 20 times a day! I am blaming it on Google Chrome. I’ve surmised it’s the culprit in the madness from my investigations. And following all the prompts and updates to the extension hasn’t helped.

Windows 10 updates are a nightmare (as usual), when it takes the liberty of downloading updates that coincidentally wind up unticking items and ticking other items I haven’t ticked off in my systems operations, leaving me having to waste hours searching for what went wrong, and of course, fixes for the ailments.

My website – don’t get me started! I went through 2 weeks of madness every time I drafted a post and previewed it, only to find my header took the liberty of plastering itself in duplicate and triplicate all over each blog post I drafted. Despite the agro I endured, I am grateful for the ‘preview before posting’ option so I could see the disasters before I posted, which then sent me on a couple of hours of madness trying out different tricks to stop the invasion. I thought it was my theme, but in the end, I discovered that after a recent Jetpack update that I could no longer copy and paste from another blog that I was reblogging or sharing links from because it was now catching code from the blog I was copying from. Resolution – I’m now copy and pasting what I need from a post onto a Word doc. After I paste, the option comes up asking me if I’d like to ‘keep source formatting’, and that’s where I click NO. From the Word doc I then paste over to my blog. Yes, I love all the new added steps. NOT!

And if the above website woes were not enough, I’ve began to encounter problems with sharing buttons when I visit other blogs:

  • Facebook is giving many of us writers grief when it comes to sharing a post there. I’ve come across a few blogs where I hit the FB share button on a blog and it won’t share because FB deems A POST ON WRITING inappropriate and abusive! As a person who believes in sharing a post I enjoyed and feel would benefit or entertain others, when the share buttons don’t work, I take the long way around to share. I simply copy the URL of the post, go to my FB page or group directly, and share it to the page or group manually – and yet, some blogs are still deemed unacceptable to share according to FB rules, I find the whole thing totally moronic that writers posts are inappropriate but trolls are taking over that site at alarming rates.
  • Tweet buttons on over 80% of the blogs I read daily have disappeared and are merely replaced with the word ‘tweet’. This mystery I have yet to resolve, but I’ve found a workaround, yet again. I added an ‘Add Any‘ extension to my bookmarks bar. It’s a universal sharing extension that when I click on while on a post, or any other site I wish to share info from, a dropdown box appears with icons for all the various social media sites. I just click on the icon to where I want to share an article to and it sends. The only problem I’m having with using Add Any to tweet from is that it copies all the info just as if I’m sharing from the Twitter button on a blog, only it doesn’t tag the handle of the post owner. And to be quite honest, I certainly don’t remember the handles of every writer. And when I’m reading numerous blogs and sharing, I’m just not able to jump to Twitter every single time I’m sharing and look for the person’s handle. So please forgive me, and know that when I’m reading your blogs, I’m still sharing to Twitter, only you may not be notified that your post was shared by me. I will continue to tweet by this method until such time that a new WordPress update stops the madness. I also use the Add Any to share to MeWe.com where several writers have opened up a page of their own and a few of us run author groups there. As of yet, there is no share button offered from WordPress for that site, so Add Any is helpful in that respect.
  • Comments – There are a few blogs I visit regularly which I leave comments and never get a reply back from. Now, I know these writers, and I know they always reply to comments. I think I’ve detected the problem: Some of these blogs have boxes to tick off after we leave a comment. One of those boxes says: ‘Click here to receive replies to comments’. Well, I tried that route, and some of those blogs get many comments on their blogs and what I receive in notifications by email are tonssssss of comments and replies from every blogger who leaves a comment on that post. I had to uncheck this because I assumed it meant a reply to my comment not every comment that is written on that blog. So if you are responding to my comments, please know that if I don’t acknowledge your responses it’s because I’m not receiving them as I normally used to up in my notification bar from WordPress. I also will note all blogs I visit that are not on the WordPress system, such as Blogspot, I never have and still don’t receive replies to my comments from there.

Just to inform you of the duration period for this Retrograde period, Mercury began it’s pre-shadowing to the Retrograde on June 20th, going full Retrograde July 7th, and won’t end until it’s post-shadow on August 15th. Ya, that’s a long time, especially when it comes to having to endure with technical woes.

If you’d like to share your Mercury woes in comments, please feel free. And if any of you have encountered same share button and/or comment issues on other blogs, I’m all ears!

 

©DGKaye