A Word of Caution

As I was hastily gathering my requisite 10 feeds last week, something happened at Bloglines that I thought about over the weekend, and decided to pass on. When searching a topic, the first option on the list may not necessarily be the one you are looking for. It occurred to me that the reason this surprised me is because on Google I am rarely surprised by the order of the list of links generated. Here is what happened:

I thought it would be neat to have a link to Hillary's website. So I typed in Hillary Clinton and hit the feed search button, and (because I was in a hurry) hit the add button to the first site on the list. This was "Just Hillary" which after some brief research appears to be a not-bad site, just not the official Hillary site. The official site was several sites down on the page.

Just to make sure I was remembering correctly, I googled Hillary Clinton, and yes, her official site was the first non-sponsored link to come up.

So the moral of that story is, be sure to sample the feed before you add it; otherwise you may be in for a surprise.

Ambivalence

Maybe it's because it's almost time to go back to the desk, or maybe it's because there are a dozen other things I need to do before the end of my day, but it's also frustration because I have all 10 feeds on bloglines, and I have just spent more than 1/2 hour trying to follow the directions to get the link on my blog (is that what I'm trying to do?). I'm soooo close, if only I could just grab a pen and write it down, I'd have it.

The thing is, once I have it, I'm not even sure I want it. It seems to me that with the little time I have to surf the net, I would never make time to check my feeds. Why not just list them under favorites and just click the links when I want to see what's happening? Sometimes the old-fashioned ways are still the best....

How Simple is RSS REALLY???

So I'm thinking that folks that think that they're explaining things in a really simple way can't really know just how little the rest of us know. It's like they think they're starting us at ground zero when they're really on the 7th floor, and we're down there on the 1st floor wondering, "Where is everybody?"

After spending nearly an hour trying to find out how to subscribe to RSS feeds, I'm not quite sure where or how they're going to show up, or if they're going to show up after all.

I've been giving screen names and passwords and headings and titles and all kinds of other identifiers to who-knows-who, and I'm not usually that trusting. I only got a gmail account after years of not being able to remotely access my email, after people I trust convinced me it was okay, and I don't trust Yahoo at all though I signed up for that last week.

So, I think I need some time to absorb all this, and I'll keep hanging in, because I really, really want that MP3 player (whatever it is...).

Reluctantly Chatting

Determined to learn to use Chat, I log on to find that no one's there. I am not a telephone person because I hate to bother people, and I suppose I am just as unlikely to want to interrupt people in cyberspace. So I don't try anyone on the list of names of volunteer "friends" who are willing to chat with me so I can learn how. What would I say???

I do recall a few years ago when my daughter patiently taught me to chat online because we would be separated for the first time. Quelle exercise in frustration! Is she responding or should I "say" something else? Am I boring her? (I can't tell from her tone of voice/font, she may be asleep on the keyboard, or chatting with someone more interesting). So I keep typing and, jeesh, now she's asked me something about something I typed five minutes ago. So I answer that, once I remember what it was, and now she's talking about the thing I said five minutes later. Then she yells at me (my italics), for not waiting for her to answer. Remember when we could talk on the phone real fast? And still keep up with the conversation?

Fiddling Around

Hurray I have a blog! It may seem like I'm just putt-putting my way into the 21 century, or, as Antoinette says, you may just think of me as a technological black hole, but I prefer to think of myself as the technological tortoise. I will get there in time.