Monthly Archives: February 2009

Google Changes FeedBurner Feed Addresses–Again.

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Why can’t they tell us about these things? Google, who bought FeedBurner in June of 2007, first changed the old FeedBurner feed address when they first “announced” AdSense for feeds around August of 2008. Funny how the majority of bloggers and AdSense users were surprised to find out about this–after the fact. So much for Google’s “announcement”.

Without getting into all the dirty details, the original FeedBurner feed address was eventually replaced with the following for those using ads in their feeds:

http://feedproxy.google.com/nameofblog/

For myself, once I went through the new AdSense for Feeds rigmarole, all I did was take my current (at the time) WordPress type FeedBurner plugin and change over the old FeedBurner feed address to the new AdSense ‘FeedBurner’ feed address as shown above. Since my original site feeds drove the ‘burned’ feed I didn’t lose any subscribers. Still, I was fairly miffed about the how lousy Google had handled this.

Obviously things at Google haven’t improved any. They changed the feed address again. Anybody hear about this one? It’s now been changed to this:

http://feeds2.feedburner.com/nameofblog/

Absolutely no public announcement about this that I could find. I only happened to stumble on to the change completely by chance when I found this AdSense blog article about the the upcoming February 28th deadline for transferring old FeedBurner feeds over to the new Google version of FeedBurner (also not announced anywhere in the news). And it wasn’t the article itself but the comment below that sent me off on the hunt.

If you do not have a Gmail account, that is your first step.
Then you will find a Feed Burner button on your Google dashboard. Try moving the feeds from there.
Once it is moved the feed changes:
http://feeds2.feedburner.com/nameofblog
If you have Blogger blogs, you will find those on your dashboard. As well as analytics, adsense and adwords accounts.
Once you get everything moved, it works a little better.

Absolutely pitiful that I should have to find out this way.

I logged into my main Google account and checked my AdSense for Feeds details and sure enough, the feed address had indeed changed. FeedBurner itself was also listed as one of my services now in my Google account main page.

No announcement, nothing in the news, just a chance finding on my part. So I changed the codes in my Subscription text widget in my sidebar and the feed addresses in my current FeedBurner plugin and all the ‘burned’ feeds are working once again.

I’m even seeing ads in my feeds now? Apparently so since they now show up with my AdBlocker disabled. And checking my AdSense account shows me that I’ve several hundred impressions already from feed ads. Rather strange considering that AdSense for Feeds wasn’t supposed to start showing ads unless I had 500 or more subscribers–which I certainly do not.

What else did Google not announce?

Labeled Disabled | Wherein the Problem Lies

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For the longest time now I’ve had a sense of spinning my wheels but not getting anywhere. Where is the enthusiasm that I always had? Why am I feeling so uninspired lately? I needed to sit down and have a serious talk with myself.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t interested and told myself to screw off. So I talked with Laurie instead and as usual she fired up enough of my listless brain cells to finally enable me to start thinking about this conundrum of mine—where did my get-up-and-go attitude get to?

Okay, so my health is not so grand at the moment and hasn’t been for quite awhile. Yes, it’s become significantly worse over the last two years, so much so that it took me out of the work force. And yeah, I’m forced to resort to a fair amount of medication in order to keep my body on a semi-even keel—more or less.

So what? I’ve dealt with all this before, I accept it—all of it.

I even accept the fact, albeit with a bit of teeth gritting, that I just can’t hop up and do whatever needs to be done or act on impulse when I suddenly feel like hiking up a mountain or to strap on the old snow shoes for a midnight romp under a full moon (or any of that kind of fun stuff).

I’ve already come to terms with all of this so what’s the problem? I have all this time on my hands to do the one thing that I love doing and that’s writing. So what’s the hold up here?

Racking my brain.

Then, in the wee hours of the morning as I tossed my 52nd turn of another sleepless night, it came to me. The one thing I haven’t been able to deal with yet:

Being “DISABLED”. Not the fact, the label!

I hate being labeled.

But despising labels is not the problem here, it’s more along the lines of feeling like someone has stamped DISABLED on my forehead that I’m having a hard time with. Seems to me now that even though I can accept the ill health, the injuries, the deafness and all the damn pills I have to take every day I have yet to reconcile myself to the fact that I’m indeed disabled.

How utterly human of me.

Obviously I’m going to have to think on this more, quite a lot more—I think. I don’t rightly know if there’s anyone else I can talk to at this point who would be able to understand where I’m coming from especially when I’m not quite sure where I’m coming from myself…yet. We’ll see.

I’ve always been a good one for sorting out and solving my own problems but I have to admit that this one is a real doozey. It’s going to be rather difficult to stand outside myself and take a long hard objective look at the situation when I’m not quite sure who and/or what I should take along with me on the way out.

Does that make sense?

No?

Now you have an idea of how I’ve been feeling lately.

Well, one thing I’ve learned over the years is, like it or not, sometimes you just have to be patient. I’ll come to terms with this all in good time if I just keep at it.

In the meantime, there’s the vacuuming to do.

IRS Thanks me for Serving my Country?

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I called up the IRS yesterday…

Now isn’t that a fine way to start a post?

I called up the IRS yesterday with a question I had never thought I would ever have to ask and that was:

What if I didn’t earn any money last year?

It was a legitimate question since, for the first time in my life, I actually didn’t make a single paycheck last year and I found myself at a total loss—I’ve never not filed before.

I mean, I’ve always filed a tax return every year since I was 17 (and I’ll be 50 next month), I’ve always made a paycheck so what to do now?  Obviously too large a quandary for my small mind to cope with so I grabbed my tax form and went in search of the IRS toll free number in hopes to find the answer to my problem.

So this was the IRS?

The first thing I encountered was the expected electronic carousel giving me 5 different options to chose from. I picked the last one and after the usual “Conversation may be monitored for reasons of quality of service blah, blah, blah” I was transferred to the next available service representative i.e. I was put on hold.

Swan Lake played in my ear.

I actually like the music of Swan Lake even though listening through a phone’s handset doesn’t exactly provide what one would call an experience in high fidelity. But it was better than the standard fare of ‘muzak de telephony’ one usually encounters. Surprisingly enough my low-fi concert was cut off in less than 5 minutes when a friendly sounding male voice came on the line.

Note that I said friendly. I was not expecting this.

So I told him my situation. Disabled Vet, taken out of work by disabilities late 2007, didn’t make a single paycheck last year and what the hell do I do now?

He thanked me for serving my country.

Excuse me? The IRS thanking me for serving my country?? Okay, I’m totally thrown by now. This is the Internal Revenue Service thanking me for serving my country. It’s got to be a fluke or the guy I was talking to was also a vet but I’ll take the appreciation wherever it came from.

Now I’m sent off to another agent who can help me with my particular situation.

Tales From the Vienna Woods began waltzing in my ear.

Now this wasn’t bad at all. First there’s the ‘thanks for serving’ from an IRS agent who doesn’t even know me and now I’m being virtually waltzed around my head by some of my favorite classical pieces while waiting for the next available agent. Things could be worse.

The next person I talk to doesn’t thank me for serving my country but I figure once is plenty. He was friendly enough though.

After asking me about a half a dozen questions or so to establish the basics we buckled down to the real meaty questions—all 3,425.6 of them (more or less–probably less). Fifteen minutes of grueling questions later punctuated by a plethora of what’s? and pardon me’s? from myself we finally determined that I do not have to file an income tax return this year.

Well, bless my soul. A thank you, two lovely waltzes, two friendly voices and no filing this year. Okay, so that means to tax return check but let’s not complain about trivialities.

I thanked him for the help and hung up. The whole thing took less than 40 minutes and I was thanked for my trouble. All in all, not a bad experience in the least.

Here’s hoping they don’t jump all over me for not filing 5 years from now.

Surgery is on! With or Without Sugar.

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Three times a charm they say and in my experience what they say (in this case) is often true. In parley with my surgeon down at the Boston VA yesterday we finally came to an accord. Surgery will take somewhere between the 15th and 30th of April, exact date depending on what her monthly surgery schedule looks like.

And sugar readings be damned!

The surgery clinic down there will be calling me around the 15th of March letting me know the exact date. The only reason for the 6 week delay is that I have an endocrinologist working with me now that has taken me off my current diabetes medication and started me on another or will if the new medication ever arrives in the mail (it’s really expensive by what I understand and the VA has to approve it) and my surgeon wants to see if that works any better than the old one did.

Taking this most recent trip to Boston as the second round with my surgeon, the third and final round will be when they lay me down in the operating theater in April. No pre-op needed since the last one will still valid. Just a final blood workup so she knows where she’s at as far as risk of infection due to possible high blood sugar levels. It does mean a prolonged visit in the hospital for a week or so afterward while they pump insulin into me until the initial risk of infection is over but that’s fine with me.

The only irritant with that will be the lack of a device to access the WWW so I won’t be able to moan and groan online–post-operatively speaking. And the Boston facility having wireless access no less. Oh well, can’t have everything.

Besides, it’s probably a good thing not to publish anything while one is bombed on morphine?

Sunday Thoughts on Monday | The State of Things

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I’m an avid news reader and thanks to the WWW I’m not limited to mainstream media’s idea of what news items make money rather than reporting without bias. Even better than that is being able to read comments on those news articles that allow them which is rapidly becoming the rule rather than the exception.

Because of this ability to read not only various daily news items but the feedback on these items as well, I’ve had several thoughts running around my head of late. Thoughts mainly revolving around our new president and this stimulus package package that was recently passed.

Any one of these ideas might be worth a post and may very well be in the near future but since time is limited (and because I’m headed out this afternoon for a 2 day trip to the Boston VA and I need to get ready) I’m just  going to list some of these thoughts in no particular order.

So…

  • No, Obama is not a socialist nor is he a communist. He wasn’t Muslim either. Get over it.
  • Yup, he’s black. Get over that one too.
  • 95% of Americans alive today wouldn’t know a communist if they were dropped into the middle of Red Square in 1960 and bumped into Nikita Khrushchev. The other 5% wouldn’t either.
  • Same goes for a socialist. The majority of Americans simply don’t have a clue despite what they may think. Why should they?
  • America (meaning the USA) is a republic whose political structure is based on democracy. It’s economical structure is based on capitalism. For the most part each individual state in the union operates autonomously. Among the towns and cities and their various political structures there’s a fair helping of democracy, socialism, communism, nationalism, feudalism and more all mixed together. The phrase “melting pot” does not just apply to the people.
  • About 95% of all comments I’ve read on news items about the economic crisis and the stimulus package are complaints, rants and insults (some racist). Around 5% actually offer productive insights into the situation.
  • The current economic crisis is real, no doubt. It’s also 100% uncharted territory. If someone either professionally, politically or otherwise states they know what to do, they’re blowing smoke…period. No one knows what do to do. It’s a “take it one day at a time” situation for now.
  • Today’s crisis is not comparable to the Great Depression. It’s 2009 not the 1930’s. Think about it.
  • It took a second world war to halt the last depression, it was never “solved”. Think about that also.
  • Obama never said the economic stimulus package was going to solve the crisis. It’s a “jump start” only. Let’s just hope the engine catches.
  • No, tax cuts alone would not have helped. Not even a little bit. Tax cuts alone never helped before so why should they now?
  • Bush, McCain and others warned congress that this crisis was going to happen back in 2002 (and even prior to that). Congress ignored them. Fancy that.
  • Only the American people along with a great deal of damn good improvisation and flexibility by the Federal government can turn this current crisis around.
  • Most Big Business mainstream players today will either adapt or fail entirely. Guess which one of the above two options will be the most common.
  • Things are going to get worse before they get better and it’s “We the People” that will determine whether we make it through this or not. The question is whether “We the People” are still capable of weathering a bad storm or not.
  • And no, it wasn’t just the government that caused let crisis happen in the first place. It was just one of the many players.

I know that a few might take umbrage at some of my thoughts listed above but then again, they’re only thoughts. And that’s what this blog is all about—thoughts.

It’s a rough road ahead to be sure. The kind of road that this country (and most of the rest of the world as well), as it exists today, has never dealt with before. The old ways of doing business either politically or economically have come to an end and, to my way of thinking, the American people have been way too complacent about it up to now, myself included.

At present it’s more akin to sailing an early 19th sailing vessel through a hurricane in that there’s going to be a whole lot of “sailing by the seat of your pants” and not much else for awhile. Let’s just hope the captain and our fellow crew mates know what they’re doing.

And I’d bet that I’m not the only one whose had thoughts running around their heads these days. Anyone else?

See you in a day or so.

Three Years of Doing it Myself?

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It seems that while I’ve been dealing with the slings and arrows of outrageous illness, this third incarnation of my first blogging effort had it’s third birthday (anniversary?) without me. In other words, I’ve been doing-it-myself for 3 years now plus a handful of days.

According to the archives my first post on my new custom digs here was published on February 2nd, 2006. It wasn’t much actually and was probably one of several that I dragged over from the second incarnation over at WordPress.com but it marks the beginning of my fine adventure in custom WordPress blogging. Hell, that had to have been using WordPress 2.0 since WP 2.1 wasn’t released until January, 2007.

Egad!

To be perfectly honest about it this rather bedraggled, dog eared, inconsistent effort of mine has existed over a very tumultuous time of my life that began with me happily ensconced with my lady in a time worn but comfortable little town in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont and contentedly employed in job that seemed tailor made to fit me and…

…ended with me still happily ensconced with my lady in a time worn but comfortable little town in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, unemployed for over a year due to disabilities and looking forward to surgery and ever changing medications.

To say I’m not quite the same person I was when I first dragged this poor blog kicking and screaming into it’s own custom built log home 3 years ago is most likely an understatement. Oh sure, it’s still me, not much can shake that part loose but the outlook on the future has taken one hell of a slap in the face. I’m still trying to come to terms with that part of it.

I’ll let you know if I manage to make heads or tails of it.

I’ve met some excellent people along the way and made a few fast friends. I’m sure you know who you are. Funny on how my life online has reflected my real life. Met some great people over the years but only a few I could actually call friends. Makes me wonder how many other bloggers have found the same to be true for them as well.

Okay then.

Obviously there’s only one thing to do now…

Alcohol!

Scotch

No…wait. I can’t do that. My gut would never tolerate it.

*sigh*

Guess I’ll just have to just keep on keepin’ on then. I mean after 3 years of solving problems, changing themes, making phone calls to my host, upgrading WordPress/plugins/themes, one complete reinstall, replying to comments and…

…now what was that other thing?

Oh yeah…

…writing!

I guess it would be foolish to ditch the whole effort now wouldn’t it?

So, damn the page rank and screw Technorati, here’s to another year of doing…uh…well…whatever I’m doing here.

Cheers!

Still down but not out.

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Just a quick follow up post to let you all know I’m somewhat on mend. This has got to be the worst crap I’ve ever encountered since my experience with a yellow fever vaccine.

And I’m sorry if the title to the previous post shocked a few folks. It was supposed to be all in fun. Just goes to prove I should never attempt to write up a post while in the grip of some horrible disease, yes?

Be back soon.