I was not going to do anything here today, I just checked in to look at my messages. In the inbox was a question from Dame Ruth, a very good question that deserved an equally good answer. So, opening up the reply dialogue I responded with an honest and I hope well thought out answer on an aspect of life in Britain. Gave it a read through, corected a couple of typos and, satisfied, I clicked send.
And the stupid software logged me out and lost my message.
Eff....effingeffityeff...effing effers. I hate gather me.
And now I have another reason to hate gather, not that I needed another.
But you have to laugh...................... coz if you didn't, you'd have to cry.
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Comments: 39
Too bad Gather lost you message but if thats all Gather has lost of yours, you should be glad; it could be worse.
Happy Sunday to you!
Debra said, "I now use firefox and ad block...". I've been campaigning for ALL members of gather to do this. If ads disappear, ad revenue disappears and if management gets hit hard enough in the wallet, it just might get their attention. Obviously, the needs and desires of membership are of no importance to them, so I'm pushing for Insurrection by Ad Block. Go Firefox!
Yes it could be worse. I could be really popular at this site and then that would make me feel guilty about doing so little and leaving so few comments and ratings on my friends articles.
Maybe in whatever universe you ghosts inhabit you could have a word with the ghost in the software and tell it we're not finding this stuff funny anymore :-)
You could try Authorsden. I have few problems there and poems notch up thousands of views with a little promotion. The social side of the site is emphasised less than at Gather but if you post in order to be read its certainlt tapped into the Search Engines much better.
My Den at Authorsden
Yeah, code sort of --- I was thinking about migrating my main blog, Boggart Blog to another host a while ago, from much the same reasons as I beef about Gather (sheer amateurism of the site management) but my friends and followers of the blog made me fel so guilty about quitting I had to reconsider.
You have to excuse me Esther, we British can be very obscure at times.
If that's how it is, as it happens I have a post about S&M today. For British readers really but I guess I can adapt it.
That's a common problem with ads. I use an effective popup blocker but will not switch to Firefox as I intend to swtch to Linux just as soon as I can get round to doing it.
Incidentally, there will always be pop ups sneak past even the best blocker. Always use Ctrl/W to close them. That way there is no chance of running a script that is started on a "mouseover" command.
No reason to be here? Well the site stinks but most of the people (trolls exepted) are great.
There is a lot of desperation apparent in Gather's efforts at the moment so I'd guess their wallet is hurting like hell now. They have never been successful in attracting or keeping members and my page view stats tell me they are seriously underperforming on visitiors too. Which is sad because despite all the dross there is a lot of good content posted here.
My message to Tom Gerace: "It's the Search Engines, stupid."
Good tip. I actually run a key logger so I can recover stuff lost to crashes, glitches etc. (not a hacker type logger but one I wrote myself) but ohers may not be aware they can often get lost content back by right clicking the down arrow next to the forward/back buttons on the browser task bar. its equally effective to just keep hitting the back button of course, but after my first attempt to send I needed to leave the site for a while.
I knew I was not alone, it was just that yesterday I felt like letting off steam about it :-)
It starts with self promotion - which is what I seem to spend most of my time doing these days.
Nice to see you. I lost track of a lot of people after the spring upgrade.
So what part of "I hate this effing site" do you want me to express in more direct terms?
:-)
And ICE is just one more straw on the camel's back.
As unhappy as ........ ? I'm disgusted. We British are much more unhappy. We have been the champion miserable buggers of the world ever since records began.
The thing is, misery does not become American's as it does Britonsso it is more noticeable. I guess the climate has a lot to do with it or perhaps it is something to do with being part of a nation that was once the world's greatest economic and military power (in which case you will soon be catching us up) but misery is what we do here.
The class system is important of course, the upper classes are too inbred and stupid to understand misery so they carry on as they always have except now foxhunting is illegal they have to hunt chavs and pikeys (the underclass) instead.
The middle classes are too emotionally repressed to ever experience any feelings of happiness or sadness. They are just too fearful of what people might think to allow themselves to enjoy life. We Bohemians are too debauched to really notice the national mood, which leaves the working class, the proleterian masses. And there are laws, temporal, spiritual and natural which require them to become miserable on attaining the age of majority.
(Sings tunelesly)
"Its the same the whole world over,
its the poor what gets the blame
its the rich what gets the pleasure
is it not a crying shame...."
Sings tunelessly
Now I KNOW how to categorise you!
Do they still dress up in those cool red jackets and nifty jompers (sp!)?
I guess you mean Jodphurs - riding breeches, jompers are --- I think --- Swedish cross country runners. Or maybe not????
Thanks, it knew it was something to do with the army. And a reminder that we tend to win wars when not allied with our cousins in America. Afghanistan excepted of course. Before the current kerfuffle the score was Afghans 3 british Empire 0.
And Mr. Obama wants to escalate activities in that area? Those who do not learn from history etc.
As Ishbel says above, jomping is an expression for marching with your wellies (galoshes) on across boggy terrian. It came into the British consciousness during the Argy-bargy in the Falklands.
I heard Swedes use it in the sdame context while working there. So you wouldn't want to wear a jomper. Swedes and Marines tend to be big people.
I don't know of any other usage but maybe its a term for wellies. You surely know the Wellie boot song by Billy Connolly:
If it wasnae for your wellies where would ye be?
You'd be in the hospital or In - firm - i - ree
coz you would have a dose of flue or even pleurisy
if it wasnae for your feet in your weeeeeellies.
Oh that's so strange... although I've known it to be the truth. In America it's the exact opposite, we think of the low class as inbred and stupid. And yet, our country wasn't begun by the high and mighty, inbred upper class. The snot nosed uppity, "I'm better than you", won Canada. lol
I was going round an art gallety once, there was an exhibition of portriats by the eighteenth century painter Sir Peter Lely. After a while I started to think Lely was a lousy painter, all his subjects had close set eyes, a long nose, a weak chin and a pinched up little mouth. Then I remembered they were all aristocrats and therefore probablt their own uncles and aunts :-)
Actually Debra, you country was begun by the upper class. A branch of Geoge Washington's family still hold land around the town of Washington in County Durham.
One of the reasons the colonists won the war of Independence was that many officers in the British army supported the claims of the House of Stuart (Bonnie Prionce Charlie) to the throne and had family connections with Stuart supporters who had fled to the colonies to escape the retributuion of the Hanoverians after the insurrections of 1715 and 45.
You're right, that's when the word came into the English speaking consciousness but the Swedes used it quite a lot when discussing plodging through boggy terrain (there's a lot of that in Sweden.) They were actually quite surprised we members of the British project team had heard of it.
In the project it became a term for an English or French consultant trying to make some sense of a document written in English or French by a Swede.