Random 5 for November 13 – WordPress, ads, normal, holidays, friends

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What’s with that? – The beloved husband told me he is no longer getting notifications when my posts are published. This has happened to me with other bloggers. I’m not sure what “turns the notifications” off but there is nothing I can do about it. I get an email when someone I follow, posts and it’s also in my “WordPress reader” but occasionally someone will drop off. I’m not sure what to tell readers to do. If anyone has a thought on this, please post in comments.

Speaking of WordPress – Remember back in the old days? If you didn’t buy the “no ads” package, there would be one ad on your posts. Then it was two ads. Now it’s nine ads. Seriously? Feels very spammy.

Relief – I’ve been enjoying this week without all the political chaos or at least a lot less chaos. I can watch a news program and focus on drive-by shootings and drug ads like I used to do. During the political barrage, a new drug started to advertise. I have no idea what it’s for but the side effects can cause uncontrollable diarrhea or death along with a slew of other things. We are back to normal.

Our tree at the last house.

The holidays this year – Last year we were knee-deep in the new kitchen project over the holidays. Most of our time centered around stuff arriving late and contractor health issues. Everything was displaced and I was in no mood to decorate for Christmas. When we downsized, the intent was to downsize most things (not the cats!) and holiday decorations are one. We don’t have room for a lot of bric a brac but we still want a festive feel. We are starting early this year so we can appropriately donate anything we don’t use here. Without smooshing things together (and I hate that look) there is no room for a tree so we’ll seek alternatives.

Goodbye Nancy – A good friend of my sis-in-law who occasionally celebrated holidays with us, has moved west to live with her son. It’s a good move as there is no one here to help her out. I haven’t seen her since before the pandemic. I wish her the best.

So how was your week?

 

74 thoughts on “Random 5 for November 13 – WordPress, ads, normal, holidays, friends”

  1. I’ve had that people dropping off of Reader and when they are people who regularly post, especially certain days, like you, I have to go to their last comment on my own blog to find them. What is up with that. And then after I go to their site, I can’t post a comment, without logging into my site. I never log into my site, just click it. Sometimes I have to resubscribe and when I do, I get posts via e-mail, in my notifications and Reader … I try to toggle it off, but it persists. I don’t remember signing up for “no ads” – maybe I missed it … my 10-year blogiversary is coming up in February. I paid extra to get a domain name and try to change it – can’t do it. Sometimes regular/long-time followers end up in SPAM or I’m in their SPAM and neither of us wrote SPAMMY things.

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  3. I have had all sorts of weird things happen to me on WordPress. Comments that for no conceivable reason go straight to my Spam box, or don’t arrive at all, notifications about other people”s blogs that stopped arriving, and so on.
    Re:politics and elections dominating the news, I can relate to that, but still, I would have thought it preferable to drive-by shootings!
    Christmas decorations? Well, it’s only November but if I substitute Hanukkah for Christmas, the bakery shops are already full of “sufganiyot” (donuts) although Hanukkah is more than a month away. I don’t think I’m going to “downsize” my consumption of those – which probably means I’ll have to “upsize” my clothes 😉

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  4. When we are in a smaller space with no room for a big tree, we get some smaller ones and set them around strategically. Just small ones out of glass or metal or whatever. Anything shiny or sparkly. For special ornaments, we find someplace to hang a garland and then hang the ornaments off of that. And also we find places to add light strings!

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  5. To be honest, I have a number of odd WordPress anomalies that come and go. For a long time I was Spammed with hundreds of comments and I couldn’t get it to stop. I think it finally did. I also occasionally go through a two or three week period when I get every response to a particular bunch of blogs. Not comments made to me, but comments on another blog. And I definitely have on more than one occasion realized that I’m no longer “following” someone, and I have to figure it out and play catch up. Very strange!

    I am so relieved that the political campaigning is mostly behind us. This has been exhausting!

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    • I gone through some of the things you say here. Often when I check my spam (which isn’t frequently) I have thousands and there is no way to do a complete delete. I have to delete them 20 at a time which is very time consuming. Campaigning, gawd yes!

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  6. Same deal with my husband not getting notifications. He even asked me the other day if I was still writing posts. I wonder who else isn’t getting WP notifications. I’m with you about the joy of no more political ads, for a while.

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  7. That’s odd about the notifications. I only follow bloggers through the Reader, so that means there’s a strong chance I might miss something. I like to think that doesn’t happen, though. I remember upgrading to the no-ads level when someone told me I had ads in my posts for removing foot corns. That was an easy motivation. 🙂 – Marty

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  12. I don’t have a tree anymore, but I do a bit of decorating. Just something on my door and on the table. Downstairs, the front lobby gets decorated with a tree and wreaths in the windows. It always looks beautiful.

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  13. Sorry I have no advice on the notifications. WordPress does strange things. I still get your notifications. Your tree was pretty. I am sure you will figure out some way to decorate.

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  14. In my younger days, I had multiple trees. When we downsized, I got rid of the last big tree and got a 7′ pre-lit slender tree that fit perfect in the corner. Then that was too much, and I went down to a 4′ tree. It still required multiple trips to the attic via the folding stairs so I went down to small table top trees, and I love them. I have one in almost every room with tiny lights. Our local greenhouse has the very best artificial small trees I’ve seen anywhere. Along with holiday wall hangings, decorated mantle, and nativity set, it’s pretty festive and in a couple of hours I can put it all up or take it all down which is then stored in a closet. Yes, much easier. 🙂

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    • Sounds a little like our journey. We had a 7′ pre-lit, then downsized to a 4′. Now we are looking at alternatives. When I lived alone, I did a huge poinsettia on the coffee table with a few standing things (nutcracker, Santa, etc.) and called it a day. We store in our basement closet which is still steps.

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  15. AdBlock works on WP. I forget that it can show ads. It has a little warning in the comment area that your guests might see an ad. It says nothing about 9. Nine is far too many.

    I haven’t decided what I’m doing for Christmas decorations this year. No tree, I think. Maybe some happy mooses and snowmen scattered around.

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  16. When we moved and didn’t downsize, I suggested to John that we consider getting rid of whatever he didn’t use in decorating for Christmas. Big mistake! He took it as a challenge. Now that he is gone, David and I will have to decide what we want. My first choices are seasonal mugs and dishes. He hasn’t decided whether to have a tree or not. This is going to be interesting and fun.

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  17. I’m with you and Maxine – I am ready for the holidays but no tree. I have noticed that I am not getting email notification to some blogs I follow but the show up in my Reader. Also, I still have trouble comments sometimes. It seems there are more adds too. Have a good week!

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  18. Hi, Kate – We decided to downsize Christmas decorations this year as well. We decorated yesterday (about a month earlier than we usually do) so that we too could donate Chirstmas ideas we no longer need. A few years back we used a real Christmas tree and decided to put it on the outdoors side of our front living window – only a couple feet away from it’s usual place – but outside. It worked like a charm and we’ve been doing that every Christmas since. Win win!

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  19. I put my Mom’s foot and a half lighted ceramic tree that she made for us for our first anniversary out on November 1.
    Forty eight years ago… where does the time go? We haven’t put up a big tree since 2017. We don’t usually put anything out but her tree. But I do enjoy Christmas music and have been listening to Chris Standring’s and Kathrin Shorr’s album, Send Me Some Snow, since late October.
    My notifications bell doesn’t work for everybody… it’s weird.
    I miss a fireplace! I think Santa is going to bring us an outdoor smokeless fire pit for the lanai.

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  21. I try to watch my local news – usually the 12-noon edition – no less than every other day, and definitely try hard to catch Sunday’s 6 PM news so I can get “The Week in Review” for any highlights during the week I may have missed. The local news, occasionally a football game in the background if ‘my team’ is playing, and some afternoon fun with Buzzr, a channel that has all of the old game shows. If I need more TV, I’ll watch an Amazon Prime movie. More than ever, I appreciate the 100% escape of a good book!

    Between ads on TV and the seemingly constant calls from phone #s I don’t know (which go directly to my voice mail) whose numbers I end up blocking afterwards, I’ve grown tired of the open enrollment for Medicare time frame. I am interested in information on a different plan, but I know if I contact them, they will give my phone # to all of their agents, and the calls will be worse! I just want to talk to one person to ask some prepared questions. I don’t want to be “Sold”. And I thought car salesmen were pushy!

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    • Usually if you work with an insurance “agent” they don’t sell your info because they don’t want you going elsewhere. We worked with one several years ago to help us select what we chose. We haven’t heard from her since but I know she’s still available if we want to revisit our plan. She spent an afternoon with us working through to make sure our docs were in network and commonly used meds were reasonable. As it is now, we don’t have many prescriptions and they are all in the $0 range.

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  22. We have small table top Christmas trees ~ one with lights and a smaller one without. That’s what we’ve done for the past 25 years. I love not messing with a BIG tree.

    We also put out lots of Santa figurines collected over the years, plus reindeer, gold beads, etc.

    Your husband should just resubscribe to your blog. I’ve had to do that for a number of blogs over the years. WP is a great platform . . . except for a few things like dropped subscribers and a profusion of ads.

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      • It’s a mystery to me too, Kate. I got unsubscribed from several blogs that I read and commented on regularly. Most times, I didn’t notice immediately because I follow a number of blogs. But if the bloggers in question commented on my posts, I would realize they hadn’t been posting for a while. I would swing by to ask why, only to find out that they had been posting but I had not been notified. Each time, I would just resubscribe and that solved the problem.

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  23. Agree about the political ads – I was SICK of them…..kinda like I get pretty sick of the “Medicare Part C” ads from the health insurance companies wanting our $$ for their Part C plans. Our insurance was a package deal with my husband’s retirement so we have no choice (besides we like what we have and it’s perfect for us). Anyway, if I hear that man in the commercial say “YOU MEAN WE DON’T HAVE A MEDICARE PART C PLAN?????” in the tone of voice like he’d say “YOU MEAN ALIENS HAVE LANDED IN THE FRONT YARD??????” – just one more time I think I would have said a BAD word (or thrown a book at the TV).

    Hugs, Pam

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    • Unfortunately medicare ads will be around another few weeks. The last week before the election, we were actually turning off the news. None of it made sense as projections changed every day. We were putting on Jeopardy earlier and early (we have it saved so we can watch without commercials).

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  24. Every year I have to smoosh stuff in the living room to fit in the tree, but I’m not giving up the Christmas tree! I love the smell of a noble fir, and the light make me happy. Never mind that I have to climb over the sofa to open and close curtains for one window. Plus, I don’t mind taking the tree down as much when I can look forward to not climbing over the sofa once more.

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  25. It is such a blessing to be done with the political ads. I feel sorry for the folks in Georgia who are going to have to listen to them a few weeks longer. I am happy to click on CNNs election results occasionally to see what’s up and not be badgered by all of it non-stop. We will decorate after Thanksgiving here, but neighbors already have their lights and mangers up…too early!!

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