BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

The “interwebz” can do some strange things. It’s almost as if the damn thing has taken on a life of its own, which I suppose kinda makes old Al Gore a “Doctor Frahnkensteen” of sorts. (Okay, okay, I know… Gore’s quote was taken way out of context, but the joke worked… gimme a break. I’m actually writing this way early in the A.M. and my caffeine system isn’t up to snuff just yet…)

Anywho, the thing here is this – there are just some places on the internet that seem to have become a multi-headed monster doing whatever it damn well pleases. Social networking sites for instance. In this particular instance, Facebook.

There I was, ditzing about on FB, taking care of my necessary social networking marketing schtuff. E K was at her desk behind me, fiddling about with her own FB page, updating the world on her adventures in grocery shopping and slapping a coat of polyurethane on the O-spring’s chest of drawers.

Yeah, truly exciting stuff there… (Hey, sometimes it’s good to be boring…)

So, anyway, I did a quick refresh of my page to see what was going on and the screen went all willy nilly, flashed a bit, sent some gibberish scrolling around, then settled back into my “Facebook Wall.” Everything looked relatively normal except for one minor – well, actually major, IMHO – detail.

Now, just by looking at the picture on the left you might not see the problem. In reality, it looks pretty normal. In fact, it looks extremely normal. And, if it weren’t for the fact that I happen to use a link that generally resides in that box, I might not have noticed the problem myself. However, on the night in question, after perusing my wall I was going to go have a look at someone else’s wall. Namely, the halo wearing half of The Evil Redhead.

Yeah… I was going to go look at Kat’s page, and the easiest way for me to get there is to click on the link under relationship status, because normally it looks like the picture on the right.

But, it didn’t… It looked like the one above.

According to Facebook, I was still married, but to whom was the question. I checked my info tab and it claimed I was married, but my spouse was a mystery.

Figuring this was just some bizarre glitch, I hit the search box, looked up Kat’s profile – which ostensibly was still there – and clicked on the link. My screen flashed, went blank, then my FB newsfeed appeared. I cocked an eyebrow, grumbled, then tried it again. Same thing.

“Hey legs,” I called over my shoulder. “Did you unfriend me on Facebook or something?”

“No,” she replied.

“Did you block me?” I asked.

“No. Why?”

I grumbled a bit more as FB repeated the redirection each time I clicked, then I answered her. “I can’t get to your page.”

“Hmm,” she said. “I don’t know what that’s all about. I didn’t change anything.”

“Let me try something,” I mused aloud.

I went down the line, clicking on several of our mutual friends. Each time I did so, either I was redirected to my newsfeed or told that this person’s page was no longer available.

Grumbling even more I mentioned this to E K. Of course, she promptly began to click on those links herself.

“I can get to Johnathan’s page just fine,” she announced. “And Tracy’s…” A few more clicks sounded. “And Anastasia’s…”

“But I can’t,” I said, perplexed. “Are you sure you didn’t accidentally add me to your block list or something?”

“I’m sure,” she replied.

Just to be thorough I clicked on some of my other friend’s pages who were not mutual between The Evil Redhead and me. No problem at all. Surfed right to them without so much as a brief pause. I cleared my cache just to make sure it wasn’t a phantom page. They still worked.

I logged out of FB, shut down Firefox, restarted it, cleared cache again, logged back into FB, and checked my page. Nothing at all had changed. No matter what I clicked I was no longer married to my wife, nor could I get to mutual friend pages.

“Well,” I sighed a lament. “It would seem that Facebook has divorced us and you got to keep all of our friends.”

E K giggled, of course.

By now it was pushing midnight and well past my bedtime, yet I was still clicking about on my page because I had no intention of signing the divorce papers, virtual or not.

E K clicked off her monitors (she has two, being the multi-tasker she is) and pushed back from her desk. As she rose to head for the bedroom she said, “I think you should just give up for the night.”

“But, it says I’m not married to you anymore.”

“Get some sleep,” she told me. “Maybe you’ll be married to me tomorrow.”

I guess I’ll have to start checking the calendar on the fridge in the kitchen to see which days I’m married and which days I’m single.

Better yet, maybe I’ll just check Facebook…

More to come…

Murv

I can remember, as a kid, sitting betwixt a pair of wood cabinets that housed a Marantz Hi-Fi – for all you age challenged folks out there, that’s a stereo.

There weren’t any MP3’s back then. Hell, there weren’t even any MP1’s.

The closest thing we had was an LP, since L obviously comes before M. We did have some MP’s, but they were Military Police and you only managed to get music out of them if they happened to be in the United States Army Chorus. The LP, however, was from whence sound and music emanated. BTW, the picture above is of the actual Marantz  stereo of which I speak. I managed to find it in the corner of a black & white Polaroid taken in our living room Christmas morning 1967, hence the mess and boxes sitting about.

At any rate, these richly stylish hunks of audio furniture… Well, they were richly stylish in their day – that being the early through late 60’s – contained 4 things:

1. Amplifier
2. Speakers
3. Tuner
4. Turntable

That’s it. Nothing more. And, in my youth that turntable got quite the workout. Another bit of nostalgia here for you young’ns – A turntable was a spinny thing with an arm that contained a stylus. Back then we called it a needle. Anyway, it would zip round and round while the needle would elicit sound from grooves that had been pressed into flat disks. Those flat disks were the aforementioned LP’s.

But, back to sitting between those cabinets… Besides listening to Sinatra, Elvis (Presley, not Costello), Trini Lopez, Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, Jan and Dean… Well, I could go on and on, but let me jump ahead to the “besides”… In addition to those many musical wonders, there were also the comedy albums. Most notably, Bill Cosby. As kids, listening to Bill Cosby comedy records was one of those guilty pleasures because while he certainly wasn’t foul mouthed by any stretch of the imagination, he did in fact say “Hell.”

I know. Pretty innocuous, eh? But, when I was growing up, “H E double hockey sticks” was a “bad word.” That’s probably why I cuss so much now. I wasn’t allowed to do so when I was a kid. But, I digress…

One of the classic bits from Bill Cosby back in that day was titled “Driving in San Francisco.” Primarily he went on about the hills and the world’s most crooked street. But, he also poked fun at morons getting behind the wheel as well.

And that, my friends, is a large part of my reason for this particular blog entry. Now that the nostalgia portion is over, I would like to move on to something I deem fairly important.

The above were both taken from the Missouri DOR Driver’s Test Study Booklet. Study these two rules in detail. Learn them. Commit them to memory. Keep them with you at all times, and OBEY them.

Do not make me tell you again…

And do NOT get me started on driving in school zones – including the friggin’ school parking lot people. Those particular infractions will just get you thumped in the head. Just ask the guy who is still trying to get a dent  that is shaped exactly like my hand out of the hood of his car. Maybe he will pay attention from here on out…

If you need further instruction on the rules and regulations for safely and legally operating a motor vehicle, you can download the entire booklet here:

http://dor.mo.gov/mvdl/drivers/dlguide/dlguide.pdf

That is all.

More to come…

Murv