Taming my spam box

It seems that once a year I get fed up with my bulging junk mail folder and begin deleting hundreds of political newsletters. During spring cleaning, I go on an extreme culling binge. If organizations ask me for money instead of offering a petition to sign, I give them the proverbial axe. 

In order to tame my Gmail inbox, I send Zoom events, newsletters, rewards, and political action items to my junk mail folder. It also means those pesky emails load in plain text, sans imagery. I have issues with flashing graphics, too much color on a page (especially red and yellow) interferes with my reading comprehension—which makes me angst ridden. And, more importantly, anything in the spam folder is a one-click forever delete button away instead of the usual three clicks to banish it from the trash. 

When I am on the unsubscriber warpath, very few sites escape my delete finger.  I don’t mind when reputable political websites send me petitions, as I spend considerable time each morning signing them as my standalone civic duty, but I get irritated when organizations attempt to either shame, or browbeat me, use insulting infantile, or alarmist verbiage (DCCC), or aggressively seek contributions. I am also not fond of surveys either. It seems like it’s another bogus attempt at drumming up money for their coffers.

In that case, very few political websites get a free pass. Most California politicians, also Rashida Tlaib, Bernie Sauders, and Robert Reich, and most progressive websites such as Daily Kos, WinWithoutWar, MoveOn, Social Security, Medicare for All, and a few environmental websites—all get to stay and play.

I think some political organizations exist solely to pad their own coffers, rather than actually offering successful progressive political acts with those petitions. It’s a racket. The thing is, once you sign a petition, they often pass your email address onto the next political entity, and so on, like a bad virus. I don’t worry about losing touch, as the deleted political action websites eventually find their way back to my junk mail box.

I swear some of those sites look legitimate, but I have to wonder why I get an influx of weird spam email after signing some of those petitions—as if my address was intercepted and held hostage in a Soviet silo along the way. The past few days I’ve been unsubscribing to nearly every entity that has asked for money, thus taming my spam inbox. Blessed quietude. At least for a while. But then it will begin all over again in a few months.

Dear Google (redux)

 Dear Google,

I write to you again and again and again, knowing full well no one is actually reading my queries and my pleas sent into the void of your send feedback loop. Please fix the problem, quit destroying and nuking my posts. It is devastating, I am a writer, this is what I do. If I could leave Blogger I would do so.  This is heartbreaking. The only reason why I joined the blogger platform is because Guy Kawasaki talked about the process and suggested that I join. And so I did. But enough is enough. Fix it. Fix it. Fix it.

Google console link explanations don’t help.

Dear Google (again)

DEAR GOOGLE,

Today I received even more emails from you telling me what was wrong with my blog.
URL is not on Google

This page is not in the index, but not because of an error. See the details below to learn why it wasn't indexed.

Server error (5xx) I GET THIS ONE ALMOST WEEKLY
Indexed, though blocked by robots.txt

First detected: 11/1/18
Status: Warning

The following issues were found on your site:

Viewport not set

Text too small to read

Clickable elements too close together

Redirect error

I am using normal text size, Georgia font, the default font for Blogger so I seriously doubt that my text is too small to read on a mobile device as it is bigger than 12 point. What are clickable elements? Are you referring to URLS? Most of the flagged pages are merely poems. Poems, I tell you. And short prose pieces. No URLS involved. What do you mean, viewpoint not set? The redirect error issue is entirely on you, Google, not me. You don’t even like my use of tags and it’s your freaking system.

Recently you deleted 13 of my posts saying that they went against community standards. They were poems, they didn’t even have swearwords, let alone, any hate speech—so I’m baffled. To your credit, you did re-install those 13 posts. But not the ones you deleted from the previous purge. I won’t mention the fact that you also put a red flag window over my blog so I couldn’t see it, saying that it was a fraudulent site. What do you think am, a Russian hacker? Back off.

At this point, I get more emails from Google telling me whats’s wrong with my blogspot than I do from my friends. I am at my wits end. I can’t take this anymore. I am considering taking down my blog and all 4000+ posts. This is utterly draconian. 

Your redirects and your explanations are useless. Telling me to see my webmaster. You ARE my webmaster. And the irony is that I have been using your software since day one. I am not using any add-on software. Just standard text. June’s myriad posts from you were relentless. Ditto that with May’s posts from you. Do you want to drive me away? Is that your endgame? 

Today, you also sent me yet another email, this time for site overview in order to improve my site, and to get more insights about my content. I don’t care how to improve my site so that more people can discover it. That’s not my goal, nor is it why I write. There is nothing wrong with my content, it doesn’t need improving, but clearly, there is plenty wrong with your software and sniffer bots.

Dear Google, please see my posts…

• Dear Google, why do you keep flagging my posts? I ...
• Dear Google, why do you keep flagging my posts?
• DEAR GOOGLE, Coverage issues have been detected an...
• DEAR GOOGLE, My woodside play is missing, looks li...
• DEAR GOOGLE, Google’s Blogger took down my memoria...
• DEAR GOOGLE, Blogger removed 13 of my blogposts fo...

Dear Google, why do you keep flagging my posts? I have no idea what you want me to do.

URL is not available to Google

It cannot be indexed. Learn more 

Somehow I don’t think it’s the URL that’s the redirect problem. You are the problem. You changed the software. Not me. I only provided the content. Not HTML code. I used your software. So this is an internal problem. Why shoot the artist in the foot? Dodging bullets is not my thing. This doesn’t even make sense. But then, I’m arguing with a bot. A lot of good that will do. 

Dear Google, why do you keep flagging my posts?

Does anyone work for Google? I am still having problems with my blog. I seem to be singled out for non-existent errors. The Blogspot post harassment continues at my blogsite, mohurley.blogspot.com. I have combed Google Help, poste queries, and have not gotten anywhere. I am at my wit’s end.

I have most definitely forever lost several posts, the 13 recent ones were reinstated (for allegedly going against community standards! Yeah, no), but not the previous ones. 

Google Help said to send in the URL to restore it, but how can I do that when a post is completely missing…and not in draft form either. I can pinpoint the dates of two deleted posts. One deleted post of a play I wrote, I at least had a hard copy of, but the other was of a historic event written directly in Blogger. Juanita Musson’s memorial gathering and photos at Olompali. I’m sure other posts are missing as well. Since I use Facebook to generate writing material, I have been double-checking posts via Facebook Memories. And, no, the missing posts were not catalogued on the Wayback Machine.

Now many of my other posts are being flagged for console search errors. I have never used outside software, only Blogger. It’s mostly straightforward text, that is, poetry. And I haven’t a clue as to why so many my posts are suddenly being flagged. 

The closest I can come to, is that Google installed a new mobile web crawler in 2019, that is causing all these flags. If I knew that ignoring it would mean that it wasn’t indexed, I could live with that, but my last experience with being flagged is that Google can, and does remove blog post without warning. 

I am devastated by the loss of my work, writing is my art form. I have 4000+ posts. At present I am madly hand-copying and repasting everything into text documents, to back it up, but I am only 1/3 done. What Google chooses to flag seems to be rather random. There is no pattern that I can see.I have also backed up my blog with Google Takeout. But that does not resolve the problem. And no, the missing posts were not in the Google Takeout download. I won’t even mention the post that Blogger turned into gibberish during the last upgrade.

DEAR GOOGLE, Coverage issues have been detected and flagged on my blogspot site. They are mostly poems, or jpgs of poems.

I keep getting warnings from Google that coverage issues have been detected and URLs have bee flagged on my blogspot site. They are mostly poems, or jpgs of poems. I have no idea what I am supposed to do. Or what could possibly be wrong with them. As it is, Google has deleted a few of my posts, most of which I was able to resurrect, but not all. I mourn the loss of my Juanita Musson memorial gathering at Olompali. 

On my corona poem, I made a brand new blog entry for it. That didn’t work. On the others. I made minute corrections to see if that would help. I even renamed some of them. Nope. Some allowed me to index URL, some didn’t. Looking at referring URLs did not shed any light. I don’t know what to do. But it seems that the Google mobile indexing URL is the culprit. It doesn’t seem to like many of my pages. Because they’re not mobile friendly? Bah!

Some of the warnings include:

Page is not mobile friendly How so? And do I even care?

Text too small to read. Really? And what is wrong with Georgia 12-point type? Actually it’s listed as normal size. It’s closer to 18-point text. You've done away with the font size numbers.

Clickable elements too close together. OK, Google, this is YOUR software. I have no idea what you mean. You don’t like my embedded links? I have not altered HTML. nor am I using other software to compose my pieces. So, what gives? Besides, there are no hot hyperlinks in most these posts. They’re poems fergawdsakes.

Is now a good time to bring up how Blogger chewed up my Shoe de Gras Mouse Wars  post on 11/30/2011, and turned it into an equation field of html madness? 

Notice there's no Hava <3 3="" all="" and="" any="" as="" asian="" at="" attract="" besides="" bird-mad="" cakes="" can.="" chocolate.="" clean="" d="" dark="" does="" drawer="" dry="" field="" go="" godiva="" goods="" hand.="" house="" i="" is="" letting="" list="" mice.=""

DEAR GOOGLE, My Woodside play is missing, looks like Google deleted it

OK, FOUND V. 3 on an old hard drive. Will restore it later. Right now I’m too disenheartened to think.

Final copy is missing. I found a first draft in my scanned notes. The short play would’ve been posted on my blog Sept 26, 2016. It was a smash success. I did a lot of historical research and incorporated folklore. Neil was so good as a vagrant ghost that some of the guests tried to run him off.Literally.

Woodside Spook Party Sat Sept 24TH 2016

DEAR GOOGLE, Google’s Blogger took down my memorial service post April 3, 2011 Resurrection not possible

Google’s Blogger took down my Juanita Musson memorial post at Olompali on April 3, 2011 stating it went against community standards. My Blogger post would’ve been dated on April 3, 2011, or sometime later that month. I am trying to resurrect bits of it via Facebook posts. I wonder if this iconic bathtub photo of Juanita is the reason why Google took my blog post down to begin with? How do I get it back? 

From Facebook: It's been confirmed: Juanita Musson's Memorial Service is on Sunday April 3rd, 2011 Olompali Ranch in Novato—Noon to 3pm. Please wear bright muumuus & Hawaiian shirts! A cock or a monkey on your shoulder, bedpans of food and wild Juanita stories will do...what a peculiar tribe we've been! Juanita Musson's memorial at Olompali, Sunday, April 3, 2011. It  was a Gate 5-ish reunion of sorts. Juanita stories abounded. Do you have a Juanita story or photos, etc? Post them here.

We were all trying to remember the 60's with little success — with Jerry Tomlinson, Yerushalmi Ben Yehudah, Larry Otis, Kurt Crowbar Kangas, Shannon Cinnamon McCloud, Stuart Ramsey, Lynn D Kircher, Neil O'Neill, Julia Brigden, Letitia Graves, Caron McCloud,  Laurie Steese, and Shiloh Sophia. (Stuart's gone now...)

 friends that were not in group photo: Pagan Neil and Carolyn Heal

"The food's good but not necessarily the temperament of the cook". —Juanita's Galley, Gate 4 and a half, Sausalito 

If you had complained, she would've walloped you with a frying pan. Then it wouldn't matter at all. 'Course if you were blottoed, she could've crowned you one and you wouldn't have noticed!

We met a lot of folks at the memorial that sort of knew, or people who looked familiar, or we were at the same place/time thing. I recognized Jerry Tomlinson who lived at Rancho Olompali when it was a Grateful Dead commune. I remember going to parties there, wading in the grotto. Before that, I got my saddle fixed there—so it was a three-wave tier of memory rolling in. 

We went to Sonoma and partied late into the night. Our host, Tim was a friend of Norton Buffalo's—so sad to see Norton's Ovation guitar silent, by the fireplace. Neil sang. We walked in the sculpture garden. Amazing place over the hill from Beltaine Ranch. One woman Caron, was with Greg Davis in the wayback days—so her kids were related to an old flame of mine, Geoff Davis! Another woman I met went to school with my brother Guy. Shannon McCloud. We all trundled up to Sonoma—Nuns Canyon and drank and feasted until the stars sighed. https://picasaweb.google.com/MoHurleyArt/RelaisDuSoleil#

I'm uploading the last of the photos now. Two more folders to go. I'll leave them all at the end of the album so it's easier to distinguish them form the earlier ones (I had 3 cameras going—and Neil had one too). https://picasaweb.google.com/MoHurleyArt/JuanitaMemorial#

You rarely got what you wanted at Juanita’s Restaurant, but you got a lot of it http://mohurley.blogspot.com/2007/08/you-rarely-ever-got-what-you-wanted-at.html

DEAR GOOGLE, Blogger removed 13 of my blogposts for no reason

 

Who else had their Blogger posts removed by Goofle for “violating community standards” yesterday? Not only did Blogger remove my posts, Blogger posted a big red FRAUDULENT BLOG banner over my entire blog. At least there was a link to contact Blogger and refute the charge. But it was alarming to say the least. Heavy handed, more like. Big Brother’s other name is Google. Move over, Facebook. I thought for sure I had been somehow hacked, or perhaps ransomeware was involved, but after a thorough security check, all systems checked out.

I had 13 of my original posts, for which there was no back up, deleted, now restored TG. But what a rough 20 hours it was, a total nightmare. And a lot of time wasted that could’ve been avoided. Seriously #epicbotfail. Last night I took 170 screenshots to document my nearly 4000 blogpost titles. I spent the entire morning restoring deleted files. Please excuse my lack of clarity, at present I really do have pigeon brain.  

The Blogger update that keeps on giving

Ah, the Blogger update that keeps on giving. My old posts with photos are rendered into blank boxes. Sections of text are randomly supersized, or there are inexplicable gaps and multiple carriage returns. Or the typography is an odd color. Makes me look like an idiot.

Wiki links are hardest hit. Cleaning it up is not an easy task. I'm tip-toeing through my 2014 posts, HTML and visual landmines! It's taken me hours to clean up the posts, about a quarter of them had HTML warnings, and I have 135 posts. Ironically it was in 2014 when I really began to run afoul of Blogger, with hanging posts, and disappearing posts. Dear Google, Using Blogger is a Painful Experience. 

Dear Google, about those 404 errors on Blogspot

Dear Google Search Console Team,
aka sc-noreply @ google.com

Thank you for writing to me to inform me that here are so many problems with my blogpage. And that 404s seem to be on the rise. I must admit, I thought your email was a phishing email. So, I sent it to the Spam folder. But then I did a little research, and your letter seems authentic. Though there are numerous hacks listed, this does not seem to be one of them. I may be wrong. If, so then this is a record.

To: Webmaster of http://mohurley.blogspot.com/,
"Googlebot identified a significant increase in the number of URLs on
http://mohurley.blogspot.com/ that return a 404 (not found) error. This can be a sign of an outage or misconfiguration, which would be a bad user experience. This will result in Google dropping those URLs from the search results. If these URLs don't exist at all, no action is necessary."

First, I had no idea I was a webmaster of my own bloggy kingdom. Does it involve whips and chains, cane-back chairs, kinky black and red leather and lace? Help! I have no idea what I'm supposed to do with this information. I click on most of the links and nothing happens.

Some of the blogposts I could access from your provided links, and remove the dead links. But most were dead links, with no redirect, and because they were a jumble of letters, I have no way to even guess what blog post they're referring to. Alpha-numeric word salad.

In the process of trying to make it all work, I discovered a feature on Blogger, to hide bits of blogs. A spacer that creates a divider, for further reading: "Read more...". I'm in hog heaven, as I tend to heavily footnote my writing—(I suspect those excessive links are part of the process that you've taken umbrage to. But now I can hide them from the main article. And those first drafts of poems I tend to save at the bottom, can now be hidden from the finished poem. Fraloo-fralay! But I digress....

Some hot links provided year, month, title, so I was able to access those posts and fix the dead links. Thanks a lot Santa Rosa Press Democrat for revamping your archives and leaving me with a plethora of dead links...

Speaking of "bad user experience," when I "fixed" my Atacama Civilizations piece for you, Blogspot created yet another null page. Scared the crap out of me, as I thought it was forever deleted...

You, dear Google, automatically created that 404 page, not me, when I hit the "fix" URL link. Oops! Luckily I did a search and discovered it was still there. But now I will have to hunt down all my cross-referenced post leading back to that URL and fix them. Talk about cross....


This was the original working URL


When I 'fixed" the URL, it changed, creating yet another dead link.


I had to hunt down the piece, fix cross-referenced posts with a new URL.

And while we're at it, when I upload an URL link for a photo, it should not say "Upload a URL" but Upload an URL. You can't have two unaccompanied vowels snuggling together like that. It leads to the fambly tree going straight up. Besides, it's easier to say an URL versus A (uh) URL, URL, URL, Duke of URL.

Second, several of the old pages you listed as having something wrong with them, were blogposts that I had written, and YOU, dear Google, stalled on the Publish upload, and then wiped my posts clean. As in void. The blank white page.

I was able to recreate most of the lost posts from scratch, but I still mourn for my lost post on Medieval Irish calligraphy and writing—as a lot of deep research went into that post—only to have it disappear. Poof!

Ditto that with my Boschka Layton memorial piece... Have you any idea what it's like to have to recreate a very long and detailed blogpost (2 to 5K words) from scratch?

Ditto that with my Viking Redhead post (my most popular post, pushing 80,000 hits). I'm terrified to even open it to correct the dead URLs, let alone "fix"anything. You've erased it no less than three times during the upload (Publish/Update button) process after I made corrections.

The Viking-Irish Redhead Gene Myth Mar 23, 2009, 52 comments

78757

I finally got wise and made a backup copy in TextEdit, before I hit that Update button. So, you can see why I'm not willing to open that particular post to fix corrections. I might lose it and all the comments its garnered.

Speaking of "bad user experience," you, Google, have not been very good to me over the years as a creator of unique blogger content...Blame it on my slow DSL, or some odd configuration at your end. But it's not been s smooth, or effortless sail. And yes, I have written to you many times. Sometimes I even see my suggestions implemented... But mostly I yowl into the void of cyberspace.

Then there's this:

Search Console
Increase in “404” pages on http://mohurley.blogspot.com/

It looks like the majority of those 125 null pages were when I moved posts to their correct creation dates in Blogspot. I don't see any way to add a redirect, but won't this eventually fix itself?

It seems silly to go to a non-existent page (that I can't even access) and add another redirect page when the page is merely moved to a different date within Blogspot. Won't the web crawlers eventually catch up? Besides, it's poetry. Who even reads poetry?

And yes, I do see that this email is a No Reply @ Google. But I had to get it off my chest. It will probably wind up as a blog post. You know how that goes. Squeaky wheel and all that. Thank you. I do feel better now.

Fondly.
MH


Dear Google, Now Blogger?
Dear Google, Using Google Photos is Painful
Dear Google, Using Blogger is a Painful Experience...

Dear Google, Now Blogger?

The only warning I got that Blogger was being updated. I clicked yes, and Blogger disappeared.

Dear Google,

I see that you've changed Blogger this afternoon—right as I was working on a poem post. I can't say it was an upgrade as I lost all ability to see anything other than your Confidential/ "got it." pop-up windows. Luckily, I had saved my poem in another format. But all my formatting changes were lost.

Your design teams really need to do a better job on Google products—the upgrades are supposed to improve user experience, not frustrate us. I was an early supporter of Google products, and now I'm disgruntled enough to leave Google behind. Your last revamp of Blogger also left me out in the cold for long stretches of time. So now, finally everything's mostly working again, (except the gratuitous extra drafts it saves every time I make a correction) and you had to go and upgrade?

And now Blogger, my entire dashboard and related pages are a blank white field, replete with orange feedback button in lower right corner. I've sent you many of messages today, while trying to get back online to complete my post.

All I get is a blank white page when I try to access Blogger's All Posts, and Create Page, etc. The only thing I can access is the public page. I've tried everything from changing cookies, disabling extensions. dumping, caches, resetting Safari, restarting, and nothing works. The URLs are broken.

I agree, Blogger really does need a revamp, it sure was an ugly interface (what's with all the orange anyway?),  Now, it may be that Blogger no longer supports legacy Macs/Safari. But like with Gmail, it should at least continue to support basic legacy HTML.

Speaking of Gmail, the new iOS Gmail is a warthog of an app. It's cluttered and distracting, What's with all the extraneous red stuff? Are you trying to attract bulls to the proverbial china shop? I can't even do basic functions without emails taking off to the hinterlands. The clincher, the embedded hot links are dead. I can't access URLs. I finally had to delete the app from my iPad, as it deleted some important emails with no way to retrieve them. Steep learning curve by torture? A dungeons and dragons approach to email? Oops! Steep learning curve, I mean, black hole ahead.

I won't even mention what an utter dog's breakfast the new features are. Imagine receiving a password reset, and then not being able to access the URL. Imagine getting an email with a link to reset that password. Now imagine, a Gmail app so screwed up, that you can't access the URL in order to change your password. A weird nanny feature? Yeah, that was me two days ago. And, yes, I have the latest iOS update. I combed the settings, etc., looking for a way to fix the problem. Nada.

Since I was prompted to download the Google Photos app along with my new iOS Gmail app, I was presented with another form of hell, when Google Photos accessed ALL my iOS photos and dumped them into Google Photos. I use my iPad as a diary, I take photos of receipts, checks, etc. I DO NOT want them showing up in my Google Photos folder. I deleted them from Google Photos, only to discover they were also deleted from my iOS photo folder. Luckily, I was able to retrieve all 104 deleted photos.

And now I can no longer use Blogger. What sort of fresh hell establishment are you running over at Google these days?

I dislike Google+, and its attached Google Photos (see previous post) on the Mac, as it's too in your face to be of much use when looking at hundreds of photos at a time.  I am still smarting over the loss of Picasa. I HATE Google Photos, which is a terrible replacement for Picasa. In addition, I lost all my curated notes on my Picasa sites, with no warning. Had I known, I would've copied them. The irony is that some people still have access to their Picasa sites. Bring back Picasa, or fix Google Photos.

So, I'm thinking it's the death knell for you and me, Google, I've downloaded my blog, as it looks like I may need to move it to another platform. Sadly, I think I've had enough of your broken applications.

So, Google, what's next? Please expand your R&D base before trotting out changes that affect our lives. FWIW, I was eventually able to get back onto Blogger, by using a different web browser, but I prefer using Safari to Firefox for my Google applications. It's simple, clean, elegant. Something you should strive for in all your products.

Dear Google, about those 404 errors on Blogspot
Dear Google, Using Google Photos is Painful
Dear Google, Using Blogger is a Painful Experience...

Dear Google, Using Google Photos is Painful

Dear Google,


I use your Picasa desktop app to edit and to upload photos, for years, it worked swimmingly until I was forced to embrace Google Photos. To my horror, when I was transferring photos from one Picasa site to another Google Photos site, in an attempt to consolidate work, I found that all the Picasa app editing did not translate.

My photos look awful in Google Photos.

Now I'm stuck with either using a different desktop app, and the Google Photos online editor. Alas, your editor is not as robust, and it's slow and cumbersome. Did I mention cumbersome? Try using it with a variable DSL speed sometime. Oh, btw, we upgraded to ATT Uverse, much faster, but still boggy at times. Still your glitches persist.

When you have 1000s of photos to reprocess, Google Photos makes editing impossible. No batch edit of albums—Picasa's desktop Auto Contrast and I'm Feeling Lucky were great filters. And the Darken Sky filter was brilliant. Can't do that in Google Photos.

So disappointing. The entire Picasa app and online experience was so much better than the online Google Photos experience. I'm sure I've told you before, I started out loving all Google products, Like The Guy (Kawasaki, who got me into this blogging mess to begin with back in 2007), I was an Google-evangelista, but I've discovered the more you tinker with our online experience, the worse it gets.

Blogger is a case in point. I continue to use it, but most of the time I'm seething. nay, frothing. The revamped Blogger has been a royal pain in the ass to use for years—since its last upgrade, and now I see Google Photos has followed suit. The relatively new Gmail revision is bad enough. At least I can opt out and use the old school version for slow HTML. Bells and whistles are not necessarily a good thing. I avoid Google+ for the same reasons.

There needs to be multiple ways to do things, and there needs to be quick and dirty methods to deal with multiple blog posts, bulk images, etc. It seems you've gone the way of Microsoft—bloatware. It's fine in small quantities, but frustrating on bigger jobs.

And while we're at it, what the hell happened to all my historical album annotations when you forced my Picasa photos over to Google+ Photos? Have you ANY idea, how much work went into that process, and now it's all gone. Poof. Like with my Seamus Heany Memorial photos, I had written a curatorial pieces identifying the readers, etc.—including poets laureate, and the Consul General of Ireland. Had I known, I would've copied the comments.

I want my Picasa web albums site back. I want my album comments back.

The more I use Google Photos the more I HATE Google Photos, and I mourn the elegance and simplicity of Picasa. What were you thinking? And  yet you've let some users keep their Picasa sites, why not me? I know others are still using their Picasa sites, including Robert Lee Haycock.

I want to opt out of Google Photos, as a user, and have access to my Picasa Web Albums again. All five sites. I don't mind that viewers interface with Google Photos, but, as a user, I need something better designed for behind the scenes access. Something like Blogger-All Posts listing. But with thumbnails.

It seems the more you make things better, the worse it gets. You need to use a much wider test market before you roll out some of these design changes. You do use a real test market, right? It's not all in-house?

And while I'm ranting, do you actually ever listen to your constituents? I get it that I'm proverbially biting the hand that cyberfeeds me. Clearly I am ungrateful. But I was once one of your most ardent supporters. Once you were great, now, you're  bloatware. Cumbersome, at best. Get a new design team in, fergawdsakes. And test drive it to a wider audience. Especially to us dyslexics. I'm offering it up, here.

1. Google+ Photos needs to also have an additional thumbnail user contact page style design—like film strips—for overall ease of viewing. Not just this multi-sized format that fills the entire page that the visitor sees. The eye needs places to rest in order to comprehend, not to be bombarded with imagery.  Please take care of the user as well as the visitor. And modular organizing of images, not by exif dates.

2. Each album needs to have a discrete space to include album prose, and not just the space on each photo, but for overall curatorship. People need context as well as visual imagery.

3. On Blogger, you also need another way of organizing posts. It's cumbersome when you have 2K's worth of posts, to navigate. Perhaps a hierarchical decade index as well as a year/month index.

4. Your in-house blogger search engine is not very robust. In fact, it's tetchy. Gawd help us if we add an extra space between words, or misspel (stet) a word. It needs to be more like Google search engine, more boolean in nature. I know you have the skills. I know you can do this. And when we get the results of the blog search, just list the titles, not the entire piece—I'm long-winded, in case you can't tell. It's otherwise impossible to access the older pieces via the in-house blog search. Even with Hot Links enabled—which bogs down the loading of Blogger, BTW.

5. On the Blogger Compose page, an actual date listed up there with the toolbar. The Schedule button is not always visible. And the helpful Schedule And Label slide-out windows are a little too trigger-happy. Sometime I have a cat-and-mouse chase the window to nail it down. Nothing worse than an overly helpful  hide-and-seek window anticipating my every need, only to have it be the wrong need. Sort of like using Autocorrect. And what's with the ghost drafts of blogposts I've already corrected and reposted? Hard to track down and delete.

I'm sure I'll have more suggestions as I continue to use the site...but at least this is a start.

Thank you, I feel better now. So let's get to it, improve Google Photos and Blogger. Or at least keep those legacy pages available for the users.

Yours under the Cranky Sign,
Maureen

Dear Google, Using Blogger is a Painful Experience...

Dear Google, Using Blogger is a Painful Experience

Dear Google,

It's become so painful to use Blogger that I often resist posting new work. I'm using Safari/Snow Leopard, and a wonky ATT DSL (read variable speed). But these problems persist even under Mavericks OS... So either it's a variable ATT issue, or you don't support Macs.

Before you lay all blame on my legacy Mac OS and low-end DSL, let me remind you that there was once a time when Google products really shone, they zipped right along, and loaded right up with even older software (Tiger, Safari 4.1). No waiting. Gmail was a dream. It just worked—despite bad ATT DSL. That is why I embraced Google products. You might even say I was evangelical—like Guy Kawasaki, who got me into this blogging mess to begin with. BTW, I'm an old customer: I scored a coveted Gmail invite waaaay back when you had to know someone who knew someone at Google.

Now, unless one has fast DSL, using Google products has become an unpleasant experience. I have complained and yowled long and mightily to you in the past via your Report a Problem button, especially when you first rolled out this version of Blogger. But clearly no one at Google cares, or is listening. Blogger is long in tooth and in dire need of an overhaul. 

So once again I find myself writing into the void in the rare hopes that maybe someone at Google might actually read this plea and instigate an overhaul of the painfully sluggish Blogger, and fix an equally sluggish Gmail, AND also ensure that they still continue to work with older software (and a weird internet connection).

I now am forced to use the classic Gmail in basic HTML as the current version of Gmail won't even load with Safari 5.1. It's not much better under the latest Safari and Mavericks OS. Nor is it improved by using the latest Firefox, or Chrome.

I can't begin to tell you how many emails and Blogger posts I've lost to the cyber-void due to Google software hanging somewhere between first saving and uploading.

I mourn for those lost posts as I put considerable time and scholarship into them. One post I was able to rescue as it was cached on another open page. But usually I'm not so lucky. That particular rescued post just so happens to be your number one post on on the Google search engine—The Viking-Irish Redhead Gene Myth. (Use "Viking redhead myth" for your search words).

Since Google products used to work just fine before you revised your suite a few years back, despite the fact that we have the world's worst ATT DSL service, the blame can only lay square on you. You've designed fatally flawed software. In the process of trying to make it cool, you've sunk your flagship with too many bells and whistles and not kept enough elegant structure—for which you were once justly famous for. I expected so much more of you, Google. 

When I say Blogger is painfully slow, it's not hyperbole. When I load the Blogger dashboard, I get a white page, and it hangs for five or more minutes—or longer—before I can get to the post icon to write. By that time, I could care less about posting a blog. I go make myself a cup of tea, and see if it's loaded yet. I wind up drinking a lot of tea while waiting for Blogger to load, Maybe I should take up wine instead?

For example, I have some screenshots I wish to share with you and I can't upload them, because, yes, they're hanging. Again. (So far, third time is not a charm...just sayin'. Forget about multiple images, I'm lucky to load one image to load at a time.) Hanging here....

My Blogger experience is punctuated by these white windows hanging for as long as 2 to 5 minutes each. Sometimes they hang forever. Loading and loading and loading. Just like the current Gmail.

I spend too much time watching this spinning cursor. This is where things can go horribly wrong if it's the first save and publish. OMG!

This is is a particularly devilish window, because even if you hit the Dismiss link, sometimes the screen goes white and there's no text at all. All my hard work gone. Poof! Sometimes it takes 20 tries to get past this red warning bar and upload the revised blog. Click on the orange Update button. Wait five to ten seconds, sometimes longer. One-and-two-and-three.... Wait for the red bar to appear. Click Dismiss. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Oh, and I revise a lot. So I count a lot too. One-thousand one.... You get the picture.

Oh, and about loading photos, this is a particularly slow loading page, that blue loading bar typically gets stuck, and most of the options are hidden behind white expanses. I had to find the right buttons by trial and error.

Photos typically hang when I do get this far. It generally takes me 3 to 5 tries to upload photos. Notice that the drop down list under MORE is invisible.

And may the gods help you if you get this window. There is no cure, no exit strategy. It will repeat endlessly. Only thing left to do is to copy your blog post to a clipboard and make a whole new document.

Your bloatware is worse than Microsoft Word. Rethink the process Google. You know the adage: KISS (Keep it simple, stupid, but I'd rather call you sweetie).

Don't even get me started on Google+, I literally cannot use the site which is linked to my other Gmail account—and in this case, Safari is not at all to blame, as I use the latest beta version Firefox for that account. Because it is so buggy, I've pretty much had to abandon my Google+ account. Luckily, I've found a way to access my old legacy Gmail and Picasa albums, otherwise they're as good as lost to me under Google+. 

I am also cross-posting this note to you on my Blogger page, because it is patently clear that you do not actually listen to customer feedback submitted via your "Report a Problem" button. So I put this plea out to you, warts and all. And I challenge you to do a much better job next time, when you do overhaul Gmail and Blogger. (Please let it be soon, before I am forced to use another email server. FWIW, IOS, by comparison is much better with Google interface. Keep in mind, that ATT DSL is little better than dial-up, with its variable speeds, causing this iteration of Blogger to repeatedly crash. Something to consider for the next iteration.)

Your latest slate of programmers have done Blogger and Gmail a grave disservice, and by extension, your (formally) fiercely loyal customers as well, by designing such flawed software, that you leave legacy folks with laptops in the dust. Bells and whistles are merely that, and if they interfere with the bones of the program, in the form of bloatware that can't upload, then you need to rethink your strategy. Sometimes cool is not very cool at all. It's so yesterday.

Or why don't you just come on up and wifi-ify Oakland too so we can have great internet. Some of these Blogger problems are bound to disappear with fast, regular DSL. I'll be more than happy to make you all a nice cuppa tea too. Cookies?

A disgruntled writer....

Google removed my memorial post of Juanita claiming it went against community standards

This is from a Facebook memory as Google removed my memorial post of Juanita, claiming it went against community standards. I thought it was spam egging me on so I ignored it. Mistake. Now it’s gone and there is no back up—not even in the Wayback Machine. I didn’t even find out about it until Google again removed 13 of my posts in May, 2021. So this is a placeholder. I’ve put the gleaned material in quotes.

I am heartbroken, as I know Google had flagged at least 7 other posts. Luckily I was able to restore the Woodside history play I co-wrote from an old hard copy. But what about the other lost posts?

This is what I gleaned from Facebook Memory: “It's been confirmed: Juanita Musson's Memorial Service is on Sunday, April 3rd at Olompali Ranch in Novato—Noon to 3pm. Please wear bright muumuus & Hawaiian shirts! A cock or a monkey on your shoulder, bedpans of food and wild Juanita stories will do...what a peculiar tribe we've been! 

We met a lot of folks I sorta knew or looked familiar or were at the same place/time thing. I recognized Jerry Tomlinson who lived at Rancho Olompali when it was a Grateful Dead commune. I remember going to big parties there, wading in the grotto. Falling in. 

Before Olompali was a commune it was Martin Ranch, I got my saddle fixed there—so it was a three wave tier of memory rolling in. One woman I met, Caron McCloud was with Greg Davis—so her kids were related to my old flame, Geoff Davis! That’s how I met Caron, Shiloh, and Shannon McCloud-Davis, and Kurt Crowbar Kansas. Shannon McCloud went to school with my brother Guy. 

Afterwards, we all trundled off to Sonoma Valley—up Nuns Canyon to a sculpture ranch, Relais du Soleil right next to Beltane Ranch. We drank and feasted on chicken until the stars sighed. We recited Juanita stories. "The food's good but not necessarily the temperament of the cook". —Juanita's Galley, Gate 4 and a half, Sausalito.

It turns out our host, Tim was a friend of Norton Buffalo's—so sad to see Norton's Ovation guitar silent, by the fireplace. Neil sang some folk songs. We walked in the sculpture garden. Big sheet metal horse running into rust. Amazing place over the hill from Beltane Ranch.”

I wrote a lovely log blog piece written ca. April 3-5, 2011, commemorating the memorial and the funereal supper. This group photo was from a 2016 FB post on Juanita’s page, and it gave me the terminus post quem date, so the missing blogpost that Google removed was still up in 2016. That’s all I know. Since it was all my original writing and photos, it couldn’t  have been a copyright issue. But then again, what do bots know about writing?

Link to Juanita’s page.

“Juanita Musson's memorial at Olompali. April 3, 2011 It was a Gate 5-ish reunion of sorts. Juanita stories abounded. Do you have a Juanita story or photos, etc? Post them here.

We were all trying to remember the 60's with little success — with Jerry Tomlinson, Yerushalmi Ben Yehudah, Larry Otis, Kurt Crowbar Kangas, Shannon Cinnamon McCloud, Stuart Ramsey, Lynn D Kircher, Neil O'Neill, Julia Brigden, Letitia Graves, Caron McCloud, Laurie Steese, and Shiloh Sophia. (Stuart's gone now...). 

I'm uploading the last of the photos to Picasa now. Two more folders to go. I'll leave them all at the end of the album so it's easier to distinguish them form the earlier ones (I had 3 cameras going—and Neil had one too). © Maureen Hurley 2011”

Friends not in the main photo: Pagan Neil and Carolyn Heal 

Alas, Picasa Web Album is no more, but the URL gave me the name of the ranch we went to, Relais du Soleil. Not only did I lose all the stories and tributes, I lost the names of the folks who attended the memorial service. I’m still so angry, I could spit.

Added 4/1/23

Juanita's Gallery restaurateur Juanita Musson dies

My original tribute to Juanita

You rarely got what you wanted at Juanita’s Restaurant, but you got a lot of it

• RIP Juanita Musson

• DEAR GOOGLE, Blogger removed 13 of my blogposts  May 13, 2021. At least they restored these posts.