Blog

Regarding posting to Blogger via email. Blogger gives you a couple of methods. The easiest is using Blogger’s “change settings” button on your friendly blog dashboard. Within the settings, there is an e-mail tab with an option called “Mail-to-Blogger”. Here, you establish a secret e-mail address. With this option, you can only post text, but you can do it from any email address.

To post pictures, you have to use Blogger’s new go@blogger.com address. Its a couple of steps, but it does work. This is for posting from a phone. You send an e-mail with your picture to go@blogger.com. Blogger will create a temporary web page and send you back the address and a “claim” key via text message to your phone. Then, you must go to go.blogger.com and enter your claim key. They will then allow you to direct all future postings from your phone number to an existing blog. Whew!

There. You asked for it. 🙂

For those of you who believe that my blog has taken on a somber tone lately, let me reassure you that life is good. Here are two happy pictures to reinforce my point 🙂

First is a photo of Dobie and Buster from last night. They are striking their usual poses. Dobie is watching me closely and planning her escape route in case I try and pick her up. Buster is in mid-meow…which isn’t so odd, because he does that about every 30 seconds to let you know he is alive.

And second is a pretty flower. This one is a test for my mother, who SHOULD receive this blog update via email…if I set this all up properly.

The photo of my Starbucks application? Fingers crossed!

I had to go through a couple of extra steps with Blogger.

One of favorite items in my office is the emergency Starbucks job application that my friend Steve filled out for me and framed. Always a good conversation piece. By the way, this is a test of posting via email. I’m NOT having a bad day 🙂

I forgot that I had taken this photo of our Japanese snowball this morning in our back garden.

Speaking of balls, let me just say that I think it takes BIG balls to have someone wait around all day for installation service and then to tell them (only after they call) that they should just reschedule for another day.

Just who is the tail and who is the dog? (I just know who the ass is!)

Fortunately, its a sunny day. Jeff and I have had a relaxing time puttering around the house, and we did get out to the Apple store briefly to buy a connector to store photos from our camera onto my iPod. This way, we don’t have to cart a computer around when we travel. THIS is a cool widget to have.

But…our tale of woe is with DirecTV.

I stumbled on a web article telling me that San Francisco local channels are now available in high definition. (For the record, this is how you find out things about DirecTV, because they like to bury this information on their website.) So, I called DirecTV on Friday night and they scheduled me for a Sunday morning equipment upgrade. We currently have HD through DirecTV, but apparently we need to keep up with the times and get a new HD receiver. But its free…so cool.

Anyhow, our appointment was between 8-12 this morning. At 11, we got a call saying that the technician was behind schedule (big surprise) and would not get to us until 2pm. OK. I was annoyed to lose 3 hours of my morning, but we ran off to do our errands and returned at 2pm.

At 4pm, I called DirecTV. They called their local contractor. The contractor “tried to contact the technician, but could not reach him” and suggested that I reschedule for another day. I said no…that I had wasted my day waiting for them, and that they can try a bit harder to find their guy.

Sooooo, they are sending a “supervisor technician”. I don’t know how much I trust him, since he can’t find the technician he is supposed to be supervising.

It is 5:16. He is late.

An update. It is now 7:34. The “supervisor” never showed up. Instead the lost technician arrived. It look him FOREVER, but he did the job. (Jeff actually hooked up the HD receiver while the technician was on the roof.) Of course, when the technician called DirecTV to activate our new receiver, they tried to charge us, because there was no record of our ‘no charge update’. Total time spent on the hook for DirecTV? 11 hours 34 min.