Tuesday 7 Feb 2023: Technology fails everywhere

Image by Mediamodifier from Pixabay

I’ve been trialling Buffer for auto-posting blog posts to social media and, in the main, it’s doing all right.

As a free customer, I can only link to three SM accounts which, at the moment, is enough because, at the moment, they don’t auto-post to CounterSocial or Post.News. I don’t have Mastodon, and I’m unlikely to ever get it, mostly because it’s on so many different servers you can’t necessarily follow who you want to unless you join their server as well. Also, the different servers seem to belong to different people and there doesn’t seem to be any management. I could be mistaken, but that’s what I’ve gleaned so far. Mastodon has been added to Buffer, but who knows which Mastodon account you should link to it?

There is a big problem I have with Buffer, though, and that’s every time I spot a typo or a mistake and go in and change it to the blog post, it automatically goes back into the Buffer queue as an updated post rather than a new post. Now, this is fine if I’m close to hand and can go in and remove it from the queue quickly. But what if I’m on the go and on the mobile?

Yes, I can access Buffer from the mobile, but removing something from the queue is something the Krypton Factor would be proud of. Unless it’s a problem with my settings or there’s a current known glitch. it’s really, really rubbish because it takes several attempts to do it and, so far, I’ve never been able to do it the first time I’ve tried. Nor the second, or even the third. It’s as though it’s asking me if I’m sure I want to go to that screen, and then am I really, really sure?

So, as with the potential writing academy subscription, the jury’s still out on Buffer.

Monday

An amazing thing happened yesterday. When my alarm clock went off, I got up. 

Yes, I know! Shocking, isn’t it? But not only that, after doing my usual morning pet chores, I also forced breakfast down and was at my desk at 10am.

Well, nearly. I was just pulling a sweatshirt over my head at 10am, but I was still able to start the day’s pomodoros off on my watch.

Actually, I didn’t go straight from pet chores to breakfast to the desk either. In the middle of it all, I noticed a mistake in the title for yesterday’s post and I went in on the mobile and changed it… I just couldn’t face trying to change Buffer too. So that was the very first job I did on Buffer. I also deleted the first two auto-posts… or I tried, because Facebook isn’t letting me delete posts via the mobile either. So again, once I was at my desk, the next thing I did was fire off a complaint to Facebook, which seemed to result in an auto-reply from them telling me that Pages have changed on Facebook.

Now look, I KNOW they’ve changed, and I think they’ve changed for the worse. What I was doing was pointing out to FB that Business Suite isn’t working, as I can’t delete posts from BS on my phone, and while I was at it, pointed out that I’d been forced to download BS to manage my pages, before that I’d been forced to download Pages to manage my pages, and now I was being forced to download the app to manage my pages.

Okay, for the last time, I DO NOT HAVE THE FACEBOOK APP. I DO NOT WANT THE FACEBOOK APP. I WILL NEVER HAVE THE FACEBOOK APP. I have already downloaded first Pages and then Business Suite, both of which have or seem to have failed. Oh, and for the record, I ALSO DO NOT HAVE MESSENGER ON MY PHONE. I DO NOT WANT MESSENGER ON MY PHONE.

I know why they’re forcing these apps onto us. We can’t hide ads on apps, and we can’t control what the apps track. But… I DON’T WANT THEM. And if the powers that be are going to insist, then it’s likely to be a bye-bye from me. I’ll just stop using anything I can’t access or manage from my mobile browser.

Now, where was I? Oh yes, yesterday’s work… Once I’d done all of that, and started off this rant, I went and shared yesterday’s blog post on CounterSocial and Post.News. Then I went to have a look at my new followers on Medium to see who I wanted to follow back in return. Then I went to find a suitable image for today’s post and when I typed in ‘technology broken’ I was, quite honestly, disturbed by some of the very creepy images that popped up.

After I’d done all of that there was only about 10 minutes left of my first pomodoro. I did a few competitions, but when the bleeper went I stopped, had a 10-minute break, and moved on to the next job in the diary, which was a quick brainstorm for the next short story in the 12 Stories in 12 Months challenge. I did some more revisions on Diary of a Pussycat.

I went into my spreadsheets to update my wordcount for Diary of a Pussycat and realised I hadn’t done the spreadsheets for the new month. So that was next, after I’d changed the target on the January ones, bearing in mind I’d had a week on the sick. In January I wrote 34,359 words, which is a great figure, but not as many as I initially planned to write. Target for February is 65,300 words…

Then my dinner bell sounded and I had to down tools for ‘my work’ and go and have dinner. For the first time in a long time I went right away from my desk, and even my office, to have dinner away from work.

After dinner, I shared this Monday’s post for Diane’s Gig List, and I created posters and an event for another Monkey Dust gig and then promoted that and the one this Friday. I edited another chapter of the history book, and then the rest of the day was spent ghostwriting.

The poet was still testing positive for Covid, and so was someone he was supposed to see at work yesterday too… someone he hasn’t seen since before we think we all caught it...


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2 thoughts on “Tuesday 7 Feb 2023: Technology fails everywhere

  1. Yeah, I tried Buffer, but it wouldn’t work across all the channels I need, so I got fed up. And changing anything is a chore. It’s better than Hootsuite, but still doesn’t meet my needs.

    I’m sick of everything trying to force us to use phone apps. I don’t do everything from my phone and I don’t want to.

    Sorry the poet is still sick. Hope everything settles down soon.

    1. First of all, apologies… the comments were playing up and I ended up pasting the wrong text in here!

      I did wonder if Buffer was one of the ones you tried. It’ll do for me for now, as I don’t have many sites to auto-post to, but the updates are a nuisance.

      Phone apps are also too intrusive. My do not disturb goes on at 9pm. If anyone has a genuine emergency, they know to contact us on the landline.

      Thank you. He finally tested negative today. Now we need him to test negative tomorrow too…

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