My buddy Walter, who is always watching over me the way Jesus watches over other people (everybody needs somebody), told me to tell my web-ma’am to update my copyright to 2022 on this site. So I did. She wrote right back. “I also updated all your plugins in the backend of your site,” she said.
Thank you? I said.
She charges a bit for that but that is how it should be. This is fine with me as I prefer to not even think about my backend plugins and in any case that sort of service usually costs a lot more on the street. And if things go too far we’re talking deductibles and a copay.
Honestly, I didn’t even feel those backend plugins, but then again they make these things out of software. I read here that you can get them in Chrome, though, so it pays to be vigilant.
My web-ma’am helpfully explained that her vigilance “keeps your site secure and keeps anything (like a web bot) from coming in a backdoor thru any of your plugins and hacking your site.” I really wasn’t aware that this was a possibility. Now I’m worried the next time I see the doctor she’s going to fumble around at my backdoor and tell me to turn my head and hack.
The most adorable thing about my web-ma’am is that she imagines I understand what she is talking about. Because she explains all this stuff and I’m all “Huh” or “Uh-huh” or “Huh?”
To her, or anyone trying to communicate with me? Be advised there are a lot of holes in my personal operating system, and although many of them are the spaces left behind when an idea vanishes into thin air, a lot of them are rabbitholes. Which means that when I’m not otherwise engaged—such as when I have no idea what someone is talking about—I’m going to take a trip down a rabbithole, and I might not reemerge in time to reenter the conversation plausibly.
Let’s take plugins as an example. As an abnormally language-sensitive person, I’ve always had trouble reading the word “plugins.” I want to put a hyphen in there. And in the absence of such hyphen, I read the word as “ploo-gins,” which immediately brings to mind some bizarre long-snouted fish in the deeps, and if something is going in its backdoor, that is entirely to be expected; all kinds of terrorist crap happens in the ocean. That’s why I don’t go in it. The plugins, as epitomized by the bristle-backed spiny plugin, are possibly related to the eelpout, and in any case are already bottom-dwelling, so intimate invasions are a likelihood, in my mind.
Yes, it’s all in my mind. Welcome to the funhouse.
I will peek out of my rabbithole long enough to acknowledge that hyphens are a pain in the ass. They were a pain in the ass on the typewriter, where they ask a lot of your pinkie, and they’re even more a pain in the ass on a phone, where you have to flip over to the numbers keyboard. Nobody likes hyphens. “Plugin” it is.
So I looked it up.
Plugins, it says here, are all about providing usability, functionality, availability, compatibility, and accessibility. I would hope mine would also support perspicacity, irascibility, and fragrance. I’ll check with my web-ma’am.
Also, according to the Googles, “the back-end application may interact directly with the front-end.” I tried that once. It doesn’t work out as well as you’d like, especially if you’re over a foot shorter than your partner. Not to worry: evidently the whole plugin thing is already being replaced by browser extensions, and I’m just vain enough to want them.
Just not on my back end.
We visit a small town in Northern Michigan and drive past its welcome sign as we arrive. It says, “Welcome to Greenbush. ‘People Loving People'”
Sometimes I think about how I could add a hyphen. Sometimes I wonder where the orgy is.
Your funhouse mind reminded me….I am not much of a chatter in the car, but hubs gets sleepy on long drives without conversation. On one trip I decided that everything that popped into my head was going to be shared aloud. Hubs stayed awake, and I laughed my ass off. I am pleased to report he did not have me committed.
My friend Dave has a game he calls “cute brain.” When someone says something completely weird out of the blue, he demands they search their mind back to how the thought occurred to them. We can usually manage to do it, too.
I kind of have that rabbit hole issue when Paul explains the finer points of what is going on in politics (Sweetie… leave that to Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, and Bill Maher. At least they make me laugh instead of going “OMG! We’re all doomed!” I call it the Mary Poppins theory: a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down.) or worse yet, the finer points of auto racing (I just nod like I’m really interested, say “uh-huh” once in a while, but go on having my own little thinkie-thoughts.)
I got a kick out of Mary W’s comment about hyphens. When I go into a fitting room and see a sign that says “4 items or less”, I cross out the less and write “fewer.” When I’ve been back there, they kept my correction, so I guess they stand corrected.
Brava! (I always feel an urge to fix mis-use of quotation marks, but I know that once I start down that road…)
YES! Not only quotation marks, but apostrophes! Whenever I see inappropriate ones on a sign in a store or business, I think, “Is THIS someone I want to do business with?” (Yes, I am judgmental. I think most people are, I’m just more honest about it.)
I think I’ll put a few hyphens in my pocket next time I go for a stroll just to see where they land.
I just put the words ‘hyphen in my pocket’ to the tune ‘Got the World on a String’. I am one of the easily distracted.
I needed a new earworm to replace “Thank God I’m a country boy.” Thanks.
Yeah, I’d rather mimic Sinatra in my head than John Denver.
Oh dear. Both to be avoided. Along with The Eagles and Stevie Nicks. There, you have all my least favorites in a row.
I find that thinking of Schubert’s Marche Militaire No. 1 will chase from my head any tune yet written, but I expect that someday an AI will produce a song so addictive that there will be no remedy for it.
There is a sci-fi short story about someone who managed to design the perfect addictive ear-candy (check out that hyphen!), a melody that would take over your mind. He succeeded and was never heard from again.
Sounds familiar. Was that one of Clarke’s “Tales from the White Hart”?
The music to clear my earworms is the Polish national anthem. Not that I’m polish, but we had to memorize it when our choir toured Poland.
I never give a thought to any plugins on my blog. Don’t even know if I have some. I tune out of conversations more often than I care to admit. I just don’t understand what people are talking about and I get tired of asking for explanations or clarifications.
The explanation or clarification so often makes it worse these days…. I often, or is it “orphan” as in Gilbert & Sullivan, just leave it be.
You crack me up.
Thanks a lot Murr. I had just gotten rid of Country Boy after my trip to West Virginia…
Mountain Mama! Take me HOME!
Colonel Bogey March gets me every time. Uh-oh…
I sang the WWII lyrics to my wife once, and she refused to believe that’s really how it goes.
Do I know this one? Do I want to?
It’s the one that starts “Hitler — has only one – big – ball!” Let me know if you want the rest.
I do!
To the Colonel Bogey March tune:
Hitler — has only one – big – ball!
Rommel — has two but they’re – both – small
Himmler — has something sim’lar
And Mr. Goebbels – has no balls – at all!
Thanks, Jeremy! I take it that the Colonel Bogey March is the song known from Bridge over the River Kwai?
Right! Those lyrics are the reason it was just whistled on the soundtrack.
I miss Walter!
Wow, I didn’t know there were people who didn’t know the words to the Colonel Bogey March. Intimations of mortality.