Mean Ol' Marissa

The “stuff” was starting to hit the proverbial fan pretty good last week after it was leaked that [Yahoo!] CEO Marissa Mayer would be no longer allowing employees of the company to [work from home].  For more and more companies around the world have been allowing more and more of their employees to work from home whenever it was possible, and this has been especially popular with working parents of small children.

Ms. Mayer cited there being a need for more creative collaboration between employees on projects as being the main reason for the drastic policy change, which I find as being rather strange coming from the chief executive officer of a major internet portal company.  Of course, it may very well be that she was just trying to be honest about her believing that there is only so much that can be accomplished online.

Nope, I am not buying it.  For Mayer’s turnaround of Yahoo! has not been going as well as promised, and she is trying to force a great increase in productivity to appease her detractors.

In all fairness, Ms. Mayer came from Google, which is where great things are accomplished on a regular basis by many employees who would rather be at work than home.  There is a very good reason for this.

No, I do not believe that Ms. Mayer has any desire of following Google’s example of insuring the happiness of their employees as much as possible.  For if she did, she would have announced plans for making the offices at Yahoo! be more like that of Google’s, and then start gradually pulling in home-workers without the threat of losing their jobs if they did not comply.  Be assured that I would be very glad to be completely wrong about her intentions.

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Geeks A-Lurking

It was not long after I started using Gmail as my primary email service that it was brought to my attention that the text ads on top of my inbox would often reflect at least one of the subject lines to an email.  A good example of that would be an ad for pet supplies showing up after I had received (or sent to) an email to PetCareRx, which could happen at least once a day.  Ah, but that is a rant for another day.

Anyway, I really did not think all that much about the ads reflecting my emails at first.  If anything, I found it somewhat entertaining—especially the ads for a cookbook with Spam recipes showing up at the top of my spam folder.

Oh, but it started troubling me somewhat whenever an ad for some medicine would show up after I had mentioned something about some sort of sickness in an email, which was not indicated in the subject line.  For I look upon that as being like the United States Postal Service reading my mail.

Yes, I understand that an email is not sealed like a letter is, but there should be a line that cannot be crossed.  It sure helps to explain why my Social Security Disability lawyer recoiled like I had said something ridiculous when I asked him if they had an email address to send and receive correspondence about my case a few years back.  Yes, there is an opt-out option regarding displayed ads, but will this prevent them from going through my emails anyway?

Alas, as if it is not bad enough that Google has geeks snooping around in my personal emails, there was a notification at the top of my homepage when I opened my [Google Chrome Browser] a few days ago that said that they had disabled some extensions that may have been installed by mistake in order to speed up page loading.  Whoa now, is this not akin to a landlord going in one of their rental properties and rearranging the furniture to make it easier for the tenant to get from room to room?  I don’t know about you, but I would like to do my own interior decorating—thank you!

Okay, both Gmail and the Chrome browser are free.  That is, at least in regards to them being free to use.  So, there is only so much that can be said, but there appears to be more of a difference than ever between my definition of evil and that of Google’s.  I sure hope they get back to their roots soon.

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YouTube Links

My journey from being as technically-challenged as anyone naturally can be to a master of all things computer-related has not been a smooth one.  In fact, I am still much closer to where I started from than where I would like to be going.

Nonetheless, some progress has been made, and in one of the areas, it is on full display for all to see.  For when I first started blogging, I had no idea how to do much of anything, and now, I think I can publish a fairly presentable piece.

No, I am not trying to take the credit.  For I have been made all too painfully aware of the absolute truth of the matter truly being that anything good I may do is actually on account of my Heavenly Father’s efforts—certainly not my own.

Anyway, one of the things I have learned to do is how to embed video clips, which has changed from the way that it could be done not so very long ago.  I can’t recall just when it changed, but the way I used to embed videos on the Blogger platform was to just include the code for the video in the text.  After clicking on “Publish,” the video would show up where I had placed it.

Yes, that was on the “Compose” page.  Whereas, the code now has to be added on the “HTML” page, which often involves some adjustments back on the Compose side.

Ah, but there is another way that is much easier when it is working as it should.  For one can click on the little button that looks like a [clapperboard] on the Compose page, and this will bring up a pop-up window that looks just like the image below.

The next step is to choose a source, and since the title of this piece is “YouTube Links,” you have probably already figured out that I will be selecting “From YouTube,” on the left side, which will leave the “Choose a video to upload” slot blank, and then you either type in or paste the URL for a particular video on YouTube, which will sometimes leave you with something like you see below.

Now, the reason why will sometimes leave you with something like you see below is up there is on account of this not being what you want to see.  For none of the options listed are for the video that I wanted to embed.

In such cases, the only recourse that I am aware of is to add the actual code for the video on the HTML page, and I wonder what is going on.  For I would think that the YouTube URLs would be unique to each individual video.

Yes, it may very well be just a glitch, but even in cases where this works as it should, why do videos completely unrelated to the search also show up?  It was a different bunch before, and the current selection will probably be replaced before long.

No, I don’t have a good feeling about this at all.  For if anyone should know how to fix something like that, I would think it would be Google, who just happens to own YouTube these days.

Okay, I suppose it is nothing to get too upset about, but I would like to hold Google to a higher standard.  After all, isn’t their motto: Be not evil?

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Blogger vs. WordPress

Back when I went to start this site on [Blogger/Blogspot], I also started one on [WordPress].  For I could remember reading that WordPress is a lot more flexible, and one the earliest invitees to become a member/contributing author here got plumb insulting about how stupid it was to even consider having a site on Blogger.

Thankfully, she refused the invitation.  For in hindsight, a female version of [Lavender Darwin] would be just too much to take.

Anyway, since I was already fairly familiar with what one can do with the Blogger platform, I let the WordPress version languish.  For this is one old dog who really does have a hard time learning new tricks—especially when it comes to technological things.

Ah, but the powers that be at Google just had to force the issue.  Subsequently, what had become relatively easy for me to do became much more difficult.

Link: [On BlogDumps]

Case in point: that video.  For the way it used to work before Google started making all sorts of a “improvements” to its Blogger platform was that one could just paste (or manually type in) the embed code to a video right in with the regular text on the Compose page, and the video would display as it should when the piece was published.

It no longer works like that.  For one has to now enter the embed code on the Edit HTML page, which really isn’t all that big of deal after you get used to it if the video shows up on the Compose page, but when it doesn’t, as with the video here, getting everything to look just right can be a royal pain.

Another “improvement” has forced me to switch from a Georgia font to Vendana.  For Verdana is almost a third again larger, and with normal text on published articles now becoming very tiny, one needs to employ the largest font available if they want their readers to be able to read what they have wrote.

Yes, I have experimented with making all of the text large, but this freaks me out when it becomes at least twice the size on the Compose page than it will be after publishing.  More importantly, the text also displays that big through the RSS feed, which looks awful (at least to me).

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I am well aware of browsers having a zoom feature, but having to do this or that may discourage many from wanting to actually read what is contained in an article.  Besides, images are also enlarged when the zoom feature is engaged, and the thought of a super-sized picture of Lavender Darwin chills me to the bone.

Hence, some of the reasons why I started looking into switching to the WordPress platform, and I quickly discovered that what I had read before about how flexible WordPress is was written by an idiot.  For you can’t even change font colors without changing the HTML code!

Oh, and the troubles I have been having with including non-YouTube videos with Blogger, WordPress can’t even read the embed code to the video above!  Needless to say, neither does it show up on the Compose page.

Yes, if I was a cranked-up coder, I might feel differently about the WordPress platform.  For with it being open-sourced, I can see where one MIGHT be able to do some things that they couldn’t with Blogger.

Furthermore, WordPress does allow for links to open in a different window, which is something that I wish Blogger would enable.  Should I sic Lavender on them?

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