Category: Assholes

Playing with blocks

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 24 Comments
I came back from a 7-mile hike to find a buggered WordPress interface.

Here’s something I don’t like: Unasked-for, unannounced and unwanted changes to a product I use daily.

WordPress pulled one of these switcheroos on me yesterday, reconfiguring its “navigation experience” to make managing its sites “more intuitive.”

“For many of you, there will be little to no change in how you use WordPress.com,” wrote Austin Lao on the WordPress blog yesterday. The many did not include the one, which is to say this one. Me.

Engineers gotta engineer, I guess. But still, damn.

Tucked into the “enhancements” to the “navigation experience” appears to be a forced shift from the old “Classic” CMS to the Gutenberg block editor, which I have been resisting because I don’t like anything about it.Â

For starters, “intuitive?” Me bollocks. The old “New Post” tool was intuitive. The new one is riddled with perplexing popups and hidden widgets. I’ll find them eventually, I imagine. But it’s gonna be like digging in the back yard for buried treasure. Might be there; might not be.

It’s a small thing to complain about. I mean, out in the real world people are still catching The Bug®, drinking poison water, or getting boned by Matt Gaetz (eeeeeeeyeeewwwwwww).

But still, damn.

I’ve posed the traditional “WTF?” to WordPress. While I await a reply, I’m back in kindergarten, playing with blocks.

Update: One of WP’s “happiness engineers” showed me how to unplug The Great and Powerful Oz. Fuck that guy. Not the happiness engineer, the Wizard. Anyway, with any luck atall atall we’re back on track here.

WordPress-ganged

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments
Don’t touch that dial.

Well. It seems WordPress has inflicted some more “improvements” upon its users. So, ’ray for us, right?

Eh, not so much.

I’m not certain but it seems that the sonsabitches have used their latest enhancement to the “navigation experience” to pry us out of the old-school CMS and into the Gutenberg block editor. I’ll have to root around under the hood a bit before I know for certain.

In the meantime, we may suffer from bloggus interruptus for a spell while I bang on a few things with this here ball-peen hammer.

Piles of blues against the door

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 29 Comments

There’s a strong whiff of the dumbass coming out of Texas lately. The directions are printed right there on the soles of the damn’ boots, yet nobody in authority can pour the piss out of them.

Maybe it’s frozen.

But not everyone in the Lone Star State is all hat and no cattle. For instance, there’s Steve Earle, and there’s also Steve Earle talking about the literary qualities of Willie Nelson, which is even better.

And finally, there’s Texas Monthly, with “13 Curses to Mutter Against Ted Cruz While You Boil Snow to Drink.”

Java jive

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 21 Comments
I love the java jive and it loves me.

Presidents Day, hey? Well, given the events of the weekend, the less said about that, the better, perhaps.

At least he’s an ex. Now all the until-death-do-you-part types know what the other folks are going on about when they talk about “the ex.” Lots of hollering, property damage, relationships shattered, neighbors appalled, cops called, lawyers engaged, and tons of money pounded down the rathole.

Then, if you wind up on the wrong side of the judgment, you try to assemble some sort of new life out of the wreckage as the asshole struts around talking shit.

The sun peeks over the Sandias.

But hey, at least we’re all freezing our asses off, right? It’s still February. Ten degrees when I arose and tottered to the kitchen to make the first of three authoritative Americanos with my old friend Mr. Krups.

I have been blessed over the decades to have an early riser for a wife. She made the coffee, and all I had to do was show up and drink it. Until Mr. Coffee went Maoist on me.

“From each according to his ability to each according to his needs?” sneered this two-bit Chicom barista-bot. “What you need is a cup of lukewarm bilge, comrade.”

I beg your pardon?

Mr. Coffee was informed in no uncertain terms that his services were no longer required, and now Mr. Krups and I spend a few brief, enchanting moments together each day, in the bleak frosty darkness of a Duke City morning.

At some point I’m going to have to go outside and shift a little snow around. But not just yet. Mr. Krups has just had a marvelous idea — another cuppa.