If you’re going to be a fraud

Be a good fraud.

Seriously.

Since I started this blog, it has become a target for spam comments. I don’t suppose that is unique to my blog. I think they must have software that harvests blog URLs and randomly posts comments. The hope, I guess, is that the blog will have a large readership that will then see the link’s posted in the comment.

Now, let’s consider the math—and the odds.

First, how many bloggers allow unmoderated comments? Obviously, some must, or this would be a futile endeavor from the get-go. But, can it really be enough to make it worth the set-up costs?

Second, how many bloggers are crazy enough to approve these spam comments? They are so obviously fraudulent. I suppose, if you were blogging daily with serious nutritional advice or plumbing repair tips, a comment like the following might entice you to approve it.

I’ve been surfing online more than three hours today, yet I never found any interesting article like yours. It’s pretty worth enough for me. In my view, if all website owners and bloggers made good content as you did, the net will be a lot more useful than ever before.

What you need to know about this comment is it was made to go on my post NSFW. For those of you who don’t remember, this is the one with the incredibly silly pirate video posted on a Silly Saturday.

All of you wondering how to make the net more useful, take heed. Apparently, all it takes is silly pirate videos.

This one, too, might be tempting.

Thank you incredibly substantially for your exciting text. I have been looking for these types of message to get a definitely very long time. Thank you.

I didn’t realize there was an Alexis Smith fan out there who didn’t know how to use YouTube for his or herself.

I guess my tip is two-fold.

First, as a blogger, don’t be dumb enough to fall for this.

Second, if you’re trying to fake it ’til you make it, fake it better.

Just wait

It will be useful—eventually.

I am nearly certain that every student in every class wonders at some point, with varying degrees of exasperation, what possible use this will be. (I suspect the phenomenon is more prevalent in algebra classes, but I can testify to the fact that it is not limited to math.)

Well, I am here to tell you that you never know when you’ll find a use for whatever knowledge you’ve got—and I can prove it!

It all started, long ago, when I was in grad school.

Grad school is an expensive proposition. You take whatever financial aid you can get.

What I could get was a graduate assistantship.

And my assistantship took the form of being on the paint crew.

I was a theatre major, you see. There were sets to build. We’ll pass over the disappointment that the teaching assistantships mentioned in the acceptance letter didn’t really exist and the subsequent annoyance of the entire class of graduate students—and note, simply, that I did get to help teach freshman acting eventually, thanks to a) the power of the ask and b) the maternity leave of the teacher. Not everyone was so lucky, and that came later, anyway.

Most of my indentured servitude involved paint.

And the shows produced during those couple of years involved an inordinate amount of wainscoting.

I have a unique and usually useless skill.

I can paint fake wainscoting with the best of ’em.

There’s not a lot of call for this skill. Generally speaking, if one wants wainscoting, one wants real wainscoting. It involves wood and carpentry, not latex and paintbrushes.

I would have said there was no call for this skill, but then…the MotH* took up model trains. At the time, I thought this was an excellent thing. He needs an indoor hobby for those days when golf is out of the question or beyond the budget. Model trains seemed an excellent idea.

That was before he built his little barn and handed it to me with the words, “Here. You can paint that.” (I don’t know why the MotH always issues his requests for help as if he is conferring unbelievable favors upon me. It’s just one of the hazards of married life.)

But here’s the thing.

I can paint that.

I know exactly how to make fake wood (and let’s face it: balsa wood is fake wood) look real.

I learned how in grad school!

That expensive Master’s Degree in that over-saturated field actually has a practical purpose.

A little trip to the hobby shop, three small bottles of the appropriate colors of paint, and the dredging up of some long-lost skill, and there is a lovely weathered barn (which no farmer in his right mind would ever use—but that’s another story).

All that useless education did come in handy!

Surprisingly, even algebra came into play recently with calculating the pitch of the dock roof. That Pythagorean Theorem? It does have it’s uses.

(I have an amusing story about the Pythagorean Theorem and my undergraduate days, but you have to hear it out loud for it to make any sense. Totally useless as blog material.)

But, my tip today is to remember that knowledge is never wasted. It just may take decades to figure out where to apply it.

Keep your notes.

* MotH = Man of the House

Ask

Don’t make assumptions.

Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

~ Miguel Ángel Ruiz

Here’s my tip for this Tuesday.

Ask.

It’s the most amazingly powerful thing.

Just ask for what you want.

Remember that asking is different from demanding. You must be able to accept the word “no.” (It’s rarely life-threatening outside of medical situations.)

You can ask for a raise. You can ask for improvements in your living situation. You can ask for help, for information, for contacts, for instruction.

Now, I’m not advocating sitting by the side of the road and asking everybody who walks by for a million dollars. I think you have to be working hard for yourself before you ask. But if you are, it’s amazing how often people step up.

Luck is where preparation meets opportunity. This is my absolute favorite quote, and it goes all the way back to Seneca who died in 65 A.D. (That’s a while ago.)

By asking, I once got a very lucrative job working four hours a day. By asking, I got my first opportunity to direct. By asking, I was incredibly fortunate to have a famous (and, more importantly, absolutely wonderful) actress do a reading of my play. By asking, I got more readings and, now, a production.

Do I attribute all of that to asking?

No.

Of course, I had to be good at the job for people to be willing to work with me on hours. The play had to be the best I could make it. I had to behave professionally, respectfully and responsibly.

But, I could have—and, once upon a time, would have—been afraid to ask.

Now, I know:

The world makes way for the man who knows where he is going.~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

…and for the person who asks.

Opposition research

Work on it.

Opposition research is a term that generally carries a somewhat negative connotation. It’s the research political candidates do on their opponents to look for areas where those opponents might be undermined in an election. Sometimes, they have their staffs conduct the same investigations on their own backgrounds. It’s known then as a “vulnerability study.” What makes a vulnerability study necessary is the same sleazy maneuvering that makes opposition research a political tool.

But today, I’m inventing a new term. Opposition thinking.

When things are going well, it’s a good idea to remember those for whom life may not be so good. It’s a good idea to think about what could go wrong. Not in a spirit of fear and anxiety, but as a way to recognize and acknowledge the goodness that surrounds you and, maybe, to take reasonable steps to preserve it.

When things are going badly, it’s even more important to think of the opposite, to recognize the things that are good. Even in the worst disasters, there are helpers and extraordinary acts of kindness and bravery. And, truly, if you have a life where you can sit at a computer and read this blog, you have it pretty good.

Sure, there are things we all want. Possessions we covet, goals we want to achieve. And there are obstacles and hurdles. Some of them loom large. Perfection is an unattainable goal. We get the “pursuit of happiness,” not necessarily the happiness itself.

Except that part is a choice.

It’s not always easy, and we are conditioned in many ways not to recognize it, but we have a choice. We can do our own vulnerability studies and minimize the risks to our inner peace. In the moments of struggle, we can recognize the places where we are stronger than that which opposes us, or, at the very least, where there are miracles to offset the stumbles and roadblocks.

The very fact that we can choose to do this is one of those miracles.

Choose wisely.

Another way

Can you find one?

Sometimes, you win a race, because you are the only one who won’t quit. (Does The Tortoise and the Hare ring any bells?) Sheer dogged persistence can get you there, and the further you slog along, the less competition remains.

On the other hand, there is that famous Einstein quote in which insanity is defined as “doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results.”

The tip for the day is keep going, but keep evaluating. Always ask yourself can you find another way?

If someone in your life is not giving you what you need, can you find another way to ask for it?

If you aren’t achieving your objective, can you find another way to go about pursuing it?

If I’m writing a computer program and it doesn’t work, I have to find another way or give up on whatever achievement it’s designed to accomplish.

Inevitably, there are times when I just don’t know enough. My latest javascript project comes to mind. I would really like to give it up. Just quit. But, I remember what Thomas Edison said while searching for the proper material to make a filament for a light bulb: I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.

When the 10,000th way doesn’t work, it is really easy to become discouraged and frustrated. It’s very easy to fear another 10,000 unsuccessful attempts. But, Edison also said, Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.

Thomas Edison is the fourth most prolific inventor in recorded history. And, yes, he is famous for never giving up. It may be more important, however, to realize that he didn’t just keep trying the same thing over and over. He tried different things.

So, yes, of course, keep going—and as you’re going, remember to ask yourself—Could there another way?

Safer surfing

Don’t click before you look.

Most of you know that it’s not a good idea to click on a link in an email from somebody you don’t know.

Many of you know that it can also be a mistake to click on a link in an email from somebody you do know. Hackers sometimes manage to break into your friends’ and colleagues’ email addresses and send spam out to everybody in their list of contacts.

In some email software, just hovering over the text of a link will cause the URL to which it is actually going to send you (not always the same thing as the text) to pop up at the bottom of your screen. That’s one way to tell if the email that looks like it’s from Microsoft offering you an urgent security patch is really sending you to Microsoft (unlikely) or to SomeFakeSpammySite.com

However, there’s one kind of link where that won’t help you—and, you guessed it!—the spammers have figured this out.

There are sites out there which will take a long link and shorten it into something that will fit on Twitter or display better in an email. This is a very useful thing when used for legitimate purposes, but it can mask the identity of a site you don’t want to visit.

It turns out, however, that these URL-shortening sites have got you covered.

This excellent information is brought to you courtesy of Hmm…, the owner of which has given me permission to link to this page, http://www.hmmm.ip3.co.uk/twitter/short-url-check-they-are-safe.shtml.

I encourage you to go to that link to read more and to see the examples. Meanwhile, a brief summary appears below:

You can add a + sign to the end of a URL that begins with bit.ly to go to a page which displays the real URL and some statistics on page visits, etc.

You can stick “preview.” in front of a URL that begins with tinyurl.com. So it would read preview.tinyurl.com/WhateverTheShortCodeIs, and you will go to a page which displays the real URL.

Google’s URL shortener lets you add “.info” to the end of the link to get to a page showing the real URL. You recognize those shortened URLs because they start with goo.gl.

(When I say the URL starts with these text strings, I mean after the “http://” part.)

It’s a really good idea to use these tips any time you encounter a shortened URL.

And many thanks to Hmmm… for helping us all stay safer on the Internet!

I found something!

Better De-leafing

Earlier this month, I was wondering if there was some special technique to leaf blowing.

Well!

I haven’t found a special technique for blowing of the leaves per se, but I have discovered a slightly better way to pick them up. Familiar to all leaf blowing peoples of the known world, probably, but new to me. (What can I say? I’m slow.)

Use a tarp.

See? Once I say it, it seems self-evident, doesn’t it?

Just use the leaf blower to move all the leaves onto the tarp. Then, pick the tarp up (carefully), and dump the leaves into the bag or bin or whatever.

Now, I will tell you that this method does have some limitations. If your tarp is not big enough, you will, basically, just blow the leaves over it. If you don’t do something to weigh down the edges…goodbye tarp. If your tarp is too big, dumping the leaves becomes an interesting exercise in wrestling with the tarp.

To be honest, I have thus far found it to be easier to proceed thusly: Use the leaf blower to create piles of leaves. Then, put the tarp beside the pile, and use the rake to move the leaves onto the tarp. Then, proceed to wrestle with the tarp as necessary.

The thing about this new (to me) discovery is that picking up the leaves has gone from being the hardest part of the whole business to being one of the easiest. Not counting those times when I just decide to mow the leaves, instead. Or those future times—probably never happening but occasionally dreamed of—in which all the trees have been removed by my most amazing tree guy.

One of the reasons this is not happening is that my most amazing tree guy is reasonable but not cheap.

Plus, I have neighbors with trees, and the wind is no respecter of property lines.

Plus, I like trees.

I just would prefer it if they would drop their leaves all at one time—or during the same season, at least—instead of from October to March. Six months of leaves is too many.

And don’t get me started about the sweet gum balls!

Respond

Just do it.

Lately, I have encountered an epidemic of people who don’t seem to respond. Not to emails, not to phone calls. And I’m not talking about your Aunt May who won’t get an answering machine and doesn’t remember things too well anyway.

I’m talking about tradesmen. People I might want to hire.

I’m talking about government officials. People whose job it is to impart information and handle problems.

I’m talking about people who have asked for and received help from me and don’t acknowledge it.

There are a lot of people who do respond, who return calls and emails and thanks and good energy of all sorts. Sometimes they even respond with negative energy, like “I can’t do that job until a week from Tuesday,” or “Thank you for sending your play but it doesn’t meet our production needs right now,” or “We’re sorry, but your car needs a new transmission.” (Fortunately, I haven’t heard that last one lately.) All of those are less than desirable outcomes, but they are, at least, resolutions.

And there are, rarely, people who have good and sufficient reasons for not responding.

In general, though, there aren’t that many good reasons, and the world moves too fast these days for failure in this area not to actively hurt your chances at success—no matter what you do.

So, my tip is this: Make a rule. Answer every email and phone call within 24 hours. Maybe you can’t give a definitive answer to whatever question is on the table, but you can say so, can’t you? “Got your email. I have to check a few things. I’ll get back to you on that.” How hard is that? And how hard is it to say when you’ll get back and then to do it?

I’m not talking about the phone calls and emails from telemarketers and spammers, or even the just-checking-in messages from friends and relatives, who presumably will allow a little leeway and aren’t depending on an answer before some project or other can move forward.

But for everything else—respond!

Everybody has busy, busy lives.

Surely, we could make them a little less busy for each other if we just stop making people chase us.

Unintended Consequences

In which I am a little too law-abiding.

The Law of Unintended Consequences bit me a few weeks ago.

Some of you who friend me on Facebook already know about this – the day I lost all my writing. All my plays, all my short stories, all the children’s stories, my not-so-good and never-to-be-seen-again novel. The whole folder. Gone.

The reason I am still here and haven’t jumped off a bridge is because of the miracle of redundancy.

But for a little while there, it didn’t look like redundancy was going to help me. In fact, for a little while there, it seemed like redundancy was the cause of all my problems.

I try very hard to follow good computing practices. I have an anti-virus program. I have a malware program. I don’t click on links in emails.

And I make backups. In the plural.

One backup can fail. Two is good. Three is better, and four was the miracle.

Because I use a very useful program called Second Copy to make three of my backups. It has the ability to synchronize data, so I can delete a file in one place, and the next time I run my backup, the file will be deleted from the backup set. This is a feature which has worked well for me for a long time—because who wants to waste disk space on backing up files you’re actually throwing away? I figured if I deleted a file by accident, I would realize it before I ran the next synchronization, and I could get it off the backup.

But that was before my hard drives booted up in a different order and Second Copy thought I had deleted my writing folder. And before I then synchronized my other backups with the one where the folder was deleted.

There I was, thinking I had three good copies onsite, and I had none. Miraculously, I have Carbonite, and my offsite backup was fine. Twenty minutes, and everything was restored.

So, my Tuesday Tip is four-fold:

Don’t let your Second Copy backups run without checking the box to let you preview it first.
Don’t run Second Copy without checking that your drive letters are the same as they were when you set it up.
Do consider unchecking the Second Copy option to synchronize deletions on at least one of your backups
Do use Carbonite or some other offsite backup service.

And, always, always, always remember the Law of Unintended Consequences.

Organization is the key

to lizard extraction

In yesterday’s episode, our heroine (me) made the momentous decision to remove an interloping lizard single-handedly.

For those who are not troubled by reptiles and/or other small scurrying creatures, this may not seem a sea-change* (Flapdoodle!) But for someone who once (long ago in a galaxy far, far away) spent a terror-filled night tortured by a cricket and, somewhat later in life, nearly fell off the rocking chair she had leapt onto at the sudden appearance of a hamster in an apartment previously hamster-less, it is, indeed, the miracle which warranted beginning the story yesterday as part of our series of Monday Miracles.

In a state of mingled what-am-I-thinking and how-brave-am-I as I contemplated reptile removal, I considered the options.

The MotH** just picks them up. As, in fact, had my grandmother and my mother, in the past, so that’s pretty much all that occurred to me, and clearly, that was what I was going to have to do.

Now, visited by sudden bravery I might be, but I am also a person with a certain amount of self-awareness. I knew it was extremely unlikely that this resolve would be carried through bare-handed.

And this is where today’s Tuesday Tip comes into play.

Always know where your gardening gloves are!

I have several pairs of work gloves and gardening gloves, and none of them are kept in the garage (me having a healthy—some might say ‘elevated’—sense of self-preservation and no wish to encounter a brown recluse spider being reclusive alongside my index finger). In fact, my best gardening gloves—the ones with the rubber fingers allowing for more manual dexterity than the leather work gloves—are in a drawer next to the side door.

Now, this is the important part. Not only are they supposed to be in the drawer next to the side door, they actually are there.

Look out, lizard.

Will Elaine find her gardening gloves? Will the lizard wait until she does? Will this story have a happy ending? And how did the lizard get on the window sill, anyway?

For the answer to these and other questions, tune in tomorrow to Wondering Wednesday.

* Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act I, sc 5 (Ariel’s song)

Full fathom five thy father lies,
Of his bones are coral made,
Those are pearls that were his eyes,
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change,
into something rich and strange,
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell,
Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them, ding-dong, bell.”

** MotH=Man of the House

Elaine Smith Writes

Anything She Wants

Tag Archives: Tuesday Tips