Windows 10 - my first experience with Windows Phone-Tech Support. Meh.

I took the plunge. I upgraded to Windows 10. The devil kept asking me to do it. And now, I've just had my first experience with Windows phone-tech support. Meh.

Microsoft products are notoriously user-unfriendly, perhaps because so many features are generic, and are intended to work over a variety of apps, instead of being designed for one app, with specific, intuitive features. I, a lover of computer technology (in theory) have grown to fear technology (in practice).

In spite of my lingering fear of technology ~ and perhaps because of my love for some Utopian idea of it ~ I accepted that twenty-fifth offer from the Devil Himself and upgraded to Windows 10. I actually did this because my niece kept bugging me to do it, saying, "It's free! You'd be crazy not to!" And because my late Daddy always said, "Dang, girl! You always take what's free. You take a b'iled monkey, if it's free!" (That's "boiled monkey," for those of you outside of Appalachia).

After installing Windows 10, my first impressions weren't totally negative, as they often are with Microsoft products. Still, I had some issues. Windows 10 claims to let you add multiple email accounts. That option really just lets you add aliases. Sounds good in theory; but in practice... The "aliases" don't seem useful. Only certain email addresses can be used, apparently. The app refuses to accept my main Yahoo Business account, or my Windstream (ISP) email account. It accepts and recognizes my GMail address, my Hotmail address, and an alternate Yahoo Business Mail address. Clicking on "Mail" doesn't actually give me the option of using an alias, though. It just takes me straight to GMail. When I click on a link for a different alias, it treats the alias as a mail recipient, not a sender. Why would I want to send an email to my own alias?!

I battled these aliases for awhile, but realized that creating them didn't solve my problem. So next, I used the "Ask me anything" thingy that Windows 10 provides. "How can I merge two Microsoft accounts?" I asked. The thingy took me to a forum. Answer: two Microsoft accounts cannot be merged. One tech wrote that they can be linked instead, but the instructions lead nowhere (literally and figuratively). His instructions must not be for Windows 10. I was discouraged, but not devastated.

I hated logging on with Hotmail (which I rarely use). Still, I knew I could log on that way, whether I wanted to or not, and just feel inconvenienced about it. Frustrating, Mr. Spock. But not fatal.

Being stubborn, I persisted. I even managed to change my log-on to my main Yahoo Business Mail address. I thought that solved the problem. Truly, I still thought the problem was one of log-on preferences.  I didn't realize the problem was one of accounts. As I've learned, I have two separate Microsoft accounts, under two separate email addresses. In changing my logon, I only changed what I have to type to get to my desktop. Yes, I do enter my favorite Yahoo email address to log on--but it still doesn't give me access to the OneDrive account associated with my old Hotmail address.

I also didn't realize that the problem would be compounded as apps were added to my machine. The real problem became apparent after my first restart. The restart required a log-on (my Yahoo Mail address). Trouble is, that logs me into my newer Microsoft account, established under that email/user name. At first log-on, up came the option to install OneDrive on my computer.

Glad to do it! Wait a minute. My OneDrive is empty! Where are all my files?! See, I have used OneDrive online for quite some time, but ~ you guessed it. OneDrive (online) is under my other, older Microsoft account, my Hotmail address. I suppose the second account would require a totally different logon, if such is allowed in Windows 10. (Ack! Flashback to nightmares of merged forums and newly unrecognizable logons and passwords!)

The problem has manifested itself in this way: I have my old online OneDrive at Live.com, which is full of files and backups. I now have a new, empty OneDrive app on my computer, which is pretty useless unless I want to spend the rest of my natural life backing up old files and adding new files to this new OneDrive. (I can still get to the old online Drive and my files, thank God ~ just not through the OneDrive computer app).

Back to forum. How do I merge Microsoft accounts? Again, they cannot be merged. What to do? Call Microsoft. Yes, for the first time ever, I used Windows phone support. It was a complete washout. At first, Support just disconnected me, perhaps by mistake, or perhaps with foreboding, because the pre-recorded voice guessed what was to come.

Not to be so easily quashed, I called again. The second time (after hold please, hold please, hold please and literally the worst canned music I've ever heard) I got a human being. I started my question as a problem about logging onto Windows 10. "I've created two separate Microsoft accounts by accident," I said. "My new logon for Windows 10 is linked to one Microsoft account, but not the other. I need both." Sorry...

When the first phone-tech guy couldn't answer my question, he transferred me to another tech. Hold, hold, hold. Human! Yay? Nay.  I had to start all over and describe my problem anew. That's when I made a critical error. I did not tell him that I was having problems with my Windows 10 logon. I told him that my OneDrive app won't let me access my online files, because I have two separate MS accounts. He dispensed with my problem immediately: "Microsoft does not provide phone support for OneDrive." Thank you, goodbye. He was actually nicer than that, and seemed sad that he couldn't help.

Now, it occurs to me that, if I had thought to re-frame my question as a problem with Windows logon, I might have gotten some help. And now for another question... why can't these techs read my mind? Okay, silly question. But, why couldn't this supposedly intelligent, experienced fellow realize that my problem could be described as a Windows logon problem? I'm not the first user to stumble into the sad realization that two Microsoft accounts exist, and that multiple complications will arise from this.

Later, in my "start" folder, I played around with account settings. I've found an option which seems to have allowed me to "link" two Microsoft accounts. We'll see. If I have solved the problem, it is without any help from Microsoft Support.

Oh, and by the way... after the tech call, and after the restart: that search thingy will not work for web searches anymore. No ideas, there. Perhaps I have inadvertently blocked Bing.

Mild-mannered rant over.

My advice is, don't accept a boiled monkey, even if it's free.

Back in the Olden Days...

“Back in the olden days,” I used to say to my nephews and nieces… and so began my story. It started out as tongue in cheek. Maybe they’d expressed surprise at one of our old-fashioned household gadgets, or lost the remote control. “Back in the olden days,” I’d say, “we used to have a TV with buttons on it. We would get up and walk over to it and push a button. Then the picture would appear and we could watch TV.” I’d also act as interpreter for one of Mom’s stories, since they predated mine by a good thirty years; but I’d heard them often, and could tell the kids what she meant. Her stories usually started out, “Back in them days,” or “Back when we lived on the mountain…” Sand Mountain, Alabama, really did seem like an olden culture, of a faraway kind that Rod Serling might have transported us to. So, when Mom started talking, I'd butt in with, “That’s another name for a mule,” or “it’s a coal-burning stove,” to help the kids when they got that distant, puzzled look. My poor mother is over eighty now, and life in the olden days really does seem olden now. Technology has passed her by, and nothing irritates her more than “them kids a-tweetin’ on their Twitters” all the time. One day, in the middle of my olden-day story, I realized that “olden days” was no longer ironic. My explanation of a thing had entailed two or three other definitions to back up the original one. This was many years after the date that my nephew had looked at me in surprise and said, “They had record players back then?!” (“Yes,” I had explained. “We used dinosaur teeth for the needles.”) I had not had to explain to him what a record player was, or a needle. We still had that frame of reference in common. My only consolation in knowing that I had crossed over some threshold into the truly “olden days,” was that my nieces were now carrying on the tradition. One day my 25-year-old niece came in looking bewildered. “You’ll never guess what my kids never heard of!” (talking about her classroom). That’s the day she began her first story with, “Back in the olden days…”

See, that's why I hate technology... !

A rather terrifying thing... I'd just spent half the night updating my blog labels ~ streamlining, deleting. Maybe I made my blog less navigable, but there was a gist to it. I thought I might switch gears, broaden the theme of the blog. Well, really ~ I just got tired of tech stuff. That was the theme of this blog: Internet history. Just my own personal history ~ the 'Net and all things tech-y.

At one time, I needed this blog. That's how it all started, as therapy. I wanted to tell how I started my first web page: all the trials and tribulations of building it. The frustration of not being able to make the Web do what I wanted it to do. I wanted to tell about brick walls and detours; the many things I've learned. I wanted a record, too. I was tracking down a memory, wasn't sure when I'd changed a host or somesuch.

I also needed to tell how a certain forum had impacted my life ~ in a good way ~ and how really rotten it was when the forum just... went away (back when About.com trimmed the fat off their list of topics and fired all those guides).

I guess the therapy worked. I got over it. I got side-tracked. The need to tell my story has faded away. It doesn't seem so important now. I grew tired of the theme. I'd been thinking, for some time, why not let the blog be about all things dinosaur-ish? not just tech.

And now to the terrifying thing...

I'd double-checked and deleted a couple of obscure labels ~ just cleaning up a bit. Then it happened. I clicked the "Posts" button. No posts appeared. "There are no posts," it said. No posts. 117 posts, gone in an instant. Into the twilight zone. That's what I thought. I clicked again. Nothing.

Well, if it had been a permanent delete, it wouldn't be the first time. That's how life is, in the Age of Technology. Thankfully, the posts were not gone. The blog was not wiped clean. It was just a gremlin, one of those bizarre little glitches, a momentary fluke. But it might have been truly terrifying. Not for the rest of the world, of course. Just for me. The Lone Blogger. I don't even know why anymore. Computers! How they've simplified our lives... (Ahem. How they were supposed to, that is.)

Windows Hourglass and the Wicked Witch of the West...

Sometimes it seems like years that I've stared at that damned hourglass, the famous, infamous, notoriously unappreciated Windows hourglass. In my case, it usually comes just before the white screen of death. Over the years, everyone gave advice. Run Linux. Get a Mac. Right now what I'm running is Windows XP; and of course, the hourglass just ran out on that one. The problem may not be Windows in the first place. I'm always working on some hand-me-down, obsolete dinosaur ~ that's the real problem. The current jurassic fossil: ten years old and counting. Can't remember if my laptop is older or newer than that. I call it The Fire Hazard. Anyhow, everyone else has moved on to Smart Phones. I'm still not ready to go there ~ image editing is hard enough on a big screen. Sigh. It wouldn't be so bad if every piece of new technology didn't cost about what a rotten used car costs. Whatever piece of new equipment I'm coveting is always somewhere out there in the hazy distance. Ah, computer envy ~ don't you just love it. It would help if I knew how to maintain a computer. Anything I get is likely to end up in the same shape as this one. Well, things aren't likely to change for me anytime soon; but I do hope that future generations have a nice, smooth, easy time of it with technology perfected... and no more hourglass.

Google Plus versus Follow

Well, I see that it has been over a year since I've blogged this one. Just... caught up in the growing complexities of life, I suppose. And I certainly have gotten off topic. I had meant this blog to be a more-or-less chronological journal of my understanding of the Internet, and of the development of my website. Instead, it has become a catchall for any tech thought, pet peeve, or general rant that pops into my mind: a virtual glass bowl or ash tray for the (figurative) stray pins, paper clips, and unidentifiable bytes I find lying around. Today's gripe: Google has arbitrarily discontinued the "Follow" button from Blogger. I noticed this because all of my two followers were gone from another blog of mine. I suppose I missed Google's memo, drowned among the countless list updates that fill my inbox. I see why they're ditching "Follow." They're forcing us, instead, to add a link to Google Plus Circles. Forcing us to be more public than we want to be. See, I wasn't happy in the first place when Google jumped on the Facebook bandwagon with Google Plus ~ especially since they'd already betrayed users during the Google Buzz rollout. Ch-ch-ch-changes (without warning)! But, no surprise that they're imitating Facebook ~ everyone else is, too. Facebook just got too popular. No-one could compete (but everyone knew they had to). It's not as if Facebook is more private. In fact, their privacy "slips" have been notoriously intentional. (I tried to write a blog post on the most recent weird Facebook-privacy robo-outer I discovered, but explaining it was just too complicated and involved a new species, besides). But Google! They're so... worldwide. I mean, if Google ropes us into their idea of social (which, ahem, they just have, in my case) ~ what do we have left, in the way of privacy? Nothing. But should I worry? I mean, they already have Google Maps (rather frightening detail, that dead raccoon I saw on street view, and the red hummingbird feeder I saw on my friend's porch, 150 miles away). And why should I be concerned anyhow? My life's pretty dull. But I can't say I want some stranger looking at my hummingbird feeder. And I, with my sugar-water...

The Spastic Blogger is Back.

The spastic blogger is back, having taken another detour, that led to another detour, that led to another detour. Yes, I got sidetracked from my purpose. It's called, "having too many irons in the fire" ~ something that used to happen with blacksmiths a century or so ago. I was blathering on about redball gifs when, who knows what happened. And about a week or two later, I was asked to do a mural. That went on for a couple of months, and then came the holidays. After that was a week's worth of blogging about the mural (on my Talking Artist blog). Now I'm back, but I can't find even a pennyworth of evidence of the stuff I was blogging about before. I found a hint of something like it in my paper files, but certainly not what I recalled. Nothing on SkyDrive, nothing in email, as far as I can see. Would you call that a detour on the now ancient Information Superhighway? Guess so. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I was resizing screenshots. That I do recall. And where are they now? Do I search my flash drives? Or do I start from scratch? Well, not tonight, for either one. I'm givin' it a rest...

Red Ball ~ Up and Running!

Now that I had mastered the art of the little red ball, you'd better believe I had Bugbones covered in 'em. (Bugbones, remember? That was my first site. Well, second, if you count that short-lived 'forum' I tried). I had links, and I had red balls up and running. I was up there with the best of them. Here and there in Bugbones, and sometimes on Southern Muse, I still find vestiges of that redball gif.

Placing the Red Ball Gif

Oh, Lord. If making the red ball gif took six months off of my life, I hate to think what placing the red ball gif did to me. Cracking the "img" code was like deciphering the Rosetta Stone, or so I thought. (I hadn't got to tables, yet). "Img align left," "img align center," "img align middle" "text align left"... the answer had to be in there somewhere. Was it image placement and text alignment that forced me to finally give in and order one of those "dummy" books? I don't recall. I did learn that if I didn't want my red balls floating a good two or three inches away from my centered text line, I had to master the art of tables. Tables, just so I could place my little red balls. And mentally butting heads with left brainers who wanted Internet to go back to being just plain text. I sometimes wonder if they weren't right.

Red Ball Gif

Asides aside (why do I feel like Tristram Shandy?) I am trying to get back to my original purpose, which is a history of my interaction with this thing called Internet. I left off about a year ago, in August 2011, just about the time I had documented my long-ago creation of the Southern Muse blue-banner logo. But even before the logo, I left off bemoaning my trials and travails as I begot my red-ball gif. How many hours of my life did I give over to the creation of that redball gif? Two shareware art programs, in addition to the standard Paintbrush that came with Windows... Call me nothing, if not determined. In the end, I had my red ball gif. It wasn't bright, it wasn't garish, it wasn't swiped from another web page. It was a nice, soft red, of my own making. Now came my comical attempts to place the red ball gif. I mean, it wasn't enough to have a red ball. I didn't want them floating around arbitrarily. Red balls had to be out beside the links. That was a law of the 1990s. I think I read that somewhere. Okay, maybe it wasn't a law, per se. But I do recall an article that said that the red ball was to the '90s as the smiley face was to the '70s. All my hard work for a cliché.

Oh no, Google...

Didn't take long to see what the downside of Google would be, after CEO changes. An ugly pop-up ad on that nice, beautiful, clean, white Google Search screen...  :-(

Distractions, Diversions, and the State of Being Sidetracked

Somewhere along the line, I got side-tracked from my original purpose of starting this blog. Well, I had dual purposes, but one of them really was to create and maintain a history of my adventures in computing. It was to be a personal history of the Internet, from an amateur user's perspective; not technical, not particularly useful to the world at large. Just a place for me to puzzle and vent and ferret out the whats, whys, and whens of my own entry into web publishing and my experiences and challenges in learning about the Internet. In a way, it's the only real 'blog' among my blogs, as it is intended to be a web 'log.' I made a pretty good effort, there at the beginning, to backtrack and figure out exactly when I got my first email address, when I created my first free site, when I bought my domain name, and when I started Southern Muse. It wasn't all that easy, but it was doable. Following the paper and ion trail was kinda fun, really. It did get complicated. I'd write a post and then recall, 'now wait a minute ~ before I did this, I must have done that.' And 'that' would turn out to be a doozie of a side track, a veritable book to be written. Procrastination is my byword, so... at some point, I just started writing history on the fly, keeping a log of what's going on now. That doesn't mean I'm not going back to finish what I started. I still have to tell about the forum. I still have to tell about the big betrayal ~ the day that About.com dumped our forum. That was the whole point. It's therapy.

Southern Muse: the Prospect of Moving a Site

Now it might seem, in my posting about Marissa Mayer and Yahoo, that I had some driving interest in keeping up with the CEOs of Silicon Valley. Although I sometimes recognize their names when I hear them, I couldn't tell you which is which, usually. I have to do a quick look-up to make sure that Steve Jobs and Apple are practically synonymous and that there was another Steve, too (Wozniak). Bill Gates/Microsoft ~ that one, I can remember (though often with distaste). Don't get me wrong ~ it's interesting. I just don't keep up. My only reason for searching Mayer was the most selfish motive of all: Will Yahoo, as we know it, continue to exist? Will they keep Y! webhosting alive, or will it go the way of GeoCities? Will I have to move Southern Muse? See, I told you it was selfish. Now, I probably don't have three faithful readers at Southern Muse. Even my old friends and family sometimes say, "Oh, you have a website?!" (This after ten-plus years). Well, maybe I exaggerate. Most of my family are familiar with my site. But I try not to SPAM people about it. Sure, I have a few readers ~ or, at least a handful of people who hit the surface and bounce off like a flat rock skipping across a pond. So, why I insist upon keeping the site, and worry about maybe having to move it ~ go figure. I've invested some years and some dollars in creating it and maintaining it. In for a penny, in for a pound, as they say. It's the hobby (or vice) that took over my life, to the detriment of all other hobbies and passions. Ever a challenge, it still needs work. But, for what it's worth, I am proud of it, and I do want to keep it. With luck and prayer, I can keep it at Yahoo. I'd sure hate to have to move it. The idea of it makes me shudder...

Of Marissa Mayer and Yahoo and Google

Reading of Yahoo and the potential acquisitions that new CEO Marissa Mayer may make, I begin to hope that Yahoo may perk up and yodel again. Yahoo is one of my old favorites, and besides, I'd probably let my long-held Y-hosted site die an agonizing death instead of trying to move it, if Yahoo's hosting crumbled. Selfish of me, I know. But here's another thing or two that occurred to me, while reading all this stuff. Google didn't promote Mayer, said several articles. 'Why, why?' they asked. It took several more articles for a glimmer of an idea to seep into my brain. One article called Mayer the user-friendliest component of Google. Now, there's the crux of it, I'll bet. 'Don't be evil' was Google's old motto, but it seems to me, of late, that 'Do evil, but on the sly' might me their newest, truest. There was Google Buzz, Ad tracking, and Google Plus. And there was that accusation that Google was putting it's own product results closer to the top than competitors. Maybe Mayer objected to Google's new kick, of putting Google interests over user interests? Maybe Google wants Mayer elsewhere. Dunno, could be... If so, that's a plus for Yahoo.

Ghosts, Phantasms, Customer Service...

So, Yahoo customer service does exist. Heretofore, I had thought that this was a figment of Yahoo's own imagination. I just spoke to a tech. Like the M&M in the Santa Claus commercial, I may just faint. Perhaps the problem was that I was using the wrong help screens. I was searching for help using the Yahoo Mail tutorials, rather than the Yahoo Business Mail tutorials. Apparently it makes a difference. Either that, or the new kid on the block (Marissa Mayer) made them reinstate customer service. Whatever the case, after hours of searching through that interlocking maze of tutorials, I found myself within the business-mail pages and there, upon my screen, appeared that elusive phone number. I called, and voila! Immediate assistance. The Yahoo tech was polite, knowledgeable, and helpful. She fixed a problem (partially of my own making) that had caused me much frustration. I really do hope that Yahoo regains their standing in the world. I've used their hosting plan for a long time now. It works for me! It's three a.m. on the east coast. I go to bed now...

Jegsworks, Edgecast, and Flux

What do these have in common? Very little except they belong to the world of tech. Of the three, Jegsworks is about my speed. The others, I just visited out of curiosity. Don't get me wrong, I was highly impressed. But they're wa-a-a-y out of the realm of anything-I-might-conceivably-ever-need. Highly corporate, I guess. Edgecast.com is interesting enough to make me want to know more. Don't ask me how I found it. Well, okay, here's how. I had just let LastPass log me into Tumblr. As I connected to Tumblr, I noticed the URL of an Edgecast page flash by in Firefox's status bar (where I usually see ads and re-directs). Curious, I popped over to Edgecast to have a look. The page is slick, commercial, and professional. They offer a patented technology that lets you feed your pages up fast without changing a line of code. It looks expensive, and there are no prices given (you know, if you have to ask...) There's very little info on the site ~ just links to PDF downloads. You'd have to fill out a contact form, so I passed on that. Interesting, though. They say they 'integrate Google Pagespeed at the edge' using Google's front-end optimization (FEO). I have no idea what that means. Perhaps the company uses server-side includes or something like. Edgeworks offers hosting, among other things. Is the speed-up service only available for hosted clients? Dunno. Anyway, I suspect this site was meant for someone else's eyes ~ maybe Donald Trump's. Speeding up your site without changing a word of code! Man, the idea sure makes me salivate! My guess is that Tumblr is hosted there. Quirk: Visiting that page must have made me look like a pro and a corporate wallah. The next ad I saw on my blog was for 'Flux.ly.' [Ah, 'This is what makes time travel possible: the flux capacitor!' Beam me up, Scotty.] I went there ~ Flux site ~ not by clicking, just by noting the URL. It was a site for streamlining and automating tasks for corporations. Once again, way beyond my means or needs. The upside of all this is that while I was trying to remember how to describe that URL that flashed by at the bottom of my browser, I searched enough dumb-butt terms that I found 'Jegsworks.' Finally, a site that understands what I need: really, really basic technical info. Jegsworks: Jan's Illustrated Computer Literacy 101. Yeah, I like it!

Rel.: Build your own Flux Capacitor: http://www.instructables.com/id/Flux-Capacitor/

And a nod... thanks for the quote! Source: http://backtothefuture.wikia.com/wiki/Quote:Back_to_the_Future

Backups and Power Outages

How come every time I sink my teeth into a computer project, the power goes out? Sigh. Twice tonight. Our power has been rather unstable since a big, freak windstorm that knocked the power out over much of the county a few weeks ago. They got the power back on pretty quickly, then, but it must have done some peripheral damage. Now every time there's a little thunderstorm, out goes the power. It takes me back to the olden days, between 1970 and 2000 or so. There was only a single transformer that served our road, then, apparently, and the power blinked off at least once a day, I'd say; and way more during a storm. (Three blinks and it was out for the duration). Some years back, they put in a second transformer, I presume. After that, the power was pretty darn stable for a few years, only going out during wrath-of-God style thunderstorms. Sometimes, not even then. I guess we're back to the way it was, at least for awhile. This is thrice in as many days that we've lost power, albeit briefly. I was transferring files to a flash drive and to SkyDrive, and planned on blogging any interesting genealogy tidbit that I ran across during the project. This, as a clearing of my hard drive in advance of another much-needed website overhaul. Life as we know it, since the Internet came along...

Making Favicon Display in Blogger

I did it! I made the big, orange "B" go away. I made my Favicon display in Blogger. I'm not sure who to thank for this, because in clearing my cache and history, I ~ well, cleared my cache and history. The irritating thing is, I kept having to look this thing up over and over ~ there seemed to be a step to the "fix" that I couldn't remember. I had my Favicon showing in three different blogs, on my main website, and on a couple of less important sub-sites. Still, every time I opened a new Blogger blog, there came the orange "B," and it wouldn't go away. Nearly every site said, "Use Blogger-in-Draft Favicon tool!" Well, I did that, obviously. That's an easy one to catch. I also tried some of the more tech-y ones ~ going into my template and adding a line of code here, there ~ wherever the tech said to put it. Adding the favicon was the easy part. Getting it to display when I visited my site ~ THAT was the impossible thing. Here's the combo that worked for me: I cleared my cache, cookies, history, browsing history ~ everything Firefox allowed except for "site preferences." Then (without visiting blogger and letting that infuriating orange "B" back on my screen) I manually added my blog URL to my Firefox Bookmarks toolbar. I clicked on the bookmark, went to my site, and voila! "B"-less it was! Now my nice little fossil-fish Favicon is displayed nicely as a bookmark and on the browser tab. Now, I don't know if it'll go away should I delete the bookmark. I don't think so, because I have a couple of un-bookmarked blogs that display the Favicon quite nicely. There you go, and many thanks to the blogger ~ whoever she was ~ who told me to "favorite" my blog in I.E. (haven't tried it in I.E., but whatever I did worked in Firefox).

Yahoo Curves and FTP Woes

Yahoo just threw us a curve. Seems they are moving to FTPS. All current hosting accounts must buy, beg, or borrow a third-party tool for uploading files. They pointed us at Filezilla and others. I took a look at Filezilla. Shudder, shudder... another tech nightmare. I'll probably go with CuteFTP again. You know... "the devil you know," &c. It'll have to be CuteFTP Pro, because "Lite" and "Home" don't seem to offer FTPS. I did have a foolish, cheap-skate moment when I considered dragging out my old disk to see if I could save a penny by loading my old 2.x version and then upgrading. Actually, I did drag out my old disk, circa 1999. It sure was funny to see that old, old Yahoo email page. I was registered under a now-defunct email address, through a now-defunct company. Wasn't using Southern Muse's email yet because ~ well, duh! I didn't have it yet. That was Muse's starting point. That's why I bought the FTP. Turns out, the disk didn't include the actual program, just a registration number. On the other hand, Globalscape did have links on their site for downloading old versions ~ which was uptown of them, I think. I mused upon the idea of downloading 2.x and then upgrading ~ but decided that some cheap is too cheap. It might open me up for no telling what security risk. I did some research on forums. The gist of the advice (what I could understand of it) was that CuteFTP would probably only upgrade to about x? versions ago, then would go no further. I'd end up having to buy the new version anyhow. So, Yahoo, I'll have to lay out some cash. Ya-a-a-HOO! Ummm, I guess it'll be more secure. But why give us so little time to transition?

Tumblr and Yahoo

Tumblr is turning out to be a good thing. I love it that I can blog on Tumblr and feed clean text updates to my Southern Muse pages. Wow, automatic updates to Southern Muse ~ something I've craved for years! I could've used Southern Muse Journal, my blog, but Blogger labels on post pages don't do as well as static pages with changing content. (With Tumblr, you can't even tell it's a feed!) Formatting is less than perfect, but it isn't horrible. I've done two blogs on Tumblr. One is a frivolous, fun site; the other is a genealogy blog, and I can see that it's going to get lots of wear. I'm going to kill two birds with one stone: clean out my computer and share lots of bits, pieces, photos, and scraps of genealogy that I've collected for 25 years. Yahoo (host for Southern Muse) may have a way to do clean feeds like Tumblr, but if so, it requires more knowledge and technical expertise than I have.

Weebly Hosting

I've tried several hosts now. So far, Weebly gets my prize for ease of use and quality of tools available. Now, if you've read any of my posts, you'll know that 'ease of use' is a biggie with me. Don't make me learn algebra, folks. I'm just sick of it. HTML basics are bearable, but anything beyond that... algebra! Now, Weebly has let me build two full-featured sites and put my own domain on them... FREE! So far, I'm sold. I do want another site, a Favicon, and a couple of other things I can't do without premium ~ so I'm all set to buy into their plan. It's pretty reasonable. They seem to have the hobbyist and small-business person in mind. I was able to use my own photos and graphics, which meant I could wipe out those generic templates (which, by the way, weren't so bad ~ not nearly as icky-slick as most). I was sorely tempted to use one of their template images. Yes, even as Graphics-Control-Freakish as I am, I liked that photo of the path leading into an autumn park. Nice! Now, the techies among you might not like Weebly. Neither will the HTML purists. (I tried to be one. I just failed miserably. Besides, W3C kept raising the bar, dangling that carrot, dropping that anvil on my head... ummm, well, you get the picture.) Granted, I have relaxed some of my rigid requirements for web pages. I want my own layouts, but... finally, I've accepted that perfect layouts are not requisite. They're iffy anyhow, since people will use different devices. Weebly has some nice, tight layouts to offer. I can't be sure they'll dish up right on every device; but then, neither does my old site. Weebly's WYSIWYG editor is so much better than the others I've tried. It's built around drag-and-drop widgets that fit nicely into place. It's a little sticky to use ~ but whose isn't? I had fewer problems than with any other. Their DNS tutorials actually make sense. Weebly's GoDaddy-specific tutorial did make better sense before GoDaddy went to such great lengths to hide their DNS Zone Editor; but if you ever do find GoDaddy's Zone Editor, it looks exactly like the screen shots that Weebly provides.

I did say that I might try GoDaddy as a host. I just can't bring myself to do it. Their hosting plan is more expensive than Weebly's, and the 'free' tools they have for site building are extremely limited. My biggest fear? What if I 'buy in,' and find that their paid site editor is as limited as their stinky free editor? I can see why GoDaddy wouldn't want to give you a fully functional site for free (though Weebly pretty much does give you that). GoDaddy's afraid they wouldn't sell any hosting plans. My advice to GD: you'll catch more flies with honey, folks. If you can't provide a real, fully functional free site, at least provide a site builder that lets me build one for testing. Well, maybe they did. Maybe that slick business card with no place to even put an 'Enter' button is all their editor is capable of. I shudder to think...