And let’s try our luck once more with an unconverted webp image.
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23 Comments
I don’t get the Reply All. But the Rhymes With Orange was my first literal LOL in a while.
I think the genre of humor exercised by this Reply All is the display of micro-anxieties taking up space rent-free in our brains.
I don’t actually mind, in fact rather like, the discourse-marking “So” that people have complained about in anther recent thread. What I get a bit thrown by is the intensifier “so” people toss in, making polite gestures sound over effusive… “Thank you so much for having us on”. [That is, having us on the podcast or on the air. Not “taking the p_ss”| I wouldn’t even mind “very much” there, but “so much” seems both more and yet trying for folksiness. … And this choice of whether to wish something a good day or a great day is on the same wavelength. (Tho this is her partner, so the interaction is tempered by their relationship.)
But everyone … Don’t worry if you get it or not… We just need to know if you see it normally or not. It wasn’t that long ago that WEBP images could not be simply posted as-is in WP and be counted on to show up in most browsers.
Agree, the RWO was s LOL
Also, yes the Reply All shows up fine. Regular website, Firefox, Android phone.
@ Powers – I think the gag is supposed to be her uncertainty about the quality of the day she is wishing for the other. It’s only after she figures out that stepping down to “good” could be taken as an insult that she return to “great”.
P.S. @ Mitch – Since I still use an outdated Mac for my comic browsing, I was pleasantly surprised that your WEBP images showed up without any problems at all (otherwise I would have had to switch all my comic links to one of our tablets).
P.P.S. The detail that I do not understand is why the dog has wild “surprised” eyes. I understand that the man is startled by the canine revelation, but I think the dog’s eyes should have been “furtive & sneaky”.
Having had, at times, anywhere from two to seven dogs [at the same time; the current canine population is three], I can (and did) identify with RWO. In fact, the dogs gave me a DogMother’s Day card this year along the same line – Happy Mother’s Day from your favorite kid . . . [inside] WHICH ONE IS IT????
It’s probably clear anyway, but in case explanation is needed, I’m not choosing to make or to seek out webp images for comics. That’s just how they arrive when downloaded from some sites (I think this one was Arca Max) or in some emails. A while back I tried to use them and had issues. So I was converting them, which was not difficult but just an irritating extra step. Then there were some notifications from WP that new versions would better support WEBP images, so it seemed worth trying again.
BTW, I’ve noticed some images in email download with a .jfif extension. I thought of that as a subtype of jpeg (or jpg) so when the jfifs weren’t uploading to WP correctly I took to simply renaming with a .jpg extension when saving from email (not a separate conversion/save step). But maybe that also is now unnecessary. Will try next time it comes up.
Aaaaand the next day . . .
Of course, you can make up a completely random word for your favourite child, or mother’s maiden name, or first car, or city your parents met… these security systems don’t check a general database of all that stuff, they just check what you said when you first entered the info. You just have to be consistent. Obviously, true answers are easier to recall, but also easier for malignanters to figure out if, like maiden names and the like, they are matters of public record.
Having said that, I just applied online for a new UK driving licence and they did ask for my mother’s maiden name somewhere in the process, and I am sure that is based on a database.
I’ve seen “What is your favorite book” but I don’t know how that one is supposed to work as a security question. Tastes change over time. Some books I loved when I was a kid I don’t like so much now. And what happens if I read a book now that I like better than any other book I ever read? You might as well ask “What color shirt are you wearing?”
I could see the the Reply All.
Have a moderately half-decent weekend all!
Just don’t ask George Carlin to have a nice day.
narmitaj – Our national reenactment group decided a couple of years ago that they need the last 4 digits of the SSN of all the members of their organization (including children). Since a couple of decades ago I decided it was easier for me as Treasurer to deal with renewals (for unit as well as national) than have to get the checks and paperwork from someone else – I am the one who handles the renewals.
This is the result of them hiring management people to run the “business end” of the organization and members – us included – did not want to give them any part of our SSNs, especially since they also need everyone’s date of birth (this makes sense as children are free and they will accept just the year of birth). I called up and told them that I was having a problem with members not wanting to give their SSNs even in part. I was told – “Then just have them make up a 4 digit number.”?
And they made this change during the pandemic. In normal years we have an annual party in March to thank members for participating the year before and go over the new year’s schedule. It was also a way to grab everyone and get their paperwork and dues. I still have members who I am waiting for renewals from. (Though a couple of the older ones may have passed away in the interim – and I say older ones as someone pushing 70 so they are OLDER ones.)
As to favorite pet – I have spent my life afraid of animals and never had a pet and greatly resented that my parents got my sister a dog while I was away with school group one weekend – the goldfish and hamsters were scary enough to me.
So my favorite pet’s name would have to be “None”.
It seems like it would have been easier for the registrar to give out the number, which makes it less likely that there will be duplicates.
Favorite Color:
Red
ERROR! Answer must be at least four letters.
Brian – The experts they brought in to run “the business” part don’t seem to be that bright.
This year we were suppose to (for the second year) renew the unit’s members online. I ignored the idea last year, but decided to try doing so to make them happy. I am reasonably proficient at using a computer (certainly beyond many in our unit), am an accountant for over 50 years and use Excel on a regular basis.
I show as the “adjutant” (secretary) of our unit as we have to give someone as same as the second contact after our commander (president) and our unit’s adjutant is not a member of our national group. I follow the directions to the page on their site – it asks for “your” certain info as a password, but then says commander’s info. So sent an email to see if they want my info or his (answer – doesn’t matter – then why specify?)
I get a spreadsheet which is blank except for our unit and number. *Instructions say to.” make any changes” to the information. Sent an email again (and each email exchange is a day back and forth).
Why are doing that? You are suppose to use the spreadsheet we mailed to you – update it, click on it and it takes you to the site to update on the site. – Why not say that in the instructions?
They then say we have to use either the unit’s Paypal account or credit card to pay the collected dues to them. Unit has neither and I am not going to give them ours. Email them again.
Really? Well you can mail a check to – person, who is not the membership chair of national (who has not been involved in any of this) or the Treasurer.
Thank goodness this is done for this year. Hope they fix it better by next year – and we did this 2 months later than normal this year – which was a mess for me as my embroidery chapter renewed at its normal time, which this year due to this all being 2 months late, overlapped the other.
The embroidery’s national and region renewals need list of names, contact info, if we are the person’s primary chapter (many join more than one chapter) – for the region they also need to know if this the primary region/chapter of the person and then just mail out with a check. Anyway you want to make the list – as long as they can read it, it is fine with them.
Meryl, I was recently reflecting on that matter of official forms asking for info in an unclear or unnecessary way. This year I was able to set my voter registration to always default to vote-by-mail. (I have been migrating over a few election cycles from in-person election-day voting at local precinct, to early voting at a regional center, to mail-in.) The one previous time I voted by mail was also the first time it was a generally available option, so there was a lot of guidance online and in the news over how to do it.
I was fine up to a point, handling the inner envelope and outer envelope, and remembering to sign and date the inner envelope and write the address I was voting from. There was also a widely publicized residency requirement, I forget whether six months or a year, at the registered address. But the form on the inner envelope did not have just a checbox or signature line saying something like “I certify that I have lived at this address for at least six months “. Instead it had two blanks for Month and Year you began living at that address.
Well I certainly didn’t know exactly. It was in the 1980s for Pete’s sake! Well I didn’t want to be disqualified for giving false information. So I tried to ask on the Board of Elections help page, didn’t get any response for a long time, then got a dumb canned response that just said We require this information because there is a six month residency requirement for mail-in ballots. People in my neighborhood listserv said just use a good guess, which is what I did. Now I am awaiting the ballot for the upcoming election and am curious if they have retained or modified that question.
Followup to my vote-by-mail rant.
Today’s mail brought the mail-in ballot and accompanying paraphernalia. The bit I was objecting to is still there, exactly the same.
“I have (or will have) resided at my registration address for at least 30 days before Election Day. I have lived there for ______ years and ______ months.”
Will my uncertainty over the number of years and months somehow cast doubts on my having been here 30 days?
Mitch, you could add “at least” to the “I have lived there for” statement, put in a number of years/months that A) you ARE certain is accurate, and B) is sufficiently longer than the required period to establish eligibility to vote by mail. That way, you avoid the possible problem of attesting to something that might not be completely accurate, and don’t get your ballot tossed. You might still end up on a list of “election troublemakers” if your local partisans are in a mood when they encounter your paperwork, but that’s also true if it’s done completely, 100% accurate/legal.
Thanks for the suggestions, James. The portions I quoted are within a larger block of text, so there isn’t room for commentary. But in place of words like “at least” I may use a plus sign. entering “20+” for Years. (And I guess “0” for Months though that feels odd.)
I know, I know, the energy I’m putting into this whining could better go to consulting news and opinion sources I like and figuring out how I want to actually vote …
We have voted the past 2 years by mail – in NYS there is no general allowance for voting by mail, one has to meet a reason such as sick and cannot go out or will be out of state. So what they did was add “concerned about Covid-19” (not exact quote) to the medical excuses.
We got our ballot for the governor/lt governor primary (second primary will be later in year for state legislature as problem came up with same). I filed in mine and remembered to sign my full name – form says just first and married name, but I have been signing it with full name (including middle initial and maiden name hyphenated) so I have to remember to do that for the signature to match. Checked off the boxes on the inside the envelope, etc. and sealed it up. I then pulled out Robert;s and repeated it step by step with him so we could mail them out. They went out in this past weekend’s trip to a USPS collection box to post the mail.
Meryl, good for you on the mail-in voting! Here in Illinois there used to be a requirement to give a reason, but they removed it. This year the innovation was being able to register as always wanting to do vote by mail. (They also assigned me a ward and precinct number and polling place, as usual previously.) Before this, each time you wanted to request voting by mail it was a one-off and by scratch.
I am still working thru the politics of what votes I actually want to cast. But also there are voices on my neighborhood / political listserv insisting the ballots should not be deposited in an ordinary USPS collection box but must be driven over to one of the designated secure collection points. Not as a legal requirement but just because they regard the USPS as good for nothing.
Our setup gave us the choice of doing the vote by mail for just this primary or all primaries. We picked the former as in the future we hope to be schlepping back into the school to vote (I do love arguing, um – discussing – with the poll workers and be upset about them trying to help me vote and for primaries there is not really enough room so one is climbing over them to vote.)
But now we will be having a second primary for the races other than governor/lLt governor as the redistricting was kicked out and redone by a third party per the state courts and will have to request forms again when that primary comes up in August.
We only have USPS mailing for the ballots – no drop boxes.
In normal times we used to go to a local PO daily as our mail went to our box there as we had problems with delivery at our home and the nearest PO is not our home’s PO. (PO done by community and we are at the north end of the zip code area and the PO – both branches – are at the south end, so we have 2 POs considerably closer to our house than the one which delivers our home mail. During the pandemic we had trouble getting the mail forwarded to the house so we (I) changed the mailing address for almost everything to our house and luckily our current postal carrier is great – our mail is delivered here (and not opened by who it went to instead of us) and none of the mail is for people so far away that we have never heard of their street. Now we have been using one or two collection boxes closer to our house or the box in front of the PO where our box is to post outgoing mail.
Comics I Don't Understand 
I don’t get the Reply All. But the Rhymes With Orange was my first literal LOL in a while.
I think the genre of humor exercised by this Reply All is the display of micro-anxieties taking up space rent-free in our brains.
I don’t actually mind, in fact rather like, the discourse-marking “So” that people have complained about in anther recent thread. What I get a bit thrown by is the intensifier “so” people toss in, making polite gestures sound over effusive… “Thank you so much for having us on”. [That is, having us on the podcast or on the air. Not “taking the p_ss”| I wouldn’t even mind “very much” there, but “so much” seems both more and yet trying for folksiness. … And this choice of whether to wish something a good day or a great day is on the same wavelength. (Tho this is her partner, so the interaction is tempered by their relationship.)
But everyone … Don’t worry if you get it or not… We just need to know if you see it normally or not. It wasn’t that long ago that WEBP images could not be simply posted as-is in WP and be counted on to show up in most browsers.
Agree, the RWO was s LOL
Also, yes the Reply All shows up fine. Regular website, Firefox, Android phone.
@ Powers – I think the gag is supposed to be her uncertainty about the quality of the day she is wishing for the other. It’s only after she figures out that stepping down to “good” could be taken as an insult that she return to “great”.
P.S. @ Mitch – Since I still use an outdated Mac for my comic browsing, I was pleasantly surprised that your WEBP images showed up without any problems at all (otherwise I would have had to switch all my comic links to one of our tablets).
P.P.S. The detail that I do not understand is why the dog has wild “surprised” eyes. I understand that the man is startled by the canine revelation, but I think the dog’s eyes should have been “furtive & sneaky”.
Having had, at times, anywhere from two to seven dogs [at the same time; the current canine population is three], I can (and did) identify with RWO. In fact, the dogs gave me a DogMother’s Day card this year along the same line – Happy Mother’s Day from your favorite kid . . . [inside] WHICH ONE IS IT????
It’s probably clear anyway, but in case explanation is needed, I’m not choosing to make or to seek out webp images for comics. That’s just how they arrive when downloaded from some sites (I think this one was Arca Max) or in some emails. A while back I tried to use them and had issues. So I was converting them, which was not difficult but just an irritating extra step. Then there were some notifications from WP that new versions would better support WEBP images, so it seemed worth trying again.
BTW, I’ve noticed some images in email download with a .jfif extension. I thought of that as a subtype of jpeg (or jpg) so when the jfifs weren’t uploading to WP correctly I took to simply renaming with a .jpg extension when saving from email (not a separate conversion/save step). But maybe that also is now unnecessary. Will try next time it comes up.
Aaaaand the next day . . .
Of course, you can make up a completely random word for your favourite child, or mother’s maiden name, or first car, or city your parents met… these security systems don’t check a general database of all that stuff, they just check what you said when you first entered the info. You just have to be consistent. Obviously, true answers are easier to recall, but also easier for malignanters to figure out if, like maiden names and the like, they are matters of public record.
Having said that, I just applied online for a new UK driving licence and they did ask for my mother’s maiden name somewhere in the process, and I am sure that is based on a database.
I’ve seen “What is your favorite book” but I don’t know how that one is supposed to work as a security question. Tastes change over time. Some books I loved when I was a kid I don’t like so much now. And what happens if I read a book now that I like better than any other book I ever read? You might as well ask “What color shirt are you wearing?”
I could see the the Reply All.
Have a moderately half-decent weekend all!
Just don’t ask George Carlin to have a nice day.
narmitaj – Our national reenactment group decided a couple of years ago that they need the last 4 digits of the SSN of all the members of their organization (including children). Since a couple of decades ago I decided it was easier for me as Treasurer to deal with renewals (for unit as well as national) than have to get the checks and paperwork from someone else – I am the one who handles the renewals.
This is the result of them hiring management people to run the “business end” of the organization and members – us included – did not want to give them any part of our SSNs, especially since they also need everyone’s date of birth (this makes sense as children are free and they will accept just the year of birth). I called up and told them that I was having a problem with members not wanting to give their SSNs even in part. I was told – “Then just have them make up a 4 digit number.”?
And they made this change during the pandemic. In normal years we have an annual party in March to thank members for participating the year before and go over the new year’s schedule. It was also a way to grab everyone and get their paperwork and dues. I still have members who I am waiting for renewals from. (Though a couple of the older ones may have passed away in the interim – and I say older ones as someone pushing 70 so they are OLDER ones.)
As to favorite pet – I have spent my life afraid of animals and never had a pet and greatly resented that my parents got my sister a dog while I was away with school group one weekend – the goldfish and hamsters were scary enough to me.
So my favorite pet’s name would have to be “None”.
It seems like it would have been easier for the registrar to give out the number, which makes it less likely that there will be duplicates.
Favorite Color:
Red
ERROR! Answer must be at least four letters.
Brian – The experts they brought in to run “the business” part don’t seem to be that bright.
This year we were suppose to (for the second year) renew the unit’s members online. I ignored the idea last year, but decided to try doing so to make them happy. I am reasonably proficient at using a computer (certainly beyond many in our unit), am an accountant for over 50 years and use Excel on a regular basis.
I show as the “adjutant” (secretary) of our unit as we have to give someone as same as the second contact after our commander (president) and our unit’s adjutant is not a member of our national group. I follow the directions to the page on their site – it asks for “your” certain info as a password, but then says commander’s info. So sent an email to see if they want my info or his (answer – doesn’t matter – then why specify?)
I get a spreadsheet which is blank except for our unit and number. *Instructions say to.” make any changes” to the information. Sent an email again (and each email exchange is a day back and forth).
Why are doing that? You are suppose to use the spreadsheet we mailed to you – update it, click on it and it takes you to the site to update on the site. – Why not say that in the instructions?
They then say we have to use either the unit’s Paypal account or credit card to pay the collected dues to them. Unit has neither and I am not going to give them ours. Email them again.
Really? Well you can mail a check to – person, who is not the membership chair of national (who has not been involved in any of this) or the Treasurer.
Thank goodness this is done for this year. Hope they fix it better by next year – and we did this 2 months later than normal this year – which was a mess for me as my embroidery chapter renewed at its normal time, which this year due to this all being 2 months late, overlapped the other.
The embroidery’s national and region renewals need list of names, contact info, if we are the person’s primary chapter (many join more than one chapter) – for the region they also need to know if this the primary region/chapter of the person and then just mail out with a check. Anyway you want to make the list – as long as they can read it, it is fine with them.
Meryl, I was recently reflecting on that matter of official forms asking for info in an unclear or unnecessary way. This year I was able to set my voter registration to always default to vote-by-mail. (I have been migrating over a few election cycles from in-person election-day voting at local precinct, to early voting at a regional center, to mail-in.) The one previous time I voted by mail was also the first time it was a generally available option, so there was a lot of guidance online and in the news over how to do it.
I was fine up to a point, handling the inner envelope and outer envelope, and remembering to sign and date the inner envelope and write the address I was voting from. There was also a widely publicized residency requirement, I forget whether six months or a year, at the registered address. But the form on the inner envelope did not have just a checbox or signature line saying something like “I certify that I have lived at this address for at least six months “. Instead it had two blanks for Month and Year you began living at that address.
Well I certainly didn’t know exactly. It was in the 1980s for Pete’s sake! Well I didn’t want to be disqualified for giving false information. So I tried to ask on the Board of Elections help page, didn’t get any response for a long time, then got a dumb canned response that just said We require this information because there is a six month residency requirement for mail-in ballots. People in my neighborhood listserv said just use a good guess, which is what I did. Now I am awaiting the ballot for the upcoming election and am curious if they have retained or modified that question.
Followup to my vote-by-mail rant.
Today’s mail brought the mail-in ballot and accompanying paraphernalia. The bit I was objecting to is still there, exactly the same.
“I have (or will have) resided at my registration address for at least 30 days before Election Day. I have lived there for ______ years and ______ months.”
Will my uncertainty over the number of years and months somehow cast doubts on my having been here 30 days?
Mitch, you could add “at least” to the “I have lived there for” statement, put in a number of years/months that A) you ARE certain is accurate, and B) is sufficiently longer than the required period to establish eligibility to vote by mail. That way, you avoid the possible problem of attesting to something that might not be completely accurate, and don’t get your ballot tossed. You might still end up on a list of “election troublemakers” if your local partisans are in a mood when they encounter your paperwork, but that’s also true if it’s done completely, 100% accurate/legal.
Thanks for the suggestions, James. The portions I quoted are within a larger block of text, so there isn’t room for commentary. But in place of words like “at least” I may use a plus sign. entering “20+” for Years. (And I guess “0” for Months though that feels odd.)
I know, I know, the energy I’m putting into this whining could better go to consulting news and opinion sources I like and figuring out how I want to actually vote …
We have voted the past 2 years by mail – in NYS there is no general allowance for voting by mail, one has to meet a reason such as sick and cannot go out or will be out of state. So what they did was add “concerned about Covid-19” (not exact quote) to the medical excuses.
We got our ballot for the governor/lt governor primary (second primary will be later in year for state legislature as problem came up with same). I filed in mine and remembered to sign my full name – form says just first and married name, but I have been signing it with full name (including middle initial and maiden name hyphenated) so I have to remember to do that for the signature to match. Checked off the boxes on the inside the envelope, etc. and sealed it up. I then pulled out Robert;s and repeated it step by step with him so we could mail them out. They went out in this past weekend’s trip to a USPS collection box to post the mail.
Meryl, good for you on the mail-in voting! Here in Illinois there used to be a requirement to give a reason, but they removed it. This year the innovation was being able to register as always wanting to do vote by mail. (They also assigned me a ward and precinct number and polling place, as usual previously.) Before this, each time you wanted to request voting by mail it was a one-off and by scratch.
I am still working thru the politics of what votes I actually want to cast. But also there are voices on my neighborhood / political listserv insisting the ballots should not be deposited in an ordinary USPS collection box but must be driven over to one of the designated secure collection points. Not as a legal requirement but just because they regard the USPS as good for nothing.
Our setup gave us the choice of doing the vote by mail for just this primary or all primaries. We picked the former as in the future we hope to be schlepping back into the school to vote (I do love arguing, um – discussing – with the poll workers and be upset about them trying to help me vote and for primaries there is not really enough room so one is climbing over them to vote.)
But now we will be having a second primary for the races other than governor/lLt governor as the redistricting was kicked out and redone by a third party per the state courts and will have to request forms again when that primary comes up in August.
We only have USPS mailing for the ballots – no drop boxes.
In normal times we used to go to a local PO daily as our mail went to our box there as we had problems with delivery at our home and the nearest PO is not our home’s PO. (PO done by community and we are at the north end of the zip code area and the PO – both branches – are at the south end, so we have 2 POs considerably closer to our house than the one which delivers our home mail. During the pandemic we had trouble getting the mail forwarded to the house so we (I) changed the mailing address for almost everything to our house and luckily our current postal carrier is great – our mail is delivered here (and not opened by who it went to instead of us) and none of the mail is for people so far away that we have never heard of their street. Now we have been using one or two collection boxes closer to our house or the box in front of the PO where our box is to post outgoing mail.