Monday, June 20, 2011

Lazy Days and Ducklings

Thought for the day:  Why waste six days while waiting to celebrate the seventh? TGI Fridays isn't only open one day a week.   

Yesterday, my husband and I took a walk at Jones Bridge Park. Usually, activity at this bustling park is  concentrated around the soccer fields, playgrounds and wide-open spaces, but yesterday, few people braved those sun-baked areas. Instead, most chose to congregate beneath the shade trees and pavilions,  where their grills filled the air with the enticing aromas of Oriental and Hispanic cooking, as well as good ol' American hot dogs and hamburgers. And more than we've ever seen before, people were beside ... and in ... the river.

The Chattahoochee fairly races past this park, bubbling over and around large boulders, dancing in mesmerizing eddies and then resting in small still pools. It's not unusual to see someone sitting out on one of those big rocks, watching the water and the world go by, or to see a couple rafts or kayaks maneuvering around them. It also isn't unusual to see one or two hip boot-wearing trout fishermen in the water, flicking their lines. And year round, no matter how cold or how hot it is, this place is normally a fowl-filled haven for ducks and Canadian geese galore.

But not yesterday. Yesterday, the bone-chilling  river was positively teeming with people. Kids playing under the watchful eyes of their parents. Couples sun-bathing on the rocks. At least a dozen fisherman. One couple encouraging their poor shivering pup to swim. It was the most people I've ever seen in the water there at one time. And, undoubtedly not incidental, the fewest fowl.

There were no geese at all, only a handful of ducks, and one adorable duckling. But let me tell you, that little duckling was one big peeper. As though he were singing, that little guy would swim around, peeping his little heart out, the vision of happy. Then, he'd evidently cross some invisible line, known only to his mother, and she'd go after him. While she poked at him with her bill and quacked at him, his peeps would take on a different tone, but once she left him to his own devices, he went back to his happy song again.

Reminded me of bloggers.

As long as Blogger works well for us, we're happy little ducklings. And then something goes wrong. Something doesn't work right. We have trouble posting images, or can't make comments, or can't even access our own blog. It's as though we cross some invisible line, known only to Blogger, and while we're having problems with it, our happy-happy-joy-joy-I-love-Blogger tune changes. Just like that little duck.

I've managed to overcome (knock on wood) the problems I was having with Blogger, so now I'm doing swimmingly again, and peeping a happy tune. Since I know some of you have been having problems, too, I thought I'd make like the mama duck and give y'all a gentle nudge in the right direction.

If you haven't already done it, I'd highly encourage you to install  Google's


It's free, it's easy to install, and it works seamlessly with Blogger. Once I installed it, my problems with posting images became a thing of the past. However, even after switching to Chrome, I still had one lingering problem that was about to drive me nuts. I was having trouble posting comments on my own blog. Instead of showing the normal prompt signal, the only thing it would give me was a silly little dot or squiggle, and trying to type anything into the comment box only resulted in more of those dots and squiggles. Frustrating, right? Somebody's kind enough to leave a comment on your blog, and you can't respond at first attempt ... or second ... or tenth. Then I stumbled upon the solution. Now, I have no earthly idea why this works for me, but it does. Now, if I get that tiny little mark instead of the proper prompt, I simply click in the comment box on an earlier post. For whatever reason, the older comment box yields the correct prompt. Once I get that, I can go back to the newer post, and proceed without a problem. And I'm a happy little duckling once again.

How about you? Have you found solutions to your problems with Blogger? And by the way, how do you track the statistics, like what searches lead people to your blog? For those of us (ahem ...like  ME) who haven't quite figured it out, please ... do tell!


Tomorrow afternoon, I'm going to visit a local writers' group. I have no idea how many people attend, or what to expect, but I'm looking forward to it, nonetheless. And I'll tell you all about it on Wednesday.

Until then, take care of yourselves. And each other.


one cool chick












15 comments:

  1. If you go to your Blogger Dashboard, you should see a "Stats" button after the "New Post," "Edit posts," "Comments," "Settings," etc. Click on that and see what happens.

    I also use a program called "StatCounter" (statcounter(dot)com, I think). It'll walk you through how to connect it to your blog.

    I love checking out the search terms that led people to my blog. So far my favorite it "reality boobs."

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  2. I spent Sunday at a similar place that you did. I took pictures but it was on my daughter's camera so I will have to wait for her to send them to me. It was a wonderful day and watching children, dogs and the occassional adult splashing around in a waterhole having great fun, was fun for me also.

    I have never figured out the statistics part of blogger. I thought that the total of pageviews for each post listed for the day should equal the total pageviews, but it seldom does. I noticed on some people's blogs that they have Feedjit Live Traffic Feed. There you can see exactly where the people who are reading your blog are coming from. I was looking into it last week and signed up but was babysitting 3 of my grandchildren and and never got to download the program. I willl look into Feedjit again. I have been getting many pageviews lately from countries that I have to look up on a map and I wonder how they found my silly little ramblings. Some of them give me cause to worry.

    After I get the Feedjit installed, I will try Chrome. I haven's had too many problems lately, but I do get frustrated when one occurs.

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  3. Blogger stats dtive me out of my mind. I think they just throw some numbers in a hat and randomly pull them...so let's see...today you have 14 comments and 2 page views and tomorrow you will 2 comments and 135 page views. Yep, looks about right to me. Apparantly someone found my blog by searching for Indian Longhouses. Figure that one out if you can. If I see the offer for Google Chrome come up again I will give it a shot.

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  4. I switched to Chrome a long time ago, because Explorer was giving me fits. I had two separate versions on my computer, the 32 bit and the 64 bit (whatever that means). One of them wouldn't load most websites. The other one wouldn't play any videos. Finally, I bagged them both and went to Chrome. Very happy since then.

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  5. Hi, Linda. Woo HOO! Thanks. I was looking at exterior programs, and the information was right there under my nose the whole time! The info they have on there is pretty interesting, and funny, too. Write about all kinds of good stuff, and it's the words like anti-monkey butt that'll get the hits ...

    Starting Over- (I still suspect we were separated at birth.) Statistics are what we make of them, I suppose, but if the Blogger info about the countries is accurate, I too, wonder how in the world those people managed to stumble upon our blogs. (Lordy, I hope it wasn't the anti-monkey butt posting!)

    Karen- Glad to hear Blogger is treating you nicely these days. (And I LOVE that red hair!)

    Delores- I think we all need to take those stats with a huge dose of salt. As for Chrome, if you're interested, you can do a google search for google chrome, and there it is!

    Dianne- I remember you mentioning Chrome when I first installed it. It definitely beats IE all to heck. Take care.

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  6. I have had Google Chrome for quite a while so perhaps that is why I haven't had any problems [knock on wood!] And I check stats the same way that the first commentator did. Although, to be honest, I hardly ever look. :)

    And I did use statcounter too until someone embedded bad code in it and it effected my blog so I to delete it from my blog.

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  7. I've never had trouble with blogging, knock on my wooden head.
    I'm glad you found my blog and visited. I loved reading your experience with the duckling.
    I love this time of year when everything seems alive and bustling. Birds singing, the little pond on my deck bubbling, flowers blooming and green grass. Some places are burning up and we have rain here in Oh every other day. Whew. I've had enough and then I see the fires raging in other states and take time to be thankful for rain.
    Have a great day evening. I'll be back.
    Blessings, Barb
    Good luck in finding a writers group. We formed a new one nearby four years ago and we're going great guns and so much fun. People come and go but the serious ones have stayed.

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  8. It was HOT here yesterday, so we took our (almost) 6 month old Labrador to a nearby lake. He took to the water at once, and swam like a pro.

    Now we have to keep him out of the pool.

    Glad to hear you find G Chrome good. I've been advising its usage too. So much better and faster!

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  9. Susan, Hate to show my stupidity but I'm thinking I've seen the Chattahootchee River in southern Georgia. could that be right? I loved that area when I lived in Florida.

    I imagine Chrome is for PC's. I have a Mac. I've had all kinds of problems with blogger. I can only use Firefox with my post or I can't comment at all. It's been soooo annoying.

    Yes, be sure and tell us about the writer's group

    Manzanita@Wannabuyaduck

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  10. I've sorted out my blogger issues - but I'm still holding my breath...

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  11. Hi, Skippy- Well, you're one smart lady. I tried working with Internet Explorer, and it worked just fine ... until it didn't. Chrome's AOK in my book. Thanks for the heads-up on the problem you had with statcounter.

    Barbara. Hi, and welcome aboard! Thanks for signing on as my newest follower. I can't remember if I signed on with you or not, but if I didn't I'll rectify that asap. (We old broads have to stick together!) This has been a strange year. Not so much of a spring as an early summer, with several weeks already of temps in the 90s. Oh well. Cuts down on the grass-cutting. We sure could use some of that rain you've been getting. Am definitely looking forward to that writing group today. I hope someone else shows up beside me. Take care.

    Cro- I'm glad your lab took to the water so readily, but good luck keeping him out of your pool on hot days. That poor pup at the park didn't look very happy about being in that water, but I know it was frigid. The air temp may have been well into the 90s, but that river stays cold.

    Manzie- Yes, ma'am, you're right. The Chattahoochee is in south GA, but it's a pretty long river. We're in the Atlanta area. It's a river with many personalities, but I love it at the park where we are. Looks like it's doing one of your dances. To tell the truth, I don't know if Chrome will work with Macs or not, but it might be worth looking into, anyway.

    Sam- I'll keep my fingers crossed for you. Take care.

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  12. I love the stats buttons (even though they frequently don't add up--how can I have more comments than page views), especially the one that shows where my readers live.

    The weirdest thing that someone has ever googled and used to get to my blog is "female straight jacket escape." I'm pretty sure I've never blogged on that--though it sounds fun.

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  13. Hi, Connie. Yeah, you've gotta wonder about how some of those searches lead to our blogs, don't ya? Now that I know how to check the stats, I'll probably check them every now and then. Doesn't mean I'll believe 'em, but it is kinda fun to see what's there.

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  14. Thanks for the helpful tips. It is infuriationg when something on blogger doesn't go through or moves at a painfully slow pace. Julie

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  15. Hi, Julie. My pleasure. (But I hope you never need the tips!)

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