Angry Old Fat Man, being more angry than usual. Probably more fat too, but to hell with it, like that makes a damn anymore.
I'm a computer guy, just trying to make heads or tails of the world as I plod along. I'm trying to build a business, so I worked practically the entire evening for free on a computer running Microsoft Vista.
If you don't know because you're an Apple sycophant, a Linux basement-dweller, Amish, or been living under a rock for the past 5 years, the Microsoft Vista operating system (like every second or third version of their software) sucks ass. It took entirely too long for Microsoft to realize they had a huge stinker on their hands, and after working on getting it somewhat stable they ended up having to rename it (Windows 7) for users to even look at it.
This machine I've been working on has an infamous Black Screen of Death, where you only see a black screen and a tantalizing mouse pointer that moves OK but has nothing to point at or click on. I've tried every free remedy under the sun and it still sits there, its dark face mocking me.
Did they even test this son of a bitch before they shipped it out the door? This is what Microsoft gets for hiring potheads and cheap overseas programmers. This is also why they're getting their lunch eaten by smartphones.
Anyways, I worked like a bitch to get absolutely nowhere on the problem, then I sat down and puttered around on the Internet. I got bored and decided to work on another problem, mainly the Facebook "Like" button in the sidebar on this blog you're looking at.
Mary Anne had expressed her displeasure with it several days ago. It was showing a lot of stuff including names and tiny FB profile photos. It was overflowing the sidebar boundaries before I worked on it for an hour and a half. After trial and error and frustration and cursing I got it to barely fit in the sidebar. Then Mary Anne noticed that FB Like button on some other website looked different, and she decided that it was the way ours should look too.
She didn't realize, of course, that it wasn't really a Like button at all. It was just a link to the website's affiliated Facebook page, where you then had to press the Like button you found there. The button I put in our sidebar was a true Like button - one single, solitary click and BAM! Quacking Alone is in your Likes list.
The button also changed to a different view when it was clicked versus when it was left unclicked. Unclicked, it showed a Like button with the signature thumbs-up icon and "X people like this page" where X is the number of people who already like it. It only showed the names and pictures when the button had already been clicked. This is the way Facebook programmed it; I had nothing to do with it.
That was just not good enough for Mary Anne. So I tried my damndest to change it. I did all the programming required by Facebook to try and fix it to her liking, even to the point of correcting their programming - when I have no PC programming experience!
I finally got the profile photos to stop displaying. While looking around on how to resize the button after the photos were gone, I saw where I could change the button style, which would radically alter the shape, size, and appearance of the Like button. Unfortunately, the other styles weren't as informative or as pretty as Mary Anne would have probably wanted, so I just went with resizing the current (photoless) style.
Would this be satisfactory? Hell no. It just wasn't good enough. Mary Anne is to satisfaction what Tantalus is to fruit - one shall never touch the other. She bitched and griped constantly about it.
So I tried several other things at the outer edges of my capabilities to get it to work, all to no avail. I gave up on it until the night I was working on the computer that had Vista on it. As I said before, I was puttering around on the Internet and decided to work on the Like button. I just went ahead and changed the style to the ugly, non-informative button.
Fast-forward to this evening. I get home and, as always, check my e-mail to see if someone has a decently paying job or is sending a Brinks truck full of gold bullion to my house or some other fantasy. There, sitting in my inbox, is an e-mail from Mary Anne that she sent to me last night while she and I were in the same house:
I'd really appreciate you taking a look at the FB button on the blog again; it's stil got that message with names instead of the button with a number
thnks
M
For one thing, I didn't know she'd be satisfied with "the button with the number", because, well, do I need to mention Tantalus again? For another, I didn't read her e-mail earlier because I figured that anything she wants to tell me she could say it to, I don't know, my face? Yes, it's a radical concept, this whole "face-to-face" thing. It's only been around for 10,000 or so years; maybe we shouldn't rush it.
Since she was being passive-aggressive and all, I decided to reply in kind:
Check it again. I think I may have fixed it before I read your nagging-ass e-mail.
So now the Facebook Like button is just a thumbs-up and a number. The number is how many people also like Quacking Alone on Facebook.
Now excuse me while I go get handrails installed on my ass - so OSHA doesn't fine me when they see every-damn-body and their mother riding it.