Nope, I didn’t start blogging again just to give up a few weeks later. We just got back from a dozen days in Tampa, where we celebrated Mother’s Day with Eric, Diane, and our two granddaughters. Alison had a dance recital last Saturday, in which she performed splendidly, and that day was also Diane’s birthday. Eric and I also took in a baseball game at Tropicana Field.

But the highlight, as always, was enjoying Alie and Virginia. Virginia is 17 months now, verbalizes a lot, but doesn’t have many words. However, she can sign¹ “please,” “more,” and a couple other things, as well as indicate with head-nods and shakes “no” or “yes.” She’s also adept at pushing away things she doesn’t want. On the other hand, she definitely knows how to hug stuffed toys—even if they are carried upside-down. And, just like her big sister, she requires “Grandma & Grandpa Detox” after we leave.

Alison surprised us by being a less-picky eater (she no longer objects to “red sauce” on pasta, for instance), although her favorite dish to order from the children’s menu remains mac & cheese. She’s a wonderful big sis to Virginia, eager to share a popsicle after school. She’s also becoming quite the ballerina: I was impressed that during her performance, she wasn’t looking to the wings where her instructor was giving cues to the dancers. She really knew her stuff!

Health & Fitness

Shortly after my last blog post, I picked up a Fitbit Flex, to help me track exercise. I crave feedback (for example, I weigh myself every morning), and the more immediate, the better. This handy device syncs to MyFitnessPal, and in addition to tracking steps (running or walking), it also does a fair job of tracking my sleep. While in Florida, I took advantage of the warm weather to exercise almost every day.² As a result, despite the increase in caloric intake while in Florida, I was able to maintain where I was before leaving home. And this morning, I was exactly ten pounds under my maximum weight: almost halfway to my end-of-year goal.

Unsubscribing: A Follow-Up

If you recall the post that restarted the blog, I was kvetching (to put it mildly) about unsubscribing from unwanted emails. I’m happy to report that I’ve successfully unsubbed from a dozen or more mailings since then, and almost invariably, it’s been a relatively hassle-free experience. Not all have been one-click operations, but many have been. Others make you select which types of emails you want to stop or continue. That’s fine, but I sure wish all of them had a selection to “unsubscribe from all.” But for the most part, the process seems to be better.

Saucy Chronicles III

Ten authors are taking part in the third installment of the short-story series I edit. All the first drafts were submitted on time, and we’re well into the critique phase. So far, all indications are that the quality of the storytelling continues to be top-notch. If the one story I’ve read (so far) is any indication, this may be the best volume yet!

The stories in this volume will be shorter—we set a 6,000-word limit—and rather than have a fantasy creature as the focus, the central theme this time is water. That is, each story takes place on or under water. Also, while I think most of the stories will have a fantasy element, at least one is science fiction (or dystopian, depending on how you want to look at it).

A publication date hasn’t been set, but I’m hoping for late summer or early fall. I’m traveling to Italy in late September, so that may have a slight impact on publication. As with Dragons and Unicorns, we’ll be publishing both paperback and electronic versions (Kindle and Nook).

Incidentally, the Saucy Ink writing group isn’t closed by any means. If you’re interested in joining us to talk about writing, or perhaps take part in Saucy Chronicles IV, we’d love to have you. Head over to Saucy Ink and sign up!

Memorial Day

This weekend is the traditional start to summer in the United States: the school year is ending, days are longer, temperatures—even here in the upper midwest—are climbing. Many of us will be firing up grills that have lain dormant for the past several months, indulging in burgers, steaks, ribs, chicken, and more. And a lot of us will be putting out a flag on the front of the house.

As we do so, please take a moment to give thanks to those Americans who gave their lives so that we can continue to enjoy the freedoms and pleasures we so often take for granted. If you see a military member in uniform, it only takes a few seconds to walk up and thank him or her for their service. Believe me, though the words may sound trite, it truly is meaningful to our soldiers, sailors, Marines, and Air Force members.

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History

In mid-December last year, just before we left for our Christmas trip to Oahu, I went in for a routine eye exam. Routine, in that there wasn’t any particular problem I was concerned about; not so routine in that it had been more than five years since I’d had one.² As part of the procedure, the optometrist had her technician take my blood pressure. She took it twice, just to be sure of the reading: 177/86.

For those of you unfamiliar with blood pressure measurements (i.e., you younger folks, generally), blood pressure (BP, henceforth) is measured in mg of mercury, just as barometric pressure is. The first number is systolic pressure, the pressure when your heart beats, forcing blood through your arteries and veins. The second number is diastolic, and is the pressure on your arteries when the heart rests between beats.

Normal BP is 120/80, or lower. Pre-hypertension is 120-139/80-89. Stage 1 hypertension (the fancy word for high blood pressure) is 140-159/90-99. Stage 2 hypertension is 160/100 or greater. Here’s the important thing to keep in mind:

If your readings fall into two different categories, your correct blood pressure category is the higher category. For example, if your blood pressure reading is 125/95 millimeters of mercury (mm Hg), you have stage 1 hypertension. [Source: Mayo Clinic website.]

So, looking back at my 177/86 number, I was clearly in stage 2. To put it baldly, given my age (60) and weight (unfortunately, in the obese category), plus my father’s history of heart disease and my mother’s high BP, I was a better-than-average candidate for a stroke, and possibly a heart attack.

You might have a stroke, so go on vacation. Twice.

What did I do with that knowledge? Not a damned thing. Obviously, not one of my wisest decisions, and certainly not one I’m proud of in any way. On the other hand, I passed on climbing to the top of Diamond Head crater, on what was probably the hottest day we had in Hawaii.

When we got back from Hawaii, I laid off quite a bit on eating wheat, and carbohydrates in general. But it was winter, and I don’t like going outside in the cold, especially to exercise. Still, my weight dropped from 220.2 lbs on January 7 to 215.2 on March 8. I suppose, because the weight was coming off at a reasonable rate, I rationalized not going to a doctor. I also slacked off my “diet.” By April 18, thanks in part to almost three weeks in California, a lot more beer, wine, and margaritas than I drink at home, and being in vacation mode, I was back up to 222 lbs.

While in California, one night as I was going to sleep, I could feel my pulse throughout my body. And then I noticed something fairly disquieting (or alarming): it seemed my heart was occasionally skipping a beat. I felt my carotid pulse, and there seemed to be no doubt: periodically, but not any regular basis, my heartbeat seemed to be interrupted for a beat. The subsequent beat seemed, to me at least, to be stronger than other beats.

A better idea: see a doctor!

A few days after our return home from California, I (finally) made an appointment to see a doctor about my blood pressure. I went in on April 23, and my blood pressure was measured in my left arm, via machine, at 200/90. YIKES! The nurse then took it manually, and got 187/94. She then measured my right arm, and got 162/100, which is what was formally recorded. The doctor figured the most accurate numbers were somewhere in between; at any rate, he prescribed 10mg/day of Lisinopril, and guessed that dosage would go up.

That day, I also had an electrocardiogram, which came back normal: no arrhythmia or other apparent issues.³

The doctor also scheduled me for a stress test and a consultation with a dietician, both of which I did two days later. By then, I’d taken two doses of Lisinopril. My BP that morning was 177/90, which my doctor opined was probably real close to my baseline. The results of the stress test were also negative for arterial blockage or other damage, so that was a relief. In fact, both doctors present (my doctor, who is a resident, and his boss, who is one of the directors of the residency clinic and, by fortunate coincidence, a cardiologist) were quite pleased—even impressed—by my performance and the results.

A couple hours later, my wife and I met with the dietician. She was very happy with our diet (other than my predilection for appeasing my sweet tooth, which I’d already been abating), and not so much with my (lack of) exercise regimen. She also introduced me to a website for tracking diet and exercise (which, unbeknown to me, my wife has been using for quite awhile), called My Fitness Pal.

The site has a huge database of foods, and it’s pretty easy to add anything that may not be listed there. It’s very easy to track meals and calories (as well as other factors) against a goal. You can enter any type of exercise as well. I’ve been using it religiously since our meeting, and as at least an indirect result, my weight Saturday morning was a five-year low of 213.8 lbs.

Before meeting with the dietician, I gave a blood and urine sample. One of the key tests was for cholesterol. Probably due to having just completed the stress test, my LDL (“bad” cholesterol) was 130—at the very bottom of the “borderline high” part of the scale. HDLs and triglycerides were normal. So the probability of diabetes, or even pre-diabetes, is low, but I still gave another lab sample on Friday to double-check the LDL number.

I wish I’d done this in January

Since my initial doctor’s visit, I’ve had one day (the next) where my weight remained the same, one day of gain, and every other day has seen a loss of weight. Obviously, as heavy as I was (and still am), the pounds will come off fairly quickly. I know that will start to taper off eventually, but I still have set myself a very reasonable goal to be under 200 lbs by January 1, and 180 lbs by January 1, 2015.

Even better, when I went in on Friday, May 3, my blood pressure was 128/79! As a reminder, 120/80 is the considered “normal.” I’m so very, very close, after only ten days. I’m fairly sure my doctor was equally impressed (or surprised). Clearly, the combination of diet, exercise, and medication is having its desired effect. Even better, from my viewpoint, was no increase in the dosage of my medication.

 Even an old dog can learn new tricks

For a long time (too long), I’ve had almost the same sense of immortality that we have in our 20s and 30s. Even when I turned 50, I figured I had a good 30-40 years left. Then I had grandchildren, and my mother-in-law passed away. My parents and my father-in-law either died of heart disease or cancer, combined with bad health habits. But my mother-in-law had been in excellent health (for her age) until she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer shortly after her 80th birthday. Her passing really brought home to me that we are all mortal. Then, when I turned 60 last year, and was as heavy as I’d ever been in my life, with a brand-new granddaughter to watch grow up, my eyes were finally—slowly—opened.

I’m having way too much fun at this point in my life not to do those things that will prolong it as much as possible. I want to see those beautiful little girls turn into beautiful grown women, graduate from college, perhaps get married and have children of their own.

I’m damned lucky, and thankful, that I “only” have high blood pressure and a weight problem, especially with my family history. Sure, I’ve dieted before, and I’ve gone on exercise binges, but it was too easy to slack off, especially without some external force—such as a real, no-shit health issue—to keep me on track.

So don’t follow my example, because here’s the truth of it: The stuff we do to ourselves will eventually kill us. But it doesn’t take much to make smart decisions that will put off the inevitable for decades.

Finally, some wisdom from one of my favorite artists, Jimmy Buffett:

Now don’t get me wrong:
This is not a sad song,
Just events that I have happened to witness.
And time takes its toll as we head for the pole,
And no one dies from physical fitness.
So what the hell, we’ll take it right to the end:
As the days grow more complicated the nightlife still wins.

I’m growing older but not up,
My metabolic rate is pleasantly stuck.
Let those winds of change blow over my head
I’d rather die while I’m living than live while I’m dead.
Let those winds of time blow over my head
I’d rather die while I’m living than live while I’m dead.

Live Long, So You Can Prosper © 2007 – 2013 by Kestrel's Aerie. This feed is for personal, non-commercial use only. Using this feed on any other site is a copyright violation. No scraping.

 

There are still a couple things I need to finish, such as formatting the excerpts on the front page into two columns (“magazine format,” I guess), and return something to the sidebar that got lost when I committed one of my goofs. Otherwise, give it a look: kick the tires, push all the buttons, let me know what’s still broken.

(One thing that’s broken for sure is that almost all the pictures accompanying posts are gone. Those that I still have will need to be re-uploaded; others . . . *sigh*.)

At any rate, thanks for your patience, and I hope to get back to regular posting before the week is out!

The “New” Aerie is (A)live! © 2007 – 2013 by Kestrel's Aerie. This feed is for personal, non-commercial use only. Using this feed on any other site is a copyright violation. No scraping.

 

As the image says, CISPA is back. The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act is supposed to protect the United States against cyberattacks and to expedite the investigation of such attacks. Unfortunately, the original intent was watered down in the House of Representatives, and further modified to make it easier for our government to spy on us.

That version of the bill passed the House last week, and is now before the Senate. (This is the same Senate that is owned by the guns and ammunition lobby, also known by the letters “NRA,” that failed to pass legislation last week that would have required background checks on people who want to purchase assault weapons and large-capacity gun magazines. See former Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford’s scathing commentary about that.)

OpenCongress.org has a full page about CISPA, which I heartily encourage you to read. However, a key provision of the bill states that access to your personally identifying information, and anything you share on the Internet, in the words of OpenCongress.org, “from Photoshop to a Nickleback album,” may be granted, without a warrant, to the government , private security agencies, and private companies. So much for the protections supposedly guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Last year, as you probably recall, we, the people, defeated the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), the Internet censorship bills, which also would have removed some of our rights and legal protections. We need to do the same with CISPA. Here’s how you can help:

• Help with OpenCongress.org‘s CISPA Whip Count, which is working to publicize each senator’s position on CISPA. (Normally, this information is kept secret before a floor vote.)
• Get better informed at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (which, contrary to the publicly stated opinion of the author of CISPA, is not a leftist organization).
• Sign the petitions at http://cispapetition.org/ and Change.org.
• Call or email your United States Senators.

We can no longer count on our elected representatives to do the right thing. We need to remind them that they are our servants, not the servants of the government or special interest groups. We need to be sure they know our position, and that they realize there will be consequences for flouting our wishes.

I’m mad as hell, and tired of taking it on the chin © 2007 – 2013 by Kestrel's Aerie. This feed is for personal, non-commercial use only. Using this feed on any other site is a copyright violation. No scraping.

 

I’m still not exactly sure what happened, and I’m not really sure how I fixed it. But as you can see, things are pretty much back to normal here. First, I realized I was not displaying the Thesis Classic theme, but the Twenty-Ten or Twenty-Twelve theme (one of WordPress’s default themes). And lots of stuff was missing or ugly. Or both. So I re-uploaded the Thesis theme, except it failed because /wp-content/themes/thesis was still there. Why WP doesn’t simply provide the option to overwrite is beyond me, but I didn’t feel like using FTP to upload, when the WordPress uploader is so simple to use. Of course, I had to use FTP to delete the original /thesis folder, but I wasn’t clever enough at the time to simply use FTP to upload. (Remember my Roberto de Vicenzo quote? Still applies, sadly.)

As I was saying, I re-uploaded the Thesis theme, did a Live Preview, et voilá—everything is back to (more or less) normal! But hey, I got the chance to plug Amelia’s site and tell you about OpenClipart.org, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time and effort.

Right?

EDIT: Well, kinda-sorta. Thanks to a tip from reader Brad Davis on Google+, I realized I was looking at the cached (pretty) version. Once I cleared the cache, it was . . . ugly. So I hid this post, did a little magic (still not sure exactly what happened), and got back to “workable.” Still isn’t pretty, the main menu is missing, and probably a few other things, but it’s more-or-less readable. Still making progress on the new theme (which will be in a new subdirectory, but should redirect here), and hope to have that all done by the weekend. Cross your fingers for me, please?

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So . . . yeah. Now I get to spend a good part of the weekend doing what I’d hoped to do in more leisurely fashion next week. The real kicker, though, is that there were a bunch of settings on the live site that I wanted to refer to and copy to the new design—and now they are kaput. Arghhh!

On the other hand, building the new theme is quite fun. I discovered a great site with a ton of very helpful, easy-to-follow videos on how to build a Thesis skin from the ground up. Amelia is an Aussie lady and Thesis diva, whose site Thesis Video Tutorials is a treasure-trove of information. Heck, I’m even starting to understand CSS!²

You want to know what really frustrates me, though? Thesis has a really nifty one-click theme backup/export function. *sighhh* I know, right? In the immortal words of Roberto de Vicenzo, “What a stupid I am.”

However, there’s a silver lining in every cloud, right? In the course of looking for a hard hat image to include here, I found Open Clipart: a site containing nothing but public-domain clipart. Most of the images are vector images, and the site has a nifty way to resize an image and provide you with a fully formatted <img src> link you can simply drop into your editor.³

So, to get even more goodness out of this minor catastrophe (that’s an oxymoron, folks), what site(s) do you use for blog post images?

Kestrel’s Aerie is now a hard hat zone © 2007 – 2013 by Kestrel's Aerie. This feed is for personal, non-commercial use only. Using this feed on any other site is a copyright violation. No scraping.

 

I admit it: I’m a gadget freak. If this comes as a surprise, you just haven’t been paying attention. Anyway . . . I read about Toshiba’s new Kirabook on The Verge today. (A quick Google search revealed coverage in all the usual places, of course.)

The more I read, the greater my desire. Okay, lust. There, I said it. This is the Windows laptop I’ve been looking for, ever since I started looking for a replacement for my Macbook Pro. Trouble is, no one made anything close, at a features–quality–price point I considered reasonable. So, I got a 13″ Macbook Air, a few months before Apple announced Retina displays for their laptops.

Thing is, as I’ve mentioned on Google+ as well as here on the Aerie, I don’t use OS X anymore: via Bootcamp, my MBA boots directly into Windows 8 Pro. And, it works like a champ! The hardware is fantastic, performance is comparable to native OS X, and I’ve had zero issues between the OS X overhead and the bootcamped Windows 8 installation. In fact, I even tweaked Win8 so the trackpad works in “natural” mode, just as it does under Mountain Lion.

Unfortunately, I don’t have the wherewithal (read: SWMBO’s approval) to just throw another $1500–2000 at another “toy,” as my wife would call it. Uhh . . . especially after having just spent almost that amount building a new Windows desktop computer two months ago.

Hence, my Twitter plea. And this one, too:

Heck, I’ll even remove the Bootcamp partition!

Toshiba Announces Kirabook, Induces Kiralust in Blogger © 2007 – 2013 by Kestrel's Aerie. This feed is for personal, non-commercial use only. Using this feed on any other site is a copyright violation. No scraping.

 

Here are some examples (and the fact these items were one right after another in my reader is what grabbed my attention):¹

• “Don’t let tax-identity theft happen to you” (Consumer Reports)
• “Don’t Take Promotions That Draw You Away from Your Main Strengths” (Lifehacker)
• “Don’t Overlook The Coffee Cake at Sofra Bakery, Cambridge, MA” (Serious Eats)²

Curiously, two of the URLs—from Consumer Reports and Serious Eats—have more positively worded titles in them: “How to Avoid Tax-Identity Theft” and “Sugar Rush: Sofra Bakery’s Incredible Coffeecake,” respectively.

My reaction to “Don’t let tax-identity theft happen to you” is probably similar to yours: a (perhaps snarky) response of “Okay, I won’t,” and hit the “Next Post” button. Similarly, I’m sure “sugar rush” and “incredible coffeecake” make your mouth water just a wee bit more than “don’t miss the coffeecake.”

To be sure, my intent here isn’t to lambaste bloggers, in general or in particular. Rather, I want to encourage you, if you’re a writer (and if you aren’t, thanks for spending time with me!), to consider how you phrase your coaching. If you have (or had) teenagers, or if you are one, you probably realize that everything after don’t is simply white noise. That doesn’t change a lot as we grow older.³

Take, for instance, the second of my three examples: The first three words are “Don’t Take Promotions.” Do what? I realize money isn’t everything, but it tends to make almost everything easier. One way to get more money is to get promoted.⁴ Generally, promotions also give us more responsibility, authority, and prestige. (They also make us have to do more work, it seems, but that’s another topic.) So, when I read or hear “don’t take promotions,” it’s a pretty safe bet I’ve tuned out.

On the other hand, if I read, “Be sure promotions play to your main strengths,” or something along those more positive lines, my reaction is, “Well, that makes sense. Tell me how to do that.”

For the Consumer Reports article, in addition to the URL wording, the title could have been written as “Eight things you can do to avoid tax-identity theft” or “Eight ways to avoid a tax-identity scam.”

Consider your writing. If you’re a blogger, look at any number of your articles. If the entire article is a call to action, a how-to post, or intended to provide guidance, training, teaching, or coaching, how did you word your title? What about the copy itself? Is it couched in positive terms? Or do you recite a litany of “thou shalt nots”?

Before I retired, my last boss had a process when he reviewed anything I wrote for his signature. That process included circling every don’t, no, not, and conjunctions, then asked if I had considered more positive phrasing. It didn’t take long for me to get into the habit of writing positively, and if you do the same with your writing, I wager you’ll be writing more positively almost immediately.⁵

So, as an exercise in the comments, rewrite the Serious Eats hed (that’s newspaper-speak for “headline,” I learned, while working at a paper) to make the rest of us want to try that coffeecake.

____________

Be POSITIVE, Writers! © 2007 – 2013 by Kestrel's Aerie. This feed is for personal, non-commercial use only. Using this feed on any other site is a copyright violation. No scraping.

 

However, I discovered that FeedBurner didn’t propagate the new article. After a bit of sleuthing, I tracked down the culprit: It seems that Google (which owns FeedBurner) keeps changing stuff, and as a result, one of my anti-spam plugins, Bad Behavior, starts rejecting FeedBurner queries. You can read about that problem here.

With any luck, I’ve corrected the issue, and RSS updates should occur as I post new articles. If you’re a subscriber, and you still aren’t getting the updates, please let me know in the comments. (And before some wiseacre asks, “How would I know, if it’s broken?” I do cross-post to Twitter and Google+. Sheesh.)  

RSS Feed Fixed (I think) © 2007 – 2013 by Kestrel's Aerie. This feed is for personal, non-commercial use only. Using this feed on any other site is a copyright violation. No scraping.

 

Every morning, the first thing I do when I sit down at my computer is read my email. Each morning, I usually have between a quarter- and a half-dozen emails awaiting my perusal, so this isn’t a long process. Sometimes, though, trying to unsubscribe from one of those emails can be.

Not long ago, I installed a PDF reader on my desktop machine, because I hadn’t yet gotten round to installing one since I built the new Windows machine in February. Not being a huge fan of Adobe Reader (it’s bloated, and Adobe invariably tries to sneak in some additional program—Google Toolbar, or worse), I looked around for another program, and found Nitro.

Nitro is exceptionally full-featured and comes in both a free and a “Pro” (not free) version, but this isn’t a review column. Before installing, you’re offered the opportunity to subscribe to Nitro’s newsletter of tips and tricks for how to get the most out of your new program. I’m not averse to email newsletters, so I signed up. I received one of those emails this morning. I think they come about once a week—certainly not annoyingly often, by my reckoning. This morning, though, I realized that I never read them. For one thing, I rarely do anything at all with PDFs, and if I do open one, it’s only to read the document. I don’t copy stuff, nor do I want to convert or edit a PDF.

So I decided that even easier than consigning the Nitro emails to the great bit bucket in the sky would be to simply unsubscribe. And a simple task it was—I clicked the line at the bottom of the email and was immediately taken to this page:

Nitro Subscription Form

One more click, at the bottom of the page, and I was done! The only way the process could be easier would be to display just those top two lines when you come to the page.¹

. . . but it ain’t always so easy.

Then there are sites like Hallmark.com, the greeting card folks.² Last June, my wife sent me a wedding anniversary e-card, which, I guess, was the impetus for me to sign up for an online account. I don’t remember signing up for emails, because I don’t want or need reminders to send cards for every holiday, real or imagined (I suppose I could send myself Grandparents Day cards—September 8 this year, if you’re so inclined—but I don’t think that’s the point).

Anyway, by Labor Day I was rather tired of all the reminders from Hallmark, and attempted to unsubscribe. Here’s the process:

• Go to hallmark.com
• Log in with email address and password
• Hover over the “My Hallmark” link
• Wait for dropdown, then select “Settings”:

Hallmark “My Account” Screen

• Wait for popup window, then enter your password (again!)
• On subsequent Settings screen, select “Subscriptions” (which, it turns out, are really “Communication Preferences,” which are really email preferences)
• Finally, you can do a single click to unsubscribe from everything:

Hallmark Communication Preferences

• Or, you can pick and choose:³

For those of you who are not keeping score at home, that’s at least five more key-clicks than it took to do the same task for Nitro (plus typing an email address once and a password twice).

OH! I forgot to add the last step:

• Continue to receive all the emails for which you just unsubscribed

Communications from Hallmark are now routed directly to my Spam folder in Gmail. To be fair, Hallmark’s not the only offender in this regard, and, having gone through this exercise again today, we’ll see if perhaps I’ll really be unsubscribed this time around.

Why is it so complicated?

In the first place, Hallmark (and your ilk), you emailed me.  I checked: my email address is there, right where I expect to see it, in the message header. Nitro knew who I was when I clicked “Unsubscribe.” Why can’t you figure it out? And then, to require my password again? Yeah, yeah  .  .  .  to ensure the security of my account. Bollocks!

Another thing I find so very curious: When you subscribe, you start getting emails immediately. I mean, before you release the key or mouse button, you already have an email confirming your subscription, asking (well, let’s be honest: requiring) you to confirm the confirmation. (Insert eyeroll and facepalm.) But when you unsubscribe? If you’re lucky, your request (okay, still being honest: your demand) will be acted upon in seven to ten business days; it may be four to six weeks. I mean really . . . W T F?

This process reminds me of near light-speed⁴ travel: The outbound trip (subscribing) is nearly instantaneous, at least to onboard observers, yet the return seems to take much, much longer, based on the age of those waiting at home. I’m sorry, but if it takes Einstein’s Theory of Relativity to explain email subscribing and unsubscribing, then I give up: It ain’t rocket science!

__________

Unsubscribing: Why does it have to be so hard? © 2007 – 2013 by Kestrel's Aerie. This feed is for personal, non-commercial use only. Using this feed on any other site is a copyright violation. No scraping.