Dan Antion

Hashtag #nuffSaid

The perfect place and beverage to share some casual conversation.

If we were having a beer, you’d have a technical question for me.

“So, Mr. Wizard, I have a question for you about your blog.”

“And that would be…?”

“Are you actually up and writing these things at 6:04 am?”

“No, not as a rule.”

“So, they’re scheduled in advance?”

“Yes, it’s a fairly common practice.”

“So, even though you sound all ‘in the moment’ you’re really sitting at a desk two days ago cranking out tomorrow’s observations?”

“Wow, I think you violated the Federation’s Temporal Prime Directive in that question, but yes, I do tend to write my blog posts in advance – if that’s what you meant.”

“Do you do this with other social media? I mean, are you tweeting some smart-ass remark about something while we sit here drinking?”

“I’m sorry to bring you two off your higher plane of existence, but you actually aren’t drinking, at least not yet.”

“Excellent point Cheryl. I’ll have a…”

“Yuengling. She doesn’t need to be a time-traveler to know that you’re ordering Yuengling. I however, enjoy being unpredictable…”

“So, Woodford Reserve for you?”

“Yes, Cheryl. I guess I’m not all that unpredictable.”

“I’ll get your drinks. You guys can go back to your own time.”

“Where were we?”

“You were asking me about scheduling social media posts. I don’t ever do that.”

“I want to ask why not, but I think you’re lying. I’ve seen tweets from you that are timestamped while we were at this very bar.”

“Yes, yes, you have. Tweets that I made while we are at this very bar.”

“No way. I would have noticed.”

“You never notice.”

“Notice what? What are you talking about?”

“SoundHound. You never notice that he uses SoundHound. Here’s your Bourbon .”

“I’m confused.”

“You are, but Cheryl’s right. The tweets you see that appear to be when were at the bar, are from when we were at – the – bar. If I hear a song that I like, I use SoundHound to identify it and then I tweet from the app.”

“No, I’d notice you typing.”

“gbs?”

“Wha…”

“GBS – it’s the keyboard shortcut for ‘Good bar song’ – I add that to SoundHound’s default tweet.”

“Our phones have keyboard shortcuts for meaningless asinine drivel?”

“OK, now you’re in violation of the Redundancy Prime Directive. And, no, our phones don’t have shortcuts, my phone does.”

“What makes your phone special?”

“I do – I’ve added a bunch of keyboard shortcuts for the stuff I say.”

“Because you’re not predictable enough in real life?”

“No. Because I make typos and I have to repeat some phrases a lot.”

“Like what?”

“Like my name. Like my email address. Like the URL of my blog. I added all of those when WordPress went off the rails and made me login to every blog I liked. I type ‘nf’ and my phone expands it to ‘No Facilities.’ If I type ‘nfc,’ it expands it to ‘http://noFacilities.com’ – It’s a pretty handy feature.”

“How long have you been doing this?”

“Since I wanted to tweet about Eat‘n Park – I never remember that there’s no space in Eat’n. Now I just type ‘enp’ and my phone does the rest.”

“I have to admit, That’s pretty cool. I don’t understand much about what my phone can do.”

“Well, it can’t place an order for food, or for another round at this place, but you can. Hint, hint.”

“Ha, we will have another round, Cheryl. Do you know about this feature?”

“I do. ‘lmj’ is my shortcut for ‘Love my job’ which I tweet after I get a sweet tip.”

“I’ve never seen you tweet that.”

“Wait, let me add ‘ns’ for hashtag-nuffSaid.”

“Ouch.”

“You stepped right into that one.”

“It happened so fast. I knew as soon as I heard the words coming out of my mouth.”

“Good thing for Cheryl, I’m paying today.”

“I think she guessed that. On another subject, did WordPress ever fix that login problem?”

“Yes and no.”

“Please, my head already hurts. Can you make this a simple, non-technical answer?”

“They had me delete the cookies and saved-data from their app on my phone.”

“You should have guessed that, that’s all you nerds ever tell people – reboot, reset, unplug, start over – it’s a good thing none of you went into medicine.”

“Ouch.”

“I couldn’t think of a comeback for Cheryl, but you? Like shootin’ fish in a barrel.”

“Thanks.”

“At the risk of a much longer explanation than I want to hear, why don’t you schedule social media stuff?”

“Cuz life goes off the rails like it did last weekend. I don’t want to be caught looking like the jackass du jour.”

“Good point, these days, it’s easy to be misunderstood.”

Click here to see the latest from Cheryl. The photos are from a recent walk with Maddie and a few of Maddie after we returned.

“It looks like the clouds are rolling in.”
“I can’t tell if it’s getting brighter or not.”
We walked from bright sunshine to near darkness.
The sun is working hard.
Very dark at the ball field. No, it’s not an eclipse, very heavy fog.
I hope they have better weather for the eclipse.
The ball games start in a little while. They might need the lights.
Midway through our walk and it’s getting darker.
“It’s no brighter up here.”
“The sun is burning through, I say we’ll be ready to start the game on time.”
I think it’s a zinnia bud.
After the fog cleared, things were busy drying off.
“These are my toys, but I’m too tired to play right now.”
“What’s that? Is that an intruder? It’s in the neighbor’s yard, but that’s still too close.”
“This is my blanket, but I got tangled.”
“Wake me when it’s time for dinner.”

70 comments

  1. Oooohhhh Weatheeeer! I love stormy skies. Great shots. We had some storms here last night too. That last photo of Maddie looks like a string of curls. Hard to Tell head from tail! Wish I new how you do that smart key thing (hint) . I could use that, most definitely. Thanks for the mention. . Heading to see some winged friends today. A little butterfly love ….

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  3. “You should have guessed that, that’s all you nerds ever tell people – reboot, reset, unplug, start over – it’s a good thing none of you went into medicine.”

    “Ouch.”

    Goes for bloggers and writers too. Where would we be without the backspace and delete keys?

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  4. OMG, that’s brilliant! Thank you so much! Wonder if it’s safe to do passwords that way. ANYWAY, the photographs are all exquisite! All due respect to the beauteous Maddie, but I think my favorite has to be the bird on the post. That one is so perfect, your bar buddy and I suspect you photoshopped it!

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    • Thank you. My bar buddy wouldn’t know Photoshop from Joey’s Phở. Truth be told, I use Lightroom to crop and straighten, I sometimes adjust the brightness and contrast but usually not by much. I know that photo was straightened (cuz I don’t like leaning poles) and cropped to make the bird, more the center of attention, but the lighting was left alone on those cloudy/foggy shots. The sun was doing all the adjustment I needed,

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  5. I was going to check into this SoundHound thing until you commented “if you have an iPhone…” Does it work on antique droid phones too?

    100 bonus points for linking to the Temporal Prime Directive and another 50 for the Redundancy Prime Directive. I could share the latter with a few people I know and make up a penalty for violating it.

    Beautiful photos, Dan. I love the fog and dark and a poke of light shining through.

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  6. Good post, Dan. It’s a reminder that we have a vast store of applications at our finger tips and the majority of us have no clue how to use most of it. I’m still all impressed with myself that I learned how to use my phone as a mobile hotspot for my iPad or laptop when we’re travelling and don’t have wifi.

    I don’t have an iPhone, but this blog prompted me to go searching through my settings to see what interesting features I may have. Oooooh – I can do data transfers by tapping devices. I think I now know how I’m going to waste a chunk of this day ;)

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  7. Violating the Prime Directive this early on a Saturday morning ! Hmmm I might have to invoke the ‘it is noon somewhere clause’ and contemplate this evil. Whilst keeping a garden bell near by to ward off said evil. ( another little tidbit I picked up this morning of reading.) I might have to attach a bell to my smart phone. Great evil lurks there. And said attachment cannot make the device more klunky. No thanks I WILL spell my klunky with a ‘K’. Someone needs to write an app that tells smart disabled devices that language is a living thing. Now back to bemoaning the small non-tactile keyboards and their apps. They require an attached warning – preferably larger than the device. Use only in extreme emergency. Translation Only after Cheryl has run out of beer. I type poorly in the best of circumstances. My proximity has been known to poorly affect nearby typists. No apps have been discovered that can counteract this. Especially on the devilish small smart devices designed for dainty digits ( of which i have none). Now to wander off and find my medications… Happy Saturday Dan !

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    • If you say something before it becomes stupid, Teagan, you’re relatively safe. If you say something after it has become a stupid thing to say, you’re doomed. I’ve seen companies do this by scheduling tweets over the weekend and automatically retweeting people and other companies.

      Thanks for the hugs. MuMu has been brushed, MiMi has been nuts and Maddie has gone back to sleep after a feverish round of ball. I hope you and Crystal have a good day.

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  10. Oh, that last photo…..love. My phone is so old, I am lucky it still rings. It was an old company phone that they allowed me to keep. Nice, right? We went to a phone store and when the smart-ass kid looked at my phone, knowing I was looking to purchase a smartphone, he said there was a 6-month learning curve, they did not give tutorials, and then popped his earbuds back in. I had to resist from strangling him…my husband steered me out the door. Hashtags? Apps? Shortcuts? Show me the tutorial….. :)

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    • I guess he was giving a tutorial on how to p*ss off a customer and lose a sale. I think I would have suggested a better place to stick the earbuds…closer to his brain.

      Thanks for the comment, Lois. Maddie likes to get comfy.

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  15. Nuff said was awesome :D Hahaha!
    Great shots! Especially squirrel!
    I write about half of my posts beforehand, but I seldom schedule them.

    It would have been hard to beat the jackass du jour last Saturday :/

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  16. Always enjoy your Saturday at the bar posts, Dan! Learning goes along with the liking! Maddie’s pics have to be there! It’s the “foam on the beer.” Is that like frosting on the cake? I know about frosting, not beer! Have a lovely weekend! Christine

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    • Thanks Audrey. I use SoundHound (sometimes) to help me remember songs that I like hearing. When we drive to Pittsburgh, we need driving music. One song that was added to our recent list was Grateful Dead “Truckin'”

      That bird looked like he was trying to figure out where the sun went.

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  19. Good discussion this week. I do not have a cell phone, let alone a SmartPhone so I do not text or get online at all unless I am at my PC. It is not that I am old-fashioned. The money just is not in the budget for the phone or minutes. I do schedule my posts too. I usually write one in two sessions, then edit in a third session. Fourth time around I check my work again, upload it, add the picture, and schedule.

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  20. Am glad you wrote about tweeting very different subjects than I have seen in the last year. Those made me decide to abandon that tool of social media., even though my (close) friends keep inviting me.

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  21. I think I’ve published only one, maybe TWO, blog posts in advance. Not that I do all that many, anyway, alas. For me, the scheduling function is much more useful on Twitter. I’d be lost without it most days, especially at TZ marathon time — as you can imagine!

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    • I think you’re generally safe with TZ Tweets. It’s ironic though, Last weekend when I first heard the news about what was going on in VA, The DVD I had just switched to began with “Deaths-Head Revisited”

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  22. LOL! Love the weather reporter. So cute.

    I added a couple of keyboard shortcuts when I first got my phone, but can’t remember what they are and it takes just as long to look them up so I just type and make mistakes typing all. the. time! Mostly I leave out words. I keep telling my brain and fingers to get in sync, but they still don’t play nice.

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  24. Reblogged this on Commentary, Outrages, Prose and commented:
    Just found: maybe it was the beer or the booze. Sucker for both. But the text was what caused me to close all this out, walk back uptown to the office and crack open the 21-year-old Bushmill single malt and make sure I had an Anchor Steam in the cold-spot and a backup or seven. This may take some time.

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