Category Archives: Technology

I think I just lowered the (technical) bar a bit

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Well, with the new blog rules, I’ve had some folks trying to comment for the first time, or the first time in a while, and they’re having trouble either registering, or logging in once they’re registered.

I don’t understand what the problem is, but I’ve raised the question with someone who might be able to help me — just probably not tonight.

So for the moment, I’ve turned off the requirement that “Users must be registered and logged in to comment.” However, I left on “Comment author must fill out name and e-mail.”

This might help temporarily. We’ll see…

Folks, help me help out the new readers…

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In light of the changes on the blog, I’ve got some first-timers trying to log in and leave comments, and having trouble. I’m hearing from them via e-mail.

Problem is, I don’t know how to figure out how to tell THEM how to log in, because when I try to do it for them, my browser insists upon recognizing me, and I don’t find any way to log in as someone else — or indeed, to create a new log-in. In other words, I can’t see what they’re seeing. (And yeah, I feel really stupid; good thing for me I’ve just banned insults and catcalls, huh?)

Since some of y’all have done this more recently than I have, would you mind posting instructions. Of course, with the new rules, they won’t post until I approve them.

Complicated, ain’t it?

The New Blog Order, Mark IV

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OK, I really don’t know how many “New Blog Orders” there have been; I just thought “Mark IV” sounded good.

Anyway, here’s the new deal, for now: Comments won’t appear unless I approve them. (And yes, we’ve been here before, in a previous regime change. The video above of me explaining this very same approach was shot during a family gathering at my house in July 2007. See how unhappy I was with having to take this approach? That’s the way I look now, only without the grubby beginning of a beard. Sort of amazing, isn’t it, that as fed up as I was then, I’m still trying? I’m nothing if not persistent.)

I’m going to do that for a few days at least, and then I hope to go to something less stringent, not that there are a lot of options. I see, for instance, that WordPress provides the option of “Comment author must have a previously approved comment,” which sounds nice, but what good is it really? I prefer to judge a comment by its own merits, not by who posted it. Lee, for instance (and Lee really resents being picked on, and he’ll probably see this as being picked on, but let’s face it; his name is the one my readers most frequently bring up as an irritant), sometimes posts perfectly fine comments that add to the conversation. I’m not saying it happens every day, but it happens. So, going by my own preferred standards, I would approve that one good comment — and under the “Comment author must have a previously approved comment,” he would then have carte blanche to return to his habitual ways.

Ultimately, the place where I think I’ll end up is that I’ll open the gates back up, but I’ll make a point of checking comments several times a day, and just delete anything that doesn’t contribute to this being a place that encourages thoughtful people who want to engage in good-faith dialogue.

And I know those people are out there. Just this morning, I was meeting with a prominent local attorney — a public-spirited guy who is a great public speaker and has a lot to say — mentioned to me that there was NO WAY he was going to spend any of his life wrestling in the mud with a bunch of trolls on a blog. And the bad thing about that is, he is just the kind of person I wish would join in with our dialogues here — I want lots of people like him, from across the political spectrum (and those of you on the left or right who think there are no thoughtful people with something worthwhile to say on the opposite end of the spectrum; well, you’re part of the problem).

So in this latest effort to foster the kind of place that he and other like him would consider worthy of his time, I’m going with a standard that goes beyond the mere absence of incivility. I’m going to look for posts that actually contribute something. I’m going for positive attributes, rather than just the absence of negative ones. Because serious people (or for that matter, people who like to have a little fun, just not at other people’s expense) deserve a blog that answers that description.

At this point, some of you are furiously writing to me to say, “You just want comments that agree with you!” which is ridiculous. That’s a ploy to get me to back down on enforcing standards, and post something that calls me and people who agree with me names just to prove how “fair” I am. Well, you know what? I’m not falling for that. I’ve heard it too many thousands of times from people who just can’t be bothered to disagree in a civilized manner.

I know that I’ve always given precedence to people who disagree with me. And anyone who’s followed my career and is not seriously challenged in the reading comprehension department knows that about me. But from now on, you’re going to disagree in a way that it doesn’t run off well-behaved people. You’re going to disagree in a way that makes people think, “Maybe he’s got a point” instead of “What a jerk!” I realize this is going to be a challenge for some, but I hope the rest of you will appreciate it.

And if you don’t, or if you just can’t bring yourself to meet the new standard, you are completely free to go start your own blog. This one’s mine, and I’m not going to waste time with it unless I think it’s getting better, and providing a worthwhile forum.

Bad video from Sanford’s Rotary speech (my poor camera!)

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I’ve got two pieces of bad news. First, Mark Sanford appeared before my Rotary Club today and did not resign. But no shock there, right?

The second is that my reliable Canon PowerShot A95 digital camera, which has served me so well — all my still photos and short video clips of Barack Obama, John McCain, Joe Biden, Lindsey Graham, Thomas Ravenel, Grady Patterson, Stephen Colbert, Fred Thompson (and Jeri Thompson!), Hillary Clinton, Mike Huckabee, Joe Wilson, Ted Sorensen, South Carolina Nazis and unnumbered others — appears to be on its last legs.

I think I’ve about worn it out. Not only is the picture dim, but I get these unwanted stray bands of color across the top of the frame. It comes and goes, but today I just couldn’t get it to go away.

I’ve posted here an unedited three-minute clip to give you a slice from Sanford’s presentation today (the sound still works pretty well), and to show you how bad the camera problem is.

It was pretty much all the stuff he’s been saying. The apology, the pitch to ask the audience to help him make his last 14 months more productive than the past 6.5 years by getting some of his agenda enacted, etc.

I’m really down about my camera… Even if I had the money, they don’t sell ’em like this any more… The great thing about it was that I could use it so unobtrusively. The photo below, which you see as a header on individual posts here on the blog, is perhaps the only photo I have of my camera in use. Note that I could hold it down on the table with my left hand while taking notes with my right. I could hold it in this position — rather than up between the subject and me, thereby disconcerting the subject and making normal conversation difficult — because it has one of those little screens that flips out and rotates in several directions, like the ones you usually find on video cameras. Yes, they still make some still cameras that do this, but they tend to be much larger and more cumbersome than this model. Sigh. All Things Must Pass, the man said…

ObamaWarthen

OK, I’m really, REALLY sorry about all the e-mails, people

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Some of you (about 50 people, I’m guessing) have received the following message from me about 14 times:

If you’re receiving this, you probably also received one of about 65 messages that just went out from my computer and which may have seemed strangely off-topic.
That’s because I first tried to send it to you days or even weeks ago, but somehow it got hung up in my Outbox until just a few minutes ago.
Sorry about that.
-Brad

I am so sorry. I mean, you have no idea how sorry, since I think some of the people I sent it to were prospective employers.

I’m actually quite good with technology, normally.

What happened here is that I finally managed (with a friend’s help) to dislodge a bunch of messages in my Outbox, some of which had been sitting there for weeks.

So, quite naturally, I felt the need to explain to all of those people why they had suddenly received an anachronistic message. So I sent the above message…

… and IT got stuck in my Outbox. So ever since yesterday, I was trying and trying to send it — changing settings, restarting Outlook, clicking send/receive over and over. And now, it seems it has send the message out again for each time I clicked on the button.

And I can’t seem to stop it. And I hesitate to send out ANOTHER apology to all those same people.

I finally managed to delete if from my Outbox, so maybe it will stop now. I hope I hope I hope…

Submitted for your approval… my apologies for the weird message

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Folks, if you just received an e-mail from me, within the last hour, that seems to have come straight from the Twilight Zone, it’s not just my usual weirdness.

I just discovered that I had about 65 outgoing messages from the last few weeks that never went out. They were stuck in my Outbox in Microsoft Outlook.

Some of them will seem pretty weird to be getting now, but I didn’t have a way to weed through them — it was send them all out, or none.

So sorry about that.

By the way, one reason I’m explaining here is that some of the recipients — KP, Doug Ross, Kathryn and Lee — are blog regulars. Anyway, now you know what happened. Or about as much as I know, anyway…

Please forgive my e-mail troubles

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Yesterday, I realized that all those folks who have told me in recent days that they never got my e-mails actually never got my e-mails. So I apologize for thinking y’all were technically incompetent or something when it was me all along.

In fact, I’m such a klutz that I haven’t figured out what’s wrong yet, and I’ve got 65 outgoing e-mails just hanging there in limbo in my Outbox in Outlook. Some of them were pretty important messages, too, like the resume I sent out Monday right after talking to someone about an exciting job opportunity. I had sent it out immediately to display my high interest, only to realize last night that it never went out. Like I need this on top of everything else.

I’ve got someone trying to talk me through a solution, and I hope to arrive at one soon. But then I’ll have a new worry — if they all suddenly go out, some of them are really going to confuse people because of subsequent conversations with those people that have rendered the original message superfluous. They’re going to think I’m nuts — Why is he sending me this now?

All I can do right now is post this generic apology to everyone with whom I correspond. Once the e-mail’s back up, I’ll try to follow up with specific explanations to all the affected people. Dang. What a headache. Maybe I should just stick to playing solitaire on computers; I at least understand that…

Some truncated messages from Joe “You Lie!” Wils..

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Joe Wilson’s hip, y’all. He does Twitter and everything.

Trouble is, he’s having a little trouble spitting out his message on that medium. Here are his last four:

Wilson gets warm welcome at Hilton Head GOP picnic: U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson told members of the Hilton Head Island.. http://bit.ly/Wzwqx

Okra struts its stuff in rain: Midway through Irmo’s 36th annual Okra Strut parade, a misty rain began to.. http://bit.ly/tNLWw

Wilson rallies in Aiken: U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., got an enthusiastic welcome from about 250 supporters in.. http://bit.ly/19tDr6

U.S. Rep Joe Wilson said he wanted to make it clear Saturday that Republic.. http://bit.ly/2dgmb9

Odd, isn’t it, that Joe would have a problem with brevity, given that the one thing for which is is nationally known consisted of only eight characters, if you count the exclamation point.

Actually, I’m not sure why he’s getting cut off like that, since those messages (especially the last one) seem to be under the character limit. Maybe it’s intentional. Maybe it’s to get us begging for more so we’ll follow the link. Maybe Joe’s on the edge of the new wave…

Why is she so much more popular than I am?

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Just in case I didn’t have enough reasons to feel inadequate… I found out today about this site that lists everybody in South Carolina on Twitter. And when I called it up, it had the list ordered according to most “followers.” And I discovered, for instance, that Gerri L. Elder of the “Absolutely True” Web site (of which I had never heard before) has 31,359 followers on Twitter.

As I type this, I have … let me go check… 310 followers on Twitter.

Now, I can comfort myself in various ways. I can say I haven’t been on Twitter long. I can note that I still have almost twice as many “followers” as people I myself follow, whereas Gerri Elder is following more than 31,000.

But given the chasm between her numbers and mine, that comfort is cold, indeed. I mean, I’m in the initial stages of looking into making this a paying proposition, with ads and all, but how can I compete in a world where somebody I never heard of before today has more than 100 times the number of followers I do?

And why does she have so many? I mean, I looked at her latest post (which is unfair; God help us all if we are judged at a given moment by our latest post), which consisted mainly of a bunch of really sickly looking pictures of bacon. Not nice, crisp bacon, but massive amounts of undercooked, floppy bacon, in phone photos that exaggerate their queasy color. It made me think about the bacon I ate this morning in a way that was NOT appetizing…

I mean, I got pictures of THIS, and she’s got pictures of THAT, but she has way more followers than I do? Where is the justice in this? The marketplace is a cruel mistress indeed.

I’m sure U R 1, 2, dude!

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Only once did I ever work in an office with another “Brad.” At the time, I joked that he would have to go, because it was too confusing, and eventually, he did. That was over 20 years ago.

I’ve never met a person named Warthen to whom I was not related. Oh, I’ll occasionally run into the name attached to a stranger in a phone book. And there was that ballplayer Dan Warthen, who used to get his name in the paper a lot when he played for the Memphis minor league team. And that town, Warthen, Ga. — apparently derived from a branch of the family, which originally came into this country through Maryland in the 1630s.

I was as sure as you could be of anything like that that among the 6 billion or so people on the planet, I was the only “Brad Warthen.”

But Facebook changes things. There are so many people there that your sense of uniqueness may have to undergo an adjustment. Some time recently I discovered that there was another Brad Warthen. I couldn’t find out anything about him; I just saw that he was a young guy with red hair. I left it at that.

Then tonight, I got an e-mail:

Brad Warthen sent you a message on Facebook…

Subject: dude

“dude we have the same name so i know ur a bad ass”

I wrote back to him, “Obviously.” I mean, what else could I say? I didn’t want to let him down.

Are you having trouble with my blog? I certainly am.

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This morning I went to check what comments there might be on yesterday’s posts, and I couldn’t call them up. Thought it was a Blackberry problem, but can’t get them on the laptop, either.

Right now, I’m just hoping it goes away soon. If it doesn’t, I’ll start the process of figuring out how to get support on WordPress.

I’m sorry for the inconvenience, if you’re having the same problem.

If any of you have a solution to the problem, please e-mail me at brad@bradwarthen.com.

Dude, you’re not getting a Dell, are you?

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As I’ve mentioned, I’ve been hanging out at an ad agency recently, which means I’ve been dwelling in the world of Mac. That’s all they’ve got around here. I’m writing this on one.

So as I got ready to get a laptop — I had decided it was a necessity, with the freelance work I’m doing and all — I had a number of people around me telling me I must convert to Apple, for all the usual reasons and more. You’ve heard them: More solid, more reliable, better designed, better software, far better for graphics, cooler, etc. In particular, they said, a Mac would be better for video production, something I’ve wanted to do more of for the blog.

So, of course, I went out and got a Dell. First, it’s about a fourth of the price (my daughter the graphic designer is buying a Mac laptop, and it retails at $2,600 with the software she needs). Second… to paraphrase Billy Jack, I’ve tried; I’ve really tried. When Jean and the kids at the school tell me to practice nonviolence and use a Mac, I really try. But when I’m doing something that would normally call for a right-button mouse click, and my fingers fumble with that one massive button on a Mac… I just go berserk!

Bottom line, I’ve been using PCs too long. The ways of navigating through Windows are built into my body’s muscle memory, and it’s too much work to change.

So I got a Dell. Specifically, this model Dell Studio. Last week, when they were on sale for $80 less than the price on that link. An Intel Core 2 Duo processor T6500, 4GB RAM, 320 Gig hard drive, plus the usual bells and whistles that have become standard — DVD burner, multi-format card reader, Webcam and so forth.

It not only had what I needed on it, but I liked the look and feel of it. It looked and felt solid and well-built. Compared to the Inspiron, it was like a Volvo versus a Trabi. The Inspiron seemed chintzy by comparison. It had little features that don’t mean much, I guess, but which I liked — for instance, it had a slot for CDs and DVDs instead of that flimsy tray that pops out, and which always makes me afraid I’m going to break it pressing the disc in. That seemed clean and smart, better design.

And the first few days went great. I was particularly pleased with my first effort with the Webcam.

Then yesterday, it crashed. Yeah, I know, you Mac folk are sneering now that that’s what PCs do; they crash. And yes, they do. It’s something PC users deal with. Rebooting makes for a nice bathroom break, gets us away from work for a moment. Part of life.

But this crash was atypical. I was running Firefox in two or three windows, with maybe two other low-intensity applications up, when everything froze up. I went to Task Manager, and saw that my CPU usage was at 100 percent, which was impossible. I bailed out using the power button, booted back up, and tried running Firefox alone — and it was showing more than 50 percent CPU usage. One of the cores of the duo core was running at capacity, the other hardly running at all.

So I took the Dell back to Best Buy, where an interesting thing happened. The Geek Squad guy, after pronouncing that I had an incurable hardware problem, leveled with me, saying that he wouldn’t buy a Dell. Yes, once they were reliable, but he had seen too many Studios come back. I should get an Asus or an HP instead.

Funny thing was, the sales guy last week had tried, gently to steer me toward an Asus. But I had never heard of Asus. I had used Dells for years, so that’s what I got. Now, I went back to that same sales guy, and he nodded and said yeah, he liked the Asus better but I had been obviously set on a Dell…

So we went to look at the comparable Asus — same processor, same memory, same hard drive size. The battery was longer-lasting. The screen was smaller (although perhaps slightly sharper). It had the flimsy pop-out tray instead of the slot I liked. It cost $30 more than I had paid for the Dell.

And it looked cheap and flimsy compared to the Dell. Sorry, but aesthetically it was not pleasing, and even though these tech guys were all but beating me over the head with the inside knowledge that it was very solid and reliable, it didn’t LOOK solid. Finally, I was unable to call up the Webcam to try it out, because of some quirk of how they had the machine set up in the store.

So, sheepishly, I said I wanted to try another Dell Studio, hoping that this one wouldn’t be a lemon. The sales guy said he understood, that it was like buying a car; you either liked the look and feel or you didn’t. But I could hardly look him in the eye, because I knew he thought I was an idiot, a guy who just doesn’t learn.

And when we got up to the customer service desk — where I was to leave it to get it “optimized” (cleaning off all the marketing junk such as trial software, and installing service packs), which is why I don’t have it yet — and I realized the Geek Squad guy who had warned me was standing right there and had to have noticed what I was doing… I almost went over and apologized to him.

But I figure I’ve got two weeks to try this one out (and longer, if it has a hardware failure), and if it isn’t everything it should be, I can go back and get the Asus, no questions asked. So I can’t lose, right?

By the way, I really hope I’m not getting these guys in trouble telling about how open and honest they were. Frankly, I think they should both get a raise, because they were going out of their way to help a customer. And they were both obviously good at their jobs, very knowledgeable about the product. Bright young men, a credit to their organization. I felt much better about Best Buy for having dealt with them.

It’s just that in this case, the customer was too stupid and stubborn to listen to them. Proof yet again that in the marketplace, consumers do not make rational choices, notwithstanding all the propaganda. At least, this one doesn’t. Neither do most people; I’m just logical enough to understand how fallible I am.

Why did The Beatles break up? I can’t tell…

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Well, Rolling Stone certainly got my attention when I saw this cover headline in the checkout line at Earth Fare yesterday:

Why

The

Beatles

Broke Up

THE INSIDE STORY

So I immediately resolved to look up the piece and read it when I got to my laptop.

But I couldn’t, because they didn’t post the actual article. Oh, they posted all sorts of teasers and promotional material, such as the 29722154-29722159-slarge1“story behind the story,” and gallery after gallery of fab pics of the lads back in the day.

But not the actual story.

We can debate from now until the last newspaper closes the relative wisdom of posting one’s precious content online for free. Maybe Rolling Stone’s got it going on teasing us to distraction this way. But I wonder: Which approach sells more magazines — this, or the Vogue approach? No, I didn’t go out and buy a copy of the Vogue with the Jenny Sanford piece; I was satisfied with what I found online. But I’ll bet the fact that bloggers were able to read, and then tout, the contents did lead to at least some people who are more in Vogue‘s demographic to go out and buy the slick dead-tree version.

I don’t know. But I know I’m not shelling out $4.99 to read the piece about the fall of The Beatles. Hey, I lived through the time, and I know why The Beatles broke up — because the ’60s ended. Duh.

Now there was a time when I would have shelled out the money. But not anymore. I guess that shows how old I am. And that the ’60s really are over…

Maybe I’m putting too much into Twitter…

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It occurs to me that maybe too much of my energy that could go into making my blog better is going into Twitter.

Traditionally, I get a lot of my blog ideas when I’m reading the papers over breakfast in the morning. That first cup of coffee coinciding with the reading generally leads to far more ideas than I have time for. I used to stew through the morning meeting, which came right after breakfast, when I was at the paper because I was anxious to get to the computer and start putting some of the ideas on the blog before my enthusiasm (or the coffee, whichever you want to think of it as) wore off.

Now, since I started Twittering, I just go ahead and post a lot of the ideas as they occur to me, on my Blackberry, while eating. Which is great, I guess. Except that this gets each of those ideas out of my system, and by the time I’m at my laptop (It’s possible to blog on the Blackberry, but it’s a LOT harder), my mind has moved on.

So they don’t go totally to waste, bleeding off into the Twitter void, I decided to reproduce this morning’s tweets here, improved with links to the original sources of these brief comments.

You’ll see that only one was developed into a full-fledged blog post. The others I share for whatever minimal value they have:

  • Gov says calls to quit are “pure politics.” Let’s hope so. The alternative is the divine right of kings. (This, of course, is the one that became a blog post.)
  • Paper says “South Carolinians aged 18-20 cannot drink alcohol.” Actually, they CAN, but aren’t allowed to…
  • Twitter followers come and go so quickly. The number constantly fluctuates; the pattern eludes me…
  • Ad in paper touts “powerful joint pill,” which makes me think “THC,” but that’s not it, apparently…
  • Sanford sez other govs flew 1st Class. Yeah, but they weren’t hypocrites about it. Big difference…
  • Just inadvertently did a subversive thing: went to the WSJ Web site and searched for “trotsky”…
  • Just saw meter maid downtown, and the bag across her shoulder made her look a little like a military man…

And as a bonus, here’s one I just posted:

  • Gov says he won’t be “railroaded” out of office. How about “trolleycarred?” Or “pickup-trucked?” Or “little-red-wagoned?” Any mode will do.

So do you have a better phone than Obama?

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You know how I mentioned that I’ll be driving back from Pennsylvania on Monday?

Well, because of that I called the local Employment Security office. They sent me a letter a while back saying that they would call me at 2:30 p.m. on Monday, Aug. 3, and that it was really important. I just realized that was when I would be traveling, so I called today to see if we could set another time.

I was told no, if I couldn’t be available then, it would be at least September before anybody could talk to me. I think the lady on the phone wanted to be helpful, but she didn’t quite understand why I was worried about the call — it’s a cell phone, right? So why would it matter where I was?

Well, yeah, but — here’s why I’m worried:

On a previous occasion driving this route — I want to say it was summer 2007 — Barack Obama tried to call me. It was a previously arranged call, set up Kevin Griffis of the Obama campaign. I had read some briefing papers to be ready for it, and I got my son to take the wheel at the appointed time.

But we had just entered the mountains in Virginia, and the call kept breaking up. I kept hearing Sen. Obama say, “Sir?… Sir?” (He’s very polite.) But he couldn’t hear me. He called back a couple of times, and then just gave up.

No, he wasn’t the president yet — not even the nominee. But hey, if not even he could get through…

So that’s why I’m concerned. But I didn’t think I should tell the lady at the unemployment office that story. She might think I was topping it the nob, putting on airs, and so forth. So I just let it drop…

If I’d invented this, I wouldn’t be looking for job

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Prof. Stanley Dubinsky, a purveyor of cool links (more than I have time to read, but keep ’em coming, Stan), passes on this gee-whiz development:

A system that can deliver power to devices without the need for wires has been shown off at a hi-tech conference.

The technique exploits simple physics and can be used to charge a range of electronic devices over many metres.

Eric Giler, chief executive of US firm Witricity, showed mobile phones and televisions charging wirelessly at the TED Global conference in Oxford.

He said the system could replace the miles of expensive power cables and billions of disposable batteries.

“There is something like 40 billion disposable batteries built every year for power that, generally speaking, is used within a few inches or feet of where there is very inexpensive power,” he said.

Trillions of dollars, he said, had also been invested building an infrastructure of wires “to get power from where it is created to where it is used.”

How does “Witricity” work? It “exploits the resonance of low frequency electromagnetic waves.” Duh.

Contemplate the implications. Your electronic stuff just recharging itself where it is. Imagine the eventual implications for electric cars. I don’t know what the range is for this transfer (it seems to suggest about 100 feet), but I expect it will get longer with development. Or maybe not. Still, a car that recharged itself in your driveway without having to be plugged in would really be something.

Wow.

Sorry, but my e-mail is down

I apologize to all and sundry for any inconvenience, but on this extremely busy day — it was extremely busy before I got called in to that craziness regarding the governor — my e-mail suddenly stopped working, at exactly 4:30 p.m.

After finishing my day’s work about an hour ago, I started trying everything I could think of to restore it, but no luck. I’ll have to try to get some help tomorrow (which promises to be just as busy).

Again, sorry for the inconvenience. It’s pretty inconvenient to me, too. I’m probably missing out on some paying work because of this, but what are you going to do?

How I flunked my IQ test

You know those quizzes people are always taking on Facebook — like “which ‘Friends’ character are you,” or “what’s your real nationality?” Well, I took one of those one day recently, and as I was taking it, a dialogue box popped up saying that some of my friends — one of them closely related to me — had “challenged” me to take an IQ test.

Well, this hit me in one of my weak spots, naturally. As y’all know, one of my few skills is that I’m good at tests. Whether it’s the SAT or a current events quiz or whatever, I tend to score way over what you would think by looking, say, at my high school transcript. I play way over my head. Some people have a natural ear for music; I test well. Just one of those things.

Add to that the fact that I was recently laid off, which makes me additionally vulnerable — all that much more eager to show off, if only to myself. You know, the “I’ve still got it” phenomenon.

So I bit. I went to take the test. And boy, did I do well. The questions were so easy as to arouse one’s suspicions under most circumstances. Sort of on the “answer this correctly and you win a free dance lesson” level. One was how many states are in the U.S., and only one of the multiple-choice answers was anywhere near 50. The hardest question was picking the 16th president — even if I hadn’t known it was Lincoln, he was the only option offered within a century of the right time. I think the closest ones before and after were Thomas Jefferson and Bill Clinton.

But instead of thinking, “Hey, wait a minute — what kind of scam test is this?” I’m going, “Man, I’m really acing this? What kind of IQ do you get with a perfect score?!?”

Then, when it was done, I get a page that tells me I just need to do one thing before my IQ score will post on Facebook — type in my cell phone number, and choose my service provider.

Which I did.

First of all, my extremely high IQ score never showed up on Facebook.

Second, I started getting these text messages. Really stupid, irritating text messages, saying stuff like “Which male celebrity from ‘The Hills’ is dating Paris Hilton?” I am not making this up.

I would have protested, except that, you know, I didn’t want to tell anybody how I had let myself in for this. Because as dumb as it was to fall for this, I was smart enough to see what had happened.

Anyway, earlier this week the Verizon bill came. And I had been charged $29.97 for 3 “Premium text” messages. Yes, ten bucks apiece.

So I got on the horn to Verizon and got them to block all such messages subsequently, which they agreed to do. Of course, by this time one or two more had come in, which will be on my next bill, no doubt. And there’s nothing I can do about it. Because, you know, I had signed up for them.

When I got off the phone, I reported to my wife that I had taken care of the problem, going forward. She asked, how in the world I came to get such messages? I said, “How about if we just leave it at, I’ve taken care of the problem, and not delve into that?” But I went on to explain, and she agreed with me that yes, I had certainly flunked the IQ test.

Oh, but the tale doesn’t end there.

Today, I was in the Harbison area shopping for Father’s Day for me Da. And suddenly, I got another one of those messages, from the same source, which the words “Premium Messaging” appearing in the headline field.

I immediately went over to the Verizon place, fuming, and got in the queue for service. The lady at the door urged me to call instead because I was in for a long wait, but I said no, obviously one couldn’t get this taken care of on the phone. I was all indignant.

Fortunately, the wait wasn’t long at all. When it was my turn, I went through my indignant spiel again, and the service rep took my phone, and clicked on the message. It said, “Premium Messaging to this mobile number has been blocked…”

Oh.

So I looked really stupid again. I thanked the guy, and thanked the lady at the front door, and left sheepishly.

But you know what? Deep down, I have this gut fear that it’s going to show up on my bill again anyway.

Of course, this kind of scam should be illegal. Anyone who practices it should be drawn and quartered.

But who’s going to report them? The victims know how stupid they’ve been…

100 followers, and counting…

Just reached the 100-follower mark on Twitter. So that makes me like a centurion, right? Like the one in Matthew 8:9:

For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me: and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it.

OK, I’ve already figured out that no one is going to do what I say just because they’re my “followers.” But as silly and insubstantial as it all is, I’ve acquired a miser’s acquisitiveness on this point. How many MORE followers can I get? I picture myself like Spartacus (just to continue with the ancient Rome thing), roaming the countryside while hundreds, thousands flock to my banner… (Warning — it ended badly for Spartacus and his followers.)

And even though there are no rules, or even conventions I can think of, I have it in my mind that, if only I can have more followers than I myself am following, I’m … I don’t know… an influential person. Or at least, ahead of the game. Whatever the game is. It’s the only way I know to keep score, anyway. And currently my score is 100 to 75.