Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: May 10th thru May 13th

May 10, 2015 JanF Community 64

Welcome to The Moose Pond! The Welcomings posts give the Moose, old and new, a place to visit and share words about the weather, life, the world at large and the small parts of Moosylvania that we each inhabit.

UPDATE: Check-in post restarted here Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania – May 14th through May 16th (continued)

Welcomings will be posted at the start of each week (every Sunday morning). To find the posts, just bookmark this link and Voila! (which is Moose for “I found everyone!!”).

The format is simple: each day, the first moose to arrive on-line will post a comment welcoming the new day and complaining (or bragging!) about their weather. Or mentioning an interesting or thought provoking news item. Or simply checking in.

So … what’s going on in your part of Moosylvania?

….

64 Comments

  1. Good morning, Motley Meese! The week begins …

    It is 51 degrees in Madison WI, on its way up to 66. Cloudy skies are in the forecast.

    Have a great day, all y’alls!!

  2. I see you’ve been busy. Them Peeps have to be stale by now. :)

    I’m doing homework and allowed myself to get distracted. (And I clicked on the “wrong” gmail account.)

    • Yes, I have been busy finding Comment plug-ins. And yes, some of the new comment Admin tools are dangerous.

      Very stale peeps! Looking at the old Moose! Maybe when I rebuild it for the new site I will use a more modern display … a wide screen flat panel, perhaps. :)

  3. This is important:

    @dariatbh: Every day next week will be the same backwards:
    5/10/15
    5/11/15
    5/12/15
    5/13/15
    5/14/15
    5/15/15
    5/16/15
    5/17/15

    • We are not all here yet! I got busy doing my real work and have yet to send the invitations out.

      Later today, I think.

  6. Morning Meese – praying for those on the Amtrak train on Philly – I was just on that train coming back from Baltimore – and used to take it regularly from DC to NY.

    This is what happens when infrastructure money isn’t a priority.

    • While our Senate fiddled for 3 months over abortion language stuffed into a human trafficking bill they delayed work on the infrastructure bill. I am waiting to see how they find a way to include new abortion restrictions in that.

    • More on the train wreck: New York Times Breaking News Email

      BREAKING NEWS Wednesday, May 13, 2015 7:09 AM EDT

      Death Toll Rises to 6 in Philadelphia Train Crash

      At least six people were killed and dozens more were injured when an Amtrak train carrying 243 people derailed here on Tuesday, shutting down some service in the Northeast region, the authorities said.
      The train was headed to New York from Washington when it derailed around 9:30 p.m., officials said during a news conference late on Tuesday. Sixty-five people, including six who were in critical condition, were taken to hospitals, Philadelphia’s mayor, Michael A. Nutter, said.

      “It is an absolute disastrous mess,” the mayor said. “I have never seen anything like this in my life.”
      Emergency workers carrying flashlights and ladders moved frantically from car to car helping passengers off the train, some bloodied, others dazed.

      The train had at least seven cars, including the engine, which separated from the rest, officials said. Six cars overturned. At least one looked as bent as a crumpled soda can, and parts of the damaged cars were so badly mangled that firefighters had to use hydraulic tools to rescue the people trapped inside.

      READ MORE » http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/14/us/amtrak-train-derails-crash-philadelphia.html

  7. Good morning, Meese. I made it to the new Pond. Will have to explore it’s boundaries. Hope I can find my way back again!
    Just heard about the Amtrak train. I know that route well. What a sorrow for so many.
    Will be back.

    • Glad you made it, Portlaw! Just wade into the pond at the edges and you should be safe. :)

      I left at comment at the Old Place and will copy it here … I didn’t realize everyone would be here so soon!

      And PLEASE let me know how we can improve the site. I am not madly in love with the way these comments display and the font seems a bit thin to me.

      Big question for meeses: do you think we should have a comment rating, if for nothing else so that we know that your comment was read?

      • It would help – I think – hard for me to remember what I have or haven’t read.

        • That is kind of where I am. Comment following has always been an issue with WordPress sites. Some people use third party comment systems like signing up with your Facebook or Twitter account or the ubiquitous Disqus but I don’t like the idea of the connecting everything I say on the Internets in one place. Moose talk is Moose talk.

          I follow the comments on this link : Moose comment thread but it only shows the last 10 or 12 (depending on length). I think I will put it in the menu to make it easier to find.

          Did you notice that you can make the comments bigger when you are creating them? My old eyes like that.

          • It seems more friendly to “like” comments, especially in ongoing threads. I also use the red new comment feature on the old moose site to make sure I read what everyone has to say. Being on sleepy west coat time means I’m often reading when more energetic east coast meese are busy with your days!

          • Tweak number 1!! I had only allowed 5 levels of replies which is clearly not enough because I couldn’t reply to this. I have expanded it to 8.

            We will probably never have anything like the [new] tag that the moose and the GOS has. And that is truly sad because I counted on that to know when posts I am following had new comments (and also to locate them via Find on a post with lots of comments). I am still looking for some kind of tool to at least tell me when someone has replied to me.

            As far as comments ratings, I will have to vet those pretty carefully. I worked on a WordPress web site a few years ago and we discovered that the comment ratings generated hundreds of additional database records and slowed down the site quite a bit. We ended up removing that feature. Maybe someone has a better one now. I will settle for a simple Like just like Facebook does. That will help me track which ones I have seen. I can’t imagine I couldn’t Like a moose comment.

            I know which database element I can interrogate for comments which makes me very scary. I want to avoid changing Moose code but I might be able to build a plugin that does what we want. In my “spare” time. :D

          • “spare time” is so elusive! Thanks for using yours to build a new home for the Moose. No worries if the red new feature doesn’t work here….just means I’ll have to use my memory…another elusive feature! A simple like is fine with me too, but if that’s to complicated I’ll just assume we’re all reading together.

      • Yes comment rating please – even if it’s nothing more than “read this” – especially helpful on long-running diaries like the weekly check in. thanks

        • I think the theme we are getting ready to preview has comment and post ratings. Stay tuned!!

          p.s. I don’t like the idea of negative ratings so it will probably just be a Like or Okay.

          • While seldom used on Moose, I think that having a negative rating is important.

            When it HAS been used on Moose, it was ABSOLUTELY a needed option.

            We have been a site of calm waters for a long while now…but, with the Primaries and the Pres Election upcoming, things very well could get choppy.

            I like our Fail, Meh, Fierce ratings…they cover all bases and are familiar to all Moose.

            :P

  8. Good morning, migrating herd! Wednesday …

    It is 36 degrees in Madison on its way up to 63. Sunny skies are in the forecast.

    In a political party based on demonization of The Other and driven by irrational fear, all of the candidates are coated in Teflon. They know that they will get x number of votes just because they have an R after their name … they don’t even have to support popular policy positions. Jeb Bush said he would still invade Iraq knowing what he knows now and not-very-quickly reversed that, saying that he “interpreted the question wrong, I guess”. “I guess”??!!?? The war of choice started by the worst president in our lifetimes that led to the death of hundreds of thousands, the destabilization of a region and trillions of dollars of wasted tax dollars and he couldn’t be bothered to understand the question or what it meant? It is almost as though he has decided to run for president to rehabilitate his brother’s legacy. Good luck with that. People who remember that war still make up a majority of the electorate and it has not gotten more popular coated with the gauze of history.

    In Madison, Dane County District Attorney Ozanne, the son of school teachers … a man whose mother traveled to Mississippi in 1965 to register voters during Freedom Summer, declined to charge the policeman who killed the unarmed black teenager. He can’t. We have a screwed up justice system where all a cop has to say is that he feared for his life and he won’t be charged. You can’t prove or disprove someone’s feelings and the only way to get a charge is when you have video evidence of malfeasance. We aren’t going to fix this problem by charging policemen … we have to fix the problem by retraining and changing the rules of engagement and finding some way to subdue a dangerous suspect without killing him.

    Busy day here … AGAIN!! I spent yesterday doing research on a product and that ate up 3 hours that I didn’t really have to spare. So now I am behind in my project work.

    See all y’all later!

  9. Good morning, Meese! Wow, the place looks different! It’s going to take me a while to get used to it. Where’s all the purple? Being an old person, I tend to be a trifle upset by change.

    Haven’t seen the news, didn’t know about the Amtrak train. It sounds bad.

    When the site is fully operational, can we change our passwords back again?

    Have to wake up Miss Pink Cheeks. Must get her breakfasted and ready for school.

    Everyone have a good day!

    • You can change your passwords at any time. The user part of the new site will stay the same … we will just be importing the archives.

      I miss the purple too and am looking for something now to liven things up. This theme is a bit stodgy.

  10. Moose Migration Update:
    – Hi peeps! Glad you could make it here.
    – I still have a few things I am working on and will share them here:
    1. I am going to find a thicker font because this one is too thin for my old eyes.
    2. We need more color.
    3. I am still experimenting with WordPress themes. Themes control the color, the layout, the sizing of the comment boxes, etc. They can be overlaid onto the basic structure without losing our words so the only danger is at the moment I overlay it, the site may jump. I will try to do my maintenance work over the lunch hour when things are quieter.
    4. Leave comments with suggestions and complaints here so that I can find them easily. Do *not* think that you will hurt my feelings if you don’t like some aspect of the site. I have no ego tied in to this project: I simply want to make this new home work well to keep us all together and provide a safe place to post and comment about politics and the world around us.
    5. Some of you have been made Authors and/or Contributors. That means you can create new posts. I recommend that you crosspost one of your old diaries to get the feel for how the composition window works. Whenever you copy/paste from another site, you need to use the Text view not the Visual view. (You will see that in the Add New Post area).
    6. I will be producing documentation about how to do stuff and it will be in the FAQ under The Moose in the menu. I will start with the stuff that *won’t* change (the WordPress basics).

    Right now I am going to change out the sticky post to provide a better road map to the migration. Once anotherdemocrat and bfitz find their way to the pond, I will put up a front page sticky note on the old Moose to direct people here.

    • I like “thicker font” and “more color” — definitely needs more purple

    • managed to get here today – hope I can find my way back tomorrow :) – and absolutely on the thicker font and more purple – how can it be the Purple Pond without more purple?

  11. I hope I remember the more-complicated password I gave myself. I’ll be logging in from home for the next 4 days, so that’s important.

  12. re-posting my check-in here so I can see what the link thing looks like

    More rain, but at least we’re not flooding. There have been water rescues in Houston & Dallas, but none here yet. But some idiot always goes around the barricades, so it’s just a matter of time.

    Very sad about the train derailment. Some day we’ll actually invest in our infrastructure….. Or not, and all those “things fell apart” science fiction stories will come true.

    I’m taking tomorrow & Friday off work. I need to take some time off because I’m bumping up against the maximum amount of vacation time. Also I’m tired. And grumpy. But my earworm is still the uber-cheerful Just Say Yes

    • wonder why yours worked & neither of mine did? will think about it while I work on e-mail

      • It might be because Dee is an Editor and has super-powers. :)

        You should not have to do the code generator any more, just the regular embed.

        • LOL Superpowers Fumblefingers who will now spend a year trying to figure this all out.

          • I had some peeps who had been used to the GOS and when they went to WordPress they were sure it would take forever to Learn The New Ways. I predict that by Labor Day, you will forget how to post on the old Moose. ;)

            Edit: I said Labor Day but I meant Memorial Day. I do not want the summer to be gone so I have no idea where that came from !

          • I find new formats daunting – and some of the older ones too – never could figger out TPM.

            I’ll keep working at it – thank you for being a MooseMomma for us all

          • The good news about WordPress is that no matter what people do with the layouts, the Write a Post is always the same from site to site. The underlying structure is WordPress Basic and people add their fluff over it.

  14. I am not sure how this helps promote dialog:

    NOW President: Obama Criticized Elizabeth Warren in ‘Sexist Way’

    [NOW President] Terry O’Neill said, “Yes, I think it is sexist. I think the president was trying to build up his own trustworthiness on this issue by convincing us that Senator Warren’s concerns are not to be taken seriously. But he did it in a sexist way.”

    And the subtext of Obama’s remarks dismissing Warren as just another politician, she said, was just “the little lady just doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

    Hello? I do not see that subtext. What I see is the media trying to gin up faux controversies because the only thing they have to report on is Republican presidential candidates and after the elebenty-billionth iteration of HOLY MACKERAL … THEY ARE BATGUANO CRAZY!!! they need to find something else.

    The TPA (authorization) for the TPP (agreement) is an ongoing process. There are pros and cons and good arguments on both sides. For those of us who care about what happens to workers, we are naturally hesitant about anything that undermines labor and reduces our already low wages or ships jobs elsewhere. For those of us who care about human rights, we are naturally hesitant about giving favored trade status to countries like Vietnam who have a horrible record. For those of us who care passionately about the environment, we are naturally hesitant about anything that allows polluters to keep polluting. But I do know this: you need to have a place at the table in order to change things. Walking away from a trade pact with the fastest growing segment of the global economy does not do us any good. The United States is still the biggest economy and what we say matters but we need to be part of the negotiating. In the end, if the agreement sucks, it gets voted down. The negotiators know that and are not going to put poison pills in it. Just like the Iranian nuclear agreement, we need to let the process finish and not strangle it in its cradle.

    My big concern is that this is starting to look like the Single Payer wars all over again. We need to ratchet down the rhetoric a couple of notches. If we come out of this all hating each other, how does our nominee, whoever he or she may be, build a winning coalition for 2016?

  15. wow – temperature has dropped here and we are due for frost tonight – so glad I decided not to plant anything till Memorial day

    • We had frost warnings overnight. It was 32 degrees on our backyard thermometer when I got up.

      Memorial Day is earlier than usual this year anyway. People should just be patient!!!

  17. Is there any way that new comments in a diary can be so marked? In the Old Moose, there was the word “new” in red. If a new comment is added ujpthread it’s hard to find it. Yes, I know, here I am complaining, complaining. But I like the new Moose because all the old Meese are here!!!!

    • It is pretty high on my To Do list to figure out a better way to follow comments.

      In your Dashboard (click My Moose on the Menu Bar) you should see all the recent comments. You can go directly to any of them and not have to scroll through the page wondering what you have read and not read.

        • That is all you would ever want to show from a Tweet on a blog post (trust me). It is more than you were allowed to do on the old Moose, I am pretty sure.

          • oh, yes, I could not embed tweets on OM, but I have pasted them in the checkin thread at Orange, rarely. I just wanted to see if I could here

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