I Found my Pizza Crust

~ Amusives

Before the ‘Pizza Crust’

In the big scheme of things, it was a little blip. I logged onto my WordPress blog a few days ago, and instead of being greeted with my WP Admin page, I was looking at the contents of the WordPress Feed Reader. Instead of seeing my personal Dashboard, I was seeing the endless list of what other people had posted and what WordPress thought I should read, etc, etc.

I was not amused. Granted, I could still get to my WP Admin page in a few clicks, but that wasn’t the point. When I log on to this account, I want my information to be the priority.

I won’t go into great detail about the discussion I had online with three WordPress ‘Happiness Engineers’; the rating I gave them when I got a cheerful email asking me to rate my help experience; or the message I posted in the WordPress Forums.

That’s now water under the bridge because this morning when I logged on, life was back to normal. My WP Admin page was the first thing I saw. That wretched Reader was back where it belonged – a tab at the top of the page.

The ‘Pizza Crust’

The ‘pizza crust on the sidewalk’ was the email that I got from WordPress (in response to my message thanking them for fixing my problem).

Isn’t that just a hoot!? They changed something in order to fix something which then broke something else, which when they fixed that, it also fixed something that they didn’t know they had broken.

Refreshing honesty and a good outcome for all. Life is Good.

What Say You – have you found any ‘pizza crusts on the sidewalk’ lately?

18 thoughts on “I Found my Pizza Crust”

  1. WordPress is ALWAYS “fixing” something that breaks something else, etc. I’ve learned to accept it (after all, I don’t pay for my WordPress account, so I really can’t complain). As a former computer science /e-business professor (married to a former programming professor), I can attest to the fact that programming any online environment (or software) is a tricky business, and you can test things a hundred times and get a different result every time – because you can’t test it in every environment out there (computer science in often called an “imperfect science”), so I’m probably a little more accepting of the kind of problems you’ve encountered (and the amusing “explanation” offered). What worries me more, I suppose, is our dependence on these things and our impatience with them when things “go wrong” (me included). We’re in a strange place in our evolution – giving control over to a bunch of electronic components and invisible connections.

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    1. I appreciate your expertise on all this. Programming seems a lot like so many things in life. Tweak one thing and then watch results that might work out fine, but might have consequences you didn’t think of. We see it in politics all the time!
      My biggest beef is the deliberate manipulation of outcomes due to algorithms; also forcing people to react a certain way before they can get to where they want to go!

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      1. One of the courses I taught (way back when :)) was User Centred Design. The idea was that websites (and other multimedia platforms) should be designed with the user in mind. That idea seems to have gone the way of the dodo – now its all about what the “owner” of the site wants you to see / click on. Its immensely frustrating (especially when you “just” get used to the look and feel of a site and they go and change it – and make it WORSE!)

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    2. Yup – that was my experience as well.

      In my working life it seemed like we were always inadvertently breaking something. In our world, we blamed poor code documentation. No one likes to document so it always seems to be a half-assed weak afterthought … until something breaks.

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      1. Interesting thought – documenting things. Good practice in a lot of areas. My husband is executor of a will, and I’ve been his right hand gal – documenting every step and keeping track of the results.

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  2. I had an issue about 10 days ago where I couldn’t justify text anymore. I’ve been using the block editor since mid-April and copying and pasting from a Word document into a new post. I let it go thinking it was a one-time thing. The next post I encountered the same problem plus all my text was italicized though I had no italics in my narrative, so I reached out to the Happiness Engineers. I was told I cannot use a Word document as it does not agree with WordPress (hmm, I’ve done that since 2013 and with the block editor since April 2019). I was told to use Notepad. So yesterday I drafted in Word, copied to Notepad, copied to WP – voila. Justification again but a long journey to get it. 🙂 SMH.

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    1. Brave Lady! I haven’t tried to use the Block Editor.
      I use the Classic Editor and switch back and forth between ‘Visual’ and ‘Text’ on an as need basis. For example, if I copy something from a document and paste it in ‘Visual’, it might contain formatting that I don’t want. If I paste the same thing when I am in ‘Text’ mode, all the formatting is stripped out and I can go ahead and format the way I want.
      I do all my writing directly in the WordPress Editor. It keeps track of revisions which lets you go back to a previous draft if you want.

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      1. Interesting because they said Microsoft Word was not compatible. I didn’t like drafting in Notepad, hard to read, and for a long time I was also blogging at Patch.com as well. It is a hyperlocal online newspaper. So by using Word to draft, I could cut and paste into Patch – they have their photos appear as a gallery, rather than in the post, so that took a little out of the post to begin with. But I stopped about a month ago since my posts are picture laden and their platform does not enable me to show the photos correctly since they have to be resized – the resizing crops the pictures badly so I stopped posting there after 6 years. I guess I could draft right in WordPress too, but, I have saved all my photos and narratives from Day 1 (February of 2011) but as I approach 1,400 posts by year end, I don’t think I’d like to have to put Humpty back together again should WordPress have a big fail or go out of business for some reason. I bit the bullet and started in the block editor since we were getting new computers, new laptops and a new accounting program at work and I decided to familiarize myself with Gutenberg first and worry about work after that. I don’t like the slideshows in Gutenberg. I used to use them occasionally in Classic Editor. They are still getting the bugs out of Gutenberg according to a blogger from the UK I follow who does updates on Gutenberg from time to time. He has a whole section of his blog devoted to Gutenberg and good tips for when you are ready Margy:
        https://hughsviewsandnews.com/category/gutenberg-how-to/

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        1. 1400 post by year end. Good on you! I was hoping to have 1000 posts by my 10th anniversary of blogging. That is not going to happen!
          I’ve checked Hughs views and will add it to my list of ideas to consider. Thanks for the suggestion.

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          1. I have not written as many posts this year as I have in the past as I had lots of things going on at the house (the house was behaving badly with a few costly mishaps so I had to be around for contractors, etc). Then I smashed my finger and I work from home and we’ve been extremely busy this year. My boss asked me to work some weekends, but I try to salvage my weekends for longer walks and picture taking, so asked if I could work late every night instead. That meant I was perpetually behind in Reader and my own posts. I try not to be repetitive in my pictures and posts about squirrels, but they are so cute, sometimes I can’t help myself. 🙂

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    1. Three people with inadequate knowledge about how to find the solutions to the problems they are expected to find the answers to… or wrenches when what you need is a hammer.
      Yes, I’m glad that part of life is back to normal! Thanks for your good wishes.

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