LJ Idol Presents:

 TONIGHT is the deadline. But it appears that Haitian migrants have eaten the majority of entries. therealljidol.dreamwidth.org/1161260.html

Please make sure to get them back before 7pm ET tonight!!!

 It's official - As of next Monday I will be employed again! 

So look for me complaining about how awful my job is posts in about 3 weeks.  :) 

Seriously though, I'm pretty excited. It should only minimal impact on Idol, but we will see. I'll just have to keep deadlines in the evenings and on weekends. '

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Speaking of Idol deadlines - the new poll is up    therealljidol.dreamwidth.org/1144477.html
so make sure you are reading, commenting and voting for your favorites!!!

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How was YOUR week starting out? 

Do I want to stir people up this morning?

Hmmm... sure...

Uber was guilty of trusting that people weren't asshats. Unfortunately, people are.

They probably should have considered that someone was going to exploit their auto response. But it takes a real shithead to do that - and it takes someone who is going out of their way to find a problem with the company to think that they did it deliberately. I don't mean the ones who saw it initially and reacted with their gut impulse. I'm thinking more of the ones who came in hours later, after the apology was already up and Uber was giving people discounted rides, who just wanted to go off on the racist company.

I was going to link an article, but honestly, most of the ones I could find seem to just be exploiting the situation for hits and/or giving attention to troll's account.

So, since most of you probably don't know what the hell I'm talking about - because that's 99% of these posts, I'll pull back a bit and explain...

Uber, like a lot of businesses, has an auto response. I'm going to use Murielle as an example name.

If she had something to say to Uber, like "I had problems using your app", they would write back "Sorry to hear that Murielle" with the support contact information.

It makes sense from a business standpoint of why you would want to address customers by name. It also makes sense that someone would try to troll that feature.

In this case, again, let's say it's Murielle - because that makes it far more shocking, she changes her name to (the N-word). Because that's what the troll did.

Now you know what auto response would end up tweeting.

After getting the response, Murielle then changed her name back, so anyone looking it at thinks the Uber auto response team is just really really racist monsters.

I'm NOT saying that the company shouldn't have seen this coming and put filters in place. They probably should have. But I can also see why it would never really occur to someone to do.

Uber has a lot of problems. Which is why there are protests scheduled. But I think it's a mistake to go after the company being exploited harder than people seem to be going after the troll who used the word as a bait and switch to get the company to say it.

Of course, I'm sure there are people who will say I'm wrong - OK, I'm fine with learning more on what I'm missing in the subtext, so feel free to let me know!

I'm coming from a position as someone who has had a few people using "offensive" user names. (Nowhere near that word just things that were designed to get a reaction) I had to post them in the poll, because that was their name. I do wonder though where that line would be - I'm not an auto response after all. Hopefully no one ever decides to push that. But I'm sure, being the internet, at some point, some troll will.

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You don't have to be a troll like Murielle to be interested in finale poll! https://therealljidol.dreamwidth.org/1064830.html

It closes tomorrow night. So make sure to get your votes in!

Tonight is the deadline to get in your entries: https://therealljidol.dreamwidth.org/1056795.html

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We ended up making a last minute trip to the Atlanta Pen Show on Saturday. Well, by the time we got to Atlanta it was late, so really we only ended up with one day there.

For those who have never been to a pen show - it's like any other convention. But with pens. No cosplay either. ;) I kind of wish there had been. It makes me wonder what people would have dressed up as!

It reminded me about how when I went to pagan festivals, I'd call them "dirt cons" - because they had everything from the vendors tables selling merch to the panels. They even had the cosplay!

It ended up being a lot better than I thought it was going to be - I actually enjoyed myself and ended up getting a (relatively) cheap pen for myself!

It was really awesome though getting to see my wife take her first steps amongst "her people" in the pen community! :)

Finding your tribe is always an awesome thing to be able to do.

There's one day left in the voting, and if the last few weeks are an indication, that means most of the votes are going to be hitting in the next 24 hours. Right now, it's still very much anyone's game to win or lose: https://therealljidol.dreamwidth.org/1044037.html

So it's a good time to talk about your favorite entries from the week? What did you see that made you go "Hell yeah! I want more of that!"


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Anything from your weekend that made you go "Hell yeah! I want more of that!"? Or was it just a "No thanks. No more of that please"?

There's a poll currently up: https://therealljidol.dreamwidth.org/1039537.html

Fortunately it's scheduled to end before our Dreamwidth paid time does! That would be awkward! ;) Of course this has to be the month where Patreon is running late in payouts. So there may be a bit of a gap in paid coverage. I don't think that is going to end up impacting anything. (since polls are really the only function we use in the "paid" benefits)

But I wanted to give you a heads up, just in case there's something that I'm not thinking about.

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How was your weekend?

I was planning on going into work on Saturday. But we got in late from the show on Friday, so I slept in. Then my wife asked if we could start the Punisher season 2. The rest of the day was spent watching the Punisher. (we finished *the final episode* immediately after we got up on Sunday. Pretty sure that's a record amount of time that she's sat for a television show)

Make sure you get out and support your favorites in Second Chance! https://therealljidol.dreamwidth.org/1026480.html

Unless of course you are in the main competition, in which case - get your entry in https://therealljidol.dreamwidth.org/1024845.html and THEN go and support your favorites in Second Chance! Read them all - find some new favorites!!!

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I've been asked about leveling the playing field. That wasn't quite the question, but I think it's an interesting one.

How do you find new readers? How do you get them over here to DW to vote?

It's a tough one. Without the ability to bring readers over from FB (which, you *can* but then they have to jump through hoops), what are the ways YOU have found to get people engaged in what you have been writing?

Any advice for a newbie fighting their way in through Second Chance, or even a veteran who just never figured it out. Or a Christmas goblin who got lost on his way to the mall and ended up frozen in the snowbank until Spring thawed home out - 10,000 years later! Maybe not that last one. Although, *looks around* who knows!

Happy Fountain Pen Day to you! Apparently there are a lot of sales today! Somehow I don't think this event is quite as popular as Free Comic Book Day, but I could be wrong.


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What's going on with you this weekend? We are going to a wedding tomorrow. Not sure what else is on the agenda.

Of course I'll be busy reading what I have left to check out from the current poll: https://therealljidol.dreamwidth.org/1007980.html

There's a lot of really cool stuff in there, I hope you take the time to check it all out - and tell some friends to do that same! This thing of ours only works with word of mouth! So keep us going and spread the word!

If you missed the announcement yesterday - I extended the deadline until TONIGHT! https://therealljidol.dreamwidth.org/1001164.html Which means now there's even less of an excuse to get your entry in! I'm hoping this means there will be fewer byes this week, but if there aren't, then there aren't. I did what I could do.

Perhaps I just need to kick harder!

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We live near a "spooky house" by a cemetery.

When I say "near a cemetery", I mean both "the house is near the cemetery" AND "we live near the same cemetery as well". The busier entrance is across the street from our road and the less busy one, if you were to barrel through the intersection, you'd end up in the yard of the spooky house.

We regularly take evening walks in that cemetery, which is how we have encountered the house, before and after the transition.


I'm pretty sure there's a new owner of that place, because for the first time since I've lived in the neighborhood, they have decorated for Halloween. They have those purple and green lights on the house and yard decorations meant to convey a sense of being "spooky".

They shouldn't have bothered.

It was much spookier the way it used to be, before the new person moved in.

The yard was overgrown and vines were growing up the side of the two story white house with it's paint flaking off. There was a shed in the middle of the yard where, if you went out in the middle of the night, there was almost always a light on. I'm talking after midnight someone was usually out there, doing something.

There was an inflatable rattlesnake that was weaved into the chain link gate to the property and then of course there was a plain white van parked in the driveway with the only bumper sticker being one that said "Caution: Weird Cargo".

They could have charged admission to go to the old place, and maybe someone would have been scared - or perhaps they would have just ended up buried out behind the shed. This new one? I don't know, kids can probably get candy.

It's just not the same.