3428 Alone in a crowd

Monday, December 26, 2011

A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.
-- Steven Wright --

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There's a Meetup group I had joined, for us older folks, but I had never signed up for anything because it was always a horde scene. Like 50 people at dinner.

Well, they had a dinner at a Bonefish on Christmas Eve, and only four other people had signed up for it -- one man (the organizer) and three women. That sounded good to me, so I signed up, too.

Saturday afternoon I got a note from the organizer saying that the other three women would be carpooling with him, and that they'd be in the bar at 7:30, I should meet them there. He said he'd be wearing a Meetup button.

At 7:15 I arrived. When I came in, there were a few people, like six or seven, I didn't count, on the porch. Couldn't be them. Too many. Too many men. Wrong place. I went to the bar and sat at the end. There was one woman and a couple at the bar. I waited. And waited.

At 7:40 I asked at the hostess stand if there was a reservation in the organizer's name, or Meetup, or the group name. Nope. I asked about any reservation for five. Nope. I left my name with them in case anyone looked for me. I checked out on the porch, and the large group was still there.

At 7:50 I walked around the restaurant looking for tables with one man and three women. I asked at two tables if they were Meetup. Nope. I glanced at men's shirts, looking for a button of some kind. Nope. I made that tour twice over the next ten minutes.

At 8:00 I gave up and ordered dinner at the bar. I ate alone. On Christmas Eve. In a crowded restaurant. I left at 8:45.

When I got home I sent an email to the organizer asking what had happened.

Surprise! They had picked up another man and woman, so they were six, not four. The group on the porch was apparently them. The reservation had been made in one of the women's name, not the organizer's. They had waited for me ON THE PORCH! until 7:45.

Um, my photo on the Meetup site looks exactly like me. If they were waiting for me, shouldn't the organizer have been watching for someone who looks like me? I am a bit unique. Shouldn't they have at least CHECKED IN THE DAMN BAR?! WHERE HE SAID THEY'D BE?

They all knew each other already. I was apparently superfluous.

What gets me is that at about 7:45 a group of six, two men and four women, was seated at a high table in the bar, about 8 or 10 feet from me. They were loud and having a good time. I wonder if that was them. If it was, I wonder why it never occurred to them to glance at the lone woman at the bar.

Yeah, on the one hand, I'm pissed. On the other hand I'm almost glad, because if that raucous group WAS them, I'd rather have been alone.

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Why, when people go to a forum, why don't they read the previous postings before they ask their questions?

Google Bookmarks no longer works, at least not on Firefox. You get the message that you have to sign in, but then nothing happens, it just repeats the "Please sign in". I had that problem a few months ago. I panicked. I have a thousand bookmarks, and am lost without them.

I found a forum for that exact problem. The answer is that Google no longer supports bookmarks, and has no plans to do so. Period.

The bookmarks are actually still there on your disk, but Google isn't going to get them for you. A few people had recommendations that involved opening code and resetting bits and flags and stuff to fool Google into thinking you have a lower level of Firefox. Others had found a way to get to the raw bookmarks involving like five steps.

Uh, no thanks.

I subscribed to the forum in case anyone found a simple fix.

I dug around the internet and found an easy to install Firefox extension called "GMarks". You can put a button right on the Firefox tool bar, and it works exactly like Google Bookmarks used to.

I recommended its use in the forum. A few people tried it and praised me.

You'd think that with the explanation of why G. B. no longer works, and three work-arounds offered, that would be the end, right? At least until someone finds something better, right?

No.

For the past few months, I'm getting alerts of updates to the discussion, and in EVERY case, it's some idiot whining that their bookmarks no longer works, what happened?, and what can they do about it?

Sheesh. Those people aren't worth helping, when they don't even bother to read the previous posts.
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