Author Archives: Vicki Lee

About Vicki Lee

Hi! I'm Vicki, and I'm a writer and an author. I write articles, blogs and author e-books both my own and as a ghostwriter. I'm a regular contributor to Squidoo (under VickiLeesBookshelf), and currently feature my own books on this blog site. I have over 20 years of management experience, which I'm currently incorporating into a professional series of books for first-time managers and supervisors, as well as working on my first fiction series ( mystery, set about 150 years ago in San Franciso).

For Glad, A Special Friend..

TweetThere’s a special place in heaven for that unique person who knows how to be a good friend. And if you are very lucky, you will meet one of these rare individuals at some point in your life. I have … Continue reading

Share
Posted in Family & Friends | 9 Comments

Another Possible Side-Effect of Menopause: Button Blindness!

Wondering what the big deal is about a button? Well, let me start at the beginning…
It all started with me registering to be a member of an Internet Marketing forum, called the Warrior Forum (absolutely no clue where the name came from). People who participate in internet marketing clearly need content for all those websites, products and blogs. So if you are a writer, you participate in their forums. And the Warrior Forum is the largest, most well known of them all. Wanting to get my little enterprise off the ground, I joined. Seemed like a good plan, and a sound move.
Having taken care of the registration part, I started out just reading the various posts. I wanted to get the lay of the land—or at least the basic protocols—before I jumped in myself. It’s pretty straightforward. Someone starts a post and others jump in with a response, either with a comment in the form of a “quick reply”, or a more “advanced” comment, or just a “Thank you” acknowledgement.
OK.. so far so good.
Now, I am what the more seasoned Warriors call a “newbie”. It’s a reference to being new to the forum—and basically someone who doesn’t know very much, or in my case– absolutely nothing at all. All the more reason to just “thank” the more experienced posters and take your time about “easing into the pool”, so to speak. So I look at my screen, and I see the names of the people who just said “thank you”—all showing up in a box just for that purpose right below the post. Now comes the tricky part. You can’t just place your cursor in that little area and type in your name. The area won’t let you do that. Going to the posting area and just typing in “thank you”, comes out as a full post with just two little words. In the Warrior world, that doesn’t even count as a post and is kind of frowned on.. especially for a newbie.
So I’m looking and looking. I see a button for a ‘quick reply” post, and another button for a “more advanced post”, but nothing else.
I really can’t figure out how those people are getting their names in that “thank you” field. There was no button at the top of the post, the bottom of the post, lurking around inside the thank you field or hanging about the signature. No clue anywhere. So I go to the “help” icon, and in the search box type in “thanking a post”. I find the protocol—as in, it’s good to thank a post that you really liked—but not a word on exactly how to do that. After reading through all the documentation, I went through my usual self-conversation of: why do they always have programmers write the help stuff? They always assume something is so obvious they don’t have to say it, and skip steps. I hate instructions written by programmers.  (I have this internal conversation a lot).
Once that silent rant is out of the way, I have to admit it..I’m stumped.
Well, I did kind of have another option. I’ve been having an occasional conversation with an internet marketing “guru” named Tiffany. I thought maybe she wouldn’t mind answering a really stupid question, so I sent off a hopeful e-mail asking how to do the “thank you” thing in the Warrior Forum. She very graciously responded, and told me to just use the “thank you button”.. She even told me where it was—lower right hand corner of the post.
Aha..well. I must not have looked there. So I log on and look there. I don’t see a button. Now, I am sure Tiffany sees that button. But I’m not seeing it. Now I’m thinking: Oh great. Another little gift of menopause, button blindness. Just another one of those little things your doctor never tells you.. because he’s male. (Actually, that isn’t true. My doctor is female—but she’s younger than I am.. so she doesn’t know either).
Well, I was at a crossroads. Do I just go with the probable onset of the dreaded “button blindness”, or do I investigate further? And if I do decide to investigate further—exactly how do I do that? I’m not asking Tiffany again. I had already hit my tolerance limit for sounding stupid. I guess I could have asked Tiffany’s mentor and partner, Craig. But he lives in Japan. Did I really want to sound stupid on two continents? While certainly not out of the realm of possibility, it still wasn’t my first pick. I’m sure that will happen soon enough.
So I log back into the Warrior Forum, and go to the help screen. There I hit the “contact us” on the Help Menu, and proceed to ask the dumb question. I rationalize the “well duh” question by deciding I shall make a point of never, ever speaking to that hopefully helpful person again.  Even though he or she didn’t do anything to deserve that.
Less than 24 hours later, I had a response. “You need to use the Thank You Button” (and I’m thinking, no shit, Sherlock. Where the hell is it?) “It is located in the lower right hand corner of the post” (great.. we’re back to the button blindness problem) “It will appear after you have made 5 posts”. What??? You have to make 5 posts before the button just magically appears out of nowhere? Oh come on. Who would know that? Let me guess—this is perfectly obvious to anyone.. who’s a programmer!
As it turns out, this story does have a good ending. I put up the five posts, and right on schedule, the magic “thank you” button suddenly appeared. I am now living happily ever after “thanking” the posters, and have lost my fear of developing “button blindness” I’m just making “do” with hot flashes and no sleep.
The End…….

Share
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment