Page 45 | MediocreMan

Like, Subscribe, Review · 4 March 2023

I have a blog, a YouTube channel, an Amazon author page, and various social media accounts. And I think you should like and subscribe to all those different media. And I think you should leave reviews of my books. But this will probably be the only time I will ask you to do that.

Like many YouTubers, I used to tell my audience to like and subscribe. Or at least I did a couple times. Then, I forgot. Then, I decided that I was not going to do it even if I remembered. After all, people will like and subscribe even if you do not ask them to. They will like and subscribe if they actually like your content. At least that is my theory.

Now, I am not not asking people to like and subscribe just to be contrary. Nor am I condemning those who do ask. But for me, it is like asking for money. Which I suppose is somewhat true.

The same goes for asking for reviews. I think it is the right thing to do. If you like a book, you ought to review it. Especially, if that author is not well known or is just trying to start a career. People leave reviews for famous authors. Those who do not ask for reviews. Which is maybe why I came up with the notion that I am not going to ask people to review my books (except in this blog post). If they are worthy of review, people will review them. If not, that is okay.

I guess part of the whole like, subscribe, review thing is that I am not really out there to be famous or to sell stuff. I just put my stuff out there to teach or entertain. I started my YouTube channel as a way to try and flip my classroom. (Lecture outside of class and work inside.) Not that it worked. People just watched my videos in my class. Ah well. The best laid plans.

At any rate.

Where was I? Oh yes. Entertaining.

I suppose when it comes right down to it, I do not really write to entertain people. Nor do I YouTube to entertain people. (You did know that it became a law that anybody at any time can verbify nouns and nounify verbs, right? But that is another story.) Hopefully, both my writing and YouTubing are entertaining, but that is not really my goal. My goal is just to create a body of work.

Okay. That is not entirely true. In reality, I started blogging to create a body of work. I figured that one day I would have enough volume of written stuff out on the internet that somebody would notice. And when that special somebody noticed, I would be able to be a full-time writer. Well, I have hundreds of blog posts. Which is hundreds of thousands of words. And now I have books out there too. At least thousands of words out there in book form. And I have YouTube videos out there and social media posts and… Well, you get the picture. I have a body of work. And nobody has come a calling yet.

The thing of it is… I do not really care. Oh sure, I write for people to read. Of course I do. I want people to read my written work. I want people to look at my pictures and videos. But I really do it because I believe that is what I am supposed to do. I may be wrong, but I really think God has told me to do those things. So I do.

Well, I am not exactly sure where I was going with this, except to say that as much as I would love people to like, subscribe, and review my stuff, I am not going to ask. Except in those few videos and in this one (maybe more) blog post. So if you do like my stuff, please like, subscribe, and review.

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I Am So Weird · 25 February 2023

I just read one of my blog posts (that is ready but not posted yet), and all I can say is, “I am so weird.”

They say that kids say the darnedest things. I must still be a kid then because I say the darnedest things too. Sometimes I mean to say them that way. But sometimes they just come out that way. Darnedest.

Speaking of darnedest. What a strange word. First, I thought I would spell it like it sounds. DARNDEST. Spell checker did not like that. So I thought about the word a bit and realized that DARNED is the past tense of DARN. So DARNEDEST must be the right word to use in the case of kids (and myself) saying the darnedest things.

But then, I looked it up. And at least the show name is spelt DARNDEST. Whew! That was a bit of a tangent. And I did not even get into the British spelling of spelled (spelt). Boy spell checkers are the darndest things.

At any rate.

I was reading about self-deprecating as self-promotion. It was the strangest thing. And yet I will publish it. (If you are reading this, you might already know that I did publish it. Or post it. Or whatever you do with blogs.)

Speaking of post. It is interesting that when you used to post something it meant that you sent it in the mail. Not email. Mail. Some call it snail mail. Not that snails mail anything, but apparently the mail system is slow. Or at least slower than electronic mail. Also called email. But if the receiver of said mail of either kind does not even read the mail, it does not matter how fast or slow the mail system is.

Now where was I? Oh yes. Darndest.

I wonder about my own writing. I wonder how I have kept writing a weekly blog since 2007. (If you look at my table of contents on MediocreMan.com, you will see posts that date back to 2006. Those early posts were printed in a local newspaper that is now defunct. So you cannot blame them for starting it all.) I suppose it comes down to the definition of a writer.

When I think of a writer, I do not think of somebody who has lots of readers. Sure, the person (myself included) might like to have lots of readers. Might aspire to have lots of readers. But readers to do not define a writer. Writing defines a writer. If a person is writing every day (or nearly every day), that person is a writer. Period. It does not matter who follows the blog or who reads the books. All that matters is that the person writes. And publishes. (I think these days that a writer must put something out there for the world to see to be considered a writer.)

I forgot what I was talking about. Ah yes. Kids say the darndest things. No wait. I say the darndest things. I am so weird. All you need to do is read this blog post again and you will see.

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Do Not Disturb the Android · 18 February 2023

If you are having trouble with your phone, it may not want to be disturbed.

I have just entered the 21st century and I have found it to be exciting. Imagine. Listening to books in my car. Books that I checked out from the library. Books that I checked out from the library that are stored on my phone! This century is amazing!

I know. It is strange thinking about entering the century when the century is already two decades old. One fifth of the way through. Crazy. But still, that is the way of technology. The thing is that I am not the only one who recently got a smart phone (okay, maybe five years or so ago) or a car that will connect to that phone.

The reason I know I am not the last person to get a smart phone is because of the problem I recently had.

I was going to work one day when my audio book would not play. I had connected my phone to my car with my USB cable just as I have every day since I got the car. I was excited to listen to Dallas Willard read his book to me. After all, it had been a week since I had really driven anywhere. So I was excited to get back to my audio book. Imagine my disappointment when nothing played.

Well, not being one to sit there in my driveway trying to figure things out when I had somewhere to go, I just drove. Sure, I sat there for a couple seconds trying to figure it out. I even probably had a couple times trying to figure things out while my eyes were on the road. But you just cannot troubleshoot audio problems when you are driving. At least not safely. So I just listened to music on the radio.

Of course, I restarted my phone the next time I got in the car. That did not work. Even sitting in my driveway a while later did not help me fix my problems. Even though I scoured the internet trying to find the answer. I looked for a couple days. (I was not in my car in the driveway the whole time.)

Turns out that I was searching for the wrong thing. I should have looked for Android Auto settings. But first things first.

One of the most important things about learning these days is figuring out what to search for. I looked high and low trying to find out why Android Auto was not working. Then, I looked higher and lower trying to find out why Android Auto was working but without audio. Finally, I figured out that my problem was not Android Auto at all. Then all I had to do was a quick search to find out why my Android did not want to be disturbed.

If you have an Android phone, you may or may not know that when you cannot change the volume, you are in Do Not Disturb mode. Neither you nor your phone want to be disturbed. Which sounds a bit disturbing. Apparently, I had turned on Do Not Disturb. And it had stayed on for several days. Until I finally figured it out and turned it off. Which is apparently the default mode. Do Not Disturb the Android means that nobody can disturb it until you tell it to let people disturb it.

That was a relief. I plugged in my phone and lo and behold my ears were blasted with radio music coming from my phone. I had turned up the car speakers thinking that could be a problem. Imagine that. At any rate. My whole problem had been that my phone did not want to be disturbed.

Okay. Not my whole problem.

The other problem was that my phone had somehow decided that it should go into Do Not Disturb the Android mode when it was plugged into my car and entered driving mode. That must have happened right at the new year because it had not happened before. Ah well. I changed the phone so that Android Auto started when the phone entered driving mode. And I changed the Do Not Disturb the Android mode to ask every time how long it is supposed to stay on when it is turned on manually. It was already following my scheduled Do Not Disturb times. Albeit, not exactly correctly. (But that is a completely different story.)

In the end, it turned out that I just had to figure out what exactly I was looking for on the internet. Then, I had to tell my phone what to do instead of letting it tell me what to do. I just had to remember that my phone is supposed to be my tool instead of the other way around. But when it comes down to it, I just needed to poke around and figure out how to disturb my Android.