{"id":4558,"date":"2016-08-01T23:57:05","date_gmt":"2016-08-02T04:57:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/?p=4558"},"modified":"2016-08-02T13:23:03","modified_gmt":"2016-08-02T19:23:03","slug":"cleaning-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2016\/08\/cleaning-things.html","title":{"rendered":"Cleaning Things Up a Little"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Cleaning<\/a>

Cleaning up a big mess…<\/p><\/div>\n

I’m doing a little housekeeping in my blog world this week. One of the things I was trying to straighten out turned into a monumental mess last week, for which I apologize.<\/p>\n

I’m trying my hand at a capability called “IFTTT<\/a>.” Which stands for “If This, Then That”…it’s a website where you can connect social media, blogging, mobile apps, and even smart home apparati together and you can have things work together pretty seamlessly. I like the idea of it, but I’m still learning here.<\/p>\n

Last week I had told it to turn Facebook fan page posts into blog posts automatically. I was testing the capability for Dave, who was interested in bringing his own model railroading blog back to life<\/a>: he shares most of his updates on Facebook<\/a>, and to have those photos and updates\u00a0automatically go to his blog would serve as a nice archive.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, I had a script set up to turn blog posts into Facebook fan pages. So guess what happened?<\/p>\n

Yeah, it was bad. I estimate about 320 blog\u00a0and social media posts appeared over the course of an hour in an endless loop, making\u00a0a mess out of peoples’ Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, and even Tumblr accounts.<\/p>\n

It took most of the afternoon to fix it, and I shall now never speak of it again.<\/p>\n

But now I do have a successful Facebook-to-blog and Instagram-to-blog “IFTTT.” The last 3-4 posts have been done that way.<\/p>\n

This evening I was writing up an email offering some blog advice to a friend. While I was telling her about some of the capabilities I’ve used for blogging, I decided to go check up on some of my plugins and widgets.<\/p>\n

What a disaster. Numerous widgets and plugins had updates and some of the updates had disabled some of things you should be seeing in the blog, from commenting to ads to an archive for searching old posts. I’m in the middle of fixing that stuff right now.<\/p>\n

Lately, on the tech front, the family has been trying out some smart home devices. We recently got an Amazon Echo, to which we have attached some lightbulbs<\/a>, one of our weather webcams<\/a>, and a power outlet<\/a>. Since we had our Echo in time for Amazon’s Prime Day, we got some great deals on the lightbulbs and the power outlet. Half price! We are still getting to know what it can and can’t to, and it’s been fun learning about it. I’m hoping we can soon get a WiFi-enabled deadbolt lock for the front door. I think it’ll be great for the boys.<\/p>\n

Stay tuned and I will talk about some of the things we’re doing to make our home a “smart home.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m doing a little housekeeping in my blog world this week. One of the things I was trying to straighten out turned into a monumental mess last week, for which I apologize. I’m trying my hand at a capability called “IFTTT.” Which stands for “If This, Then That”…it’s a website where you can connect social […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1],"tags":[157,450,153,657],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5ycQ0-1bw","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":398,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2009\/09\/more-toilet-talk.html","url_meta":{"origin":4558,"position":0},"title":"More Toilet Talk","date":"23 September 09","format":false,"excerpt":"I haven't done one of these irreverent blogs in a while. This is an accumulation of about 6 months of frustration with automatic flushing toilets when I'm in uniform.So here is the new Air Force \"Airman Battle Uniform\". We call them \"ABUs\" for short.In fact, let's get up close and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"air force\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1290,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2012\/08\/our-new-toy.html","url_meta":{"origin":4558,"position":1},"title":"Our New Toy…","date":"12 August 12","format":false,"excerpt":"This past week was Dave's and my 17th anniversary. Because Dave's birthday is the same week as our anniversary, he took the day off between the two special events and we had a nice day together. We took the kids on one more trip to the Pensacola MESS Hall, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"camera\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/DSC_0082-1024x678.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":127,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2008\/04\/now-thats-what-i-call-clean.html","url_meta":{"origin":4558,"position":2},"title":"Now That’s What I Call CLEAN!","date":"29 April 08","format":false,"excerpt":"Hi!Let me catch my breath...\"Phew!\"The photographer just left -- she was here to take pictures of our \"staged\" house for the MLS listing.So now we can mess up the house again! Just kidding...I will admit that I feel like if I BREATHE too sloppily, the house will get messed up\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"housework\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":80,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2008\/02\/ch-ch-ch-changes.html","url_meta":{"origin":4558,"position":3},"title":"Ch, Ch, Ch, Changes","date":"18 February 08","format":false,"excerpt":"Hi! This weekend Dave and I have been doing some web rearranging. His Model Railroading website is very very popular among others in the hobby, generating over 1000+ hits per week! Up until recently, another PRR Model RR fan had been graciously hosting Dave's website, but recently some changes to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"computer\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1341,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2012\/08\/lacewing-and-slime-mold.html","url_meta":{"origin":4558,"position":4},"title":"Lacewing and Slime Mold","date":"13 August 12","format":false,"excerpt":"What??? Yeah...um...I had a good old time today photographing assorted stuff with the new camera while I was doing lawn work. \u00a0First of all, this lacewing has been sitting all day on our door from the garage into the house. I'm starting to dabble a little with the post-processing that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"bugs\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/LAcewing-1024x678.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1648,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2013\/01\/major-moms-back-to-basics-campaign-getting-control-back.html","url_meta":{"origin":4558,"position":5},"title":"Major Mom’s Back to Basics Campaign: Getting Control Back!","date":"02 January 13","format":false,"excerpt":"It's 2013 and resolve to get my life back under control. Since when do I actually abide by those resolutions? \"Lose 20 pounds.\" \"Save more money.\" \"Eat out less\". \"Bake my own bread.\" \"Run a half marathon every season.\" Have you ever had \"training\" on how to set goals? I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"back to basics\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/hoarder-barbie-dreamhouse-4.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4558"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4558"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4572,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4558\/revisions\/4572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}