Christopher Merle

Que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be, but first I need more coffee.

I Am Still Here

As a web developer, I probably ought to update my site more often. At least to let people know I still exit and still in business. My bad. This past year has been very busy and full of ups and downs, family, health, travel, work with existing clients.

The featured image of this post is of my parents, Darryl and Linda, whitewater rafting. I wish I could remember when and where it took place, but based on their age in the picture and guessing the most likely place it happened in the late 1980’s and in Colorado. My father is wearing the White Sox baseball cap in the upper right and my mother is to his left. Note—He was a diehard Cubs fan, so I’m guessing if he’d lost the cap, he wouldn’t have felt so put out if it had been a Cubs hat. He did like the Sox a little too. I lost both my parents within the last two years. I lost my mother Linda in September of 2022 and my father Darryl in June of 2024. They had been married for 59 years. My mom made it to 81 and my dad almost made it to 83. So I am blessed that I had them for as long as I did in my life.

I won’t promised to update this more often or say how frequently. My last major project was to import all of my LiveJournal entries. I’d been cleaning up or removing bad links. Whether or not this hurts my employment prospects,  I don’t know and to be honest, I don’t care. We are all more online and if you can dig back far enough you’ll discover I’ve changed my views over time like any grown up would. It remains to be seen if I’ll stay on the WordPress platform, but it’s a good one and has a large community and that’s what most of my clients use. If that changes, I’ll let everyone know, but I’ll keep supporting my existing clients using WordPress for as long as they’d like to use me.

2023 so far

Overall things are going well, but I haven’t posted in a while. I’m still doing freelance web development but primarily supporting people using WordPress. So I will make a quick post. I have a health issue that I’m dealing with I may post more details later, but the rest of my health is good. I’ve been losing weight, walking more, and eating a lot better. Cutting out sweets, eating more veggies, walking more, and skipping lunches seem to be doing the trick. I can do pushups once again. I’d been doing wall pushups, but I knew once I lost the weight I’d be able to proper pushups again. Once I reach my target weight, I’ll start adding lunch in again. I won’t be eating as much sugar as I have in the past, but I’ll be able to treat myself once in a while to a nice desert.

I’m on Mastodon now. I gave up on Twitter after the new owner took over.  You can follow me here: https://mstdn.social/@clmerle

Can Has Broken Links

One of the plugins I install on client’s website is a broken link checker. I realized that I probably ought to do the same form my own site. The plugin tells me I have 149 broken links. So, sorry that I didn’t do that before now, and I’ll get around to fixing them in the not too distant future.

Verified

So the other day I shared on Facebook a few of these hilarious fake tweets by fake verified accounts using the new blue check verified service offered by Twitter. It was an utter disaster. Several companies stocks were tanked by these tweets.  Facebook was not amused and decided that I was sharing false information. I was not I was providing examples of false information and labeled it as such. I got a 24 hour ban.

 

WARNING! All of these tweets in this gallery contain false information and are posted by imposter accounts that Twitter verified because they paid the $8 price tag. Some of them are funnier than others.

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1001 Days

I’ve used Duolingo for 1001 days. I started my Duolingo odyssey to brush up on my high school German and college Russian in prep for a Baltic cruise that would start in Germany and stop in St Petersburg. Then the pandemic happened and our cruise was canceled.

I kept going. I eventually added Spanish, Ukrainian, and Scottish Gaelic. I had some Spanish in high school. It’s a useful language to know in Tucson. I started Ukrainian because of Russia’s invasion and I wanted to see how closely related and mutually intelligible they were. And to show my support for Ukraine. I learned Scottish Gaelic on my own 18 years ago and started a self-studies group in Tulsa. I decided to brush up on it too and see how good Duolingo is for it.

I chose 1001 days as a milestone as a nod to 1001 Arabian Nights. I’m not fluent in any of the languages and I’m not ready to converse in any of them, but my German comprehension is much better.

Of course Duolingo celebrates 1000 days as a milestone.

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