There's a Method to My Madness

Those who know me well know that I'm different . . . unique . . . a little bit crazy . . . just plain mad!  So if you've noticed that there are now two contributors listed for this blog, both named Susan Lea, you may just say to yourself, "That crazy Susan!  She must have hit something twice."

In this case, you would be wrong!  I did that on purpose (mostly) and there's a method to my madness.  A few weeks ago, Google informed me that I had reached my 1 gigabyte limit for photos on my Blogspot blog and invited me to purchase more storage for $2.49 a month.  I'm sorry, but that struck me as just plain CRAZY!  I've been blogging on Blogspot since October 2009 for FREE and now they suddenly want me to start paying for the privilege?  Or to stop uploading photos (which would be INSANE)?

There's an old joke about a guy whose car breaks down outside an insane asylum, and the punchline is the resident of the asylum saying, "Well, I may be crazy, but I'm not stupid!"  Well, I'm not stupid, either!  I figured that if my Blogspot blog was linked to my Gmail account, I would just create a new Gmail account, invite myself to be a contributor on my own blog, and keep on blogging!

Are you feeling crazy yet?

My original Google identity was "Zephyr Hill" and appeared next to this photo as the only Contributor to this blog.

When I set up my second Gmail account, Google gave me the option of doing it with Google+ which did not exist back when I became Zephyr Hill.  Somehow this time I ignored all internet safety rules and used my real name, so that when Zephyr Hill invited me to contribute to my blog, the second contributor appeared as Susan Lea.

Nevertheless, everything worked fine and Susan Lea is now able to upload pictures and make new posts on my blog--as long as I remember to sign myself out of Gmail and back in again with the second Gmail before I start the post.

Whew!  If I wasn't already crazy, it would MAKE me crazy!  But as I said, it's been working fine, and I bet you didn't even notice anything . . .

Until I got too smart for myself and decided to join Google+ with my Zephyr Hill self.

That was when Google informed me that my Zephyr Hill profile would disappear from my blog and my new Google+ profile would appear--with Zephyr cut out of the photo and me blown up like a blurry blimp!  So I picked a new photo . . .

cutting Charis out of the photo to avoid being unfair to Kol.  Sorry, Angel and Brandy, I know it's not fair to have Julie in the photo instead of you, my old faithful girls, but I had a TERRIBLE time finding a photo of myself that I didn't hate!  And anyway, I don't think Julie was happy about this photo, either, so that makes three of you!

After all this messing around on the computer, merging my Zephyr Hill self with my Susan Lea self and even finding a decent photo to use, my blog now shows two contributors with identical names--and we both look like little red squares with + on them!

If you want to see anything else, you'll have to click on the first Susan Lea (the one who used to be Zephyr Hill).  I don't really care about the other Susan Lea--she's just a way to let me upload more photos on my blog.

So what happens when the second Susan reaches her limit on photos?  Oh, please, I'm not ready to go there yet!  I think if I had to have a THIRD identity on Google+, it might just drive me crazy!

And while we're on the subject of madness, I am REALLY,  TRULY,  FURIOUSLY MAD at spammers!  I used Captcha for awhile to avoid them, then capitulated to another blogger's plea NOT to use Captcha in order to make it easier for people to make comments.  And the spam started up again . . . and got worse.  I've been getting up to 5 spams a day on the same (old) post, except that different spammers use different (old) posts.  Lately, Blogger has failed to detect spam comments and has actually published them so I've had to go to the old posts and delete them.  And just today my latest post got spammed . . .  AND.  I.  HAVE.  HAD.  ENOUGH!

So Captcha is coming back.  I'm truly sorry for those of you who like to leave comments on my blog, and I hope you will pleeeeeze continue because it's really encouraging to me!  I love having a conversation with you!  But I cannot sit by and let my blog be over-run by spammers.  And this is the only way I know to fight back.

I would never click on their links, but I wish I could give them a message!  I'd like to say:

"This is what I think of you!"  In case they didn't get it, let's try again:

"This is what I think of you, and this is how I'd like to treat you!"

In case they still didn't get it, I'd like to say what my grandmother used to say when she was REALLY mad: "Oh, go soak your head!"

But I would hate to insult a nice, friendly pig by comparing it to a spammer--so I won't.  But it made me feel better to think about it!  :)