technology

My first paying subscriber

I got my first paying subscriber on my Tomversation Substack account and I’m all excited. It’s $5.00 per month. The sad part is that it’s me. I signed up for my own subscription.

I was setting up the payment system and wanted to try it out to be sure it was working right. I don’t plan on charging for any of the stories until I build up a large subscriber base. I’m Substacking along.

Someone had asked me how I made money on my local news publication when I was editor and publisher. It would have been great to have Substack back then, I had thousands of subscribers, but there was no cost for reading. I made money through ads. The first year or so I didn’t take any ads, but people kept asking, so I eventually started running ads and I made quite a good living at it.

I turned down big developers though, even though there was a lot of money in their ads, but I couldn’t be a sellout. I wrote against over-development and greed all the time, there was no way I could make money off of the developments.

I did take ads from smaller building projects if they were in the same footprint as the buildings they were replacing. One time a very large condo building placed ads, we had discussed it for months, and I don’t know what I thought it was, but when the ad came in, it was for this humongous project, right at the entrance of Key Biscayne, it is still under development now and everyone who sees it can’t get over the size.

They were prepared to pay me a lot for a pretty large ad which would have run monthly. It would have been running over three years by this time. There’s a lot of money in development. That’s the problem.

I dream of moving up to the Hudson Valley one day, where nothing is really over-developed and those small little towns along the river look the same as they have for years. I’ll be up there in about a month doing the usual pumpkin and apple picking. So I’ll check out one of the small towns again to see if I feel a connection and feel at home there.

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New York in July

Got to NYC yesterday. The city is packed. I’ll be here for a few weeks. I already got my Mister Softee ice cream, and it wasn’t so hot and humid, so it didn’t melt all over my hand.

This Thursday is July 4th and people have started their holiday this weekend.

It’s gonna be a long week, I have a lot of family plans. We’ll be in The Hamptons, Connecticut, and we’re going to The Who’s Tommy on Broadway this week. Plus a lot more things. I visited that Portal thing in Madison Square, right next to the Flatiron Building – where we can see Dublin, Ireland and they can see us live.

It’s funny how people are so flabbergasted at it and can’t believe they are seeing Dublin live, but can’t we do that on our cell phones and zoom on our computers every day if we want?

I’ll visit the usual museums – MOMA, the MET, etc.

I’ll take you along.

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Techie overcharges

Yesterday I spent hours on the phone with American Express, Door Dash, Venmo and GoDaddy.com. All issues which I guess were modern and technology related.

I paid an electrician last week through Venmo, his choice, and he still had not received the money. I called American Express since they were the ones I used to back up the payment, and they said it was approved and went through. As I was on the AmEx website I saw a $9.99 charge for Door Dash, which I had not used for months.

AmEx told me to contact both Venmo and Door Dash. I did.

Venmo, which is almost impossible to navigate, said the reason the payment was held up was because the electrician did not verify his phone number. I contacted him and to make a long story short, he was incapable of doing this one simple task, so I sent him a check.

Door Dash was charging me $9.99 a month for some sort of service I never signed up for. They easily refunded my AmEx card for the four months that they charged me for and I canceled my Door Dash account, for screwing me over, when I know I never signed up for whatever service it was.

As for GoDaddy, they added some sort of thing to my email accounts called the Quarantine List, which seems to quarantine everything and I have to go in and one by one approve or block emails. It was even blocking my own emails which I sent to myself. I send out my cartoons via one email address for example and it sends me a copy to the same email address. So it was blocking itself!

And I was being charged for this Quarantine service, like the Door Dash service, which I never signed up for. It looks like this is the new thing, sign people up for things they don’t know they are paying for and hope they don’t catch it.

Anyway, I think I solved all the problems. I was able to undo the money I sent through Venmo and I got a full refund from Door Dash. I didn’t hear back from GoDaddy yet, but I did manage to turn off the Quarantine thing.

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Reaching out on my birthday

This week was my birthday. And as usual, I got tons of texts, Facebook messages and a few phone calls, which is all great. People I hadn’t heard from all year, including past neighbors, reach out, who I enjoyed hearing from.

Our condo building text blew up. Our building prez doesn’t like frivolous texts, he feels the text string is for important things, like if the elevator is stuck or something. But they are texts, they aren’t important messages for posterity so who cares if someone sends a frivolous text, aside from the non-stop beeping when all the texts come in.

I don’t think many people save texts, they get rid of them eventually to make room on their phones, but to tell you the truth, I think I have ever text I ever received over the years. I’m a packrat when it comes to that.

But in those birthday texts, on my birthday itself, were requests from charities, car dealerships, restaurants, and other pests. Is this a new thing – on your birthday, all these requests for money and sales come out of the woodwork? I like the Starbucks free drink reminder, I did forget to use it, but at my local Starbucks they know me, so when I show up a week or so later and say I never received my free Starbucks drink, they just give it to me.

But the other texts I don’t remember happening in the past before. I guess when I give to a charity or something, they take my birthday down, so they can hit me up for more money on MY DAY! I blocked those numbers.

I gave a donation recently to a political organization and they kept texting and emailing me, but not on my birthday strangely enough. I guess it’s because I blocked the emails and texts after receiving the requests for more money so many times after my first donation. They didn’t even wait, they started asking for more right away.

Anyway, I just thought it was curious that all those requests for money and notices of sales, etc were coming in via text, which I found intrusive, especially on MY DAY!

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Supermarket phone calls

The last year or so I noticed this strange phenomena in Whole Foods. People are on their phones, usually on Facetime, showing someone what they are buying and asking their advice.

I thought it might be the Amazon delivery service people, I know at times when I used Instacart they would text me, asking me questions about something I had ordered or telling me they needed to substitute something, but I don’t think this is that.

The people shopping for the service usually have carts with lots of brown bags on them and they are shopping for multiple people at once, it seems. They are easy to notice. These people I see on the facetime calls are usually without a shopping cart and usually at the hot bar. They are asking people on the phone what they want to eat or what they should buy to eat. And it’s usually Latin people, because the people talking are speaking in Spanish.

I’ve seen more than once a person go through all the items at the hot bar and salad bar, explaining to the person on the phone what’s what. It almost seems as if they are speaking to another country and showing off what an American supermarket looks like.

It’s annoying and rude and almost as annoying as those jerks with dogs on a leash in the store. Even though they have signs around that say, “No dogs allowed,” people have dogs in the supermarket, around the food.

Publix seems to be strict about the no dogs policy, I never see dogs there anymore and I also don’t see the Instacart people there anymore. They must pick up the food at a different location and not directly from the actual stores. Not too long ago, the aisles were crawling with these Instacart people who would push anyone out of their way to get to what they needed. They were crazy and pushy in their quest for the freshest loaf of bread or whatever.

Some aisles had quite a few at once and it was difficult to shop. I haven’t seen that in a long time, which is good.

I have a friend that says I’m always at the supermarkets, which I am. He says I like it. Which I don’t. I go because I need food and I prefer to go in person rather than use a service. I’m in and out, since I know where things are, so it’s not a chore. I just do my routine and I’m quick.

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Polite texting

I live in a small condo, there are only 14 units. We have a building text string that has almost everyone on it, about 21 or 22 people. It’s annoying at times, but useful.

It gets annoying when someone asks something like, “Did anyone see my Amazon package? I can’t find it.” And you get 10 responses with, “Not me,” “not me,” not me,” and the beeping gets out of hand with every “not me” that comes in. I usually never respond, so of course they think it’s me, since I’m silent.

But the purpose of this post is to talk about one of our young neighbors. He’s 24-years-old or so and all the rest of us are so much older, yet he participates in the building and never shuns us as most people of his age would – they would just ignore the older folks, but he never has and never does. He’s always part of our little community.

His texts to the building always start politely. like last night he posted a text that started with, “Hi Friends,” and then he goes on with his text. He usually starts his texts with “Good morning,” Or “Good evening,” and then he goes on to say what he has to say. Whenever he says, “Good evening,” I always think of that old Alfred Hitchcock Presents tv show. I recently watched a few reruns so it was on my mind.

I find it charming. Especially since most people just start right in with the text. And his generation uses all sorts of abbreviations, like ty, u, lmk or tbh or brb. Yet he doesn’t. He is proper with his texts, almost as if he is writing a letter. I saw an article somewhere on the proper way to text, maybe its a thing and he learned it college or somewhere.

I like it. It has character. I started saying “Hi,” a lot of times before I text now. Maybe because of him, who knows, but many times I’ll text someone something like, “Hi, I’m on my way,” or “Hi, what time are we meeting?” Things like that. It seems a polite and nice way to do it.

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White space

I read The Miami Herald every morning as I’ve always done, but I subscribe to the online edition, rather than have it delivered to the house. I read the e-edition daily.

I recently found out that since I subscribe to the online edition, I can read all of the McClatchy-owned newspapers that way – The State in Charleston, SC; The Olympian (Olympia, WA), The Modesto Bee (Modesto, CA), The Telegraph (Macon, GA) and so many others, which I like to do.

One thing I noticed, with just The State newspaper so far, there might be more, is that they just end a story on the page and leave white space. Now maybe since I’m reading it from another state, ads are there and they just don’t show where I am reading from, but I don’t think so. I saw on the front page of the Sun-Herald, the Biloxi, MS newspaper, this big gap next to the masthead, but inside the paper, there is none of this white space stuff.

***Lots of white space on page 1 of the Sun-Herald in Biloxi, MS***

I’ve been in and around the newspaper industry for so many years, and I’ve never seen this. I used to like this tv show called 800 Words. This guy wrote a column for the newspaper and it had to be exactly 800 words, he would add or subtract words to make it 800 in the column he wrote. The show really has nothing to do with his newspaper column and it’s a dumb name for such a great, but the 800 words concept in a way, it sort of reminds me of this – just end it wherever you want.

***At left is a large white space at the end of a story and at right, is another large white area in The State.***

It’s sort of interesting to see in the paper, where it just goes blank, but it messes with my sensibilities. It’s such valuable space to be wasted, a little panel cartoon could fit there (Tomversation perhaps?). And speaking of the comics, it’s one of those things were every McClatchy newspaper has the same comics page – same comics, same layout, etc. No individuality.

***More white space in The State newspaper.***

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I felt naked; without my phone

I left the house without my phone the other day. Before I left I kept thinking I was forgetting something. I kept feeling my pockets. I had my car keys and fob, I had my money and credit cards. Why was I feeling like something wasn’t there?

Halfway to the store, I realized I didn’t have my phone. That’s a very weird and helpless feeling. To tell you the truth I hardly every answer the phone, so it wasn’t like I was expecting any phone calls. But still. My whole life is on that phone. I felt naked.

Makes you wonder how we did things in the past.

Before cell phones, I ran a whole business by hardly ever being there. I was a printing broker and I worked maybe an hour or two a day. I picked up jobs early and then ran to the office in the morning, then for a bit after that I went to printers to bring the jobs over and was done by 11:00 am or noon. After that I was out all day – mostly at the beach.

People couldn’t reach me. They had to leave a message on my answering machine. And they did. I literally printed school newspapers, all sorts of things for local hospitals, clubs, the American Cancer Society, books for many organizations, etc., all doing it within an hour or two a day.

Years later I had a couple of neighbors who were attorneys. They lived between Miami and New Hampshire. I asked her how they did it, you know, handling clients, going back and forth, which was a silly question coming from me, who worked an hour a day for so many years.

She told me, “Tom, as long as you answer your phone, they don’t care where you are.” This of course, was after we all had cell phones.

And I did that for years, but now, I don’t answer the phone. With my business account, I have a message that tells people to email me if they need something, and that’s been working out fine. As for personal calls, no one really leaves a message. When I see a missed call, I return the call or text them back when I have a chance.

When I got home from the store and checked my phone, there were no calls or emails or texts. The way I like it to be. Silence.

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iPhone SOS

I was one of those people with the dead iphone yesterday. It wasn’t totally dead, I could use the wifi to do things, I just couldn’t make phone calls. Which actually, was a good thing. I don’t like talking on the phone. I prefer texting, which was working.

I woke up early and looked at the phone and I saw some messages regarding my cartoons had popped up on the screen. When people comment, it alerts me. The top comment said something like, “Phone hack.” It was on a cartoon that had nothing to do with a phone or a hack, so I checked the phone again and saw the SOS at the top of the phone where the signal bars should be.

I went to a website and it wouldn’t load and I tried other things and the same thing. I panicked. Was my phone hacked? How was that done? When I went to bed the night before, all was well. If I hadn’t seen that “phone hack” comment, I would not have thought much of the whole situation.

For about an hour I tried everything, I downloaded the latest update and I looked up things on google and You Tube, using my computer. I tried this, I tried that, I tried everything, panicking for an hour.

I’m usually good at fixing electronic or internet problems, but nothing worked.

I then thought that it could be AT&T and not just my phone, but of course I couldn’t call AT&T since the phone was down.

I turned on the 6 am news and there it was – it was a national outage! Phew. Relieved.

I made it through the early morning calmly then, since I knew there was nothing I could do. And before 8 am, the phone was back up to it’s usual self. I suspect many people slept through the whole thing. While many of us went crazy in the dark, needlessly. First world problems.

Someone posted this image on Twitter with the tagline, “AT&T customers this morning.”

I wondered about things like Apple Pay or using the phone’s boarding pass option at the airport. I’ve seen articles that say to download the boarding pass at home or print it out at the airport, rather than just have the app passport, and now that makes sense.

And what about the NY subway, where it’s “tap and pay” with the OMNY system? Will lines back up at the vending machines with people buying metro cards if this ever happens midday?

Also, of course, have cash or credit cards if you are an “only apple pay” user or other tap and pay users, which I suspect many Gen Z users are.

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Many errors, many likes

I was going to put Tomversation toons on hiatus many times and start up Ollie and Jacomo again, which I did earlier this week finally and I hope you’ll check it out. But each time I was going to make the switch, a current Tomversation cartoon would get millions of views (one cartoon had over 2.5 million views just on Instagram) and it would egg me on to keep going. One day cartoons would get a few thousand views and then overnight, one cartoon would get millions. It happened more than once and so I kept putting Ollie and Jacomo off.

This cartoon about the one hour film processing ran last week. It was one of my most popular cartoons. It has been seen by almost 1.5 million people so far on Facebook alone, and shared by thousands and debated and commented no non-stop. You can see the stats below. There are over 1000 comments, and over 3000 shares.

It’s still being shared and commented on today, almost a week later. The odd thing is that I meant to say, “One Day Service,” not “One Hour.”

And originally when it was published, I spelled “whoa” wrong. I was corrected by readers, as they are so quick and gracious to point out one’s mistakes.

Many camera aficionados or people who simply worked in photo places at the time told me that One Hour Service started some time in the early 1980s. But it’s interesting either way how many memories this cartoon has brought people, mistakes and all.

I love when a cartoon hits a nerve in some way – in a good way, that is – jogging good memories is always a good thing.

My Ollie and Jacomo cartoon started Monday, June 12, hope to see you there for something new and different from me. You can see it here.

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