Month: March 2012

This is an informational post for anyone searching for information.

Whats happening, at some point in your internet history you used that email address to sign up for either a WordPress.com account OR a Gravatar.com account.  I know you probly don’t remember it, but thats ok.  If you have a custom picture next to your posts normally then you at the very least definetly have a Gravatar account.  Also, if you use Askimet on your blog (regardless of TYPE of blog), you have a Gravatar account, and infact it will have created a 2nd one just for Askimet if you used a different email.  Fun right?

If you do NOT wish to use your WP.com account, and are willing to sacrifice the custom picture here’s the simplest way I’ve found to solve the problem.

First head to www.wordpress.com (yes, even if you swear you didn’t have a wp.com account, see, they’re owned by the same people, and the fact that you only agreed to a TOS for one service apparently doesn’t matter to them), if you have no idea what the password would be (and you probly don’t), use the password retrieval, type in the email and go to the email then send you to get into your account.  THEN, change the email on the account (there are two places for emails, only one counts, yes it sucks) to something that you never use (I have an old hotmail account).  Follow the process to change the email (this will require you to go to that email and click on a link from that email too), then log out.  NOTE: if you get an error that says that email is already in use then WP.com created more than one account for you at some point, yes that was nice of them huh?  Especially since its possible you didn’t actually sign up for it and agree to a TOS….(I had two accounts, one of them a brand new haven’t even confirmed the account via confirmation email yet new, on the email attached to THIS hosting package, which is thus brand new, and has NEVER been attached to wp.com EVER).

Then go to www.gravatar.com, log in if you know the log in, if you don’t use the password retrieval.  Once you’re in the first thing you need to do is add another email address, add the email you want on the account, follow the process with the confirmation emails.  Then make the new email your “primary email”, then delete the original email.  Now log out.

Clear your browsers cookies.

Go back to Gravatar and click on the retrieve password option, yes I know you just did this, trust me….you are going to do it AGAIN.  If you’re lucky it’ll tell you that there is no such account with that email, if you’re not lucky then you have more than one Gravatar account (I turned out to have 3, and I only signed up for one of them).

Note: if you use Askimet and you used that email when you signed up for the API key, you will have to SHUT DOWN Askimet before Gravatar will stop “correcting” your email address.  You can redo Askiment with the “new” email if you really want it.

You WILL have to clear cookies again once you’ve got everything switched, shut down your browser while you’re at it just to be sure.  If you’re still getting the log-in error then either there’s an account you missed or you didn’t clear cookies well enough.

Yes it sucks, and I’m pretty sure that the using a customer’s information to create a new account with their other services without informing the customer much less having the customer agree to a TOS is borderline illegal at best.  Hopefully WP will figure that out before someone sues them….

Apparently this went into effect just recently, and I’m not the only one having issues, infact, several people are saying that even if they allow people to comment with no emails, and the commenter doesn’t put in an email, that people are STILL getting these errors….I can’t believe they were that stupid.  People who signed up for a wordpress.com account ages ago and haven’t used it since aren’t able to comment because “that email is attached to a wordpress account…”  good god, maybe I really need a completely differnt system……..I really dont want to go through that again!

The popup for them that sits on the bottom of the window no matter if I scroll is seriously annoying.  The ads in the side bar are fine, but that popup thing…..seriously.

Why yes, I’m grumpy today, why do you ask?

So first I get annoyed  at wordpress.com, then in my frustration and trying to fix that I forget to watch the clock, then as I’m rushing to work I get stuck behind a motorcycle doing 10UNDER the speed limit….

I’m seriously starting to regret having created that account with WordPress.com.  Its only barely linked with the account that handles this because apparently I couldn’t use that one here, so basically I never use that account.  EXCEPT, anytime I now want to comment on a wordpress.com blog I can’t because I’m NOT FUCKING LOGGED INTO MY WORDPRESS.COM ACCOUNT.  It will NOT let me just enter my email/name/website and comment.  I have to LOG INTO the wordpress.com account FIRST.  And when I hit the back arrow to go back to the comment page it deletes the entire comment I just typed.  I DON’T USE THAT FUCKING ACCOUNT!!!!  AND, there’s no way to delete the wordpress.com account without actually going through wordpress.com support AND according to the support page the support team is so far behind on support issues they’re only accepting new tickets from paid subscribers.

So if you have a wordpress.com blog, and you see in your site stats that a viewer with a NY ip address linked over from here, and appeared to try to comment and didn’t…..yah, it was probly me.

Edit: I may have sorta fixed this by changing the wordpress.com accounts email to an old hotmail address I use for spam.  This is seriously annoying.

Edit again:  Nope, because in order to have the custom picture next to my name I have to log into either the wordpress.com account or the gravatar account FIRST, and this is seriously getting annoying!!!!!!!  I’m logged in here that ought to be good enough dammit.  Off to go contact Gravatar and see if I can at least delete THAT….

The Adaptive Curmudgeon has a post up about pulling into a gas station and watching a truck pull away with no driver….

It reminded me of something that happened to me a while back.  I was pulling into one of these little awkward city parking lots that had been squished into an empty spot, and was greeted with the site of a seemingly driverless car moving forwards and backwards, about a foot at a time, repeatedly.  After watching for a moment I realized that whoever WAS in control of the car was attempting to turn around, everytime the car would change direction the front wheels would turn just a little bit.  After another minute I finally got a glimpse of the face of a tiny elderly old lady, tiny as in, could barely see over the steering wheel.  From what I saw she was barely able to turn her head the 90degrees required to look directly left or right, and was attempting to turn around so she could leave the lot after having pulled out of a parking space.  Since A: she wasn’t making any real progress since she wasn’t able to see and thus was only allowing the car to move the barest amount at a time, and B: I was pretty sure she hadn’t see ME and I didn’t want to get hit, I found a different place to park.  As I walked back to my car a half hour later I noticed that she’d finally gotten herself loose from the parking lot and had left.

In all honesty I’d have prefered a truely driverless car……