Day: January 12, 2013

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Comment Policy For This Blog

I’ve been meaning to post a comment policy for ages. This post is not a result of any particular comments I’ve received lately but rather a piece of administrative housekeeping.

Thank you to everyone who comments on this blog. It lets me know that I am not posting in a vacuum. I get really excited when I open my email and a ton of comments pour in!

So the official Travels With Miranda stance on comments is:

-I receive all comments by email, regardless of the age of the post. So you do not need to email me to let me know you commented on an older post.

-All comments on this blog are moderated unless you are a previously approved commenter. So if your comment does not show up, please do not recomment. I will get an email with the comment and if it is legitimate, I will approve and reply to it.

-Legitimate comments with a lot of links or no text (such as someone just commenting with an emoticon or with a punctuation mark) may end up in my comment spam folder. I do not get these comments by email. I go through the spam folder every few days and usually catch the odd legitimate comment, but if I don’t, please don’t be insulted. I get hundreds of spam comments every day and out of the thousands each month, I might get one legitimate comment in there.

-I reserve the right to edit comments. For example, sometimes someone will post a comment with typos and then comment to apologize for the typos. I will delete the second comment and fix the first one (I will not correct typos until the commenter points them out). Another example is someone who has an afterthought; I might merge the two comments together. A third example is someone who posts erroneous information and then follows up with the correct info, I will delete the incorrect information.

-I do not heavily moderate comments, unless I feel that they are particularly inflammatory and will not lead any valuable discussion. I will never delete a comment from someone respectfully disagreeing with me or offering a contrary opinion.

-If your troll comment is particularly good, you may warrant a post where I will mention you by name and post your contact information.

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Good That the Mechanic Thinks I’m Crazy?

I got up early this morning to make sure I didn’t miss a potential call from the Ford shop. By 8:00 (they opened at 7:00), I decided that ‘sit and wait’ wasn’t going to work for me, so I called them. The lady who answered wasn’t too helpful, but a mechanic must have overheard and told her to pass him the phone.

He said that the truck started right up normally and he drove it into his shop. What kind of trouble did I have with it?

I think it took five minutes for him to understand me because of our accent differences. I kept on having to repeat myself. It’s not just him; I had issues with the tow driver yesterday, the mall security person, the tourist info person, and I’ve experienced this in Savannah, too. And the accent troubles go both ways as I have a hard time catching more than just the gist of what someone says unless I’m listening very carefully.

Anyway, he said he would look at it today as it is second in line for service, but if it needs part, I may have to wait till Monday.

I’m going to hang out at home a while longer to see if I get any good news. No sense keeping the rental car into tomorrow if I could return it today, although I’m pretty sure that by noon I’ll be into the next day anyway.

The mechanic called me back as I was writing this post to ask me what state Alberta is in and for my zip code. I replied Canada and gave him my postal code slowly, remembering to say ‘zee’ instead of ‘zed’. He got the information in one shot, but said, “Gee whiz!”

I now have to confess how relieved I am my truck is actually where it’s supposed to be. 🙂