Hiding Political Posts on Facebook

Many of my friends on Facebook have lamented the explosion of political posts this year in their news feeds, and wished they could hide them.

I can show you a way to hide political posts on Facebook and it takes less than 5 minutes to set up.

1. Go to socialfixer.com and install the add-on version for your browser (Firefox, Opera, Chrome, etc). Just about everything EXCEPT Internet Explorer is supported!

2. Once you install the social fixer add-on, enter Facebook. You can (and probably should) turn off every single option EXCEPT "filtering".

3. Click on "filtering". Make sure "Filter posts on pages and profiles"is checked.

4. Go down to the Other column and and (here's the hard part) type the following line into the field labeled Matching Text:
/politics|conservative|obama|romney|republican|democrat|election/i

(you must start with a slash and end with a slash and letter i)

Between the slashes you can put any word(s) you want to filter, seperating each with the bar character |....or you could just copy and paste the line above to remove 95% of all political posts! (Be careful if you add a filter for "Ryan" if you have any friends named Ryan, they'll be hidden too!)

5. Next in the Action column, simply click the Move to tab: field and type "Politics" (or "hidden" or something).

6. Save and exit.

7. The next time you enter Facebook you will see two very small tabs at the top of your newsfeed: "Home" and "Politics". "Home" is the default. You'll never see another post from anyone again with the words listed above UNLESS you click the "Politics" tab.

The best part is that your friends' non-political posts will still display as they always do...just their poltical rantings are hidden!

I must confess I did not discover this on my own, someone linked these instructions to me a while back and I've been using it ever since.

Bob and Chuck and Ed and Alice

Just got back from a weekend at the Beau Rivage casino in Biloxi, Mississippi. My son Ed and I had a (rather profitable) Father and Son weekend.

The highlight of the weekend, without a doubt, was having front row mezzanine seats and backstage passes to see Alice Cooper, who was kicking off his summer "No More Mr. Nice Guy" tour that Friday evening.

I'd entered a contest to be the guest of bass player Chuck Garric, and won tickets with a whimsical essay about how I was a terrible father for not having taken my son to see Alice Cooper in his formative years.

I saw Alice in concert way back in 1975, the famous "Welcome to my Nightmare" tour. I was determined to see him this summer, and Biloxi was perfect since it was halfway between my home in Houston and Ed's home in Tampa.

The weather refused to cooperate, though, and we almost didn't make it. We were both supposed to arrive around 4 pm for the 8 pm show...instead we arrived at 7:30 in Gulfport, about 15 minutes away from the casino.

We rented a car from Budget in world-record time, and showed a healthy disregard for Mississippi traffic speed laws as we hightailed it to the casino. We got to the "will call" line for our backstage badges and tickets with literally TWO minutes to spare!

The concert was excellent, it was a great show. I finally got to hear "Elected" live...and after the encores, Alice had the band do a metal version of Lady GaGa's "Born This Way".

Afterwards we were milling around the stage entrance when Chuck Garric walked back on stage (which had 2 dozen roadies tearing  it down incredibly fast) and Chuck called me out by name. Ed and I got to go up on stage and Chuck was a gracious host. He answered a lot of questions, and even asked a few ("What did ya think of the GaGa number honestly?") He gave us bass picks and we took photos.

I'd forgotten how loud those shows can be, and we were sitting directly in front of the bass amplifier rig, so it took a while to recover my hearing!

Crosseyed and Painless

After three weeks with no eyeglasses and blurry double-vision, I was overjoyed when I finally got the call today that my corrective glasses had arrived.

A quick run over to Copperfield Vision ensued.

I put on the glasses....and became very alarmed when my bruised left eyeball started swinging wildly in its socket. Everything, and I do mean EVERYTHING, was doubled. I was equal parts panicked and irritated.

The fitting technician, bless her heart, calmed me down and explained that my eyes were adjusting themselves to the glasses "auto-magically".

Sure enough, after about 10 minutes I could actually see straight for the first time in weeks, and after an hour or so I can actually see everything perfectly.

No more driving my new Dodge Challenger like Mr. Magoo!

How To Pickup Flight Attendants

Flying the red-eye special from Las Vegas to Houston. I opted to spend $69 of my princely $85 in gambling winnings to upgrade to First Class. Sadly, all the window seats were taken so I was sitting on the aisle.

We had an uneventful climb-out of Las Vegas, and the guy in the row ahead of me asks the flight attendant for a blanket.

She opens up the overhead compartment directly across from my seat...

And a carry-on bag comes tumbling out and hits her...HARD...on the shoulder.

She topples backward...I have literally a millisecond to react, and I "catch" her as she falls directly into my lap. My left arm catches her back, my right arm is under her knees...basically she's pinned my arms to the arm rests, I'm cradling her.

Naturally, everyone turns to look.

I say the first thing that comes to mind:
"Please exercise caution when opening the overhead compartments as items may have shifted during takeoff and landing".

Much laughter in First Class.

The mightily embarassed flight attendant, who is being a good sport about this, nuzzles my neck and whispers throatily in my ear "You're such a smartass..."

Why yes, yes I am!

Eye Carumba!

Continuing the further adventures of Bob Jensen, a singularly uncoordinated man....(warning...not for the squeamish)...

I was very happy to find one of those "press on" LED lights you can use to illuminate dark rooms at the local Bed, Bath and Beyond. I had been looking for one for quite a while.  It was on a rack of various items that stretched from the floor to the ceiling, on the very bottom rack just a few inches off the floor. I was so excited to find it I swooped down to grab one....

....and promptly impaled my left eye on an empty rung two levels up.

That's right...I said "impaled".

By some miracle the empty rung hit me on the left corner of my eye, and slid into my eye socket about an inch, partially dislodging my eyeball.

A half-inch to the right and I would have punctured my eyeball and been blinded in one eye.

The little rung thingee got stuck between my eye and the socket. Did I mention it hurt?

...and it got stuck there.

I'm standing, crouched over a display at Bed Bath and Beyond, with a rubber coat metal display hanger stuck in my eye socket.

Not my best day.

I gingerly pulled back and was able to pull myself off the metal display hanger. My eye made this sucking "glorp" sound that sounded ten times worse with the echo inside my head when I finally pulled it off (probably took all of three seconds, but make no mistake, that was possibly the longest three seconds in my life). 

A little blood from a small cut on the corner of my eye and a lot of involuntary tears.

It started swelling up shut so I drove home (thankfully only  a mile) and put an ice pack on it.

No lasting damage but it hurts to look to the left today. I think my eyeball itself is bruised.

(and in all the excitement I never did buy that stupid light!)

Chasing a Buck

I had to pick up my dry cleaning on Saturday morning. I was in a bit of a rush, so I opted for the "drive thru" service area. Pulled up, got my clothes, handed the nice little Asian lady six dollars (a five and a one). She fanned them, as if counting...

...Then an enormous gust of wind blew the one dollar bill out of her hand! I was momentarily speechless...that bill took serious flight and was 75 yards downrange in a matter of seconds.

What happened next was even more impressive...the lady dove out of the window, squeezed herself between my car and the wall of the drycleaners...and took off at a dead run after the bill.

Right into traffic...there's a car wash next door and a steady stream of customers pulling in on a Pollen Season Saturday morning.!! She finally stepped on the bill...I estimate she'd gone over 100 yards...the length of a football field...for a lousy dollar.

I've heard of  business folks "chasing a buck" before, but had never experienced it..literally...first hand!