Penny Sanford Designs

Facebook Forces Me to Change my Account Again!

I'm not going to waste time apologizing for how long since my last blog post. The best thing to do is just jump in and get back to posting because I have a LOT to share with you all!!

Firstly, I'm having to move to a Fan page on Facebook!

I started getting nasty warnings from Facebook about how many friends, contacts or acquaintances had connected to me on my individual page on Facebook. The nasty warnings from Facebook started around 4500 friends, telling me I had to delete some friends before I could add any more.

Sorry, but I have no intention of just throwing away friends, contacts, acquaintances, people interested in my country or farm-related prattle, etc. I had heard that the limit for individual acounts was 5000 friends, but I researched and found articles dated as early as 2008 reporting that Facebook was going to lift that regulation.

Apparently they forgot to do so. Further research uncovered reports from individual users that Facebook had deleted some accounts that approached or reached 5000 friends. I've been through that delete punishment before, remember? I did NOT want to go through that again! I've still not found some people I grew up with with whom I had connected on that first Facebook account.

So the only solution was to set up a Fan page on Facebook.

Well, I don't feel I am anyone who deserves FANS, so I'm calling it my EVERYTHING page because we talk about almost everything on that page.

Supposedly there is no limit to the number of people who can follow me as a friend, acquaintance, contact or whatever on this new EVERYTHING page.

Now some instructions:

1. Look to the right of my  new Everything page title "Penny Sanford Fikes (everything)". Click on the "LIKE" button. You will get my updates on your Home page (as I understand it). 
For now, the Everything page has the picture of pink antique roses in an antique medicine bottle turned lavender in color by years of sunshine.


 

 2. Delete me from my old individual page (to keep Facebook from deleting that account out from under me (again).

The old individual page has the picture of the yellow lemon applique block. There are two ways to delete that page from your friends.

   

    a. Go to that Lemons page. Scroll all the way down and look on the left column. There is a link that says "remove from friends list" or some words to that effect. I'm not in the habit of removing people from my friends list, so I'm not sure of the wording.

    b. Second way to remove me from the old individual account is to go to your friends list, find Penny Sanford Fikes with the lemon applique picture and click on the X on the far right of my name.

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I'm so very sorry for this inconvenience. In advance, I apologize to the early birds who have made the switch already, and they will have to read OVER and OVER and OVER again these instructions and my reminders for people to switch to the new account.

Please be patient with me. Not everyone checks their Facebook account every day (like me) and will not get the first several dozen notices that I HAVE to get my number of friends down on the old individual account before Facebook deletes my account.

The irony is that once we get everyone moved over to my new Everything page, Facebook will probably lift the limit on friends on the individual accounts!  LOL

Three more of my Facebook pages you might like:

Carving by Charles Hamer
Penny Sanford Designs
Westies Hamer Hills Farm

Join me also on:

Twitter
Flickr
YouTube
Friendfeed

Then Gordon has a Facebook account and a group, AskaGeek, on Facebook.

Now, the next blog posts will be about some of the snippets of life I have briefly shared on Facebook, along with photos. We've been in a frenzy of activity this April and May, and I had all with the intention of blogging at the same time more photos and information on those topics here on Typepad!

Lots on which to catch you up about our quirky life on Hamer Hills Farm!

Fun Video for Quilt Shop Client - just released!

Here's a fun video Gordon just finished for a quilt shop client: Patchwork Party 2009, the Fall Edition.

I was just the "talking head" for the project. It was the second video we have done for this client.

In the event they move the link to this preview video, here is a permanent location to view it on the PatchworkParty YouTube channel.

If you need someone to shoot video or take still pictures and turn them into something polished and professional to promote your business, may I recommend my husband Gordon?
gordon (at) pennysanford (dot) com .

Back on Facebook

Thanks for all  your help in attempting to have my Facebook account restored!

Facebook did NOT restore my account, so I had to start from scratch. Please feel free to "friend" me on my new Facebook account: Penny Sanford Fikes.

I think this link will also get you there: http://www.facebook.com/inbox/readmessage.php?t=233157915190&mbox_pos=0#/profile.php?id=1341114725&v=wall&ref=name

I could rant about Facebook and their lack of customer support, but the whole mess is over and I don't want to expend any more energy on it!

Here is my other contact information. If you Twitter, please add me, and I will add you in return.

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pennysanford/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/pennysfikes
YouTube: PennySanfordDesigns

Happy Social Networking!

Tonight, Gordon and I are giggling ourselves silly over some old Harold Lloyd movies on TCM, doing a little social networking in person, between the two of us! LOL!

Progress toward being reinstated on Facebook

I am DEEPLY moved by how many of you are emailing Facebook, asking them to reinstate my account! "Thank you" does not seem strong enough to express how you have moved me emotionally with your response!

We are all so busy with just living Life, that it is a GIFT when you take a moment to send an email of protest for someone and something that does not directly affect you! At least I interpret your gesture as a GIFT!

A number of you have shared with me about similar experiences with Facebook...a friend or a group of even personal experience with having one's account disabled. Thank you for commiserating and sharing your experience with me!

If you are reading this for the first time, my blog post yesterday shared the details.

I do think that FB is growing so fast and has automated so much of their communication that they are essentially constipated. 

Gordon and I continue to send emails every day asking them to reinstate my account. The emails you are sending are helping. I'm hoping the automated system at Facebook will see the words, "Penny Sanford Fikes" enough that the issue will be handed over to a human.

So, if you have another minute to send another email, or if you think your friends would have a moment to send a short email, please send an email to disabled@facebook.com and ask them to reinstate the account of Penny Sanford Fikes.

I hope there will be SOMETHING I can do for you in the future that will mean even half as much as what you are doing to help me be reinstated on Facebook! You can be sure that the minute I hear anything from FB, I will be sure to let you know!

Now, I'm off to make chicken enchalidas and beef enchiladas. I made some beef enchiladas last week, a first for me, and Gordon loved them! That makes me feel like a million bucks for him to enjoy eating something I have just made for the first time!

I'll let you know if I hear anything from Facebook! 

Facebook Disabled My Account!

My Facebook account has been disabled. 24 hours ago. I am so bummed about this!

It seems I have too many friend requests, and those friends have sent me too many Facebook messages. Excuse me?  Is not that the purpose of Facebook to begin with? To make friends and communicate with those friends?

I could go into the nitty gritty details, but quite frankly, I am just too disgusted to write it all down, even on a keyboard. 

As of this time last night, the groups I started were still in place, but I had been removed as administrator. Those groups are just there, without anyone protecting them from spammers.

I had created:

Mississippi Quilters
Alabama Quilters
Louisiana Quilters
Tennessee Quilters
Arkansas Quilters
Florida Quilters
North Carolina Quilters
Kansas Quilters
Oklahoma Quilters
New Mexico Quilters
Texas Quilters
Texas Quilts

I started a few more groups for quilters from an individual state to find each other, but at the moment I can't remember which states for certain. Eventually I was going to make a group for every state that did not already have a Facebook group for quilters of that state.

The reason is that when I started on Facebook, I could not find more than a few other Mississippians who were quilters. From the comments I have received from MANY Facebook quilters, others have felt the same way about finding quilters from their state.

Gordon has helped me research having one's account disabled by Facebook, and there are hundreds of people, maybe thousands, who have had their accounts suspended or disabled. Some have experienced that indignity several times. Most have been reinstated after badgering Facebook with emails.

If you could help me get back on Facebook, I would appreciate it. I need my account, "Penny Sanford Fikes" to be reinstated so that I can keep my friends and keep the groups I started. Please email: disabled@facebook.com and ask them to restore my account.

So many of my blog friends have also connected with me on Facebook. I love to be able to connect via Facebook. It is like seeing people at a grocery store. The greetings may be short in passing, but one feels like one has touched base with more people because it is more interactive (in my opinion) than blogging or Twitter or Flickr.

I think Facebook is making examples out of some of us so that they can set the stage to charge for "power users". Fickr has a pro account, and Typepad has a pro account. Other social networking platforms have paid pro accounts.

I would pay for a pro account from Facebook, but that is not even an option. For now, they are penalizing a few people according to some irrational triggers in their automated system. POOF, six months of friends and photos and conversations and groups are gone as if I had never existed. Many of those friends I don't know how to contact outside of Facebook.

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Gordon has just washed the four Westies, and they are romping and playing around the den-turned-bedroom. It is precious to watch! We don't have to blow dry the Westies...they are Run Dried! LOL

I promise to do better at blogging again! Please forgive me for not being more consistent in writing this month.

If you can help by writing Facebook on my behalf, I will be very, very appreciative.

Does Social Networking make me more sociable?

Remember when it was a big deal just to have a pager number or a cell phone number in addition to one's home or work number? Now this:

Website: www.pennysanford.com
Blog: www.pennysanford.typepad.com
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pennysanford/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/PennySanfordDesigns
Twitter: http://twitter.com/pennysfikes
YouTube: PennySanfordDesigns

We dumped our land lines earlier this year after Mama died. She was the only one who used them any more. Gordon and I conduct more business on our cell phones than on the land lines, and Unc could not hear well enough to talk on the phone if Gordon or I were not around.

Unc was nervous about NOT being able to hear well if we were not around to pick up the phone. That nervousness translated into hearing even less on the land line. If we were around for him to hand the phone to us to interpret what he might not be able to hear, he could hear better.

That probably makes no sense if you've never witnessed the indignity of aging, but I hope you know what I am trying to express.

We just opted to drop the land lines, keep our cell phones charged and with us 24/7, and spend the money saved on some other bills. More and more we are running across folks doing the same.

Anyway, while acquiring my personalized Facebook Internet address (url), I could not help but remember the time when keeping up with someone was just the matter of remembering a pager number.

Mama and Unc used to talk about the many advances in technology in everyday life that they had witnessed. Imagine what Gordon and I will be able to list as technological advances in our lifetime when we hit our 80's!

What is your Social Networking footprint? Does Social Networking make you more sociable?

Get this blog in your email inbox

Gordon has fixed the Subscribe by Email feature to this blog!  YEAH, Gordon!

Apparently, Feedburner was bought by Google, and there was an email (that I totally missed) instructing me what to do to tweak things the Google way. I hope the tweaks will restore the email delivery of this blog to those who are subscribed that way.

If you have changed your email address, or if you want to subscribe to this blog for the first time, just look for the subscription thingy over on the right of the page. Enter your email address into the little space, and click on Subscribe.

I just subscribed to my own blog so that I could share with you what steps are involved.

After I hit the "Subscribe" button, a window popped up, and I had to type in the letters of the squiggly non-word.

Then I got this message: "Please check your inbox for a verification message from “FeedBurner Email Subscriptions”, the service that delivers email subscriptions for Penny Sanford Designs. You will need to click a link listed in this message to activate your subscription."

Hope this helps. Some of you have asked lately about subscribing to this blog via email. Even more of you have asked why you were no longer receiving this blog by email anymore. Now you know why...and how.

PLEASE let us know if you have any problems!

I'm on Local News in Paducah, KY!

This is good for a giggle, so just follow me with this little report...

Could not sleep, so I was catching up on my Twitter Tweets. Imagine my surprise when I read this:

Now Brenda Groelz in Utah is former editor-in-chief of Quiltmaker and current Dir. of Marketing and Education for Handi Quilter

I've been following Brenda on Twitter for...I don't know how long...at least a couple of weeks, I think.

So when she tweeted that she had been interviewed by NBC news about the American Quilters Society 25th Anniversary Quilt Show in Paducah, KY, I tweeted back my congrats and an off-hand comment about being her assistant.

Whodathunkit that little tweet would hit the local WPSD Channel 6 television station?  Well, I have not seen the local news coverage, but I believe Brenda. (See photo 1)

I'm so jealous of myself! There I am on the local television news in Paducah, and I did not even let myself go along to enjoy seeing all the beautiful quilts!

Now before I close this post, I do want to share something new: A Twibe for Quilters.

Yes, only on Twitter would you have a Twibe for Tweeters of like minds. Birds of a feather flock together, you know.

AND as a guide for future big announcements, Tweeple: Twitter is where I Tweet my Twopics. Facebook and this Blog are for elaboration and photos. Gordon tells me I must now learn to BubbleTweet.

There will be a vocabulary pop quiz shortly!

I'll see you around...somewhere... *wink*

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pennysanford/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/people/Penny-Sanford-Fikes/1061463088
Twitter: http://twitter.com/pennysfikes
YouTube: PennySanfordDesigns

Technical Difficulties

Hi Folks.

Hubby here.  Sorry we haven't posted in a few days.  We have been having issues with our internet access.  We are still here but having trouble getting online.  Penny is still recuperating from her fall a month ago and her arm continues to improve.  We apologize that we haven't been able to post but until e get all of the issues worked out, it may be a little while longer.

But don't fret, we will be back asap and Penny will be posting all kinds of pictures from quilts to everyday life here on the farm. 

Take care and we will be back up as soon as we can.

Hubby