Not just to Jim,
Possible? Yes. Will I? Nope. And I am about to go on a Boyd-esque rant (apologies to Ed), so if you all don't want to hear one, take a pass on this message now.
As you will soon ascertain, this is a sore point with me, and I have held my tongue through several discussions on this issue. Some background may be necessary. First I heard, "no one posts from Frederick County; you really should post." So several of us started to post. Then I was taken to task for not posting fast enough--in real time. So now I post from the field, and it's not done properly.
I am an old fart. I have enough problems typing at any speed with little bitty buttons. And let's not dwell on arthritic thumbs and the need for reading glasses to see what I am typing (which I don't carry in the field as one can tell from all the typos). I email from the field to let people, those who have asked me to post, know that there might be something interesting that they might like to see. The full name of the bird was in the text. Trust me on this, it takes a lot less time to open the message than it does for me to type it. I guess if I had seen GLIB or SEPL in a subject line and didn't know what it meant, I would be sure to open it to find out. I find it hard to believe that if I had spelled out G-L-O-S-S-Y I-B-I-S in the title that most folks wouldn't open the post to find out what's the scoop. But I suppose there must be some difference (unknown to me) where the name is spell out. Yep, old fart here.
On this and other listservs (e.g., Birdchat), people who use codes have been called everything from elitist to lazy. I am neither of these things, nor do I think folks who use codes are elitist or lazy (I'm actually a nice person and most of the time not a curmudgeon). The time it takes for me to type the messages that I sent today (longer than you would think) takes time away from my birding. So you CAN call me selfish with my personal time. And before you ask, yes, I have actually missed a flyby or three while texting sightings.
So, done with the rant, but no more messages from the field from me. I do have a twitter account (I just have to figure out how to use it better; remember--old fart) and will be posting on that from now on if I see something worthwhile, but be forewarned that I will be using codes and possibly even abbreviations. Please don't tweet me back giving me a hard time about that, but you certainly are welcome to ask me what the heck I mean. And when I do post on MDBirding from the comfort of my full-sized keyboard (assuming I don't get kicked off after this), please don't send me anymore emails chastising me for not posting on MDBirding in real time.
Ed, I am not sure this is up to your standards, but I tried.
Everyone, thanks for listening, um, reading.
____________________
Marcia Balestri
Frederick, MD
<mebalestri...>
On May 10, 2013, at 3:49 PM, Jim Wilkinson <lakekoshare...> wrote:
> On Friday, May 10, 2013 2:42:48 PM UTC-4, Marcia Balestri wrote:
>> Glossy Ibis now at Lilypons.
>>
>>
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>>
>> Marcia Balestri
>>
>> Frederick, MD
>
> Not just to Marcia:
> Is it possible to please spell out the bird names on the message line? It took me awhile but I just could not figure out what a glib was...
>
> Jim Wilkinson
> Columbia, MD
>
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