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Wednesday, May 12, 2021

Trust, Safety & Buckets

I thought I would let the imaginary blog readers and website visitors out there know that I've recently updated both this blog and scottcooley.com with improved security, because I care about your safety.  Hopefully this will entice you to visit and read more often, and maybe even recommend reading the words I type and sing to some of your friends.  I've always had imaginary friends, and I'd like to have more.  

One way I've set myself up to attract more of you is to make you feel safe and confident with your reading and listening during your visitations.  I've done this by implementing the HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure), which you can identify by these letters at the beginning of the web address displayed at the top of your web browser.  Even if you don't type it to navigate here, it redirects automatically, so for example, if you only remember the domain because you know my name, and you type blog.scottcooley.com, or just scottcooley.com, it will load the content, but the actual URL will be https://blog.scottcooley.com or https://www.scottcooley.com.  

This communications protocol encrypts exchanged data between your client browser and my server via third-party trust certificates and prevents eavesdropping and tampering while keeping your browsing private.  The technical details can be intimidating, but rest assured, its safer for you and me.  It can also improve the website ranking, which could result in even more friends, imaginary or real.  

If you couldn't already tell, I like to joke that I write all these songs and web content and blog posts that no one ever becomes aware of, and I question both the point of it all and my own sanity at times, but I do it anyway because I like it, and I maintain sincere hope for a larger audience.  For those of you who are reading this long after I type it, I'm glad you discovered it.  It is out of a desire for people like you to have a good experience when interacting with and consuming content I've created that I have implemented these measures to build your trust to come back for more.  

It may be of interest the odd coincidence that my new job title is Trust and Safety Content Analyst at LinkedIn, a professional social network that I work to keep professional and safe for its users in my day job.  On these pages I've also enjoyed in the past joking about the fact that I've wisely not given up my day job in pursuit of a songwriting career, and that is still the case.  After an extended period of unemployment during the pandemic, I feel fortunate to have a paycheck again, particularly due to the fact that my streaming royalties for the music I've released were a drop in the bucket to sustain me during a challenging time.  

Less than that even, since the fractions of a penny don't come close to adding up to even one single penny to drop into said bucket.  On LinkedIn every day I read of people who are much worse off than me, who are struggling to find work, and who have resorted to asking for financial support to tide them over from the kindness of strangers.  I understand hitting that type of low point, having similarly made public a method to accept donations in this recent post (https://blog.scottcooley.com/2021/01/asking-for-support-backwards-proposition.html  -  note the https at the beginning of that URL), and although I did not receive any response -probably due to the fact that no one became aware of it due to a lack of actual readers and/or fans- I'm happy to report things have improved.  

Yes, as a writer of many sad songs, and as someone who has had my share of hard times, I can relate to the pain in the world right now.  It's the stuff of great songs, it's healthy to talk about your troubles I think, and misery loves company.  Sometimes hearing about the difficulties of others can make you feel better about your own, as is the case with the reason people love blues music and sad country songs.  

And this reminds me of a great way to both sum and wrap up this post - two versions of the great song "My Bucket's Got a Hole in It" one by Hank Williams, the other by Jimmy Page & Robert Plant:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=045__ojHb_g


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYj2J6RMivk



Enjoy, and hope you'll be back for more words & music.  If not, that's cool too, hope your life improves too as we get back to easier living in the year ahead.