Google Plus Contacts Flooding Google Talk

It took me a little while to find this, so I thought it might be helpful to post it on [d]online in case others are having the same issue.

After signing up for Google Plus, I noticed that my Pidgin contact list was getting flooded with contacts. Many of those contacts had a Google Plus email address rather than a normal one. I’d recognized a few names but not all of them. So I went to Google Plus and realized that these were all contacts that were in my Circles – friends of friends, subscription lists, companies under profiles of users, etc.

If I clicked “Block Friend,” “Remove Friend,” and/or “Hide Friend” from Pidgin, Google Talk (on my Android) or Google Talk on my Gmail sidebar, the users either remained in the list or disappeared until the next time I logged in. As you can probably imagine, it’s frustrating to see a wealth of users flooding a buddy list when they’re not, indeed, buddies.

After poking around online, I found a number of other users were dealing with the same issues. I tried a few recommendations and hacks, recommended by some of the more proficient users, but none of them seemed to work. Finally, I landed on a post in a Google Plus Help forum that seemed to do the trick. If you’re experiencing the same issues, try the following: Read more

Random Musings III

Sir, this area is just for waiting

After just having returned from a month researching my family in Italy (we were able to trace our family back to 1200 when previously we couldn’t get past 1860), I noticed the prevalence of the green man over The States’ preference for the red word “Exit”. But I also saw a number of signs that I felt were funny. Here’s one for the “waiting area” of an airport. In a place where iconography is especially important due to so many international speakers around, I initially thought this was a sign for the bathroom.

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