Critter Alley

Critter Alley

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Me vs Blogger









On Thursday morning, I sat at the computer, ready to do some catching up. Critter Alley opened with no problem, but then...Surprise! Blogger would not let me log in. I went to my most recent remedy for such problems and clicked on "sign out". Usually Blogger will then politely allow me to properly sign back in. This time, no dice.

After trying the same method about 5 times, I gave up. No doubt some temporary little traffic problem. Surely later in the day things would be fine. I couldn't have been more wrong. Thursday night I went through the same process. Blogger still refused to allow me  in. What's more, Critter Alley seemed to be doing some rather strange things. Comments disappeared, while some odd looking symbols showed up. What the heck did that mean?

Then I started to worry. Had Critter Alley somehow become corrupted? Could it have been hacked? All my attempts at solution failed. Once again I shut down the computer, hoping that Friday (the 13th) would be a better day. It felt so weird not to blog that I had to soothe myself by eating half a DQ ice cream cake.

Bright and early Friday morning I went  back to Critter Alley hoping all would be well. But once again, I couldn't log in. Blogger doesn't provide a way to directly communicate with administrators, so while looking for answers in the "Help" section, I discovered that Blogger had apparently experienced some sort of major meltdown during maintenance work. The entire system had been put in "read only" mode while they tried to correct the problem.

Somewhat relieved that issues weren't unique to me, I shut down the computer and decided to try my luck on Saturday. To kill time, I finished off the rest of the ice cream cake.

On Saturday, signs of hope appeared. Blogger had posted a notice that issues were resolved, posts restored, and everything was back to normal.

Everything except Critter Alley, that is. After another hour of trying to figure things out, I posted my issues in the Blogger Issues forum. And I must say that would be a pretty darn handy place to visit if only you really got any help there. I still haven't heard a word from anyone.

So, amidst renewed sweating and slight hyperventilation, I went back to the drawing board, culling through the Questions and Known Issues Forums. Unfortunately, there were way more questions posted than answers. The hunt continued until much, much later.

Finally, I stumbled across a suggestion to clear my computer's history of cookies and cache. Now that sounded like pretty drastic measures to me. Delete my cookies? Clear my cache? And what in the world is a cache, anyway? Would this impact on my computer's functions? Erase valuable information? Produce the blue screen of death? Not to mention the fact that I hadn't the remotest idea how to perform such a deed.

After even more research, I found a step by step guide. Going into "Tools", I checked the appropriate boxes and pressed (gulp) the "Delete" button. A little blue bar traveled back and forth for a full three minutes.

Then, in a virtual sweat, I went back to Critter Alley. Attempted to log in...

Hooray! It worked! Finally, I'm blogging again and feeling so good about it that I didn't even bother to eat dinner tonight.

H'mmm. Do you suppose there's a 12 step program for bloggers?

16 comments:

NAK and The Residents of The Khottage Now With KhattleDog! said...

Based upon our FB posts, it would be welcomed!

Khyra's Mom

CreekHiker / HollysFolly said...

I definitely had withdrawals during the outage!

Ryker said...

Boy, we hope blogger is good for a while or your gonna blimp out on us and I'm gonna buy DQ stock!


jk

Linda O'Connell said...

Pat,
I was right there with you, munching my worries away. Half a DQ cake? I laughed out loud. My comfort food was brownies, half a pan.

Anonymous said...

BOL! Glad you're feeling better ;)

Waggin at ya,
Roo

Fireblossom said...

Sista, I hear ya. Blogger "help" is no help at all. I got all the skinny from a friend who has facebook and twitter (which I don't).

Don't they understand that I need to blog or else I experience more dire symptoms than are listed on a tv drug ad? Gah! LOL @ me.

Anyway, welcome back!

Frankie Furter and Ernie said...

I found out about that Tools and History thingy a LONG time ago. I do that about every other day!!! Everybuddy SHOULD... butt it is not well known about. I did do a post on the subject last fall.

WOW... DQ Ice Cream Cake therapy. I could really DIG that..

I suffered Blogger Withdrawal also. I guess since we missed it soooooo much we should be thanking them fur fixing it.

Diana Chiew said...

I didn't do anything because I am an idiot with computers! I knew something was wrong with blogger when I read about it on Facebook so I did not do any postings. I couldn't visit some blogs and some comments left on our blog were lost. I thought blogger said they would be restored but I have not seen them yet.

- Diana

Donna McNicol said...

Had a friend who after the outage could write a blog and save it but couldn't publish it. I told him to clear his cache and that seemed to work for him, too.

A sidenote, folks might want to backup their blogs from time to time.

http://2takinga5th.blogspot.com/2011/01/blog-readers-and-saving-yours.html

An English Shepherd said...

It was a bit worrying!

the booker man said...

miss pat,

seriously!! blogger was drivin' me bonkers, too! i could read posties 'n stuff, but when i tried to go to the comment part, blogger would say that the page didn't exist?! and i couldn't manage anythingie on my bloggie...only the home page would load. it was soooo weird!

*woof*
the booker man

Pup Fan said...

I'm so with you... Blogger is pretty frustrating right now! They need a better way for us to communicate with them - it's almost enough to make me switch platforms! I'm pretty sure some of the comments on my posts are missing too...

Lisa Ricard Claro said...

Blogger says everything is fixed, but I don't believe them. I've been having problems for days, and old posts disappeared and still haven't come back. Ah, well. . .

I have no idea what a cache is. LOL You're so brave to start pressing buttons.

Cat and DOG Chat With Caren said...

Ahhhh the "Blogger meltdown" we all had it my friend!! It was torture! A sick part of me sort of liked it though because it gave me a rest.
If you get a chance stop by and read my post from last Friday. It might make you laugh :)

Arran, Arthur and Mum said...

Glad you got it sorted! Always a good idea to clear your cache regularly. :)

Lynn said...

Seems like blogger went out at a perfect time for me because I was not in any mood at all... but had I not been in such a cruddy place, I would have been having blogger withdrawals!