Hmmm. Facebook was down

I know it came as no surprise to those who are active on Facebook, but Facebook was down this morning.

I don't use Facebook except as a means of communicating with Younger Daughter at her overseas duty station, so I didn't really care. Nor do I use Instagram, which I understand also went down.

But a lot of people are questioning the timing.....

Technical help

Dear readers, if anyone is a tech type, I could use some help.

Each week I do a full backup of my computer. This includes a full backup of this blog. On Blogger, the option to back up is found in the "Settings" file.

However for the past couple of months, the blog backup does not complete. It gets about 25 percent finished and then quits. (Sorry for the poor-quality screenshots below.)

The full blog backup should be about 142,000 KB, but as you can see, I can't get beyond 33,755 KB. And yes, it stops at nearly the same point – 33,755 KB – each and every time. (This morning's attempt, for example, stopped at 33,752 KB.)

I've tried backing up dozens of times, and even on different computers, with no luck. I'm sure it's a glitch with Blogger itself, but no amount of internet searching reveals a solution to the issue.

Interestingly, this same thing happened a few years ago. I backed up the blog regularly without a problem, and then one day – boom! – it stopped doing complete backups and did this partial-backup nonsense. A few months later, Blogger (the company) updated its software (which was annoying, because it meant I had to re-learn how to post things), but the one advantage is the backup system worked again.

And now, abruptly, it's back to the same issue. I've searched and searched online for anyone facing a similar issue, and haven't found anything that helps.

Does anyone have any advice for how to overcome this problem so I can complete a backup?

UPDATE: Just to clarify, my computer backup works fine. The thumb drive works fine. But before I do the computer backup, I back up the blog, which is entirely out of my control. I can't exclude any files because Blogger backs everything up in one lump. Nor can I control where Blogger sends the backup file – it always goes to my computer's download file. In short, this is a Blogger issue, and I guess what I was hoping for is someone familiar enough with Blogger to explain why its backup program stalls. I've never had any luck trying to contact Blogger's tech support, since it's too big of a company to pay attention to a small fry like me.

Glitch on Blogger

Just an FYI to my dear readers -- I keep trying to respond to various questions or comments on various posts, and Blogger isn't letting me. It keeps giving me a "Whoops! Something went wrong" message.

So I'm not ignoring you. Truly I'm not.

Backup backup backup backup

After a couple of years of waiting for it to happen, it finally happened: my faithful laptop died.

By the grace of God, we had ordered a replacement laptop back in January for just such an occasion. I even got it "pre-set-up" for what I needed, and then tucked it away.

Yesterday my old laptop froze. And I mean froze. Totally dead in the water. I finally turned it off cold (which I hate doing) and re-booted. After that it worked fine. I should have backed it up at that time, but I didn't. My last backup was April 3.

This morning my laptop worked fine, until once again it froze. Again, totally dead in the water. This time I had unavoidable job commitments and couldn't mess around, so I transitioned to my new laptop immediately. We were able to get the old laptop to run long enough for me to back up my materials (writing, photos, etc.), so nothing was lost.

My dear father is one the one who spent many years hammering into my head "Back up back up back up back up." He is right.

Back up your computer. You will be glad you did.

Technical difficulties, please stand by

Thanks to a series of unfortunate events (this is the last time I ever try to alter a security feature!) on my email account, I am locked out of my email for an entire month.

No, this isn't a result of Big Tech's massive bloodbath purge on half of America. It's simply (cough cough) user error.

To those readers who communicate with me by email, please forgive the silence since I cannot see your emails. I had to hastily set up a temporary email for urgent communications, but hopefully it's just that -- temporary.

It's also awkward because all email addresses of people I normally communicate with (including family members) are all on my email account. That means I'll have to get some roundabout means of getting important email addresses.

Ah, the joys of being a technological idiot...

Technical difficulties with Photobucket

Out of the blue, you'll notice the sidebar photos and ads on my blog are now gone. Instead, we see an ominous sign:

In the past, I believe we paid something like $9.99/year -- that's ten bucks per year -- to Photobucket (an image storage site) to maintain and store the photos used on this blog. But hey, maybe we missed an overdue notice and we owed them their $9.99....?

So Don hopped over to Photobucket and learned it would now cost us $399 per year -- that's FOUR HUNDRED BUCKS PER YEAR -- to store photos.

The amazing thing is this came literally out of the blue. All over the internet, people are furious that their photos have suddenly disappeared and are being held hostage by a company that now demands -- with no prior warning whatever -- a ransom of $400 to restore the photos.

PC Magazine noted:

Embedding images on a website or in a forum post is a very common practice, with those images usually living on one of the many well-known image hosting websites. One such host is Photobucket, but a recent change to its subscription tiers means many millions of images across the Internet are no longer going to load outside of Photobucket's own site.

The key feature of a Photobucket account we're talking about here is called "3rd Party Hosting." It allows you to embed images from Photobucket in another location on the Internet, e.g. in a forum post or on a website.

As Norvic Philatelics discovered, Photobucket changed its terms and conditions and removed the 3rd Party Hosting feature from the lower subscription tiers. If you want to continue using that feature then a Photobucket Plus 500 subscription is required. It costs $39.99 per month or $399 per year.

The worst part of this debacle, according to Ghacks.net, is the fact Photobucket users were apparently given no warning of the change. The subscription features simply changed, and images stopped loading without explanation.

I don't have the slightest problem with companies needing to raise their rates to earn a profit. But as far as a business model designed to create bitter anger among its customers, I don't think they could have done any better.

Fortunately every single photo on my website -- as well as ads and ancillary images -- are stored separately, so I won't lose anything. But I'm furious at Photobucket for pulling this low-handed trick with no warning and no negotiation and no options.

Um, here's a little head's up to the Photobucket folks: You aren't the only image-storage service available. Bloggers and websites have other options.

We'll be looking at other image hosting sites, of course, but I believe I can speak for many others in the Blogosphere when I say this: Even if Photobucket realizes the errors of its ways and restores their services to everyone tomorrow, their image is now trashed. No one will touch them with a ten-foot pole.

So my apologies for the ridiculous look of the blog's front page. Meanwhile, if any tech gurus out there can recommend an image hosting service, I'm all ears.

I hate "technical support"

A few weeks ago, our phone rang in the middle of the night.

We don't have an extension upstairs in our bedroom, so I gradually came awake to hear the shrill sound at the last ring before the answering machine picked up.

"Was that the phone?" I mumbled sleepily to Don.

He agreed it was, and we both lay there awake but not quite coherent. I'm sure you're aware of the heart-clutching fear that accompanies a middle-of-the-night phone call. We have family scattered across three states. Was someone sick or hurt?

Finally Don got up and went downstairs to check the caller's phone number (there was no message on the answering machine). It was an unknown jumble of numbers, so he came back upstairs to bed.

Two hours later, the phone rang again. This jerked us both awake, and this time I went downstairs. Same jumbled phone number.

In the morning, Don back-tracked the phone number and determined it originated from Scotland. Since we have no friends or family in Scotland, we determined it was simply a wrong number.

Well, having gotten our number, the middle-of-the-night calls continued. The next night we were woken up three times. Every night we had at least two and sometimes three calls. It got to the point where we started unplugging our phone at night -- which isn't a good idea since, of course, we have we have family scattered across three states and want people to be able to reach us if something is wrong.

After about a week of this, I was up early one morning (as I usually am) and had already plugged the phone back in -- when it rang, around 4:30 a.m.

By this point I was totally ticked off and ready to do battle.

"Hello," said a man with a very thick Indian accent. "This is Martin with technical support..." The sounds of a massive call center could be heard in the background.

"Where are you calling from?" I snapped. (My grammar isn't the best at 4:30 a.m.)

"This is Martin," he reiterated, confused by my question. "M-A-R-T-I-N. Martin."

Like I needed to be told how to spell "Martin." "Where are you calling from?" I asked again. I repeated my question twice more while he assured me he was Martin from technical support. Finally he gave what sounded like a street name.

"Look," I said, "You are calling Idaho, United States, and it is the middle of the night. Stop calling us! Take us off your calling list!"

"Oh, I'm so sorry, dear," said Martin. Thereafter he kept calling me "Dear," having undoubtedly been told by his supervisors this was an acceptable term to call a middle-aged female customer who was a complete and utter stranger. "Shall I call back at a better time, dear?"

"No! Stop calling us! Take us off your calling list!"

"I can call back again, dear..."

"NO! Stop calling us! Take us off your calling list!" -- and I hung up.

Well, that seemed to work for a few quiet weeks ... until last night.

Once again at 2:30 a.m. the phone rang. We ignored it. It rang again at 3:45 a.m. Again we ignored it. But because it always takes me awhile to fall back asleep after waking up, I subsequently overslept.

This morning I saw the number wasn't from Scotland this time, but instead was a standard ten-digit number with area code 634 -- which, if preliminary research is correct, is "unassigned" in North America.

We get plenty of "technical support" calls during the day, but I don't know how to stop a foreign "technical support" company from calling us in the middle of the night. So for now, the phone calls continue.

Meanwhile, if you're a family member who needs to reach us in the middle of the night, leave a message on the answering machine, because we'll hear it and will call back immediately.

Oops!

So I just clicked "approve" on a reader's comment -- and then couldn't find it on the post. Turns out Blogger had shuffled it into spam.

I went into my blog's spam file and found the reader's comment -- as well as a whole bunch of other comments I had never seen and certainly had no intent of filing as spam.

To anyone who kindly posted a comment at some time in the past and then were puzzled when they never appeared, I beg your pardon. I had no idea Blogger would automatically shuffle comments into spam; I thought all comments, even those which clearly are spam, came through for my approval.

Guess I'll start checking my spam folder more often.

Don't worry, Enola at Paratus Familia is okay!

I've been getting frantic emails all morning inquiring why Enola Gay's blog, Paratus Familia, is down.

Rest assured, it's just technical difficulties. I called Enola and she said the domain expired, but she's working to get it up and running as soon as possible. She said she'll try to get the domain www.paratusfamilia.com, instead of www.paratusfamiliablog.com as it currently is. I told her I'd put up this notice for the time being, letting people know.

Enola sends her thanks to everyone for your concern!

UPDATE: Here's Enola's new url: Paratus Familia

Really really lousy day

You know how on some days, everything goes wrong? Well today has been one of those days. It started with accidentally downloading a malware virus onto my computer and went downhill from there.

So -- rather than wallow in pity and count the number of things that have irked, bothered, harassed, and otherwise contributed to a lousy day -- I'll do three things.

One, I'll count my blessings. Younger Daughter passed her driver's test and is now a licensed driver. Don handed me a piece of chocolate shortly after I mentioned to Older Daughter that if I was the kind of person who liked chocolate, that's what I'd want. These are blessings.

Two, I invite everyone to tell me about their really really lousy days. Nothing like a little sharing of the misery, I always say.

And three, I'm having a glass of wine as soon as I decently can. I can't quite justify it as I write this (2:50 pm).

So...let's hear it. Spill the beans on your lousiest day.

Me expert!

I've had a rough morning.

I woke up late, I didn't get my NaNoWriMo word count in, it's pouring rain, the internet was down, I had a pounding headache, and my computer was glitching. In short, it was one of those mornings.

One by one the issues got resolved. I drank my tea, put aside my NaNoWriMo requirements until later, accepted the rain wasn't going anywhere, took some aspirin, and the internet came back up.

But my computer continued to glitch despite re-starting it and doing a "cc cleaner" (a cleaning program). But then Don came along and waved his magic wand, checked a few settings, cleaned this and scrubbed that, and suddenly my computer was working again like a champ.

I covered him with grateful kisses and told the rest of the household, "I love my hubby! He's such an expert in computers!"

"I'm not an expert," he said. "I'm pretty much a caveman when it comes to understanding computers."

"If you're a caveman, then I'm an amoeba."

He adopted a caveman voice. "Oooh look! Hubby make spark! Hubby an expert!" (Adopting a woman's voice): "Oooh, I love hubby! He make spark! He expert!"

Regardless, I still love my hubby. I still think he's an expert.

And my headache's gone.

Technical difficulties, please stand by......

Hi All. This is a test of the blog. We've had a bit of problems switching domain name servers.

This is only a test

Husband of the boss

_______________________

UPDATE:

Thanks for everyone's concerns! I recently switched the domain name to a different hosting service and there was a glitch during the transfer. Many of you can see this blog post, but ironically I can't (yet) since our ISP hasn't yet cleaned out its cache (which seems to be the secret here -- try cleaning your cache). Obviously I can access my blog through the back-door way (as administrator) but I can't see the front page at the moment.

It's been a crazy day as I try to get everything packed and ready to go for my trip to Portland, so please bear with me if I don't have a chance to return emails.

- Patrice

The blog roll is restored

Don was able to correct the log-in issue between www.rural-revolution.com and plain ol' rural-revolution.com

During that process, the blog roll corrected itself. Phew! However if anyone notices he or she is missing, please let me know.

Many of you kindly offered instructions on how to correct the log-in stuff, for which I thank you profoundly. I'm always humbled and amazed by the depth of knowledge readers are willing to share.

Success!! My blog is back!!

As thousands of you doubtless noticed, my blog has been down for the past week due to technical difficulties. I discussed the nature of the issue here. My dear husband temporarily reinstated the old blog name www.patricelewis.blogspot.com, and for the time being we had to hobble along with that.

But thanks to the intervention of a kindly reader named Tom H., I was actually able to talk in person (gasp!) with a Google tech support person named Laura. I spent an hour on the phone with her in Dublin, Ireland (yes, Google has outsourced its tech support to Ireland, but I was treated to her charming lilting accent throughout). As frustrated as I was with Google, this woman was the soul of patience and expertly guided me through the issues that led to my domain named being suspended. She also did a follow-up phone call this morning to make sure everything was GO.

Once the domain name was reinstated, my husband spent a hairy hour this morning making sure traffic was redirected back to the correct domain name. He also had a phone consultation with the folks at eNom.com (where the blog name is registered) and got a few issues straightened out.

So now -- at last -- it looks like things are finally back to normal!

Well, sort of.

We've found a couple of weird glitches. One glitch is you MUST put the "www" in front of the domain name (i.e., www.rural-revolution.com). If you type in rural-revolution.com without the "www" in front, you'll get that "404 Error" message. We're working to get this resolved.

The second glitch we've noticed is the blog roll has disappeared. A blog roll, as you may know, is a listing of other blogs that share similar reader interests. Blogs that have the most frequent posts automatically get scrolled to the top. For whatever reason, most of the blog roll list is gone -- poof! -- into the ionosphere, so I'm going to have to rebuild this list as bloggers contact me.

If you were on the blog roll and your blog has disappeared -- or if you have a blog you feel would be a match for this blog -- please contact me at patrice@patricelewis.com and I'll either get you reinstated, or confirm your blog would be a good match. (Specifics for what we require in a link exchange are spelled out here.)

I have a few special thanks to make.

Both SurvivalBlog and Paratus Familia were kind enough to put up posts directing traffic to the temporary blog name -- to both these fine bloggers, thank you.

Reader Tom H. intervened with Google on my behalf and truly got the ball rolling. A thousand accolades are hereby being flung in his direction (along with a few complimentary books).

Google rep Laura was so very helpful and patient with me. Laura, I doubt you'll ever see this, but thank you.

To my dear husband for his patience and forbearance while I was literally pulling my hair out in frustration. This is the busy season for our home woodcraft business, and he didn't need a spastic wife just at this particular juncture.

And above all, to you, my dear readers, for your concern and faithfulness and willingness to keep trying to get into the blog. Without you, this blog is nothing.

Sheesh, sounds like I'm giving a speech at the Oscars, doesn't it?

Onward.

Technical dificulties

Oh groan. What a morning it's been.

When I got up this morning, I found I had dozens and dozens of concerned emails in my inbox notifying me that my blog was down and redirecting people to a generic location.

It seems I'm in a dispute with Blogger (run by Google, boo hiss) about the domain name www.rural-revolution.com. We thought we had the domain name registered elsewhere, but in 2010 we were "slammed" by Google and inadvertently transferred the domain to someplace called eNom.com which, if not owned by Google, then has a close association with them. Whatever the circumstances, though, everything continued to work fine.

But for the past month Google has been telling me I need to update my financial information so I can renew the domain name. No problem, I'm happy to do so -- IF I COULD JUST LOG ONTO MY ACCOUNT. But there appears to be a hiccup on Google, and every time I log in using my email and password, I get an "Invalid Request" notice.

I've been trying to resolve this issue literally for weeks. I've gone round and round and round their troubleshooting options but keep coming up against the same brick wall. I've updated my financial info with Google Wallet, but there is no -- and I mean NO -- customer support for Google itself. Every troubleshooting avenue I've attempted, both online and via phone, shuts me down and can't help.

I've been carefully backing up my blog weekly for just such an occasion (I don't want to experience what happened to poor Granny Miller's blog). Nonetheless, I want to get my blog back up and running normally.

So for the time being, please bookmark this location:

www.patricelewis.blogspot.com

This was the original domain name, and it still works.

I'm also going to be looking into the possibility of transferring my blog to Wordpress or another host site. I am sick to death of Google's behemoth attitude.

Thanks for all your emails of concern!

Success! And thank you!

Thank you, all my wonderful nerdie techie friends! As you can see, I've managed to stretch the header photo to fit the entire width!

UPDATE: For those who are still seeing the old layout, trying emptying your cache and then reloading the page. That will probably help.

For those wondering how it's done, here's what I did (this applies to Blogger templates only):

- In the upper right-hand corner of your blog, click on Design.

- If you haven't already done it, click on the little "gear" symbol in the upper right-hand corner, and then click on Old Blogger Interface

- (Then click on "Design" again if necessary)

- Click on Template Designer. Give your computer a moment or two until the Live on Blog loads your blog template.

- On the upper left side, click on Advanced. A scroll bar will show up.

- Scroll to the bottom of the scroll bar where it says "ADD CSS." Click on Add CSS.

- THIS IS IMPORTANT: Copy and paste the current HTML coding!!!! You want to be able to go back to the old system if this doesn't work.



- Once your original coding is copy and pasted somewhere safe, copy and paste this:

#header-inner {
height:600px;
width: 100% !important;
min-height: 0px !important;
background-size: 100%;
margin: 0px;
}

...and replace the old coding with this new coding.

- In the upper right-hand corner is an orange button saying Apply to Blog. -- click on this.

Hopefully that will do it for you! I learned I could tweak the height (I chose 600 px for my blog) and it will adjust things around. You can CAREFULLY play around a bit and see what works for your blog.

Once again, my heart-felt thanks to all you nerds out there. What would this world be without your dedicated nerdiness?

Help with Blogger!

Okay all you tech nerds out there, I need your help.

I have never -- never! -- been able to get a header photo to "fit" correctly on my blog. As you can see, I just posted a new photo, same size as all the other photos I've posted, and it looks worse than ever. Nothing I do will make it "stretch" over the entire header block. And yes, I always click "stretch to fit" when downloading a photo, and it never does.

I've tried resizing any number of ways and nothing works. I've been haunting Blogger help sites and haven't found an answer yet. So if anyone knows how I can get header photos to fit properly, by all means let me know!

Technical difficulties -- %$#@&% Blogger....

So it looks like Blogger.com has transitioned to an All New (cough) IMPROVED format, grrrr. Needless to say, it isn't worth squat.

This is all the behind-the-scenes stuff, and one of the things it ISN'T allowing me to do is post comments. So if your comment doesn't get posted for awhile, please forgive me and feel free to heap all the curses and blame on Blogger, as I've been doing all morning...

More info on difficulties posting

I know some readers are still having problems posting comments. I just received the following email from a reader which might shed light on the situation:

Just wanted you to know that I was finally able to leave a comment on your blog. My wife works with a gal whose husband works on computers for a living. He couldn't leave a message on your blog, either, using Internet Explorer, so he tried with another browser called "Firefox" and that worked! We added the Firefox browser to our system and that did the trick. If you get anymore emails from folks having trouble leaving comments on your blog, you might ask them if they have Internet Explorer for their browser. For some reason, it doesn't work with your blog anymore, at least not for us!

Once more I'll state that I'm an absolute doofus when it comes to computer issues, but hopefully this reader's experience might be helpful to others.

Technical difficulties? Apparently so.....

Twice in the last 24 hours, I've had readers email me privately asking if I've banned them from posting comments, because every time they try to post, nothing comes through.

Rest assured I haven't banned anyone! The only comments I delete (and this is rare) are those that are too snarky, vicious, or profanity-filled to be permitted. (And once in a blue moon an ad for Viagra comes through. Zip, gone!)

But I figure if two people are having troubles posting comments, there may be more.

Unfortunately I'm not a computer-savvy person, so I can't address the technical side of the difficulties. However in the past when this kind of issue has arisen, it turned out to be someone had recently reset or changed some of the parameters on their browser.

Rest assured I haven't changed anything on my end, and I most certainly haven't banished anyone from posting! I'm so sorry for those who are experiencing problems and hope whatever is blocking them gets resolved shortly.