Been having some problems with publishing to my blog...I write posts and try to publish them...and get the dreaded "Publishing taking longer than expected...blah blah blah." Eventually, hours later, the posts will arrive on the blog. There is no such thing as a "spontaneous post" to my blog when this garbage is going on. And if I decide to edit or add something, that will take hours to appear on the blog. Very, very annoying. Been going on for a few weeks. I called my host service -- nothing useful. But, I think I found some actual help on resolving the issue from one of the kind folks in the Google/Blogger Help Group. Doesn't happen very often, but once in a while, someone answers...and actually knows what s/he is talking about when it comes to the question being asked. Which is refreshing -- as compared to the responses where the person just generically refers you to Blogger Help -- as if you haven't read all of those articles already. So thanks, nitecruzr. It seems as though your writings on FTP/Blogger problems may have fixed my issue. This post is a test of that...

In the meantime, I felt I needed some virtual flowers to pick up my spirits. Because the Trudy-ChooChoo-Cat has been trying our patience something awful. We had a horrible time with trying to medicate her today -- getting clawed, bleeding, foaming at the mouth, wasting pills, getting pissed with her, getting pissed with each other while getting pissed at her...you get the idea. She is impossible! But, by 11PM?+/- I found a method of wrapping her in the towel that works much better for keeping her "blades of death" out of our skin. Doesn't help us with the drooling and foaming, the biting and the Exorcist-head-turning theatrics that she puts on to keep us from easily putting anything in her mouth -- BUT, it does give us a better chance with those challenges when we are not screaming in pain from being slashed by her. So that's good. It is a good thing she is a wonderful cat in every other way because this shit is for the birds. Seriously.

Ok then, enjoy my virtual flowers! Aren't they pretty? They make me feel better (even if they are just imaginary!)



UPDATE: Yes, the test seems to show that the fixes worked! YAY! Thanks, nitecruzr, again!

Labels: annoying, blogging, cats, ChooChoo, computers, friends, pets, reading, testing, web

For those of you who enjoy XML FEEDS:
I only recently discovered that my "Comments" feeds for Atom and RSS were not working correctly --- they were directed to the regular Post feed, instead of the Comments. This has been rectified! Now you can see what I say in my posts as well as the nasty comments that people leave for me...LOL just kidding :) You are all very nice people!

Wanna Search TBB??
I have added a dandy little Google-powered "Search" field so that you all can search the blog with keywords. As Google continues to crawl the blog pages, this search will get better at finding stuff in the blog (takes time.)

For those of you who enjoy searching by using an INDEX:
I have added a TBB SITE MAP that will provide all my posts in Monthly Archives, Daily Archives with Post Titles and Archives Sorted by Labels....I will try to update this monthly???

Wowsa. And of course, all of these changes have been implemented over at the Daily Lizzard as well. Enjoy! :)

Labels: blogs, code, computers, experiments, learning, lizzard, templates, web

The symbol of my day's torture...my entire St. Patrick's Day was spent:

a) installing this year's subscription upgrades for my computer protection softwares
b) getting error messages on certain liveUpdate installation processes
c) not getting the apparent fix installations to work
d) waiting for a chat rep to join me online to try to fix my problems
e) getting links for other fixes to run that didn't work
f) being told to download the Norton Uninstall Tool and uninstall all Norton softwares from my computer and start fresh
g) waiting over an hour(?) for all of the Norton applications and GoBack histories to be removed
h) reinstalling all of the softwares and encountering new, different error messages
i) resolving most of the error messages, some, not resolving...
j) waiting for a chat rep to join me, again, for a long time, to discuss why my firewall subscription still says that I have only 16 days left?
k) re-entering my new product key in a different way so that it could be recognized this time
l) thinking I was done with all installations and issues and was finally ready to re-run my virus and spyware full system scan so that I could have everything up to date...only to discover 90,000 files into the scan that I had more issues to resolve!
m) waiting for a chat rep to join me, again, for a shorter time, to let her know that she needed to merge my leftover subscription days with my renewed year subscriptions so that I would get the full 396 days that I have paid for...
n) following all of the directions to get the server to update my new balance to my computer
o) finally resuming my virus and spyware full system scan so that I can rest easy...

That was my ENTIRE fucking day in a nutshell. I need a drink, I need a lot of drinks, but alas, I will not drink them --- because I would be drinking alone into the night, like an alcoholic, whilst the boyfriend sleeps. I'd rather have tea and Raspberry Newtons, thank you very much.

While I am bitching, let me mention another, unrelated annoyance (a spelling pet-peeve)...I recently read a comment on another blog where the commenter said that one of his/her career ambitions was [is] to become a writer. This same person, within the single comment posting, misspelled the word "definitely" as "definately" not once, but twice! It took a great deal of self-restraint not to leave my own comment suggesting that the person learn to spell first if s/he wanted to have a prayer of becoming a professional writer. Good God! I behaved myself though --- and saved it for my own blog --- where it is more appropriate for me to voice my "issues" with the mangling of the English language.

/end rant

Labels: annoying, computers, holidays, pet peeves, software