Valentine's Day in Two Weeks

I am reposting the last post I had at the old blog, from one week ago, Tuesday January 24, 2006.
That afternoon is when I was locked out, and all of my attempts to contact Blogger Help have fallen on deaf ears. I'm a never-say-die kind of gal though, so I start anew here. I have been contacting everyone on my blogroll and frequent commenters, to notify them of the new digs.

I deeply appreciate all of the support and good wishes I have received from so many of you.

Valentine’s Day is TWO WEEKS from TODAY!
(All the male readers experience temporary blindness - LOL)

I’ve decorated the ol’ blog - added a countdown (I will send the code to anyone who wants it) changed the banner and colors a bit (still tweaking the colors some, it’s hard to find colors that look good and provide enough contrast to show up well.)

WIN FREE CANDY!

Send in your best Valentine joke, and I will compile them into a post each Friday for a contest, and ask readers to vote for their favorite.

You can post your jokes in the comments section, or e-mail them to me here:

Valentine’s Day is Tuesday February 14, so I will announce the winner on Friday, February 17.
I will send the winner a free box of Russell Stover Chocolates!

Here’s one to get you started:

A young woman was taking an afternoon nap.

After she woke up, she told her husband, "I just dreamed that you gave me a pearl necklace for Valentine's Day. What do you think it means?"

"You'll know tonight." he said.

That evening, the man came home with a small package and gave it to his wife.

Delighted, she opened it--only to find a book entitled "The meaning of dreams".

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

New Blog Update:

I've received a couple of entries for the joke contest.

Please send in your Valentine's jokes and we'll let the readers pick their favorite.

Thanks!

Valentine’s Day, jokes, contest, free, candy

Blog Backup

You should back up the posts from your blog (all of your computer documents really).

At least my old blog it is still there, just frozen in time, never to be updated again. Sometimes they get hosed and all the files vanish. No one knows why - LOL

These things happen.

Worse things can happen, like when your hard drive dies. It is not a question of "if" because none of them last forever. Are you prepared? Oh gawd, I’m having flashbacks to the days I sold
cemetery lots. . .that was our big pitch. . ."Are you prepared?"

Well of course no one is, because nobody likes to think about dying. And they were not interested in hearing my spiel about it. - LOL

Same with hard drives. And servers. So if you don’t put that information somewhere else, it’s gone for good when the drive dies. (Granted, there are companies that specialize in recovering data, but they cost thousands of dollars)

So BACK UP! LOL

I write my blog posts as Word documents first, so I can check the spelling. Then I upload copies of my documents to Yahoo. If you’ve written yours directly to your blog, you should go in to your archives and save them to your computer as Word docs or some kind of text file.

Then save them.

Burn them to a CD.

~OR~

Get removable storage, like a keychain flash drive.
(DISCLAIMER: Yes, I am an affiliate but I was a customer first, and still am. We’ve purchased products from Computer Geeks for years, and gotten great deals - never gotten a bad part.)

~OR~

Upload them to a free online storage space such as “My Briefcase” at “My Yahoo.” It is somewhat time consuming and tedious, but it’s free - LOL

~OR~
Pretend you’re a medieval monk. Buy a notebook and start transcribing manually. LOL

It doesn’t matter what method you use. Put “Back up computer files” into a search engine and figure out what method works best for you. The method isn’t what’s important.

The doing it is.

Chinese New Year

January 29, 2006 is the first day of the Chinese New Year.

The Year 2006 (Red Dog) is the 4703rd Chinese year.

Chinese New Year starts with the New Moon on the first day of the new year and ends on the full moon 15 days later.

The 15th day of the new year is called the Lantern Festival, which is celebrated at night with lantern displays and children carrying lanterns in a parade.

The Chinese calendar is based on a combination of lunar and solar movements.

The lunar cycle is about 29.5 days. In order to "catch up" with the solar calendar the Chinese insert an extra month once every few years (seven years out of a 19-yearcycle).

This is the same as adding an extra day on leap year.

This is why, according to the solar calendar, the Chinese New Year falls on a different date each year.

As we find our heroine...

(Cue emotional organ music of 1930’s melodramas. Cue deep, manly voice of announcer:)

Welcome back folks, to another episode of ‘Marti’s Miseries’ our ongoing story of a plucky little blog-gal who faces adversity and peril.

As you may recall, on last week’s episode, our brave woman of admirable exploits had been named to the Blog Herald 100 Blogs List.

Basking in glory was not in the cards for our glib gladiator, as she soon found herself in mortal peril, saturated in gasoline!

Despite this harrowing event, she emerged with the grit and determination we’ve all come to know and love.
(Cue tug-at-the-heartstrings, pulling-for-the-hero musical interlude)


Her generosity of spirit and willingness to go to any length for notoriety gave rise to her episode of Tuesday, January 24, 2006, in which she offered a FREE box of chocolates to the winner of a joke contest!
(Cue crowd sounds - murmuring approval)

BUT! (Cue menacing escapade music)

This was the last official word from our champion of chatter!

We’ve received word from some fellow operatives of her temporary hideout, where she is taking sanctuary from the Wicked BloggerBeast!

Stay tuned for more Tales of Turmoil as our heroine struggles to regain her readers and climb the Link Ladder to fame and glory, fighting for truth, justice and the American Way!


(Cue then sign off with triumphant victory music)

Previous Blog Is Hosed

If this has been a test from the Almighty, I think I passed.

I didn't firebomb the offices of Blogger Support. LOL

Oh wait, I can't- they obviously don't HAVE offices, they just have a robot autoresponder somewhere that sends out a letter that says, "Thanks for writing. We're free, what'd you expect? You've got a problem? You're screwed."


If you used to read my blog here, and you know how to get Blogger to give me access to my old blog, or to publish to my domain using FTP, please write me.

I don't know how.

I have changed the settings a thousand times and nothing works.

Phooey.

So what if all of the directory listings, bookmarks, blogrolls and links that I've built up over the last year are hosed now?




I've had to start over plenty of times in my life, this damned thing isn't going to beat me.

About This Blog

I have been a writer since pre-school.

Our family has been on the internet for almost a decade, going clear back to the early days off USENET bulletin boards. I watched Husband and Son foraging excitedly through this new cyber-jungle, and followed along on their safari.

I learned that I could find people who had similar interests. I learned that I could post messages that other people responded to. I found a place to share my crazy ideas and express myself through my humorous writing.

It made me happy.

Eldest Son started blogging and sent me his link. I was fascinated, and played around with several private blogs, learning the ropes.

Then I officially started Digital Doorway: Enter the Laughter in January 2005.

No one came.

It made me sad.

But I am one determined gal, and I learned about traffic exchanges, started commenting at other blogs, and got myself listed in directories.

Readers came, and life was good.

Then disaster struck.

On Tuesday, January 24, 2006, I put up an early morning post with the subject that it was three weeks until Valentine’s Day. My template had small pictures of items I had listed at E-Bay down the sidebar, to direct people to those online auctions, in hopes of having more bidders.

That afternoon, one of the items sold, so I went to the template to remove its picture. There was a notice from Blogger that they would be shutting down for maintenance.

Little did I know my blog was doomed.

I was right on the borderline, one minute before the scheduled shutdown.

I thought I could get an update in just before the shutdown. I made the changes and hit publish. One of the pictures wasn't showing up, (just got that dumb little box with a red x in it) so I double-checked the code and I had left the trailing quote mark off of the reference to the picture.

Duh on me - LOL

I went in and made the change to add the quote mark, and hit publish again.

I think that is when I sent the whole shebang down the drain LOL

It was exactly at 4 PM. I went to "View blog" and none of the changes showed up. I went back to the template and they had the notice up that they were doing maintenance and nobody could get in. But after the control dashboard became available again, I still wasn't able to publish. I could attempt to change things, but when I hit publish it would just show 0% over and over LOL

The next day, when it still wouldn’t work, I thought I would switch to FTP and upload it to web hosted space I already have, so I set up a folder at my webhost (Yahoo) to receive it, and changed the parameters at Blogger. But I still got the 0% publish thing, and that's when I knew I was doomed.

I've written dozens of letters to Blogger Help and Support, all for naught.

I’m considering Wordpress, but I hate having to start yet again, and having to learn a whole new system. So I’ll probably just stick with the new blogspot address and hope all my old pals can find me - LOL

So if you see a frazzled blonde out of the corner of your eye, waving her arms, whistling, shouting, and waving a sign that says, “Over here!” that’s me.

Come on over, door’s always open.