I just finished my big "workin' on my Volvo" post over on Revolvoblog with pictures and humor and such, clicked publish, and it said I was good to go. Yippee! For once it didn't mess up!
I clicked over to view it, and for some reason, the post didn't show up. Eh--no big deal--sometimes it takes a minute or two.
Jumped back to the edit screen and pulled up my template to add a couple of items to my line-item listing of repairs I've made (which is part of the template), saved, hit republish, and with great anticipation ran over to see what was going on.
Not only was the post not there, there was no more Revolvoblog!
I jumped back to edit--my just posted post was nowhere to be found. Jumped to the template--NOTHING THERE. I had a huge list of stuff on that template that took forever to format, and ALL OF IT WAS GONE!
Pfft!
Now, I KNOW I didn't erase the template, or overwrite everything when I did my template update. But by gum it was now irretrievably screwed up.
THANK GOODNESS FOR GOOGLE CACHE.
I thought maybe, just maybe, I could Google it, get a recent capture (it hasn't changed since June 20), and maybe use the View Source command to pick up the formatting.
Sure enough, the information was all there, so I copied it, pasted it back into the template, saved it, and now it's back in one piece. Sans my most recent post, of course.
Stupid Blogger.
And yes, by now I SHOULD know to save a copy before publishing--every time this happens, I am reminded by several people that I should have done this. Obviously, since I am a moron, you're just wasting your breath.
UPDATE: Apparently there's more to it--for some reason, even when posts are saved, they aren't appearing on the blog page. I managed to cross post this one over there, but it's not showing up at all. Stupid Blogger.
Posted by Terry Oglesby at July 11, 2006 01:01 PMFunny, but I haven't noticed anything wrong with Blogger lately...
Oh...
Nevermind.
I am totally with you on trying to recreate the creative mojo. It's single-use only. Re-doing a blog post is like having to wash and re-use those little plastic sandwich bags.
Not that there's anything WRONG with that...
Posted by: LittleA at July 11, 2006 02:36 PMCouldn't have said it better myself. Therefore, don't be surprised if I steal the analogy at a later date.
Posted by: Terry Oglesby at July 11, 2006 02:50 PMChange servers
Posted by: Catfish at July 11, 2006 07:03 PMAfter one too many "three hours of work gone POOF!" moments of horror, I learned to do "Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C, open Notepad, Ctrl-P, minimise." Every time. That way if Blogger goes Blooey, I still have a copy until I see it on the blog!
Notepad is humble but a friend of incalculable value. I figured out how to put a link on the status bar at the bottom of the screen to make it even easier to call up.
While we're speaking of Blogger helpers, have you ever tried Yankee Clipper? It's a Clipboard extension that will save a copy of *everything* you copy. If you don't like the Notepad solution above, it's even simpler. It also has a "boilerplate" mode that you can use to store text you use repeatedly. I use it for URL hyperlink HTML text, image link HTML, blockquotes, the names of the local papers in italics, etc. You just select and click to "shoot" the boilerplate into your post. Wonderfully handy.
Posted by: mike hollihan at July 11, 2006 11:16 PMI blame Movable Type for lulling me into a false sense of security. I post so infrequently on the other blog that I seem to forget how unstable it is.
Charlie Brown-Lucy-football.
Posted by: Terry Oglesby at July 12, 2006 09:10 AM