Technorati Knows Me! (AKA My Most Humble, Groveling Apologies)

I know, I know. "Where's the review for THE POWER OF THOUGHT? You promised a 'double bill', and we're gonna get one!"

Well, first I had to succumb to the power of sleep. The previous review took fourteen hours of non-stop work, I'll have ya know--and I had errands to do the next day. All told, I was awake a total of 29 hours: a feat I haven't successfully accomplished since my late teens, and I hope I'll never be challenged to break that record. It's taken the better part of two days for my body to recover--now that it has, on to business.

Remember the horrible things I said about Technorati? Well, I hereby officially retract all previous insults: at least until something else goes wrong, that is.

Hallelujah, it works!

After spending about half of yesterday redoing all the tags, I find this morning that all that work wasn't necessary: I awoke to discover the blog had indeed been updated, and found this letter from Technorati Support:

Hello Rachel,

Please accept my sincerest apologies for the delay in getting back to you. We've been experiencing a backlog in support and are
working hard to address everyone. I've taken a look at the issue regarding picking up your pings for "orphan-
toons.blogspot.com". After making a small adjustment, I've sent our spiders to revisit your page and your blog should be indexed
successfully from now on.

Please let us know if you experience any problems in the future. Do not hesitate to contact me if you have any other questions.
We apologize for any inconvenience. Thank you for using Technorati!


Best Regards,
Janice Myint
Customer Support Specialist
Technorati

(Customer Support Specialist? Is it just me, or is everybody a "specialist" these days?)

My profuse thanks, Janice--though it would have been nice to know what the "small adjustment" you made was, so I could make it myself if this ever happened again. I don't know if you noticed, but you folks aren't the easiest people to reach.

Moving on:

Like my new avatar? It's supposed to be a self-caricature, but to be honest, it doesn't look like me. I look worse.

I figured a drawing might be easier for you folks to take than an actual photograph...anyway, after not drawing for so many years, I felt it was time to re-establish my cartoonist creds.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go watch two cartoon magpies outwit a bulldog...

Tags: Technorati, support , apology, avatar

Technical Troubles Continue: Or, Down with "Techno-rotten"

Yes, I said the next part of the review for "The Magic Pencil" would be up today. And since "today" technically still has a few hours left in it, I might still get it posted in time--but I'm not counting on it.

I discovered too late I had a little difficulty getting screen captures from DVDs--using the old "alt-Print Screen" method, all I got was a black square. Don't ask me the technical reasons why--I don't understand them. All I know is that it doesn't work.

Fortunately, I was able to fix that problem by downloading the appropriate software--you might have noticed I added screen caps to yesterday's post to liven up the text a little. At least that's taken care of. However...

...would someone please tell me whose perverted idea Technorati was? I haven't gotten that to work since I started using it--"Techno-rotten" still thinks I haven't updated my blog in eight days. In other words, the date I changed the blog URL. As should be obvious to everyone, I have posted since then. "Technorati Support" is an oxymoron--I've written them twice telling them I can't ping them. All I get are canned responses saying if I don't hear from them in a week, I should get back to them. Well, it's been more than a week, fellas...

What do you want to bet this will be the one post Technorati does find--the one trashing them? Sounds like my kind of luck.

Tags: note+to+readers, Technorati, screen+capture, technical+problems