Monday, July 4, 2011

The vagaries of Blogger as they relate to comments here

I've said from the outset that I am strictly an amateur when it comes to this whole blogging adventure, and today that point was driven home with a vengeance when I discovered that I don't even know how to leave a "comment" on my own blog. And apparently I am not the only one who has had difficulty in this regard.

Comments, until recently, were not a concern to me because there had been none and, frankly, I didn't expect any - so no comments, no problem. That changed recently when my dear (but distant) virtual friend ACME (the subject of an earlier post) notified me by email that she had read my blog and had left a comment! But alas, the comment never appeared, at least not on this blog - I suspect it lives on in some parallel universe created by Blogger for comments that it has decided for reasons of its own are not to be posted on the intended blog. And so ACME lost forever the opportunity to be remembered as my very *first* commenter - a man's recollections of his *first* are very special and I would have loved for it to be she, but I guess it was not meant to be.

Today Blogger notified that there was a new comment on one of my posts from a while back, so I clicked on it and there it was, a very nice and interesting comment from @Deb (who by the way recently signed on as a "Follower" to this blog.) She made some lovely points in response to what I had written in the post, and I wanted to reply and tell her how much I appreciated her comment (and to let her know that SHE was my *first*.)

I composed a comment of my own in reply to @Deb - it touched on a couple of points she had made and added some new thoughts on the topic at hand. All in all I think it was a pretty good comment, one she would have enjoyed reading (and this is a bourbon-free assessment) so I felt pretty good when I hit the "Publish" button - and then a weird thing happened: I got caught in an endless loop of "Sign in to Google" (I was already signed in) and "Captcha" - there was no way to get the comment to actually post (at least not on my blog - maybe it went somewhere else.) I'm no quitter, so I tried several times and in a couple of different ways to post my comment but they all met with failure. So @Deb, I'm glad you commented and I'm sorry Blogger won't let me reply directly with some of that "wit and wisdom" that I am famous (in my own mind, at least) for. I hope you'll keep reading and commenting when you feel like it, but please don't take it personally if I don't comment back.

And ACME, you weren't the *first*, but not for lack of trying, so I hope you'll come back again and try again someday - it's always a joy to hear from you.

3 comments:

  1. Whew! I thought you were ignoring me out of some fear that I might be a crazy, axe-wielding stalker or something.

    Blogger is finicky. I've never run into your particular problem (commenting on my own blog) but I did suddenly run into a problem commenting on another blog a few months ago. No matter what I tried, I'd get that same crazy loop you described (sign in! but I AM signed in!). I finally tried using a different browser (Safari) and had no problems.

    I think it's a conspiracy, frankly. I can't use Firefox with gmail anymore if I want to use the chat feature. I can't use Chrome if I want to play spades or listen to voice mail without downloading it first. The only trouble-free browser I use now is Safari. Go MAC! :)

    BTW, I read through a lot of your older posts and really enjoyed all of them. And thanks for letting me know I'm not persona non grata. :)

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  2. OMG, wake up!! Acme made an appearance on Rex's FB page!

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  3. @Deb, thanks for the tips - if you are reading this obviously I found a way to fool Blogger into letting me comment on my own blog.

    @anony, thanks for the heads-up - Rex' FB page isn't on my regular rotation of things I check so I might have missed her. Nice picture, too!

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