The morning dawns, now comes the test:
‘Twas on last night. How bout the rest?
It’s on in morning, down at night.
It seems to take turns taking flight.
And just when I get used to this
It takes another nasty twist.
Now on at midnight gone at noon.
The blog has now reversed its tune.
Last night (or was it morning then?)
I snuck a blog peek once again.
Lo and behold, it was back up
But this alone can’t fill my cup.
All day I checked to see just when
The blog would go back down again.
Did Pennsylvania’s main electric
Power source go all dyspeptic?
Hey! Maybe there’ll be some relief.
My tale, once met with disbelief,
Was verified by other fans
Who crept more shyly from the stands.
GoDaddy, was this group to blame?
Could they have messed up domain name?
It seems it wasn’t fault of Dad
So Dave then wrote WebHostingPad
Who promised to redress the glitch.
In just one day they’d do the fix.
I think it’s holding. Wow! That’s good!
But still I tend to knock on wood.
I’m praying that it will not fail
And soon perhaps I can exhale.
I’m positively all off track
Till Negativa’s truly back.
—Joan Ryan
*
Thanks to Joan for the light verse, which she self-deprecatingly calls “bloggerel” (though I beg to differ: true doggerel’s distinguishing feature is that its author intends it to be serious poetry). I am also indebted to her for insisting that I had a problem, finally prompting me to post a query on Facebook and ask if anyone else was getting “server not found” messages when they tried to visit vianegativa.us. Thanks to everyone who responded there. With fifty percent reporting problems accessing the site, I knew the problem wasn’t with Joan’s ISP, as I had originally thought/hoped.
GoDaddy is where the vianegativa.us domain is registered, and WebHostingPad is where the site resides. Once I felt fairly sure the problem was with the latter and contacted tech support, they responded almost immediately: “I apologize; there was an error with the DNS settings for your domain name.” I liked the personal touch, and the fact that the fellow knew how to deploy a semicolon. Joan’s fingers are still crossed, she says, but I feel fairly certain the problem has been resolved.
—Dave
Very clever, Joan. I was one who “crept more shyly from the stands.”
Very nice of you to post this, Dave. I gotta admit, though, in this rarified atmosphere I feel a bit like the court jester among the bards, or as George Goeble once put it, A brown pair of shoes in a room full of tuxedos. Well.. unless I call it bloggerel, I don’t really have a name. To mis-paraphrase Twain, the difference between real poetry and light verse is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug. The difficulty with writing rhymed sillies is that too many people, having lived with Hallmark Cards their entire lives, actually consider this stuff to be ‘poetry’ and therefore are pre-disposed to hate the real thing. My younger old son, still goes all cringey when presented with any of my verses.
Well, “Poetry” for me encompasses everything from song lyrics to prse poems to visual arrangements of type, so I have no problem including light verse or even doggerel in its ambit. But I take your point.
Love it totally!! Love the word bloggerel too! Great job Joan.
Wonderful!
I too was distressed. It says much for the intensity of devotion of your readership, Dave, that your stats didn’t go down. We all apparently just kept doggedly clicking till we got through.
If you hadn’t, though, I might’ve been more willing to admit I had a problem and quit blaming poor Joan. :) Because, I mean, you’re right: the stats didn’t waver. Then again, I think most of my vistors are actually stat comment bots — lord knows nothing stops them.
“…the fellow knew how to deploy a semicolon…” LOL! My concerns about serial commas feel secondary only to my worry that someone might inappropriately deploy a semicolon. (The real fun with that quote stems from your genius use of ‘deploy’ in that context. Brilliant!)
I had no problem with the site, hence I’m embarrassed to say I bypassed your Facebook query as a personal problem–just not mine. Oops! Joan cleverly read me the riot act in that regard. Next time I’ll pay attention.
Hey, I know how it is. No one is obliged to pay attention to anything posted on Facebook — that’s part of the attraction of the site, I think. It doesn’t feel nearly as obligatory as keeping up with friends’ blogs, for example.
Techie types are always deploying things. That’s how I picture them, anyway, ensconsed in their little bunkers.
Thank you all for your kind words. For a short time this week, I felt like a totally paranoid Chicken Little since the sky did not seem to be falling on anyone else. I went through all these stages. First was denial, then the dogged clicking away at weird hours. Next, I shyly watched from the stands for other whiners, lest I be the first one. All finally culminated in my totally freaking when the blog went out almost 15 hours straight. Finally, the pleading: “ Please! Let the blog come back. I promise never to be a lurker again. “
I too was intrigued by Dave’s use of the word ‘deploy’ in re the semicolon. So military. I picture little commas all lining up ready for orders. (grin)
You can lurk all you want. I lurk on most of the sites I read. But I’m really glad you spoke up this time.