Oh No! A Screwup!

“Aaaarrrggggghhhhh!”

That was my first word after I received the email delivering my September 25 Benari Blog “The Dots Are Irrelevant.” Those of you who receive the missive through the email distribution list know what I’m talking about. The formatting was completely gone, and a collection of old missives rolled out below the current one.

Here’s how it happened.

Shortly before the missive went out, we, meaning my tech guy Paul, updated the security on the blog in an effort to do our best to protect ourselves from the rotten people hacking everything. For some reason, this process completely messed up the way the missive was presented.

Suffice it to say, it totally freaked me out when I saw this. I immediately sent a note to Paul who rapidly responded “I’ve not seen this before. Once again you defy all technology logic.” “Once again” is a reference to my well-known ability to cause a technological crisis by so much as glancing at a screen.

After doing some research, Paul let me know that sometimes these security updates cause feedburner, (a web feed management provider), to push out a blog one time with these distortions. If all goes well “one time” it was and right now you’re reading a nicely presented missive without lots of older missives attached.

As often happens, something positive emerged from this screwup. Paul went on to share that after his initial surprise at seeing what had happened, he began reading the older missives. Other readers informed me that they did the same. So my reaction went from “Aaaarrrggggghhhhh!”  to “How nice! People are enjoying older posts”.

Let this be a lesson.  Once you’ve gotten over the initial shock of witnessing something gone terribly wrong you have a choice. Rage in anger, point fingers at those responsible..often yourself, sulk in a corner, or calm down, fix it, and look for something good that has come of it.  It’s likely you’ll find it.

*****