The Day I Shut Down Blogger

I had a busy day yesterday. I did laundry, drove kids to various activities, bought dog food, shut down Blogger.....

It started simply enough. I wanted to cross out a word, just one little word. Blogging people do this all the time to be witty and clever and I wanted to be witty and clever too. In the sentence I'd written about pleading for mercy in grading, I thought that really the word mercy wasn't accurate since I deserved an A. So, I wanted to strike out the word mercy and add in the word fairness. I thought I understood how to do this.

I clicked on the "Edit Html" tab and I was instantly transported to a land I've never before visited. This land had its own language and strange rules and customs. The inhabitants were dressed in symbols and their ways were strange to me. But I'm not a novice to foreign travel. I've walked through the Vatican, I've hiked up a mountain in the Alps, I've stood on the Great Wall of China; I can hang with these Html people.

I found the word I wanted to cross out, Mercy, something I was to learn Blogger would not be granting me, and as I understood it, before the word I needed to add this sign < and then the letter s and then that same sign going the other direction. After the word Mercy I needed to do it again. It was so easy. I had spoken the language of the Html people. I clicked Publish and then View Blog.

WHOA! WHAT HAPPENED? In my attempt to speak the language, apparently I had erred--and they are not forgiving in Html land. Every single word after "Mercy" was being crossed out. Even all of the stuff off to the side, all crossed out. In China, if my tone was a little off, they giggled, they tried to redirect me, they gave me the benefit of the doubt. But they're ruthless in Html and they don't like foreigners. I instantly tried to correct my ways, but they wouldn't even let me back in the country. They ripped up my passport, they took away my Visa.

I sent a frantic e-mail to my friend Lisa:

Help! I tried to be clever and cross a word out in my post from this morning, and I THOUGHT I followed directions, but take a look at my blog now!! Yikes, what have I done? I can kiss my 11 followers bye-bye.

What the heck happened? Now I'm just trying to erase it and never again try something techy like that, but it won't even let me do that. It says "Blogger is temporarily unavailable". Is it unavailable to you too or just to me? I think Blogger wants me to get a life.

Lisa wrote back:

Yep. I went and looked and yep. You’re in trouble. You totally messed up......And I tried to comment and it did say blogger was down.

Lisa went on to tell me that I'd missed a crucial backslash in my use of the Html language. Just one little backslash. Picky, picky picky.

I envisioned a scene from a movie where some kid is playing around with different codes on his computer and then suddenly all the lights start flickering off in the greater Chicago Metropolitan area, leaving the kid in the dark saying "Oops" and his Mom downstairs yelling, "Johnny!" Was it a just a coincidence that right when I started messing around in places where I shouldn't have been, all foreign travel was blocked, the whole country was shut down?

So, if you experienced a Blogger shut down yesterday around 1:00 West coast time, Oops.

And take a look at my previous post. Do you see the crossed out word? Oh yeah, I've got that one down. So, drumroll please....
Don't be surprised if you see a lot of this in the future.