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Insecure Writers Support Group
I almost didn't post for IWSG today because I spent 3 hours (for the 2nd time this week) trying to fix a problem with WordPress. I can't post on any WordPress blogs.
1) It won't accept my email and password.
2) It won't allow me to use FB, Google, or Twitter to sign in and post a comment.
3) When I try to recover my password, it tells me my acct email is invalid.
4) When I tried to set up a new acct with that same email, and it tells me the email is already being used. (YES, BY ME!!)
5) So I tried to use a different email to set up a new acct, but the activate link sent to the email won't work.
6) Yes, I deleted my browser history and cookies. Nothing changed. Can't use the old acct, can't get a new acct.
7) I can't complain in the forums because you need to be logged in to do that.
8) WordPress has an email for Customer Support, but they admit they'll only answer the emails of PAID users.
Several years ago I had a similar problem being unable to comment with Explorer.
So I downloaded Foxfire and it worked great! Until it got a pop-up spam virus that opened up 3 advertising pages for every 1 blog I went to.
OK, on to Google Chrome and Opera. (Didn't take any chances -- downloaded 2 new browsers!) My Google Chrome works okay. Until now, with stupid WordPress.
What about all the other things that can go wrong?
Facebook crashed several times last week. Twitter sometimes gives you the "Heavy traffic - please try back later" message.
Blogger once decided it detected "suspicious activity" on my blog -- and they de-activated it! And they didn't inform me, so I had worried friends emailing me wanting to know why I'd deleted my blog and if I was okay. I know people whose entire blogs have been EATEN by blogger, never to be seen again...
PC doc files get corrupted and won't save (usually after you've done all your important edits on them). Hard drives crash. PCs, laptops, tablets, and Kindles inexplicably stop working and have to go to the Techie Hospital. Meanwhile, you twiddle your thumbs and watch TV and pray it doesn't take too long or cost too much.
Writing, revising, querying, publishing, and promoting are hard enough, but sometimes it seems like technology is OUT TO GET YOU!
What about you? Any horror stories from the technology battlefield?
This is a post for the Insecure Writer's Support Group, the brainchild of Alex J. Cavanaugh. It exists so the community of blogging writers can share and support each other, blog-hopping to cheerlead and commiserate. To find out more, visit:
Insecure Writer's Support Group. Plus, check out the IWSG Website for lots of helpful info and links.
52 comments:
Oooh, Lexa, you're scaring me! Is this part of your October frights! One, no, two things I agree with you on--I left Explorer many many years ago and have been a happy little camper using Chrome. Also, I've tried to start a Word Press blog five times and abandoned the process each time. Blogger spoils us, being so easy. Neither WP or blogger are perfect--there's things about WP that make me want to have a shiny new site. Then there's the WP email thing all the time, which is why now I 'change' when I want to comment.
Did I say all that? Sorry!
I hope you get the techno sorted. I try not to get too hot and bothered about any of it as there's always something going wrong. Just have to remember to breathe!
Denise :-)
Sounds like you are having an AWESOME time ;)
I feel your pain. I'm lucky that I have a technically minded hubby who can sort through my many tech issues.
Hug
I think you opened a whole can of worms with this one... But I won't bore you with my litany of tech woes. We'd be here all night!
Wow! Talk about the perfect technology storm of issues. I wish I had advice, but I've experienced many of the problems over the years, but not so close together. I do wish you the best and hope everything works out.
Wow, that sucks. And of course, none of those offer a phone number to call.r
So far, Firefox and a separate virus protection program have worked for me.
Hope you can comment on Wordpress soon.
Nightmare. Computers do some really odd things at times. The other day the only web page that would load was my blog - a bit less stressful than when my blog is down, but still a time suck.
If all those things had happened to me, I'd be annoyed with technology too! Hope you get it all sorted :)
That's a bad start to the month! My computer has been dying slowly for months. I swapped out the power supply this morning, but when I booted it up, I got a notice that an "unknown device" was detected and that the software was installed (? If you don't know what it is, wouldn't it tell you in the software? I'm guessing it was the PSU), and there are a couple of USB drives that are not showing up. I'll have to take the cover back off and see what I didn't reconnect. Hopefully, this will fix the crashes....
So sorry you're going through so many computer challenges. It's worse than a pain. I use blogger and haven't had a problem. I use both Mozilla and Chrome, and they seem to work fine. My big challenge with my job as a writer from home is that I must have two working computers at all times. Our main PC got a terrible that I fixed once but came back and I couldn't fix it. I ended up getting a new laptop that I like. Good luck with your challenges.
I sometimes think that two year olds can navigate this technical world better than I. I get frustrated, they don't.
I'd heard enough Blogger horror stories to move my blog to a private server. I still link to the old one but I expect it to disappear one of these days. Take care.
I haven't had any technical problems for a while, but when they pop up they can be extremely frustrating. There's nothing more scary than clicking something on your computer and having an error message you've never seen before pop up. Shudders!
Good luck with getting everything straightened out.
Technology problems are the MOST frustrating thing. I'm so sorry! I wish I had a solution for you, but I'm one of those who stumbles through each problem as it comes up and hopes for the best. =/ Good luck; I hope you get it all sorted out soon.
I'm technologically challenged, so all this blogging stuff has been a huge learning curve to me, but I still haven't had all the horror stories you've said! That sucks! :(
Any issues I DO have have to do with the fact that my laptop is a million years old and because of it my internet connection is slow, at best. I think I get more confused by my phone..
- Madilyn Quinn @ NovelBrews
You've had quite a time of it, my girl. I think the internet and all things techie sense our vulnerability and do sneaky stuff ti drive us mad. You did a great job in getting things under control!
Oh no! Technology can really be tricky. I seem to go through phases when everything breaks (two laptops last year, not to mention almost losing all my work several times). Hope everything's sorted now!
I wake each morning whispering, "I love my Mac, I love my Mac!" He's old and doing some extremely, weird things. Like demanding I insert my inbox password every few seconds, or scolding me for using contractions in Word. Who knew I'll and They're were spelling errors. I think these little glitches are a reminder that these wonderful machines are alive and need constant reassurance that we adore and worship them! Go a day without doing that and look what happens!
Oh, so very many horror stories. Like when I updated to Windows 7 and that killed my internet connection. I spent the rest of the day crouched over my outdated laptop searching for a solution on Google (because you know, tech support was useless). Or the time (like you) Blogger suspended my blog during a blog hop (oh, the outraged emails they got). I could go on, and on, and on...
That's when you sing a little song.."I wish I had a little gun..." or a baseball bat can do wonders:) I feel for you and would have no clue. I have/had Windows 10 nightmare. My hubby decided to download it before all the kinks etc.. are out. This was done back in late August and there have been, shall we say, issues. This past Sunday my ex, who knows all about computers, came over and spent 5 1/2 hrs trying to fix the problem. Yes we made dinner for him. I am keeping my fingers crossed and now, for you too.
LOL! Now that's a scary post. But what if technology was out to get us? Ooh! *cue the scary death music*
Yikes! I've never had anything quite as bad happen to my blog. Once (because of a Google+ snafu) every photo in every blog post I'd ever done disappeared, so I had to go through and replace all of them. I can't believe they deactivated your blog!
I'm sorry to hear you've been having quite a nightmare lately.
I have a love/hate relationship with my computer at the moment, it's really slow and I tend to run out of patience with it from time to time.
Yes! Especially after we had no internet for a week last month. Although I back up to three different places every day, I still fear losing it all.
Wow, you have had more than your fair share of problems with technology. Sounds like the Ghost in the Machine is out to get you!
I feel your pain, Lexa. WP gave me a problem logging in this morning, but I resolved it by exiting Chrome and trying again. It doesn't happen often. Commenting on Blogger/Blogspot for me is insane half the time. Either I accidently double comment, or my comment doesn't show up at all. Frustrating.
Hope everything gets sorted out soon! Hugs. Eva
Wow! I've been locked out of some sites with no hope of getting back. Technology is really out to get me!
Wow the technology gremlins really went after you. I'm sorry. I hope it's getting better.
Yuck! What horrors. Technology is so unpredictable. Makes a person want to go back to phone calls and written letters. :)Think how slow that is though. Hope everything is straightened out soon.
This is the perfect terrifying post for Halloween month. It gives me the chills just to think about all of these things that can go wrong and it's so frustrating when it happens to you. I hope you are able to get whatever issues are going on with Wordpress straightened out and no other technology monsters crop up to torture you.
Since the late 1970's i've said that to err is human but to really foul things up requires technology. Douglas Adams said, "We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works."
Hope it gets cleared up soon!
How frustrating, Lexa. Truly. I hope you find a solution soon. I had a nightmare with Google + once, where I lost all my blog photos when I deleted them on my smart phone (apparently everything was synced). I was so upset. I redid every post!
So is it an old computer problem or security? I wonder. Let me share what my husband (a retired computer guru) did for me on my PC to establish security. I have three log on's with passwords. #1 is for general use; I do google searches here, access my blog, work on my book, store photos, and other general stuff. #2 is for Finance; I only use this for paying bills and checking investments. #3 is for Admin; I do updates here. By dividing access, no one can fully hack my general site. Make sense? Something else we use is Malwarebytes Anti-Malware (we have the paid version). It runs on a schedule, but whenever my computer starts acting strange, I run it again. I also do the same with Spybot-Search and Destroy (we use the free version). In addition, I have McAfee Security Scan Plus and Microsoft Security Essentials (which came with my Toshiba). I use Mozilla Firefox. Hope this helps!
And those problems never crop up when you have all the time in the world to deal with them, it is 15 minutes before you have to dash out the door for an appointment, or on the one and only day of the month you can post on a topic! The recent Facebook issues are driving me batty. You can always tell when they are working on something - because it gets glitchy and then a few days later - voila - changes. Ugh. Technology. Why do I love you so?
My laptop crashed last fall and I lost about 50 pages I hadn't bothered to upload to our favorite online writers forum.
But I rewrote them and the revisions are an improvement.
Sorry you are having computer woes. But you sound very competent with all you are doing to stay on top of the problem.
Dave Emanuel
So scary and frustrating!!!
I've been thinking about moving away from blogger, but I can't seem to wrap my non-tech head around some of the other sites so I keep plugging away with it and hoping it doesn't die on me.
This sucks! Our technology is advancing so much that it has been too complex and prone to tiny errors sending the system into a tizzy. But if it's simple, it gets hacked. We're damned if we do and, well, damned if we do. :)
I'll think happy tech thoughts for you.
Gads, I don't remember any of my passwords to log into quora, disquis, feedly. Sometimes I even forget my google password. I'm not tech savy at all. Sometimes I think it'd be easier to just not be on social media.
Damn! Sounds like I need to send you a vat of wine via carrier pigeon *cuz lord knows the postal service would only drink it and declare it lost in transit*. Chin up--don't let technology get the better of ya:)
Something Wicked This Way Comes
I hate Wordpress! I hate Wordpress! And I, too, have trouble logging into it for purposes of commenting. It often won't let me in because "this email already in use". Well, duh! Yes. It's the one I give you, Wordpress! And when it does let me in, I can't comment till I have subscribed to that post. Too many of these things don't have an inquiry email, you have to check out the forums for fellow users, not the people who run it. I started a Wordpress blog, but haven't gone back to it for some time. It's too fiddly.
So far, no problems with Blogger, and my blog has been around since 2006. But I feel for you!
Recently, I dropped my iPad and had to replace it. Fine. I had it backed up in iTunes. But when I went to download everything I'd backed up, it didn't download everything. I lost all my PDF documents and nearly all the books on my Kindle app, the ones I'd bought with my gift voucher. There were a few of the old books which were free due to copyright expiry, but nothing else.
So I bought a paid iCloud account, which is still not letting me back up. Urk!
Now you've scared me!
I'm techno-challenged! That's why I have a wordpress site that is looked after by somebody else.
I've contacted him at 'unearthly hours' with regards to techno problems. LOL
That's why I'm thinking of printing out copies of all my writing - good, old-fashioned paper... (sorry about the trees which may be harmed in the process)
Technology errors sometimes take forever to fix. My biggest issue is with printers. I hate paper jams. What takes the longest is when the ink space is clogged. It doesn't even matter if a new cartridge was just put in. I'm just waiting for ink to finish up on a printer that constantly jams, because I have a new printer in a box waiting for me to hook up.
Oh, yikes! I've had similar issues with WordPress in the past, which is why I've chosen not to host any blogs there. Never knew Blogger would just deactivate blogs out of the blue like that, though. Ack!
Egads! That sounds like a rough time. I think I'm glad my blog is set up to just take a name and email address, and you don't need an account to comment.
I hope all of your issues work themselves out. It sounds like a real technological pain in the rear.
That's really rough. I'm sorry. I could probably give you hundreds of stories, so I'm not sure where to start. In short, I build and repair computers and am getting into the IT field soooooo.........yeeeeeea.....
Wow, just reading your post made me want to tear my hair out. I've had issues where Blogger won't let me make a comment on their sites unless I use my Google account, rather than my Wordpress account or Open ID. That really annoys me, so out of sheer orneriness, I go to great lengths to not use Google. Most of the time I succeed.
Good luck getting everything straightened out!
It can be so frustrating when you have technology problems!
Yikes!!! I know how you feel!!! When I get computer or internet glitches, I'm fried!!!! Good Luck, I hope you get it all straightened out.
My goodness, what horrible experiences you had! So sorry because it's terribly frustrating when computers aren't working the way they should. It spoils everything with your communications and/ or plans. Hope things are better soon.
My internet has been known to cut out for no apparent reason. And the little indicator tells me it's fine.
Les choses sont contre nous, Lexa.
Oh, Lexa, I'm so sorry you had to go through all that! I've had frustrating times in techie-world but never on that scale with so many things happening at once. I hope all those troubles are over and you can get back to the way things were before it all happened. Take care, and best wishes for a wonderful week. You've sure earned it!
I hate tech problems they can be so frustrating and time consuming (and sometimes costly) to sort out.
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