Creative Endeavors, The Home of BoxcarOkie.com

The Sky is falling!  The sky is falling!  It really isn’t, but I just love saying that.  The sky is falling!  Chicken Little used to tell us that the earth as we know it was doomed, and life on this planet was soon to be extinct.  Maybe in say, 2 billion years when our sun expands, boils off the oceans, and turns our green planet into a charcoal briquette.

But it could possibly happen as soon as next month, if a black hole created by scientists in Geneva, Switzerland, swallows you, me, and all 6.6 billion other souls on earth in one big gulp.  Some guy in Hawaii has filed a federal lawsuit seeking a stop-work order on a Large Hadron Collider, a mammoth atom-smasher that European physicists are about to fire up. 

He claims that hurling all of this energy at each other will cause an irreversible implosion and will form a miniature version of gigantic black hole here on earth.  Thus leading to even more black holes, and as they fuse, they’ll swallow all matter in their vicinity, and soon, the entire planet.

Which we all know will not happen. 

The earth is not going to end.  We all owe wayyyyy too much money for the earth to end at this time.  We are also well educated here in The Heartland, ask any Okie what he thinks about black holes, and he will tell you almost immediately, “They are hell on your suspension man, really bad.” 

We are aware here in The Heart Land.

So here it is in a nutshell. Earth is on the precipice, it could happen at any moment (Scientists say that it won’t, but they have been wrong before, just ask Al Gore) and we must be prepared.  Send an email to everyone you know and tell them the “earth is going to implode next month” (this is going to make you extremely popular in the neighborhood) and visit all your loved ones as soon as possible.  Black hole or not, I say bring it on.  From a personal standpoint, if it will end the Presidential Election Campaigning, I am all for it.  So ends today’s science portion of the post. 

So many questions … So little time. 

(A)  Did you know that on the surface of the moon, there’s no sound, weather, wind, clouds, or colors at sunset and sunrise.  It is somewhat similar to Crawford, Texas. 

(B)  That no one knows the name of the guy who stood in front of the tank with the two bags of groceries and stopped the tanks cold in Tiananmen Square. 

And #3 … that I could actually spell the word “briquette.” 

And Y’all thought this was gonna be a slow week.

***

Came in here Monday morning, just like I always do, and something was amiss.  I had been set back to one/one day.  In boot camp, when you screw up, they set you back, and that is your one/one day.  First day of boot camp, first week.  Someone or something this week, on Monday set me back.  My dashboard still has a radio and I hear tunes, I guess I should not bitch. 

All of my sidebars, my widgets, calendar, everything on the right side of my page was gone.  Whoosh!  Much like a thief in the night, my hard work and labor was missing.  Where it was or where it had went, is anyone’s guess. 

So if you come onboard and notice that the “comments” are gone, don’t worry about it.  It all went south, and so far, no one is willing to tell me why. Most of it was rebuilt the next day and seems to be operating just fine (for now anyway). Nothing can go wrong … wrong … wrong ……..

After getting over the initial shock of it being missing, I sat out to rebuild it all.  This was AFTER I sent an email to support trying to find out what happened to it. Now that was on Monday, and today is Thursday, so it is fairly apparent to me, that the request has been ignored and/or is not going to be answered. I guess I am somewhat disgruntled.

As most of this has been an ongoing “learn as you go” experience for me, it was somewhat tiring to have to rebuild it all, I did it, but I did not like “having to do it.” 

When you take all this, 1-0-1-0-1-0-1-0-1-0-1-0-1-0-1-0-1-0-1-0-1-0-1-0-1-0-1-0-1-0- Stuff and put it together and get a picture of a duck or a naked woman, that amazes an old Okie like me.  I have to admit.  But as for the rest of it, it is far from second nature, and I would rather not have to do it every other Monday … You get my drift? 

I don’t understand what all of this computer jargon means, twittering, widgets, press this and that, code or HMTL, but I know the meaning of the word “support” and that means.  Help.  Of which I did not get any. 

It is now safe to say, some four days later, it is not forthcoming and I will I suppose, never receive an explanation why everything was missing and I was re-set to one/one. Most of the time I get “FAQ” and nothing more, which is kind of blowing you off. 

Currently I am now taking full advantage of the “Export” feature and backing up everything that I can.  I highly suggest that you do the same thing.  Networks are sometimes flaky, and this one, is no different than any other I have found. 

At the very least, I should have been told what happened to all of it, some kind of explanation should have been forthcoming, but it didn’t materialize.  Someone or something clobbered me and I should have been told why.

With the volumes of people using WordPress system each day I can certainly see where responding to requests might be a problem, but in this case, I just got farted off, and that isn’t my definition of support. 

I am now leaving the improvements, updates, and maintenance to the “IT” guys.  They are taking all the Atta-boys and pat’s on the back for a good job and I am handling the backups myself. 

People who do not learn from their mistakes are prone to repeat them is what I always heard.  This week I am reminded of this fact.  If this, any of it, has any kind of intrinsic value to you, then by all means back it up.

It all could be missing the next time you boot up or log on.  And of course, the definition of the word “support” seems to be highly over-rated around here.

***