Google-y Eyed

I have some good news, and some bad news.

The good news is that I won the Featured Blog contest over at Philly Future. The good folks there have linked/pimped my blog all day, and I truly appreciate it. I have exactly two weeks to win over a few more readers. Of course, with my writing, I would probably need two decades.

The bad news is that while I am basking in the luxury of a link surge, Blogger decided to give me the screw-gee. When I checked Blogger today, the jerkasses at Google said that "Old Blogger" was down for maintenance, and there was no timetable for its return. Thus, I couldn't post anything at all. Okay, that's not so bad, I thought. I'll just check SYLG and see how many people have stopped by and said hello.

Except that no one could get there.

Since the Old Blogger was down, every blog that ran its crummy system was also kaput. No one could check out SYLG, even if they wanted to. I know, a world without SYLG, it sounds like a blogger's Utopia. For me, it has been a nightmare.

You see, once Google took over Blogger, the service has left a lot to be desired. I know, you get what you pay for, and Blogger is a free service, but Google is really frakking it up. After a few weeks in "Beta," the New Blogger made its debut. Users were given the choice of staying with the old, or jumping on the new. The New was too, well, "new" for me, so I hesitated. After a while, though, I realized that I would have to change sooner or later, so I tried the switch.

And it wouldn't let me.

I was getting error messages like "Thank you for your interest in the New Blogger. Unfortunately, you are too fat to use it, so SYLG can get bent." It gets worse. Blogs4Bauer, where I also contribute, passed Google's inspection, and switched. Now, I cannot post there, because I am not "with the New."

So I've got that going for me.

In the interim, many old users are given the shaft by a corporation that couldn't care less about customer service. I have been with Blogger since 2005, and have been pretty loyal, despite many of my blog friends changing blog servers. I don't know when Google will let me switch, but I hope it is soon. Until then, we will have to suffer with outages and other infuriating glitches.

Urge to kill . . . rising!