My weblog is down this morning, and my personal and blog-affiliated email with it. This sort of blackout has happened a couple of times under my current hosting regime (once for some hiccup with my credit card, and again due to a comment spam-induced traffic spike). Still a far cry from the bad old days and the bad old host, where blog outages were more common and customer support a mere rumor. I am assured by my current host that a "highly trained staff of technical professionals is working to restore service as quickly as possible." Can't ask for more than that, I guess.
It's my reaction to being sans weblog that's more interesting to me than the outage itself, however. Frankly, I'm feeling pretty good about not having the obligation of blogging hanging overhead - and I don't mean to whine about obligation as though burdened by the demands of a voracious readership (which I'm pretty sure is not the case). It's just that it seems suddenly quieter here without the blog, more tranquil. It's like a little bank holiday.
Previous blog-outages have found me much less sanguine, mind you. I've paced and hyperventilated my way through many a past blackout, obsessively clicking 'refresh' on the home URL and seething as the hated error message returns: "The connection was refused when attempting to contact www.waveflux.net." Grrrr.
An annoying aspect of BARS (blog access removal syndrome) is the sudden inaccessibility of ye olde handy blogroll. Honestly, the real reason for keeping a blogroll is for your own convenience rather than that of your visitors. For some reason, I prefer that to having the list bookmarked in my own browser. Of course, this makes sense only if you're the kind of person who always has a tab open to his or her weblog. But that's hardly uncommon. There are lots of us out there...uh, aren't there?
I guess the most frustrating thing about having your site go black is the feeling of being suddenly sidelined and silenced. As Robert Silvey once observed, "So much injustice, so many dangers, so little time." Or, as the sarge who wasn't Michael Conrad used to say when dismissing the patrolmen on Hill Street Blues: "They're gettin' away out there!" Who's got time for a blackout?
Of course, I'm not feeling much of that kind of tension just now. It could be because I have the luxury of guess access here at Shakes Sis. Hmm. I shall have to think about that while I've got all this extra time on my hands.
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