The Political Chase

Troubles abound

I hope everyone enjoyed the holiday yesterday. Hopefully most were able to find some time to reflect and contemplate on what Memorial Day is about — honoring and remembering those who have sacrificed far more than the rest of us who can still read and write blogs.

I managed to get in some personal reflection, albeit limited, because all day yesterday my laptop kept venturing into apocalyptic eschatology. However, today it seems to be more indicative of Armageddon.  Today has been a constant vacillation between certain death and miraculous resurrections. And each resurrection has indeed been attributable to anything but the mundane, with the of exception of literally, some electrical tape, twist ties, and rubber bands. None of which computer hot shots would normally consider “standard issue.”

So, I’m up for now, which could be anywhere between the next five seconds to maybe even hours. Moreover, I never ceased to be amazed at how engineers can so accurately design a product’s life cycle to end so perfectly just before catastrophic technical failures commence at the expiration of a manufacturer’s warranty. Mine expired exactly one week ago, and that’s not a first. I’ve experienced it numerous times before.

Consequently my technical woes have been an obstacle to seeking out what’s happening in the world around us. Moreover, with all the ups and downs, I haven’t had the opportunity to catch the chattering heads on cable today. Purchasing a new laptop just isn’t feasible or practical today. So, the plan is to try and ameliorate the emergent problems as they arise in the near-term and catch up as quickly as possible until I can discern what is necessary to accommodate the long-term.

I’ve started two to three posts, but have been unsuccessful in getting beyond any drafts. If the Band-Aids hold up sufficiently for the next few hours, I may actually be able to publish something worthwhile.

The power meter is yet again warning me of imminent failure, so I’ll be back as soon as possible.

Sharing and Emailing Posts

Just an FYI.

The feature that TPC uses for sharing (Digg, Facebook, etc.) and emailing of posts has been temporarily disabled. I discovered some rather significant technical issues with the software and could not let it remain operational until it was "fixed" or replaced.

I’m fairly confident the "product" will have to be replaced, so it may take a day or two.

Update 5/12, 5:21 PM ET:  Just to clarify — this does not apply to sharing and email features in RSS syndication feeds. It only applies to features on TPC’s actual web site. So, for those of you that use a reader or receive TPC by email, the features listed at the end of each post should still work.

Still more maintenance

We’re still doing maintenance and will be applying major changes shortly. These are all behind-the-scene changes and should not have any effect on the appearance or the normal functions of the site. But there’s a slight chance something could go wrong, so if we’re suddenly not available, we’ll be back ASAP.

Doing a little maintenance

We’re doing some maintenance. The Contact Page will not be available for a little bit. It should not be long. We’re done with this part. Now, onto the next. The Contact Page should be working again.

All tied up

I have some personal business that I must take care of and will not be be able to post any today and possibly tomorrow. If I finish early, you’ll be the first to know.

Correction to Lieberman post

FYI. I have made a correction to the "Lieberman confused in attack on Obama" post.

Suspended Accounts

IMPORTANT NOTICE 

For security reasons, a few TPC reader accounts have been suspended. If your account has been suspended, you will receive an email shortly explaining why and what options are available.

If your account appears to have been suspended and you have not received an email notification within an hour or so of the time this post was published, please contact TPC.

Update

I will be working on the registration process today (see this note); therefore, I will not be posting until that’s completed or I run out patience. 

Too much spam

(updated below)

You may notice that user registration is now required will be required soon (see below) to use (or maybe access) some of TPC’s features (primarily comments). I would rather NOT do this for several reasons, but the volume of spam bots attacking this site everyday — no make that every minute — have forced me to do something.

To make a comment or access any restricted area, you will need to provide a username and a valid email address. Your email address will be kept confidential, and will never be given or sold to anyone for any reason, not even George Bush unless he hands me a valid court order or NSL. Of course, anyone that reads TPC knows they already illegally reading what they want, so….

Most of the spam junk is never viewable to the reader because what doesn’t get automatically trashed goes into a moderation file for review, and that’s where the problem lies. I’ve been sorting through literally hundreds of comments, trackbacks, etc. on a daily basis trying to determine what to keep, which takes too much time, and more importantly means I’m probably missing trashing something valid and at minimum delays publishing a valid comment.

So, we’ll try this for a bit and see what happens. If it is too cumbersome, restrictive,or you have a problem it, just let me know. Just go to the Contact page.

Also, if anybody has suggestions or ideas on how I might improve any of this, I would definitely appreciate hearing from you.

Many thanks.

UPDATE:  I have turned the registration requirement off for now. A few changes new to be made to improve the existing process.  

Incoming!

I have been been preparing all day for the annual onslaught of family and therefore have not been able to post. As time permits, I will be posting over the next few days, but just not as frequently as usual.

Cheers!

Help - Pages Not Found

If you are connecting to TPC via an external link and get the Error 404 - Not Found page, the external link or bookmark you are using is no longer valid. The post or document is still available, you just need the right link information.

The domain name for the old site switched to this site over the weekend; therefore old external links are not valid and need to be updated.

To help get you to the right place you can use any of the following options.

1. A Help Page has been set up which should tell you exactly how to find the page or document. This will be particularly helpful if you need to update permanent links or bookmarks.
2. If you know the title of the post, you can use the Search box at the top-right side of the page.
3. Below is a list of the top pages people are looking for, but have not found the first time. Just click on a title and you should be taken to the proper page. The pages are listed in alphabetical order rather than most frequent.
4. If you need additional help, just let me know.

My apologies for any inconveniences.

Posts and Documents Frequently Not Found

These are the top “not found” posts and documents from the old site. Click on a post title and you will be taken to the correct page in the new site

I’m back and looking for contributors

(Update: Contributor means authors, bloggers, etc. Money is ok too, but for this post the context is different. I thought I should clarify that to keep some readers from immediately dismissing the post.)

It’s been quite some time since I published a post. To begin with, the server failure was catastrophic. That within itself is a long story, and is still in recovery mode, however, the basics have been resolved. Other overwhelming tasks, priorities, etc. have been a real problem. The bottom line is I need more resources at TPC.

The server crash was just the beginning of several unexpected and extraordinary circumstances that were impediments to posting. In summary, the common denominator has been available time. Yes, everyone has to juggle priorities, but in certain cases there are issues we must deal with but have no real control over the priority. A primary example for me is the management of my father’s estate. You can’t tell the courts to take a back seat – they set the agenda.

Regardless of what personal circumstances one may face, blogging is no different than publishing a newspaper. If content is not published regularly, readers go elsewhere and they do so quickly. A solo-blogger, such as me, is especially vulnerable. I can muster up technical resources to address the behind-the-scenes tasks, if by no other means than resorting to the phone book. But contributors are an entirely different situation, and one I have a mandate to address.

I will follow up with more information on adding contributors soon, but I want to get the word out now that I’m looking for additional contributors. If you would like to be a contributor to TPC – part-time, full-time, anytime – please let me know.

Finally, there a few posts I have written but just not published yet. Given the lag time, I thought it was more important to explain the “downtime” first, rather than simply have long intervals between a few posts. I will turn those posts on shortly, however, they will reflect the actual dates posted and thereby precede this post.

Important Information for RSS Users

If your are still using the RSS feeds from the old site, please check here for information on updating your reader.

If you have already subscribed to the new site and are not experiencing any problems you can ignore this message. Like Gilda Radner always said, “Never mind.”

Success!

As you can see TPC has a new look. And as many of you may know, we were in the process of transferring from the old site, but never completed the transition. The short story is we encountered several problems with the design and newer versions of WordPress, which ultimately led to starting the project over.

I believe we have passed the point where there may be outages, but we’ve still have work to do. We’ll be restoring elements along the sidebar and other functions over the next several hours, however the content should not be affected.

If you experience any problems, please let us know.

Site Maintenance

We will be doing some necessary maintenance on the site from 6:30 PM ET until ???, which means until we’re done. For most of the time, the site should remain available, but you know how that goes. There is one exception when the site will go down, but it should be very brief, less than five minutes. If you are unable to access the site, please try back later.

As we progress through the maintenance, you may notice substantial changes. Some changes will be intentional, and then there’s always the anomalies. If we’ve done our homework, the anomalies will be minimal and temporary.

Thanks for understand and more importantly, thanks for visiting TPC!