The silence was deafening.

HIR:tb is back, after a brief but spirited match with an ambitious and highly mischievious bunch of technical gremlins.   For the past couple of days, anyone attempting to access the site either got an error message (early in the Crisis); a blank browser page with a cryptic message in the title (late yesterday, my way of trying to tell you I’m aware of the problem and trying to make fix it up all better now); or a more explicit message (complete with animated graphic!)  that was basically the equivalent of one of those Please Stand By test cards that the local UHF station would put up whenever drunk Uncle Billy showed up and tripped over the cables in the control room  at channel 77.

The source of the difficulty was an attempt at upgrading the software that functions as this blog’s engine:  wordpress.  I am not kvetching, complaining or whining here (seriously – wordpress is freeware and I applaud the efforts of all those out there who spend their spare time tinkering away with code to permit dummies like me to have fun with things like this blog), but by way of explanation to those wondering what was going on around here in the technical department, suffice to say that there are challenges involved in maintaining the nuts and bolts of this site, which lives on a server.  Ever had a problem with your own computer when you installed a new piece of software or updated an existing program?  This was the same idea, except that to accomplish the update, I had to start monkeying around with the files on the server via FTP (instead of just double clicking on an installer program like you might use in Windows) and generally doing things about which I had only a very limited and vague technical understanding.  I was armed with a set of instructions from the WordPress site, but the said instructions are woefully overmatched by the task at hand, in view of the depth and breadth of my ignorance.  As a rough analogy, it was much like a simple cobbler setting out to perform an appendectomy, having reference only to the following medical diagram:

Anyway, at last, our electrical nightmare is over and I can resume the important business of musing about John Ferguson Jr.’s successor, complaining about the commercials aired during football telecasts and generally thinking (metaphorically) out loud.

The interesting thing, though, is that I missed you!  You, my Internet friends who write to tell me that you saw my blather and chose to read it.  

My apologies for the brief interruption of our social intercourse. 

I couldn’t help noticing that the WordPress site indicates that there is yet another update that I need to do – a security patch to the upgraded software I just managed to beat into some semblance of obedient submission.  I think I will wait until the weekend to give that one a shot – I don’t think I’ve got a good butterfly-ectomy in me right now.