'You have exceeded the login limit. Please wait a few minutes and try again.'

Hi all,

My apologies for last Monday.  I try not to break my word (you have my word on that) but sometimes, things happen and you deal with the results.  I am sure it is obvious at this point that the blog has moved (again) to a new site.  The following will sort of serve as an explanation.

Folks, you are being warned.  I am going to RANT and RAVE for the majority of this post.  This 'R&R' will continue in a couple of additional footnotes (newly reformatted).  If you have any cats or children nearby, you may want to return later on the off chance that they accidentally absorb any of my nonsense while peering over your shoulder (*).

*If your children are really small, though, they probably cannot read yet so you should be covered.

OK, got it?  You've been warned.

First, again my sincerest apologies for not having a post up on Monday (*).  My intent for the 4/4 post, which I finished about two weeks ago, was to do a little bit of wrap up work on it last Sunday afternoon and schedule it for an automatic Monday morning publication.  But, as occasionally happens when I try to complete an undefined project in a specified time period, I ended up needing a little bit more time than I originally projected.

*I bet some people won money betting on my failing to keep my schedule, for which I am genuinely happy.  The lesson here- always bet on things that might happen late but could never happen early.

In the case of last Sunday, this projection failure meant I actually ran out of time.  This is due to my preference to proofread on computers at the local library, simply because these computers are stronger than my ten year old Macbook.  The entire non-writing time of the blog is reduced greatly as these computers allow tasks such as toggling from the 'preview' mode to the post editor to happen almost infinitely faster than they would at home (1).

1 (explained). To celebrate the change in blog hosts, I think I am going to a new and improved footnote style.  And what better place to explain than in a footnote?

Numerical footnotes are going to the bottom of posts while the asterisk footnotes are going to remain indented and in italics as I have done so far.  I am also going to shrink them by a tiny amount.

The split is intended to recognize how my footnotes sometimes actually add to the post while others are totally tangential.  Moving the tangents to the end of the post will improve the clarity of the main entry (*).

*I know on paper this sounds confusing but I think it will work itself out.  For one, the asterisk footnotes will show up right away so anyone wondering what the asterisk is about should understand immediately. The numbered footnotes will NOT show up until the end but, being a more traditional formatting trick, should cause less confusion. 

Anyway, I continue rambling in the first official footnote below- so I'll meet you there at the conclusion of this post.

Last Sunday, I went to the Boston Public main branch at Copley Square.  And although I proofread fairly quickly, I got my 'time's up in two minutes' warning with about four minutes of work to do (*). Since I had a little spare time and it was threatening to become sunny outside, I decided to get on a bike and go to the Minuteman Library's main branch by Harvard Square in Cambridge (2).

*Fine, I probably had more like fifteen minutes of work to do.  The lesson here- no one can predict how long anything will take, ever.

When I made it to Cambridge, I signed up for a computer and attempted to log into Wordpress to finish the post.  Instead of being taken to my blog, I was taken to the following error message:

'You have exceeded the login limit. Please wait a few minutes and try again.'

If I am anything, I am open to suggestions, so I waited a few minutes and tried again.  Same error.

The next step was to get help but, unfortunately, I had quite a difficult time doing this.  A direct link to chat with someone online about the problem or a contact email for troubleshooting questions did not seem to exist.  I did find quite a few pages touting the site's 'support' but no information about how to take advantage of this feature.

After some clicking around, Wordpress eventually maneuvered me to a 'help' search screen within their troubleshooting forums.  This forum was basically a set of archived articles where helpless users described their problem and helpful users describe their solution (*).  I did not find anything applicable to my issue, however, so I moved on.

*I consider this a good, if not great, setup for medium term problems but cannot fathom how this is helpful for someone who has one problem that needs to be addressed before anything else can proceed.

I aimlessly clicked around some more, eventually making my way to a 'problem form' I could fill out.  

Success?  No.  

Instead of this form- containing my name, email, and description of the problem- going through to its intended destination, I am directed away from the form to 'sign in' first.  Automatically, I entered my user name and password again and, you guessed it-

'You have exceeded the login limit. Please wait a few minutes and try again.'

To summarize so far- the issue I keep running into is that, in order to properly access anything, I need to LOG IN first but, my problem being one where I cannot LOG IN, I find myself stuck.  My sole problem, you could say, is my inability to contact a soul.

Still, when it comes to failure, I always aim to do a full job, so I tried a couple of more tricks.  I reset my password, twice, to no avail, and repeat at least one of the above steps.  Since my time limit in Cambridge is now approaching, I decided the best bet was to try for the summit in the morning and logged off.

I returned the next morning (to Cambridge) to try again. I entertained the hope that, perhaps, 'a few minutes' referenced in the error message meant 'a few hours' and the account has reset itself.  This was immediately proven not to be the case.  I am back to where I was the day before.  I felt like Hemingway- but instead of standing, drinking, and finishing yesterday's half-done sentence, I was sitting, sober, and back on the 'search' feature within the Wordpress help forum.

I recalled that many search features built into websites are less effective than running the same search from Google with the name of the website included in the search terms (3).  I eventually took advantage of this recollection by searching the exact error message I included above.

The article I found had the same error message as the title and suggested that this issue might relate to being logged into an account from multiple places.  This made sense, to a degree, since I did log in from Boston just the afternoon before.  But it made less sense given that it had been eighteen hours since I left the Boston library's computer and I suspected those computers are designed to shut down active connections at closing.  I also found speculation about 'spamming' and that this type of lockdown might relate to attempts at preventing such activity.

In any event, reading such articles did not actually help me with my problem.  It reminded me of the time a couple of months ago when I 'researched' my unexplained stomach pain on the internet- I was looking for something to point me to a solution and all I got was a very unhelpful list of possibilities (*).

*This happened to me in the middle of February and might partially explain why it took a month after my sacking before I started 'blogging' even though I had been writing for most of the month. Basically, my stomach hurt a bit and the 'information superhighway' helped me conclude that I had one of the following: appendicitis, diverticulitis, an ulcer, a gluten allergy, or a potassium overdose from too much banana bread consumption.  I was not in a great place. I think it turned out that I pulled a muscle from doing too many straight-legged deadlifts.  The lesson here- avoid WebMD at all costs.

I continued digging through the website.  After all the time I spent scrolling through different pages, I was surprised to find something new.  This discovery was the 'account retrieval' page (or something like that- I actually forget the proper name of the page). I was not sure I met the conditions for using the form but I could not access my account, either, so I was ready to try anything.

Filling out this form was similar to what I tried the day before. Fortunately, it did not seem like I needed to LOG IN to have this form accepted.  However, I did need one of three pieces of information- a PayPal record, an identification code I used to activate the account, and a third piece of information that I required an app.

I do not pay for the site so I have no PayPal record.  The latter piece of information was similarly not applicable to my account given my lack of apps (bar nachos excluded).  This meant I needed to retrieve my identification code from over a month ago.  However, I knew this was likely a futile exercise, thanks to Gmail's policy of permanently deleting anything you specify for 'trash' within thirty days.  I suspected I sent my activation code to 'trash' over thirty days ago and my ensuing virtual dumpster-diving efforts confirmed this suspicion.

Luckily, there appeared to be a way to 'retrieve' the activation code. All I needed was my email address.  I entered the email address and got this error message:

'We were unable to fetch your activation record. Are you sure you specified the email address you signed up with?'

What was going on???

Time was up, again, at the library.  I decided the only thing left to do was to post a comment on my previous post explaining the issue. Hopefully, those expecting a post would show up, see my comment, roll their eyes, and come back on Tuesday.

I filled out my comment, including my name and email address, and click submit.  It did not work, though, because the website, which had moments ago asked me if I had 'specified the email address you signed up with?', now recognized my email address and asked that I log in. Fearing that seeing the same error message for a third time in twenty hours would cause my head to literally explode (*), I declined the option to try logging in again and left the library.

*You forgot what I'm referring to?

This one- 'You have exceeded the login limit. Please wait a few minutes and try again.'

When I return to the library, three hours later, I find that I am able to access my account.  There is no explanation provided.  It does not matter because, over the past three hours, I had thought over the issue and made up my mind that I was done with the site. Recognizing that I was perhaps a bit annoyed, however, I decided to let the decision rest for a week before taking action.

That was a week ago, so here we are.  Welcome to Blogger...

The most immediate and obvious reason is the that final email address thing.  In trying to fetch my activation record, the website could not recognize my email address.  However, when trying to post a comment just a few moments later, it did recognize my email address and asked me to log in.  I guess this could be called 'the last straw'- although not necessarily a problem on its own, given the pent-up frustration of the past twenty four hours, the inconsistency I observed pushed me past the point of no return.

But there is also a more general reason for moving on.  It kind of applies here, in the sense that this anecdote brought the idea back out into the light of day, but perhaps not directly enough to include in the post.  I suppose it kind of relates to customer service and kind of relates to knowing when to give up on something that is actually working quite well. I'll tie my thoughts up over the next couple of days on this matter and post it in the near future, ideally Friday.

In the meantime, though, new blog host means a couple of admin comments from me.  If interested, please see the final footnote for details (4).

OK- thanks for reading and for bearing with me in the process of yet another move.  Back on Wednesday with a 'Leftovers' post about checklists.

Tim

1. Blog writing process tangent

When I refer to the public library computer as being almost 'infinitely faster', I mean this as literally as such a technically impossible statement is possible.  Loading Wordpress on my laptop takes about five hours.  So how do I actually get blogs done with a computer that moves about as fast as a government issued abacus?

The way I do blogs is fairly simple.  I usually start by writing down ideas I come up with for potential topics and saving them at the bottom of a list I maintain alongside my completed and 'in progress' posts.  You all saw this at the start of the month on my 'proper admin' post and, given my decision above to throw out 'the schedule', this is going to be the only thing you see on those 'proper admin' posts in the future.

When I set aside time to write and have nothing 'in progress' that I feel like working on, I'll go into this list of ideas and try to write as much as I can come up with on the topic.  I'll work through different drafts, edits, etc- my laptop is capable of doing all of this.  All the writing is done on Gmail to minimize the transfer time of sending and downloading drafts back and forth.

Once I finish the post, I upload it onto the blog as a 'draft'.  Using preview mode, I give it a final read to make sure formatting is OK (big problem early on, since I did not know how to translate line and paragraph breaks on HTML into the post editor).  If everything looks good, I schedule the post for the assigned date and leave it there.

At this moment (4/7) I have the 4/13 post fully complete and scheduled to publish.  The 4/15 post (*) is about 90% done, writing wise, and perhaps 50% done with editing.  The Lost In Translation bracket quarterfinals (**) are 100% done except for proofreading (0% done for the two posts).  Books posts for the years 2012, 2013, and pre-2011 are all around 50 to 75 percent written with no editing yet (***).

*This post is delayed indefinitely thanks to my splitting THIS post up into two parts (4/11 and 4/15).

**These posts are going up next Monday and Wednesday.

***No idea when I'll post these but I will probably start to liberally sprinkle in 500 to 1000 word posts about books to help maintain a two post per week schedule- I'll draw on these first.

In summary, the blog post goes through four stages-

1. Idea- I write it down on the posting list

2. Writing- I keep these as drafts in my gmail (if working on them) or send emails to myself for storage (if I started writing but switched focus to something else)

3. Editing- this stage ends once I upload a final draft to the blog hosting site

4. Proofreading- I do this on the blog host and schedule the post to publish once I am happy with it

2. Meteorology tangent

I have heard no less than three sources state aloud over the past week that the recent Boston area weather has been 'fucking bullshit' (*).

*Fine, one of those three people was me.  But I stated it aloud in public, so that counts, right?

For those outside the area who need a recap- last week, or perhaps two (*) weeks ago, spring began.  Unfortunately, as one of the three above sources colorfully speculated (not me), Punxsutawney Phil (**) must have came out of his hole and froze to death because it seemed like there was more snow in March than there was during the entire non-event of a winter we just had.

*Three  

**I noticed that familiar 'red squiggly line' under 'Punxsutawney' so I decided to right-click on the word to see what Google thought a reasonable suggestion for a spelling correction was.  Turns out it is '
subcutaneous' which is a lot closer to being correct that I anticipated.

I could complain about the snow but after twenty-odd years around here the snow is just barely inconvenient for me.  The wind is another matter.  The wind blows.

I spoke to two types of people on March 31 (a Thursday)- people who loved the day's weather (sixty-five to seventy degrees, not many clouds, not humid) and people who actually went outside for more than thirty seconds (wind so heavy that I actually stopped pedaling and walked my bike for the first time as an adult).

Seeing as how I learned later that day that a several decades old oak tree was reported to have fallen on a house, a perhaps more accurate way to describe the wind was that it was LIFE THREATENING WIND.  The wind sucks, which sometimes means it blows, and sometimes the exact opposite.

3. Searching a help forum tangent

The setup of the Wordpress help forums reminded me a lot of the help pages I used to access when I encountered obstacles while programming in SQL.  My preferred way to find the help I needed was to run a google search with the website name- 'Stack Overflow'- included as a search term.

4. Blog admin tangent

I'll try to post three times this week and next, like I originally indicated in my schedule from the 4/1 post.  After that, I am going to recognize my own limitations and switch up the posting schedule.  Instead of always going Tues/Fri, I'll skip a post if it is not ready to go when the previous post goes up.  As always, I'll let you know at the end of a post when the next one is going up.

This switch should help me both keep my word when I promise a post and allow me more time to work out complicated or lengthy posts.  We'll see how it goes and adjust again in May if necessary.

The other admin note is that I will go back and edit my old posts to make this new host 'self referential'.  I do not think this is an actual phrase, concept, or even pairing of two real words, but what I mean is that any links, which currently point away from this URL, will eventually point to only Blogger URLs.  For anyone who starts (carelessly) reading after 4/11/2016, it might even seem like this blog never existed anywhere but on Blogger.