Archive for the 'Blog' Category

August 25, 2008 @ 7:38 pm | Filed under: Blog

I’m still missing some three hundred subscribers…if you’re reading this on the blog and wondering why my recent posts haven’t popped up in your feed reader, it probably means you’re among the people who were suddenly unsubscribed by my Feedburner snafu last week.

And I’m still hearing from readers whose IP addresses have been blocked from loading the site, for reasons neither I nor my hardworking web person can fathom. If you are one of those people, send me your IP address and we’ll get you unblocked. (But how will you know to do this, if you can’t load the blog AND have been unsubbed? I wonder if there will be people out there who think I just stopped blogging one day?)

So I’ve got the SURPRISE! YOU’VE BEEN UNSUBSCRIBED problem. And the SURPRISE! YOUR IP ADDRESS HAS BEEN BLOCKED problem. And let us not forget the WHOOPSIE, YOUR BROWSER IS SHOWING YOU A CACHED VERSION OF THIS SITE WHICH MEANS YOU AREN’T SEEING THE MOST RECENT POSTS problem which has been plaguing some readers for a while. (At least we know a solution to that problem. Register for the site and as long as you’re logged in, you will always see the most recent posts. Only—for Pete’s sake don’t forget your password because if you try to log in with the wrong password, my hypervigilant spam filter will label you a Suspicious Character and block your IP address. See problem #2, subset A.)

Thanks, friends, for hanging in here with me while I continue to try to sort out these obnoxious problems. I’m sorry some of you are having to work so hard to make it past the goblins to new posts. And then I go and reward your trouble with a boring post like this?! Heck, the goblins are more interesting!

August 21, 2008 @ 5:40 pm | Filed under: Blog

I’ve just discovered that over half of my subscribers have been unsubbed. I don’t know why or how, but there it is. If you wouldn’t mind resubbing, that would be ducky. Thanks so much.

Of course here again we have the problem of the people who need the message not being able to see the message. If any of you feel like spreading the news, I would really appreciate it!

August 21, 2008 @ 6:34 am | Filed under: Blog, Family

Well, in addition to the Mystery of the Blocked IPs, we now get to add the Mystery of the Wonky Feeds on Bloglines to this week’s blog drama. It seems some Bloglines users are finding that when they click through from my feed in their reader, they wind up at Old Bonny Glen (Typepad) instead of here at New Bonny Glen (Wordpress). As best I can figure, this is the result of my having accidentally and for two minutes only reconnected the Typepad blog to my Feedburner feed, which blunder I discovered immediately, because suddenly a six-month-old Typepad post (the one announcing the launch of this here website) reappeared in my Google Reader.

It’s all very strange. I didn’t actually reconnect the Typepad blog to the Feedburner feed for this blog—what I did was create a new Feedburner feed for Old Bonny Glen, but for inscrutable and maddening reasons, Feedburner ignored the new feed and hooked the Typepad blog back up to my original Feedburner feed instead. And so I changed it right back and said argh a lot and have been scratching my head in befuddlement ever since.

But none of it matters because this post is so boring all my subscribers are going to unsub in disgust anyway. It was lovely knowing all of you, really. I’ll miss you.

Meanwhile (she says, speaking to the empty room), life! is! so! busy! And these are supposed to be the lazy days of summer? Ha! Appointments, appointments, appointments. ‘Tis eval season for my boy: OT, PT, you name it. Speech therapy resumed yesterday after a two-month hiatus. He receives it through the local public school district (but not OT/PT; I’m going through medical for those), and the schools here started back up on Monday! August 18th! They didn’t let out for the summer until late June. Which was last week, I’m pretty sure. The calendar claims there was something called “July” in the middle but I didn’t see it, did you?

So anyway, it’s appointment season for my lad. And for me: all the OB stuff. (I miss my Virginia midwife, sob.) And Jane: Jane is getting braces. Probably next week. So that’s kind of exciting. Today is x-ray and tooth-molds day for her. (See how clever I am? Scheduling it for back-to-school week? When, for once, the orthodontist has no other patients? OK, fine, it was a total accident caused by my procrastinating all summer, but if I HAD planned it this way, I would be a genius.)

A nice thing that has been happening lately is we’ve got our read-aloud groove back. For the past year, the Rilla-and-Wonderboy combination has made peaceful reading aloud, um, challenging. I have missed it! I gnash my teeth in jealousy in the quiet evenings when the little ones are asleep and Scott stretches out in the cool, breezy sunroom with a bevy of eagerly listening girls for uninterrupted reading time. OK, I’m not really gnashing my teeth—because I know, now, what my parents paid for the braces that made them nice and straight.

About which, by the way: um, thanks for that, Mom and Dad.

But anyway, recently I got it into my head that I wanted a return to happy readalouding (hush) of my own, so we’ve been working on it, working out ways to keep the little ones happy while I dust off all my best accents for the big girls. And it’s working, sometimes. Enough of the time. I’m satisfyingly deep into Understood Betsy with Rose and Beanie—Beanie was two years old last time we read this book aloud, so it’s new for her, and of course Rose is right there hanging on every word, because how can you not be? It’s one of the best read-alouds ever, and I don’t say that lightly. And you already know about my Austen revels with Jane. (Jane and Jane, ha!)

Nothing could be more delightful, to quote Jane the elder.

August 20, 2008 @ 9:54 am | Filed under: Blog

If you are reading this in a reader but are unable to get the site to load when you click through, it means your IP address is suddenly being blocked for some mysterious reason. Email me your IP address and I’ll get you unblocked posthaste. (You can look up your IP address at http://whatismyip.com.)

Now: what to do about people who are being blocked but don’t subscribe to my feed, and therefore won’t have any way to see this message??? I sure hope they will send me a note to say they can’t get the site to load.

In the meantime, I’m double-posting all new material at the old Typepad site. But keep commenting here, if you can get through.

Thanks!

August 19, 2008 @ 4:51 am | Filed under: Blog

This is one of those posts that makes no sense, because the people who could use the information are the very ones who won’t be able to see it. I’ve heard from a few readers that they have been unable to load Bonny Glen for the past few weeks. I’m working on discovering and solving the problem, but in the meantime, if you do see this post and know anyone who is having trouble, here’s a temporary solution you could share (and I’d be ever so grateful):

Try this link instead: http://feeds.feedburner.com/bonnyglen

That should load my blog’s feed, which is a stripped-down, no bells-and-whistles version of the site. Posts only, no sidebars. (Of course you may also subscribe to this feed in a reader like Bloglines or Google Reader, and then you’ll never miss a post!)

If the problem persists here on the blog, I may consider double-posting at the Typepad site and having that be a mirror of this one. Not an ideal solution, but it’s the back-up plan if we can’t figure out what’s wrong.

Thanks, everyone.

August 2, 2008 @ 7:53 pm | Filed under: Blog, Photos

All right, all right, I’ll post a picture of the Green Bag tomorrow. Can’t tonight because my camera’s out there and I’m in here.

In the meantime, feast your eyes on this shot by my pal Kristen “Hey, Joss Whedon! Yay!” Rutherford. Does she not take the best photos?

Some of you will not be seeing this post for a few days, due to that browser glitch we discussed a while back. I mention it now only as a reminder: if your browser is afflicted by the glitch, you can get around it by registering for the site. Click on any post, scroll down to the bottom of the comments (right above the box where you’d leave your own comment), and click on “Register here.” And then, as long as you’re logged in, you’ll always see my most recent posts. If you’re seeing this post on Saturday or Sunday, then you’re not experiencing the glitch and can ignore this paragraph. Or not! Register anyway and make your own little avatar for the comments. I like that so much.

In other news—y’all know, right, that there was one name I had to leave out of my Internet Baby Boom post, even though I was bursting to spill it? And finally she has spilled it herself? Hey, Alice Gunther! Yay!

Scott and I have taken geekdom to a whole new level lately by communicating via Twitter. John Stossel’s mustache is so jealous. Everyone else is probably grossed out.

June 27, 2008 @ 10:24 am | Filed under: Blog

…for a few days, that is. Argh. I’ve got a little bloggy glitch going on, a complication having to do with the server and a plug-in, which may be preventing some of you from seeing my most recent posts when you click the blog’s main page. It’s a caching issue: some browsers are viewing an older version of the blog rather than the most recent. For example, I’ve just heard from one friend that when she clicks on my blog today, she’s not seeing anything I’ve posted since June 24th. That means she’s missing about four posts.

In her case, she knew she was missing something because she subscribes to my feed in Google Reader. If you read my feed, you’re seeing all the posts. And you can click through directly to individual posts and see them here, with the comments. It’s only when you (and only some of you; it doesn’t seem to be happening to everyone—if you are logged in, for example, it won’t happen) click to the main blog site that the problem is occurring.

A workaround until I find a solution: click on the top post title in “Recent Comments.” Then you’ll see an arrow link to the title of the next post, and from that one, you can click to the next, and so on. Not ideal, but it’s a temporary fix. You might also try emptying your browser cache. And of course subbing to the feed is another good option.

Thanks for putting up with me while I get this sorted out. Maybe I’ll add a note to the sidebar until then, because this post won’t show up for many of you until next week, most likely.

April 6, 2008 @ 1:27 pm | Filed under: Blog

After more than three years of blogging, I still haven’t figured out the best way to respond to comments. When you ask a question in the comments, do you keep coming back to that post to check for an answer?

Or is it better if I pull both question and answer into a new post?

Obviously there’s no one best way. Some questions are not directly solely to me but rather are parts of ongoing discussion, and in those cases of course it makes sense for me to respond in the comments as well.

Other times, my response to a question turns into a whole post in itself. And in still other instances, I might make a short response in the com box, but newer posts and comments push that reply down the page and the person who posted the question might never know I replied.

I’m glad many blogs are now providing the option of subscribing to comment notifications so that I can follow com box discussions I’m interested on other sites.

I replied to a few questions in my own comments last night: Michelle’s daughters had a question about the Martha books, Hannah was curious about how we make read-alouds work with noisy little ones around, and Mary Alice wondered about kids who gulp down books very quickly. Feel free to chime in on those last two topics if you’d like! (I mean, you’re welcome to chime in on the Martha subject too, but that’s one of the very rare questions for which only I could provide an answer. It was about whether the Martha-and-Lew wedding story is ever likely to be told.)

April 2, 2008 @ 7:12 am | Filed under: Blog

How ironic that so many of you are getting an “unable to connect” message when you try to click through to this site.

My web host assures me, however, that this situation is temporary and will be resolved very soon. My hosting company switched servers last week and they are still  ironing out the wrinkles.

I’ve just learned that at least one person has tried to post comments and had them disappear. I am very sorry to hear that. If it has happened to anyone else, please let me know. I may be able to restore them from the feed.

Thanks for your patience, and please do keep trying to get through when you want to leave a comment! I’m sorry this problem has coincided with our busiest discussions ever.

March 31, 2008 @ 9:32 pm | Filed under: Blog

I’ve just discovered that some of you are subscribed to an inactive feed. If you haven’t been seeing new posts in your Bloglines reader, please make sure you are subscribed to http://feeds.feedburner.com/bonnyglen, not     http://melissawiley.typepad.com/bonnyglen/atom.xml. Thanks!

(But how will you see this if you’re not getting my feed?)