Ejected

I don’t know how much free license one has to say what they think on a Blog. But my understanding of freedom of speech is as long as it is true there’s no great risk. I hope that is the case. Because I am feeling so low I need to tell someone.

Now this may not sound like a serious question, but it is a serious question, and don’t even read the rest of this until you give it some thought.

How would you feel if you shut down your blog for a few days to put up a new template, and when that new template was ready, you found someone else living on your site? Decorating it their way with their color values and their words? Remodeling what was once yours to suit them? How would you feel?

Well, that’s more or less what has happened to me. Starting in March of 2003, I had a quaint little place called “Abbreviated Abstractions”. This was my fledgling blog. But I was forced to build another spot because it was a blog that allowed a maximum of 300 posts and I had 311, which caused the indexing page to scramble and overlap. And made it impossible for me to continue posting there. So I moved. But still I spent a lot of time at the old place and so did my visitors.

Then just before Christmas, Hub said to me, “You’re not posting on ‘Abbreviated Abstractions’ anymore. So why don’t you clean up that site? You are a rather unorthodox thinker and if nothing else, a lot of the stuff you write is original. Original thoughts are at a premium these days and if you leave those ramblings too long, they could be plagiarized by others.”

Now I probably would have stood my ground and let the site stand as it was, but this remark was the closest Hub has ever come to complementing my blogging efforts. In an oblique way it seemed to me he was saying that I occasionally write worthy stuff. So although I wavered for the rest of that day, the next day I backed up my rants and took down the site.

And then busy with Christmas and New Year’s. So it was January 6th before I set about to resurrect that familiar old place, where I had always felt such magical inspiration, and move back in. But it could not be resurrected. URL - No longer available.

So now, my heart is breaking, as I tell you this. In the space of less than two weeks, someone else moved in. I guess to be fair, I have to admit it, the title and URL were up for grabs for a few days. That is, if we ignore the rules of plagiarism. But it still showed up when Goggled. Even though on Blogger it was now available. But Gees, I made up that title with no one’s help. So can’t others do the same? But no, we have a new resident in my old place. And guess who it is?

None other than Martha Stewart. My Title was “Abbreviated Abstractions” and my URL was “abbreviatedabstractions.blogspot.com” and her title and URL is now exactly that. Words cannot express how heartbroken I am. I know I’m partly to blame but couldn’t I have had a longer period of grace?

I moved out on the 23rd of Dec and as far as I can tell, she took up residence January 5th. I am so sad. My only comfort in this fiasco is that the place is haunted. When I was there, there was Spam lurking everywhere.

By the way, just so you know, I noticed when I googled what once was my place, that some of my older blog friends still have links to my old calling card, so don’t be surprised if Martha greets you, instead of me.

And now, by writing this, I’ve probably offended Blogger, and they’ll kick me out as well. But that would be too unfair. They have a shared responsibility in this matter. They have been telling me, and telling me, for probably two months or more that my old blog was unstable and that it MUST be moved.