Blogger.com = Exasperation

Many of you who read this blog also are regular visitors to my other blog, Once You Go Asian. And by now, I suspect you are thinking that that blog is yet another of countless blogs that are started by some gung-ho person who puts out a flurry of posts but then burns out after his attention is diverted by the next new, cool tech-y thing that comes along. How many blogs have we all seen with 2 or 3 months of posts then one or two a month for a couple months til it finally just sputters out?

Well, please know this is not the case with Once You Go Asian!!! Rather, it seems there is a conspiracy afoot to keep me from being able to post to my other blog. It started simply enough with my vacation to Cancun a couple weeks ago. I was hoping to be able to post from Cancun, but my hotel did not have internet access, and thus I was unable to post during that trip.

When I returned from the trip, I submitted a post on Monday, September 11. However, almost immediately after submitting, I went to check something on the blog, and when I typed in the address, the following page came up instead of my blog (click to enlarge):



Somehow, someone managed to take over my site address and redirect people to their site. I don't know why they would care enough about my site to do that, but such was the case. I did not know how to fix it, but finally by Tuesday night, I had figured out a solution, and the blog was back up (but not before I received several panicked e-mails from readers who thought I had taken the blog down. I can only imagine how many people just removed my blog from their lists without asking what had happened).

All was well for Wednesday and Thursday's posts, but then on Friday, as I attempted to post, I received the following message from Blogger (click to enlarge):



Apparently, my blog is so generic and non-specialized [uh, right], that it has appeared to Blogger's spam robots to be a spam blog. Naturally, I immediately submitted the request for them to unlock the blog, trusting their promise that they would "take a look at your blog and unlock it in less than a business day." Today is now the 5th day since they locked it, and they still have not unlocked my blog or even acknowledged any of my multiple requests and e-mails. I'm about at a loss for what to do, as they don't make it at all easy to contact a real person at Blogger.

I'm tempted to move my blog to another hosting site, but I can't even publish anything on Once You Go Asian to let people know where I would be moving! So, if any of my readers happens to be a Blogger.com employee, could you PLEASE unlock my other blog?



Well, to hold over my Asian-o-phile readers until Blogger gets their act together, click below to reveal some beauties for your viewing pleasure....