Well, in some ways — not many that actually affect me and my blogging experience, but in ways that apparently made things better for other bloggers — the last upgrade of MovableType contained some improvements. MovableType, of course, is the software that powers this blog.

Unfortunately, the Powers That Be over at MovableType thought that they should decide how people run their blogs. They apparently decided that the ability to completely block spammers was Not A Good Thing™. Who knows what muck got stuck in the creative synapses when they were making this decision? Certainly not me.

*sigh*

I used to blog daily. Perhaps I even wrote overmuch. At one time, this blog had an average of 250 readers per day. In those days, I ran my own server and maintained my own software. Then I decided that I would go into law and needed someone else to handle fighting off the asshats (children, mostly) who learned how to press the “go” button on someone else’s “hacker toolkit.” These bozos couldn’t hack their way out of a paper bag, but they could download software written by others who sometimes could. Occasionally, they’d figure out how to successfully get the toolkit to actually work and — voilà! — they’re “hackers.”

Yeah…right.

Well, anyway, my first attempt to hand over responsibility to someone else was to sign up with A-plus.Net’s hosting service. After all, some of my domain names were registered there. (As they expire, I’m planning to gradually move them to Network Solutions because of what happened.)

A-plus.Net gave me space and ability to install MovableType. To test things, I started by moving some domains I don’t really use much — Chafowitz™ and TechStop™ for starters. Things seemed fine. So eventually I moved Unspun™.

The blog was up and running and everything seemed fine. For about 24 hours. Then, suddenly, everything stopped working overnight. And I could not figure out why. After dinking around with everything for a bit, I realized that somehow my domains were all disabled. Turned off. Not working. No web pages. No email (which, of course impacts my ability to do business in my law clerking office). No nothing.

Aplus never said anything to me about this. They just shut me down. When I contacted them to find out what was happening, I was told I was using up too many calls to the database server, supposedly generating thousands of calls per second. Nothing like that had happened when I was using the identical software and set-up on my own computers, but Aplus would not listen — nor would they respond to my requests for log files to prove what they were saying was true.

We argued about this for awhile — lawsuits have still not been ruled out — and eventually I was forced to give up and find another hosting company. No choice. I needed email to communicate with my clients and Aplus was refusing to turn things back on.

I moved everything to LivingDot — with whom I’m very happy — but it took about two weeks to get everything re-configured and transported. (I had moved things slowly, one domain at a time, when I went from my own servers to Aplus. I had no such opportunity after they unceremoniously shut me down.)

During that time, I saw my readership drop from an average 250 per day to an average of 80 per week. Also, because of a change in the way the blog operated, the Google links to my articles were no longer accurate. (The blog switched from a numbering system to a “partial title” or “naming” system for the target URLs.) The blog readership still has not recovered significantly. No doubt some of that is because I’m not writing as much (and the most recent writing is just not as interesting).

I’ve lost some — most, actually — of my desire to write about politics and social issues. Seems no one really gives a damn anyway. And, hey, as I’ve said many times before: I don’t have kids. If you all aren’t worried about the world you’re leaving them, why should I be? I’ll be an attorney soon. I’ll make some good money. Maybe I’ll become a selfish Republican and worry only about myself and my own creature comforts — damn the future. Damn you and your children. You can try to figure out how to feed them while paying $15 for a gallon of gasoline. You can figure out where they’ll live when there are no more unpolluted spaces. You can figure out what they’ll eat when there’s no more usable farmland. You can figure out where to bury them when the Bush Administration sends them off to our next unjustified war.

Oy. There’s an awful lot of writing here for an entry entitled “No Comment.” Where was I going…..?

Oh yeah. I really wrote all that to write this: To those few readers who might still visit the blog, some other things are changing. Because the MovableType people have decided that they, and only they, will decide who can post comments to my blog if I turn on commenting, I have turned off commenting. At least for the time being. If you have comments to post here, you’re just going to have to email them to me. You can probably guess the email; I’m not going to post it up here for spammers to mine. I get enough of that already.

Maybe someday I’ll turn commenting back on again. But until MovableType gives me back the ability to block posts I don’t want, or until I switch to another kind of blogging software that does, the rest of you will have…

…No Comment.