I’m having not so good luck lately.
First I find out that vox is closing, which is not good because every book review I’ve made in the last 3 years uses vox as the host for my image files. I had a little mini breakdown contemplating having to manually backup all my pictures somewhere and then laboriously editing all my posts so that the img tag pointed at the new source.
Then I found out that I could import all my vox posts to wordpress and if I clicked on the Download and import file attachments checkbox, it would download all my images to wordpress and automatically link them properly in all my posts. Fine, good. There was just the problem that I already had a years worth of the vox posts mirrored here. So I decided – backup my current wordpress blog (check), import vox to a temporary wordpress blog (check), remove all the overlapping posts (check), import the rest to the temporary blog (check after some issues). This took about 4 hours, I won’t go into the things that went wrong there.
Then I tried to import that back over to this blog. Well. First it imported everything to just July. I’d try over and over. Just up to July, not September. And then I noticed I had about 2500+ media files from trying to import it over and over. This was about 2000 files more than necessary. So I went in, deleted alllll the media files, all the blog posts. Tried again. But when I went to try again, strangely my import page was stuck on “processing” . So I opened a ticket with support. Waited about 12 hours. Support deleted the import and asked me to try again. I tried again. Looked OK.
Oh wait. I clicked on the Download and import file attachments checkbox, but all these images are still hosted on vox! OK…. try importing again. I DEFINITELY clicked the checkbox there. Nothing changed. OK. Let’s try deleting all the posts and retrying the import. OK.. deleted posts. Go to import.. what, it is stuck on “processing” again! Emailed support that I’m still having import issues. Waited another day. My blog is an empty wasteland in the meantime, but I figured, oh well, it will just be a day.
….
Waited waited. Think to myself, “Strange, support hasn’t replied to me and it’s been 24 hours?”, hmm. Then I see.. THIS!!!
“Support is currently closed as staff meet offsite brainstorming ways to make WordPress.com better. We will be dropping into the forums regularly during the hiatus, and we’ll formally reopen on September 19th.”
Support is all gone .. for 11 days.
Oh by the way, I’ve been having parallel issues at work. All this stuff with wordpress? Yeah, same crazy not working crap of a different variety over there too!
(No. It is NOT me!)
Seriously .. it’s like the stars aligning to wreck havoc ON MY LIFE!! (See: Sneaky Hate Spiral)
Allie Brosh / CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Anyway, my solution is that I deserve presents which I buy myself.
Luckily, I bought myself stuff before the latest debacle so I’m only Crazy and not Enraged.
I have had a book buying ban and didn’t buy anything for almost 3 months (fine, I did break when the book was less than a dollar at a library sale but I’m not counting those). On Monday, I went into Barnes and Noble and bought:
I ordered:
A month ago I also bought the whole President’s Daughter series by Ellen Emerson White because The Book Harbinger pointed out that there was a sale at BookCloseOuts and it was “$0.99 US dollars for each of the the first three books and $3.99 for the fourth.” – P.SÂ that price is still in effect today.
Yesterday I saw that there was a $9 t-shirt sale at Threadless so I bought some pulp science fiction type t-shirts (I already own this one, after all):
Today I bought myself this artwork (also on sale for less than $5):
And… in the mail today? Fed-exed over?
I feel better.
specficromantic 
Buying stuff often helps! And I’m sorry to hear about the hassle with Vox…that’s just crazy.
I’m reading Killbox right now and will be starting Bayou Moon this weekend! Very excited for those! Also, I’ll have to spend the next week trying to talk myself out of buying that “Girls in Space” shirt…
As long as I get it to finally import properly before the deadline I think I’ll be happy.
I’ll probably start BAYOU MOON this weekend too. Reading SONG OF SCARABEAUS now. 😀
It really is unfortunate that the auto-import wouldn’t work. I mean, it’s supposed to be there for convenience, you know? When I moved from Book Love Affair to Dreams & Speculation it worked brilliantly for me, but stopped importing comments about half way through. I figured that was good enough, you know? But still…
Song of Scarabeaus looks interesting. Honestly, I haven’t seen much about it, so I’ll have to make sure to read the review!
P.S. You know you want the Girls in Space shirt! if I see it on sale again, I’ll alert you.
Thank you, I’d love to know if it does! 🙂
Lol, well you were entitled to all those books after this drama.
That’s what I tell myself. *hugs them for comfort*.
I’ve been seeing your tweets about Vox and I really feel sad that you’re going through so much just to import your blog posts. I can’t imagine having to go through all that. So you really deserve the new books.
Magic Bleeds! 🙂 I also got my copies of the President’s Daughter series! I had the local bookstore order it abroad for me, the first three was around $10 and the last one was around $18 so I’m jealous that you got it a lot cheaper. Although I’m excited for both us because we’ll get to read this wonderful series soon!
Aw, don’t worry. It will work out somehow. Even if I don’t get all my pictures, I will redownload them off the web and deal. I may be complaining and making voodoo dolls as I do it.. but it will happen! I am very dogged.
Wow, I didn’t know that they were that much for you to get. If you ever see a deal like this on bookcloseouts and need someone to ship from the US to the Philippines, I’m your girl. I think I can figure out the cost of shipping on usps.com and we can discuss.
It’s funny that I experienced problems with WordPress right after you did but mine is so small compared to yours and I’m glad it’s resolved now.
Aww thank you so much for the offer! Book bloggers really are awesome. I’ve had other blog friends offer the same thing and I’m usually too shy to take them up on it. I really appreciate the thought though.
Ouch, that was a lot of bad things happening at the same time. I hope the support team drop by and see your request before the 19th.
Good to see that you have at least found some small comfort 🙂
I hope they count my email reply to them before the close as a ticket that came in before the close. *crosses fingers*.
Yes, I have some stories to keep my mind off!
Holy crap. I’m so sorry! You totally deserve every little item you got. And naturally I’m on pins and needles to hear what you think of the President’s Daughter series!! 🙂
Well it will work out I think. Just will take a while. I haven’t started reading THE PRESIDENT’S DAUGHTER yet but I will!
Lol I’m sorry! Gotta love retail therapy. And I was a bad influence, but the EEW books really didn’t add that much more to the total I see. 🙂 Jealous of the Bayou Moon purchase. Must get that soon.
🙂 Those PRESIDENT’S DAUGHTER books were such an awesome price.
BAYOU MOON was an advanced finished copy. I submitted a request for it a while ago and never thought I’d get one. So happy because it was unexpected and RIGHT when I needed it.
Oh I am so very sorry to hear about all your computer woes. Not fun at all. But I cannot think of a better pick me up than all those lovely books. And I really need to get back to the Cast in.. series – I love the cover for CAST IN CHAOS. Maybe that should be a happy Friday gift to myself 😉
I’m hearing mixed reviews on the CAST IN CHAOS book, but I’m optimistic because it sounds like more clash of culture-y and I like those situations. We’ll see.
Eeek, definitely the retail therapy is justified. FWIW, I also had the same problems in exporting/importing with wordpress (images still being hosted from the original), so it’s not just you – but I didn’t have to deal with losing the original source.
Really?! Did you figure out how to get around that? WordPress support managed to get my import un-hung so you can see all my posts now (YAY), but the images are STILL hosted in the wrong place (*sad face*). At this point I feel .. well, tired. I’ll take whatever tips people have though.
No, sorry – I got lazy and just left it as is. It was just for a personal site and I was changing blog addresses on wordpress.
OK. Well I seem to have a nice support person so they’re looking into it. If they tell me what’s up with the images not coming over, I’ll let you know. 🙂
oh you poor thing. 😦
I’m so sorry you’ve had to deal with all that over vox closing down. Ugh! I hope you’ve gotten some solutions and or help by now. In the meantime, so glad buying books made you feel better! 😀
Thank you. 🙂 I am crossing my fingers. The support person says he’s giving the problem to the developers to look at now.