Week Review: Citing Taggart, “Never Give Up Never Surrender”

Remember Commander Taggart’s exclamation, “Never give up, never surrender!” in the movie “Galaxy Quest?” It was repeated over and over the last few days. Roger Ebert’s 1999 review reads, “One of my favorite moments in ‘Galaxy Quest’ takes place as a Red Digital Readout is ticking off the second until a spaceship is blown to smithereens. The only person who can save it is a teenage science fiction fan far away on Earth – and he has just been ordered by his mother to take out the garbage.” That is why I titled this post accordingly. The extreme and dumbfounding comedy/tragedy balance reflects current blog events.

One word or expression, as it were, may recap this past week: “Ugh.” The most loyal presence in my life as of late has been Mr. Murphy (as in Murphy’s Law). As I wrote a few weeks back, we have been working behind the scenes, or the blog’s backend, to make numerous changes slotted for quite a while, but I have not been able to address them in their entirety on my own as of this post. Though many “technical” things have been set in place and are functioning as intended, every time one sets out with the best foot forward and plenty of determination, the “luck” machine clogs, or “the teenager takes out the garbage.” This week has been epic proof of that on all fronts (and I mean all).

TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES: PLEASE STAND BY

Trying to put some order in chaos: with less than 24 hours to the first anniversary, there is still plenty of blog work to be done, and we (it takes a village) are doing our best to have everything working as it should as planned. This is amidst the challenges plaguing me on so many different levels (some known through previous posts here, some simply occurring because of Mr. Murphy’s all-too-annoying presence – he’s been *polite cough* asked to dwell elsewhere). Never known to have much good fortune, to begin with, I have always fought tooth and nail to overcome. This is no different – albeit a bit tougher than usual.

That bit said, I have received many inquiries as to why comments were not showing up or resulted in a 403/404 error, some of you could not access the blog at all, content went missing, photographs triple-posted or disappeared altogether, to mention a few issues, etc. For those of you who are bloggers, this is probably eliciting a chuckle and an eye roll: yes, we know the frustration. However: rest assured that some of those issues are due to us working as diligently and quickly as possible to streamline, outline, move, and consolidate content as we had anticipated and written a few weeks back. Most other technical issues should be solved now (let us know if you still have difficulties. Your input is essential!)

SPAM AND HACKING

In the last couple of weeks, and having eventually established that it was due to spambots, black hatters, and hateful hackers, the security impact has been felt on different fronts (from the blog to personal devices). Though largely resolved (through a more aggressive firewall, working with social media platforms and telecom providers resulting in mostly successful account recoveries), I am still backlogged regarding re-establishing continuity. If you have been unable to contact us or received no reply to inquiries we never received during this time, please accept our sincere apology –  though we are not at fault, we feel mortified. All forms of communication were affected on almost all levels.

That said, I cannot conceal that this week has been challenging and almost brought me and the blog to a permanent halt (it may sound dramatic though it is not: it is simply the truth). Instead of giving in and up, I set out to resolve the most pressing issues as quickly as possible. Most technical problems were successfully solved, yet other derived consequences may never be. Though a sad and dreadful outcome on that level, I am grateful to all those that persisted in attempting to – and succeeding in – reaching out. Unfortunately, the occurrence was not only a sudden and unwarranted technological attack but also led to unforeseeable and startling personal setbacks — a lot to deal with and move on from. Shaking off the dust from our feet and onwards, we go.