Update from Mannix Marketing on Feedgate, 2 p..m. 2/15/19:

(This morning we spoke with SpecificFeeds support team (they have been very helpful) and everything will be back to normal tomorrow morning. The issue was ultimately that we imported the 3,500 subscribers from Feedburner before the correct settings were added (show full blog content, 4 a.m. email delivery time). We assumed that they would automatically sync up with the final settings.

They did not, and the settings were set to send the blog feed at 10 a.m. and only show headlines. So around 8 a.m. today I had him do a mass sync(hronization) to make sure all of the subscribers have the correct settings.

The blog feed was set to go out at 10 a.m before the mass sync occurred. Because of the mass sync, (this kinks the subscribers from the old feed to the new) all of your settings were updated so they receive the feed at 4 a.m., which means today’s feed will be skipped.

So, translated from geek, this means no blog feed today, Mannix expects it will all be normal tomorrow. If it isn’t, we will keep working until it is. Thanks. That’s all I know. If you are missing the blog, don’t. It really isn’t necessary. Go to bedlamfarm.com and read it, every day all day, until the feed comes back. As an 84-year old grandma just e-mailed me, “finding your blog and reading it for a day or two is no big deal.”)

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We live in a tense and frustrating world, technology has not made our lives more peaceful. But you probably know that.

The technology that Walt Disney celebrated in his movies and theme parks really did make people’s lives easier – women didn’t have to walk miles to wells for water, washing machines cleaned clothes quickly, homes were warm in winter, stoves cook dinner quickly and cars brought us mobility and freedom.

Computers are a lot  more complex than typewriters and letters.

Technology today – it always promises to make life easier – is more complex today. It is still not clear if the onslaught of new devices makes life easier, or makes life more difficult and tense, whether it brings us together or separates us.

This week, my website is having some issues with the free daily feed that brings the blog to thousands of people automatically. To me, this is an unfortunate but common technological glitch that will be fixed shortly, it happens all the time. Very few blogs offer free daily feeds, but it is good for me, it makes reading the blog so simple.

You just get it in the mail.

To others, this is not a glitch, it is a crisis, one that is deeply upsetting, even enraging. I am touched that people care so much about my blog, that is what I want, that is what I worked for. And I’m sorry they are experiencing this inconvenience and aggravation, honest.

But this is the world we live in, and I am offering a free and still uncommon service that most blogs cannot or will not offer – free daily delivery. Free for you, that is, but not for me. There will be a big bill for the work this week, and a monthly bill from the new feeder.

There will be bumps in our technology and we are in one. It will take a few days to work through and sort it out.

I take this stuff seriously, but I am puzzled as to whether this qualifies as a crisis or not, is it really something to be angry and sorrowful about? Maybe I’m must missing something. I’m getting an awful lot of mail from some people who are frustrated, some angry, and impatient.

This morning I got this message, typical of many I have been getting this week.

“I too have been cutoff from your Blog,” wrote a long time reader. “I have not be able to see your blog since Tuesday of this week.  I know you are trying to correct this.  This problem appears to be occurring only on my desktop but not my IPhone.  Hoping your technical support personnel can correct this.”

I am sorry he is upset enough to message me, even though he knows we (not me) are working to correct this. But I am confused as to why he feels “cut off” from the blog. I have several hundred thousand unique visitors to my blog, and only a tiny fraction have signed up for daily delivery.

Some people see the blog on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, some manually access it, many Bookmark it or Google it and read it every morning or whenever they want to see it. That’s how I get it when I am out of the house or away.

There is reason to feel inconvenienced or irritated, technology does that for us and to us.

But cut off?

It’s not even possible to be cut off in our world. Just try it. My blog comes out every day, several times a day. You might want me to shut up sometimes, but I never go away..

Is Feedgate a  drama and crisis? Is something wrong with me? When I look at the news (and I love my blog, as you know) I don’t perceive the migration from one feed service to another as a crisis. Of course this will be fixed, it happens 100 times a day, it isn’t a moon launch or a physics experiment.

Sandra (not her real name)  wrote me a few minutes ago:

“Jon  I look forward  to your blog everyday  and when its  not in my inbox  I am disappointed .  It has not been  in my I box for 2 days . How is Red  doing? I love pictures of him and his body-guard ( Bud ). I also love the pictures  of all your other animals .  Hope to get your blog soon. ”

I answered the reader and explained she need not be disappointed,  there are two stories about Red on my blog just today. If she wants to know about him, all she has to do is to go and read them. It’s not like it isn’t there.

And until it is fixed the blog is readily available in several ways to anyone who wants to read it. Our world is filled with real crises – climate change, gun violence, polarization, political extremism. By the grace of God, I am not one of those crises, and my blog is not one either.

I told one fraught reader to “chill” this morning, a patronizing but truthful thing to say. People can survive a few days without me easily, but the truth is, nobody needs to miss a single post. Hopefully, all of these problems will be resolved by the weekend.

And then more messages, they come in a stream al day: “The Bedlam Farm blog is not coming thru anymore since this past Tuesday!  Explain? Thank you, reader since 2007!”

I told this reader I couldn’t explain this entire story to each of the many people contacting me. I suggested he or she (no name) just go and look at the blog, I’ve explained this several times. I’m not sure why people wouldn’t do that, do they think I don’t know, I wonder?

Or are they just reaching out to make contact with someone they have come to know well and whose blog they care about. It’s interesting because I switch back and forth between being overwhelmed and being grateful.

Once or twice (okay, maybe 50 times) I wanted to reach out and grab people by the throat, and say, “hey, just go to www. bedlamfarm.com, you can get the story of the feed and the story of the blog! All all for free and in seconds until this gets fixed!”

Several people even posted on my blog itself today asking where the blog was.

But you don’t want to grab people by the shoulders who have been following your work for years, that would be pretty stupid.

I have worked day and night for years to make the blog important to people, why be surprised that it is important to people. I thank each one for caring.

In any case, it’s Friday afternoon and this is not quite resolved, at least not yet. I know the Mannix people are working hard to resolve it, and they don’t need me to pester them. (see the update above)

In our world, this is a part of life, and not a major one. I am glad the blog is  up and running, and easily accessible to anyone who wants to read it. It’s just a click or two away until our feed is up and running and restored.

I confess I momentarily considered scrapping the feed altogether, since is was taking up most of my day, and since it seemed to be training people to never go and read the blog on their own Chris Archibee, my guide and contact at Mannix, reminded me that cancelling the feed  would be a self-destructive and stupid idea.

I contented myself by warning a few nasty people to behave in a civil way or get lost. So far, so good.

We will handle this. I thank you for your concern and interest in my blog, which I love dearly. But if you look at the news,  poor things, you will see people have a lot heavier loads to carry than this.

Last year 130 children were killed by gun violence  and there are 65 million refugees looking for homes, and our government leaders are lying through their teeth about immigrants.

I can wait a couple of days for my feed to get fixed.