Wednesday, September 5, 2007

The Saddest of Days

Today I committed a fatal error, one from which there was no recovery.

I accidentally deleted my blog.

I lost years and years of posts, and many poems and journals that I had no backups to.

I nearly cried.

But I didn't end up crying; I forged ahead - recreating from the ashes what you now see before you. And I do have to say that the new features now available on Blogger do make it much easier to customize.

Still, the sadness that dwells in my bosom over what has been lost has not yet fully sunk in, and I'm sure when it does there will be a few tears shed. (Ha. I just said "bosom.")

I say this tongue in cheek, but in all seriousness, this blog has been such a creative outlet for me that this is really no small loss. I wish that there was some way to recover them, but I can see none. Perhaps some tech-savvy wizard will happen upon this site and tell me the miraculous process for resurrecting dead posts, but I do not pin any hopes on this. I'll accept what has happened as the Hand of the Almighty, and will press ahead, no looking back.

And in an attempt to do so, allow me to point out a few new features, most notably the "Jesse Recommends..." sections you'll see to your left. These are lists of some of my favorite books and movies of all time, in descending order, typically, although in what order they fall often changes according to my mood. I should add a "Current Recommendations" list as well, in which I list books and movies I've recently read or watched that I can recommend.

So, welcome to "The Cleverness of Me" remix edition, and please join me in a moment of silence for a blog that met its fate before its time.

7 comments:

  1. WAHHHHHH!!

    Wow. Crappy. I miss you. You had some beautiful posts about me when we first started dating and stuff. WAHHHH! ;)

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  2. Cripes!
    That's awful. But that doesn't help you in your predicament, I realise.
    I came here wondering where to answer your question.
    I've been... around. At home. Changing, somewhat. But not writing much. Had a MySpace, Facebook and Bebo but I deleted them in order to limit my online existence and work more on my other existence, which is altogether trickier. But I almost wrote another blog post last night. Just feel like I'm repeating myself though, since there's little new in my little mind.

    As for your pain, you can get a few of your posts through google's caching - search for posts with terms you used, then click the "cached" option in the search result. Then copy them quick before google re-indexes your page.

    I got this
    through that method, for example. It's a start... unfortunately the links from that point to the non-existant current pages, but if you remember exact phrases from older posts, perhaps you can salvage them too through searching for their cached versions.

    Married???!?!?

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  3. Sorry, I really should really look up my mild oaths / exclamations of astonishment in the dictionary before I post them rather than afterwards.
    Sorry...

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  4. One more...
    Dunno what you've tried, but
    this makes much the same suggestion, but better. Others reckon if you e-mail the good folks at Blogger they might well retrieve for you what was lost.
    Good luck, for the sake of us all...

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  5. Thanks, Pete. Good to hear from you.

    I very much understand the "no new thoughts" syndrome; it's often what prevents me from posting anything. And working on a "real" persona is a worthy cause. Good luck to you in that respect.

    Thanks fro the tips on recovering old posts. I've used all those, both the Google cache and the Wayback Machine, and was able to recover a few of my old posts. I may re-post a few, but then again...I may not. This deletion is like permission to redefine what my blog is all about. Not that I'll actually take advantage of that opportunity, but I like the idea that the option is there.

    And yes, I'm married. For just over a year now, actually.

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  6. Hey, congratulations!
    Somewhat belated, but real.
    It was good to be able to use blogs to piece together a little more of your life. Stallion.

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  7. Agh! Jesse that's rough! I'm sorry sorry sorry. I promise I will spend some time in mourning on your behalf. Kudos for keeping at it though. I know how hard it is for me to even start a deleted email over. I suppose I should find a way to export my posts and back them up or something....

    Best of wishes on your....um...rebirth. :p

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