Asked for Help and Got It

 

A while back I went to write a blog post; but upon clicking on the button that normally took me to the webpage that was designed to do that, it no longer had the information I was used to seeing.  It didn’t have a button to indicate anything about adding a new article; instead, it had references to various improvements to help with “my blog experience”.

After having attempted to find the “+” button which would have shown me the last several articles posted along with the opportunity to add a newer post…I gave up, having found an endless loop taking me back to the same gibberish on how to improve “my blog experience”.

My neighbor is something of a computer guru and has helped me on several occasions.  I waited until he’d gotten back from vacation and asked if he would help once again. 

This time I had two challenges for him.  The first had to do with Microsoft 365 and that the little icon at the bottom of my monitor no longer functioned.  It only brought up a blank box that was supposed to have other small icons; Word, Excel and so on.  If, on the other hand, I double clicked on the small icon for Microsoft 365, it showed the box with all the proper icons; but when I clicked on Word…again, nothing happened.

I’d already figured out a round about way of bringing up a blank Word document page to work on.  All I needed was to bring up a Word document that I’d already filed away, erase everything on that document, type in a title for the new document and then save that document under the new name so as not to erase the older document.  Not exactly efficient; but it works.

Turns out that Microsoft screwed up, at least that’s the information gleaned from the internet by my computer friend.  According to what he found, this issue must be affecting anyone who is using Microsoft 365…and it won’t be fixed until Microsoft sends out a new update.  Imagine, if you will, how many customers are trying to figure out how to make their computer open a blank Word document.  That’s a lot of unhappy customers.

Back to getting my blog back to where I could add a new article… It took a while, trying various logical avenues, none of which were helping.  What happened?   Apparently, Google had taken over Bloger.com.  Then when I went to sign in it showed my Gmail address and asked for my password.

Well, that should have been easy since I only use that Gmail for church business, and even then, only for certain aspects of church business.  So, I typed in my password and…nothing, no help and back to the screen showing how to better enjoy “my blog experience”.

Then he asked for the original email used when I opened the Blog. Fortunately, I keep index cards showing all the old passwords and things like that.  Turns out Google wanted to log me in using an ancient email address, one that got hacked years ago so it was abandoned.

Google sent a challenge code to my cellphone; thankfully that number is still active.  Upon clicking on the proper challenge code everything snapped back on and the “+” button reappeared.

I did have to update the saved URL button on my tool bar, the easy access button that takes me to a blank Blog page ready for a new article.  I had to do this for Chrome’s tool bar as well; but that’s all taken care of now. 

My neighbor has a great billing system for when he solves computer issues for me.  He only let’s me pay him with Dr Pepper.