Associated Content's Anonymous Emails, Disappearing Articles and Mystery Numbers, What Fun

Associated Content is so much fun. Just when I think I've gotten things figured out, here comes something new. This week, it's getting email notifications without a name attached. I love it. It's like opening a UPS package without a return address on it, all the time wondering who it's from and hoping it doesn't contain anything that goes boom. It's really neat to me because I usually do most of my reading late at night after everything's settled down, and I can concentrate. I pull up a notification on someone and try to read everything they've done since I last read one of their articles. That new notification system is really good, though, because that means I'm giving everyone on my subscriber list two page views instead of one because when I pull up a blind email, I've usually read it already.

I've noticed most of these little glitches seem to happen during the weekends, which causes me to think that we're sort of on auto pilot during that time, or maybe like people in an office, the computer takes Saturday and Sunday off.

One weekend, I pulled up an article, and the only thing I saw was the first sentence. I thought to myself, I guess she got tired of writing or just ran out of something to say. I saw differently, though, when I strolled down to the comments and saw the author wondering what happened to the rest of her article. I went back later, and as if by magic, there was the rest of it. Ta-da!

Another weekend, every time I tried to pull up an article, I got that message about the content being unavailable. I even got it on mine. Funny, I thought, I could have swore I put it out here in cyberspace somewhere. Wonder where it landed?

On one occasion when I published an article on a Saturday, my comments kept appearing and disappearing. I was beginning to think I was having hallucinations, or maybe it was just wishful thinking. Fortunately, they all reappeared, and my sanity, such as it is, was back intact.

My favorite, though, was the weekend everyone's profile information said they had published "1" article, and all the while I'm looking at a long list of articles on their web page. You gotta' love it.

But for some inexplicable reason, these glitches seem to go away as the week wears on, and everything gets back to a normal pace. Numbers change, articles reappear and all is right with the world again.

But I must say that when I question the powers that be on Associated Content, they usually respond fairly quickly and either zap the problem, or at least let me know that everyone is in the same boat with me. Sometimes, even though I feel like I may be sitting in a deck chair on the Titanic, most times I feel like I gliding through the water on the Queen Mary.

All in all, it's more inconvenience than anything else, and a little quirky in life is a good thing. I can't wait to see what it is this weekend.