Offline

Well, it’s been a bad couple months for me, as far as the internet is concerned. In a previous blog I expressed my annoyance at being blocked from using MySpace at work. However, shortly after we were banned from the site, I discovered that I could still access my account by using a proxy server. It worked fine for a couple weeks before unexpectedly converting the whole thing to German. This was still doable for a while, until something else on the site mutated, causing my inbox and messages to be completely distorted. But hey, it was better than nothing – for a while, anyway. But this week at work when I tried to click on my precious proxy link, I was greeted with large black letters reading Forbidden Site. Great.

As many of my friends know, shortly after I moved into my apartment about a year and a half ago I discovered that my laptop could hook up to the internet by using other wireless connections in my building. I was obviously thrilled, since I really don’t have the money to pay for yet another bill. But sadly, I discovered last week that I have been blocked from every single network – the person allowing me to use their connection must have moved out or something. Not having the internet at home presents several problems. Obviously now I can no longer access MySpace at all, except when visiting a generous friend’s house, etc. And as many of you have probably noticed, I am only able to post text to my blog from my work computer. Photos have to wait and be uploaded from home hours after the original blog was posted, since my work PC times out every time I try to upload one.

Which brings me to my main point: I have now been locked out of Blogger.com at work! A friend convinced me that by switching over to Blogger Beta, I would be able to post pictures to my blog from my work computer. This sounded like a great idea, since my free home internet connection is gone. Sadly, I should have thought twice before clicking OK – an action that cannot be undone in this case. Blogger Beta assigns the user a new login name using a Gmail account, and for some reason this is unacceptable to my company network. Now when I try to log into Blogger, I get a lovely “this site is inappropriate for the workplace” warning. And unfortunately, there is NO WAY to switch back to Classic Blogger. Trust me, I’ve tried.

So here I am at work, writing this blog with absolutely no way to post it. What this means to all my loyal readers is that you might have to check my blog for days or even weeks at a time until suddenly five blogs pop up – This means I was somehow able to access a computer with an internet connection.

I am beyond annoyed. I even went so far as to contact our company help line and ask them to unblock the site, but I was denied. This is actually quite surprising since The Seattle Times Guild has a Blogger site of their own. At any rate, I’m sorry I can’t keep my blog so up-to-date anymore, and I wish there was something I could do besides complain. If there are any tech nerds out there who think they could help, I’d welcome any and all advice.

Until then, I hope to post again soon – but don’t count on it.