Back In Business

Jesus Christ.... we've said it before and we'll say it again: Blogger is free, and you get what you pay for. After being labeled a "spam" blog by one of Blogger's trusted "spambots," we were locked out of our blog on Friday afternoon and have just now been given access again, meaning that we didn't get to post a weekender or anything else for several days. Somewhere, a member a Belafonte has a tear in his eye.

Anyway, the really crappy part is how Blogger's spam spotting works: The robot finds your blog, suspects that it's a spam blog, and automatically locks you out in order to shut it down. The problem is that this apparently happens to dozens of legit blogs every single day, and once a blog is locked for spam, Blogger insists that you wait for up to a week or longer in order for a human being to actually go to your blog and confirm that it isn't spam. Then, and only then, will they unlock it and give you the privilege of blogging once again.

Yeah I know, bitching about a free service is kind of stupid, but Google certainly isn't running Blogger out of the kindness of their hearts, and this guilty unless proven innocent approach to security seems to go right along with Google's happy new partnership with the Chinese government. Get in where you fit in I suppose. Expect a "very short because we didn't think we were going to post today" it list a bit later.