In September 1939, on a quiet farm in Western Poland, my Great Uncle Karol was busy tending his cows when he saw a cloud of dust on the horizon. A few minutes later he happily ran into his house, bursting with excitement.
"Marta, come quick!," he said. "Those German boys are coming early for Oktoberfest this year! Maybe they vill bring sum beer!"
If I truly had a Great Uncle Karol - and I wouldn't put it past my gene pool - then he was no more a fool than I was this morning. It serves me right for seeing a banner ad from AOL and posting about how it may be (golly gee!) the long awaited 'save' function for our journals. Poof! - it turns out AOL Journals is going under.
Dear AOL Journals user,
We're sorry to inform you that on Oct. 31, 2008, AOL® Journals will be shut down permanently. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
It is very important that you save your Journals content before the shutdown. We're working on a way to easily move your Journal to another blogging service -- you can expect an email within the next week with more details about how to do it. We want the transition to go as smoothly as possible for you, so you'll have two choices. You can either save your information manually and find another place to blog on your own, or let us handle the migration for you and automatically transfer your Journal to a different blogging service.
In the meantime, please bookmark the People Connection Blog, where you can find out more about AOL Journals. You can also subscribe to the People Connection Blog RSS feed to stay informed about any changes. We'll be updating the People Connection Blog often, so please check it regularly.
Thank you for your patience and understanding as we make this transition. We look forward to getting your blog settled into its new home.
Sincerely,
What crap. What absolute boondoggle. I'll let you in on a little secret. For months I have been sooo excited to reach my 4th anniversary here in early November and have tried like mad to have it coincide with my 1000th Journal entry (counting this one I'm at 954). It is irrational how hurt I am to learn that will not be allowed to happen.
What's worse, for three years I remained skeptical about this whole 'JLand' community, never reaching out, never joining in except on rare occasions. That's all changed in the last year, and I can't fathom not having a steady stable of Journals to read each night.
I will set up another blog somewhere else - I can't not spew words - and AOL has promised to porter over all content, including pictures and video. With due respect, I'm not going to rely on that. This journal includes four years worth of memories, of events, of relationships. That's too important to be trusted to AOL alone, so a webmaster friend of mine is calling tonight to come up with a backup solution.
Meanwhile I'm going to pretend everything is hunky-dory and leave the tears to October 31st. :)
7 comments:
AWWWWW. I'm sorry your plans have been messed up by AOHell. This whole thing pisses me off (can an old lady say pissed off?). I have already left and hope your will visit me occationally and let me know where you are when you light.
Hugs, Joyce
Now at http://tagsandalittlechatter.blogspot.com/
Needless to say, we are all angry. Let's all keep in touch somehow. If the migration moves smoothly......then we can all be kept together again.
Wow, I don't have all the years invested like you do but the two Journals that I do have are so special to me. It has helped me grow as a person and I relied on it like a Best Friend to be there for me.
I have to purchase some sort of back up thing like MyBook to protect all my Entries somehow and yet I don't know how to do it.
Hugs, Rose
AOL is slowing chipping away at the reasons I've stayed loyal all these years. Like you, I have a few years documented here and I don't want to lose them. I hope that at least they won't screw up that aspect of this end. UGH. Estela
Dan, I'm really hoping that all goes well with the migration. For the past several months, I've been writing almost all of my entries on Google Docs, so they're saved there; also I've been subscribing to my journal through Google Reader, so they're archived there as well. But I've got a big gap of entries that I could potentially lose.
I have my two year anniversary coming up in October, and it bums me out, too! So your four year anniversary is...well, twice as sad. :(
Check out blogger.com and poke around in there a little bit. Several of us have already set up our blogs there, and I hope we can keep our little J-Land community going there. Ken and I will be there, and hope you'll join us. I'll still be posting on my AOL journal for a while to help with the transition, but I'll start moving my regular entries to Blogger.
Love, Beth
http://nutwoodjunction.blogspot.com/
What a cluster f***. Like I really have time to set up a whole new journal again. But I will (did, shell is below), and I hope you will also.
http://buckoclown.blogspot.com/
I'm still freaking out somewhat. Not real computer savvy here, so I'l be stumbling along as I try to salvage entries and open at blogger. I'll post the addy in I was thinking...
:) Leigh
If I am reading things rightly from AOL bummers that they are.over here in UK we are not even being offered the oppertunity of our files etc being "sen" oer to blogspot so we will loose everything unless we try to keep them somehwere. In truth I am so upset and pissed of ..and I don't use that word easily!!...I doubt if I will continue. As I said how sad ad sad I will be if I cannot continue watching your lovely amily grow up..so if you do strat another journal please let me know. Love Sybil xx e mail syilsybil45@aol.com
http://journals.aol.co.uk/sybilsybil45/villagelife/
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