Confession Time: I Felt Terror

Like many other evenings, I went to add an entry to this blog, but before I wrote it, I wanted to check an older posting.  I typed www.paulmyoung.net, hit enter, and up came a message in Firefox telling me that the site could not be found.  No problem I thought, must have mistyped something.  So I tried it again.  And again.  And yet again.  Every time, I got the same error.

By now, the sweat was rolling off my brow.  I went to Blogger and was happy to find my dash still working, but horrified when the “view my blog” link went right to the same error.  At this point, all logic left my brain and I started to panic.

I was now fumbling through Gmail trying to find my domain registration email.  Heck, I was trying to remember who my domain registrar was!  Finally found it and after resetting my password, got logged on—domain’s OK (my secret worry was that I had let it lapse).  Next, I started reading help postings on Google and doing my best to figure out what could of happened. 

After about 20 minutes, it suddenly hit me:  Try another browser.  D’oh.  That worked.  I then cleared Firefox’s cache and all was well again.  Double d’oh!

Why is this significant?  Because after 20+ years of technical work, I often don’t remember what it feels like to be an end user in near, total terror.  Thanks God, for that little refresher.  I just hope these chest pains subside soon.