Sunday 15 May 2011

Blogger Is Currently Unavailable

If you’re a blogger (on blogspot) you’ll no doubt be aware of the site outage that forced the engineering team to take it offline and put it into a “read-only” mode for the better part of two days – apparently they were just carrying out routine maintenance work on the site when they experienced some data corruption blah blah blah which meant they had to restore the site to a pre-maintenance format blah blah blah, whatever that means. Now, I wouldn’t really have noticed except that when I clicked onto the site to create a new post, the response was a recurrent (and frustrating) “service unavailable”. Then when I tried to return to my blog, about two of my posts had completely vanished.

I panicked. God did I panic. (N.B. Moment of realisation, I am addicted. I am addicted?!). Typical net-savvy surfer’s reaction – Google it and see if anyone else’s had the same issue. So I did (and eventually found out all of the above information, relaxed a little albeit with bated breath, waiting for my lost posts to be restored) but when I typed “blogger” into Google news search, the first story that came up was actually something completely different. And I guess that’s what I want to make a note of today, and share with you as well –

This is what the search engine churned out:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/connect/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501833&objectid=10724740

Final Blog Touches Millions in Cyberspace.

A Canadian blogger's moving last message of love and hope published after he died from cancer last week has drawn millions of hits from people inspired by his grace.

Derek Miller, 41, ends it with a declaration to his wife of 16 years: "I don't know what we'd have been like without each other, but I think the world would be a poorer place. I loved you deeply, I loved you, I loved you, I loved you."


Naturally I clicked onto his blog (now an archive I guess) and I don’t think I have ever read anything so candid yet so comforting. I need not say much more either because his words say it all. Despite knowing he was staring death square in the face, he describes living with cancer with moving honesty but without even a trace of self-pity. He's proud of the life he has lived, and though he wishes he could be there to watch his family grow he takes solace in the thought that what he won't know can't hurt him. In his own words,


“The world, indeed the whole universe, is a beautiful, astonishing, wondrous place. There is always more to find out. I don't look back and regret anything, and I hope my family can find a way to do the same."


His words stun [me] and his bravery is profound. His last words put perspective on life, so much perspective. Life really is very short, and there's nothing more to it than sharing it willingly with another. If you've made somebody smile and you leave the world a better place then we've lived a full life regardless of how prematurely it may end. The message is simple.


http://www.penmachine.com/2011/05/the-last-post


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