The Daily School Bus: my attempt to put this blog on life-support while I wait for Squarespace to get their act together

Parked at Valley Country Store – from today's coffee break, which I just finished.

Am I really going to start a feature called, "The Daily School Bus?" I don't know. I'm thinking about it - as a stop-gap measure to keep this blog alive until Squarespace solves the ever–worsening bugs that plague their iPhone app; bugs that have gone from being a minor annoyance I could work my way around to having degenerated to become a barrier that makes it almost impossible to put up a complete post from the iPhone anymore.

Those who have been with me for a while will recall that I switched to the iPhone app because I could no longer take the time to make my blogs in the conventional way.

This iPhone app problem became acute a little over a week ago. Squarespace did some tests and discovered that yes, indeed, my complaint was valid and their app was deleting pictures before the post went up. They promised to fix it, there was a slight respite for two days, then the problem appeared again but for a couple of days but I could still work around it. Now, in every single attempt I have made over the past three days, including all the multiple retries, the Squarespace app has deleted the photograph and posted only text.

The Squarespace iPhone app is now wasting more of my time then the old method ever did – AND THE AGGRAVATION!!!! - yet I cannot go back to the old method on a regular basis because I still don't have time for it.

So I am thinking about posting one school bus picture every day, and then making no other posts at all. Then, every day readers see the school bus and nothing else, they will know Squarespace has not yet come through with their promise to fix the problem.

I am not optimistic. About three months ago, the Squarespace statistics keeper began to malfunction. It would keep statistics for a while and then it would drop statistics for a period. I pointed this out to Squarespace. They said they were aware of the problem and were working on a fix and would let me know as soon as they had made it.

I reminded them of this a couple of times over the next few weeks, and their response was always we told you we are working on it and we will let you know when it is fixed. Then I gave up and I have heard nothing more on it since. Sometimes statistics works just as it is supposed to, sometimes it doesn't. A malfunctioning statistics keeper is not a fatal flaw, but what is happening with their Squarespace iPhone app is. 

Update: Well - what do you know? I hit "publish" in my Squarespace iPhone app, expecting the process to fail just as it has every try and retry for the past few days - but it succeeded! It worked just like it is supposed to - except it puts up a somewhat pixelated image that I subsequently feel compelled to replace with a cleaner image - a problem I will explain at another time.

Was this Squarespace success a fluke? Has the bug been fixed? Squarespace said they would notify me when it is fixed. I have received no such notification. I hope so. But I am wary. Squarespace has given me so many aggravating headaches over the years. Stay tuned, look for school buses and we will see.

School bus gets rained on but does not get blown off the road

I am on my coffee break and kids are going home from school. The rain continues and there has still been little wind here to speak of. There have been strong winds, gusting up to 84 mph, on the Anchorage Hillside, Muldoon in east Anchorage and the places I mentioned earlier, plus Eagle River. This is not a scientific analysis, but I believe this is because of the way storms get funneled through all the mountains around here. West Anchorage hardly got any wind at all. Maybe the next storm will hit the mountains from a different angle roar into our neighborhood and threaten to take our roof off.

I had no choice in the matter

I was trying to restrain myself, and to take no more pictures until my coffee break, but as I walked by Little Lake, a school bus came by, dressed in the colors of fall What choice did I have?

School bus = inspiration?

This morning, I speculated that I might not take another picture beyond my sleepy, brain-dead image of coffee being poured into my cup at breakfast at Abby's. I did allow for the possibility of inspiration arising somewhere. I don't know if you would call it inspiration or not, but as regular readers know I have a policy that I never let a school bus pass by me unphotographed, if I can help it. So here I am, driving to Metro to pick up my afternoon coffee and lo and behold – a school bus!

I receive instructions from a duck; birch buds about to leaf; a variety of very young people; Scot's funeral service announced

Seeing as how I am now on

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