Like Bunny Berigan, who once sang, “I can’t get started with you”, I can’t seem to get started with this blog. After two weeks of honing and toning to make it look acceptable, I succumbed to a case of acute plugin-o-mania, some of whose activation led to pants-filling results. Now that they appear to be working (and one can never really be sure), I have decided to upgrade to WordPress 2.6, in spite of my better judgment and the screams, cries and whimpers of many who have tried and failed with disastrous results.
It is surely a proven fact that the upgrading of blog software often leads to insanity and/or sudden death by simultaneous stroke/heart attack. Not to mention the onset of a bevy of wildly metastasizing cancers were one to survive. This leads me to the theory that the internet has spawned a new form of masochism, those of us who can be called upgrade masochists.
We know the odds are against us. We are certain that instead of merrily continuing with our daily posts, we are going to encounter that hell of hells: emptiness in the form of blank screens where once our creative endeavours flowed without incident. We know that once we make the fatal mouse click, raw fear will turn our blood cold as it soaks our clothes with primal sweat. But we do it anyway.
Of course, the complement to masochism is the sadist. In our case, the sadists who write the programs we flagellate ourselves with. They are sadists, because they all believe that their code is bugfree. (Thankfully, that is mostly true.) Some get downright snotty when challenged. Reading their replies to the desperate questions of the inept in various forums is not a hopeful sign for the future of the species. Nevertheless, you can’t have a sadist without a masochist, and I must qualify as a prime example of the latter. I simply cannot resist.
But while it may end there, upgrading actually starts with the backup of the database. This requires entry to a control panel which is equivalent to the dashboard of a jumbo jet. One must then utilize an arcane system known as phpMyAdmin to encounter the database itself, called MySQL. It is here that you begin to understand what it feels like to be smack dab in the middle of a horror movie. One false step and the lurking evil contained in your ignorance of the mechanics of cyberspace will sizzle your database, and all traces of your virtual existence will disappear.
But the starting doesn’t end there either. Suppose you’ve actually backed up your database. There is no certainty that you will be able to restore it. Many have tried, many have failed. Something will always go wrong. As the WordPress Codex states under the title of Warning:
With great power comes great responsibility. phpMyAdmin allows you to interact with the database directly: it also lets you mess up the database directly. There is no “undo” or “undelete” in your database. Always exercise caution when working with the database.
In short, yours truly and this blog may not survive the next few days. Perhaps I will emerge a hero, one whose blog will go on to be unread by millions. Perhaps I will emerge as someone with a life. By that I mean someone whose life exists on the planet instead of in front of a computer screen.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…
