JIM TREACHER writes: "Since you were nice enough to link to me...Here's a brief note on why my blog is gone."

I've repeatedly tried to post Jim's temporary URL as an embedded link, but at this hour Blogger can't seem to post the link properly either, so I'm reduced to spelling it out. Copy-and paste to your address line:

http://phukthis.blogspot.com

The gist of it -- which Jim reported in more detail on another site, and I'm afraid I've forgotten where -- is that he'd recently paid good money for an upgrade to Blogger Pro, and instead his Blogger address became inactive. The entirety of his archives may have disappeared along with his account. And, after several days, he's received no help whatsoever from "Ev," the beleagured proprietor of the whole enterprise.

*sigh* While I haven't experienced any catastrophic service failures on that scale, my own activities on this page have been too often stymied by sluggish, unreliable connections to the Blogspot server. Lately, I've ended up deleting a number of pending posts when they'd simply become too dated to upload after a day or two had passed.

Blogger was a great idea in its early days, but it's grown to the point of collapse, underfinanced and understaffed for too long. I continue to cling to Blogger solely for its ease of use -- but If Ev doesn't get his act straightened out soon, Mind Over What Matters will be looking for a new non-Blogspot solution pretty soon, too.

UPDATE: After several days, Jim's Blogspot site seems to be back in business. But for how long ... HOW LONG...???