Got IT!

Can you believe it? Really, I did it! I got my reader fixed!

And I did it almost all by myself too!

I did have some help from my good friend up in British Columbia, Vic Grace, who e-mailed me some information (the urls for my Atom feed and for the RSS feed as well.) I had no clue these things existed. LOL And, I sure as heck would never have been able to figure out where to find them either.

But anyway, since last Friday, I have pretty much been very engrossed in trying to work with my Google Reader and most of that time, I have also been really, REALLY frustrated with it -as well as with my own lack of knowledge about blogging, html, readers, feeds -virtually everything except how to use the keyboard. That seemed to be the only thing I was capable of mastering.

Somewhere along the way, over the past few days (six days to be exact) I got the bright idea that I needed to add Feedburner to my list of things I absolutely had to have. And, although I knew nothing about how to go about adding that little tool in to work with my blog and my reader, etc., somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered the lady who is the owner/moderator of a certain writing group I subscribe to having said oh, at least a year ago -probably more like two years ago -that having Feedburner was the best thing ever since sliced bread and as easy as falling off a log to put up on your blog too!

Needless to say, there were many times over the past couple of days that I was very temped to try to find her phone number down there in southeastern Virginia, around that island area where those wild ponies live, and ring her up at her posh new digs in her lovely condo there just to tell her in no uncertain terms, "You lied to me about Feedburner being easy to add in here!"

But, for whatever reason, sanity prevailed and I didn't call poor Dorothy to bitch about my predicament.

By this morning though, as I tackled this reader problem once again, I don't know why, but I decided to give it one more try at getting the Feedburner thingy to work and burn a feed for me.

Carefully, trying to track my every move as I did this, I finally managed to reach a point where I got a message from Feedburner that I had done it -I had burned myself a feed using their stuff.

Then, I happened to notice near the bottom of the last page of their instructions, in very fine print (but highlighted) was an offer to "go here" and I could then get the url for the OPML file for my blog. And it dawned on me -probably a huge power surge along the east coast when THAT lightbulb in my brain came on -that I had seen mention of OPML urls on the settings page for Google reader having to do with "import/export" stuff.

Now I didn't know then what an OPML file is and for that matter, I still don't, but I clicked on that highlighted fine print and there, before my eyes, what should appear but urls for the RSS feed along with all the feedburner feeds I had tried, unsuccessfully, to burn!

I had been smart enough with this last try to do the feedburner thing to copy the url of this particular feed and I had saved it over in a notepad file for future reference too! So, I looked at that file for the matching letters at the end of my feed's url to those on this list in front of me, found the url that matched my current (and successful) attempt at feedburner, and copied it then over to a notepad file too.

Then, I went to my settings page for Google reader, to the "import/export" area and was able to plug in the opml file there and let the computer do its thing -which it did -and after that, when I checked my blogroll list for my blog, VOILA, there it was -my blog listed and showing new, updated posts too!

YAY, YAY! If I'd had some beer here and if it hadn't been like 11 a.m. and I was also the person in charge today too of BOTH these little holligans here, I could easily have cracked several beers and got myself slightly tipsy in celebration mode -big time!

Now, I don't understand a lick of what I did -other than that somehow or other -probably pure luck -I managed to get the bloody thing up and running -working fine and dandy again. But man, am I ever proud of myself for having stumbled my way through this!

Now, I really would like to thank all of you readers who came forward and commented about my predicament, many sympathizing with my dilemma but I learned too I was far from alone when it comes to this technical stuff that I am as dense as an ultra large can of Crisco when it comes to comprehension there!

I won't however, be extending any "thank you's" though to any of the Blogger forums or help sites because no where along the way did I get any kind of response from them to my plight and my pleas for assistance.

And it shows me too just exactly who my friends are out in this cyberspace community - my blogger buddies are the greatest all the way and for sure!

Now I can go to sleep tonight and rest easy, sure in that bit of knowledge abouit my friends and also, a teensy bit of pride in myself too for having stumbled my way through and getting this stupid thing fixed, up and running again!