When I started this blog, I didn’t really intend to be a blogger. I didn’t even know what a blogger was. I was just using the internet to store mails I typically used to send to old friends, many of whom had threatened to call authorities if I didn’t stop. But over time, something snapped and I crossed over. Now I am one of them; a blogging enthusiast.
What makes me an enthusiast? I try to understand what I should do to increase traffic on my blogs. Note: I said I try to understand what I should do… Not that I DO these things. I just understand them. As far as tips are concerned, I am on first name-nickname basis with the eminent SEO guru, Manikuttan Karthik, from The Daily SEO Blog who doles out Grade A marketing insights on a daily basis. In our talks, he has given me around 20-30 logical, feasible, practical suggestions for the task at hand. One of the few tips that I actually tried was to be active in communities.
While I did join up with some forgotten communities, the only one where I was active was the fantabulous Humorbloggers. This is where I’ve met some of the funniest bloggers I’ve seen, including the ever-helpful Eve from That’s Funny Because.
Eve suggested that I sign up with Blog Catalog as well. I am definitely not one to ignore direct advice from Eve, so I scurried along to BC. Apparently, my blog was already registered there; has been for over ten months. And that too, with some unknown email ID. For ten twelfth of a year, my blog had been registered in BC, but I was logged out; I couldn’t log in; I couldn’t register again; and I couldn’t send along a ‘Forgot Password’ request.
Hijacked! Identity theft! Someone stole my identity! A sini… Whoa. Someone stole my identity? That doesn’t sound right. Why would anyone…Hmm… Maybe it’s a ransom demand. That’s it. A ransom demand. Any day now, I’d be receiving an anonymous mail spliced together with alphabets cut out of stupid old newspapers.
Dear Hammy,
We have your BlogCatalog ID. If you ever want to login again, get two million bytes of data from your site in unmarked, non-sequential, non-buggy code, and login to the chatroom ‘KidnappersRUs’. Come alone. You shall get further instructions from there. If you call the BlogCatalog authorities, we shall send you your login ID in little pieces. Remember; No punny stuff.
Anonymously yours,
Roger I mean, Mr. Anonymous.
At least, this was the initial reaction. On careful reconsideration, there seemed to be several problems with this theory.
- If the ID thieves have indeed stolen my identity, why would they waste 10 months before sending such a letter.
- I’m nowhere near as famous enough to be targeted this way.
- If they’re going to send me the ID in little pieces, that would be ok with me too.
I was man enough to admit that I had made a hasty judgment here. I wrote to the BC authorities and explained the situation. I think I did the right thing by not mentioning the ID theft theory.
Unfortunately, they sent initial communiation all to the unknown mystery email ID that my site was registered with. So I was still stuck outside BC. I could see my site displayed at “http://www.blogcatalog.com/blogs/the-blah-blahs-and-the-yada-yadas.html”, but I couldn’t log in. Eve told me that apparently, many people had tried to add me as a friend, but I couldn’t log in to I spent a lot of energy on following this matter up, grovelling energy and pleading energy, but finally, I have found the mystery email ID.
hamish@gmail.com
hamish@gmail.com instead of hamishjoy@gmail.com.
They took out my joy. Literally. Of course, considering the level of klutzhood I display, I think this goof up has entirely been from my end. Anyway, I used this information to re-login and mark the territory. No, I just had to change the email ID from their files… bring back the joy, so to speak. So I’m finally on BC, after ten twelfth of a year in latent dormancy. It’s still a matter of debate whether I’ll be active. But I’ll try. If I get active enough, maybe people will stop laughing their heads off when I talk about people demanding my writing as ransom.
