Daily Dot killed their comment section. I’ve read their post about it twice, and I still don’t really have a clear picture of why. It seems to be some sort of amalgamation of troll-like comments meets people don’t want to leave comments meets why leave multiple places for people to discuss when they’re talking about the posts on Facebook meets… something else?

All I know is that this fundamental part of blogging — in fact, what made blogging a discussion vs. having someone talk at you — is disappearing.  I don’t just mean the conversation itself; that’s been obviously on a decline as people read from mobile devices.  But this sense of closing the door to conversation.  It would be like someone saying, “Fine, you’re not going to talk?  Then I’m going to stick ear plugs in.”

Whether or not people left comments, it was nice to know the door was open.  Now I just have to write posts about their posts.  Or hunt down the discussion elsewhere.  Or not talk about it at all.

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It’s Harry Potter’s birthday.  Happy birthday, Boy Who Lived.  You’re now 35.

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Stop procrastinating.  Go make your backups.  Don’t have regrets.

Seriously.  Stop what you’re doing for a moment.  It will take you fifteen minutes, tops.  But you will have peace of mind for days and days.  It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments in order to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

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And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Strokes” (Beyond the Parentheses)
• “Bioethicists in U.S. and Australia Call for Fertility Industry Regulation, More Transparency” (Silent Sorority)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Life and Love in the Petri Dish is doing treatments again, and specifically worrying about her reaction to lupron.  She dreaded taking it, but she isn’t having the same depression this time around.  She writes, “I keep wondering – why is this time so different than my prior two experiences with depot lupron? And all I can guess is that having Magpie means I am so very happy, that plunging me into a chemically-induced menopause can’t shake it.”  It’s an interesting post on how infertility thwarts all of our expectations.

Non Sequitur Chica has a string of random thoughts, and I’m willing to bet that if you click over, you will connect with at least one (though likely more).  For me, it was the piece about playing the pregnancy game.  I do that and didn’t even realize how it’s different between summer and winter.

Lastly, A Woman My Age has a post about her son’s fictive kin cousins, the children of her husband’s best friend.  Seeing her son play with them, she reflects on how much she wanted another child and how much her child wanted a sibling.  It’s a post about an unfulfilled heart.

The roundup to the Roundup: Another comment section closes.  It’s Harry Potter’s birthday.  Your weekly backup nudge.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between July 24th and 31st) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

My body talks all the time in little signs and twinges but says little of worth.  I bend down and feel a strange cramping in my leg as my body speaks up and makes itself heard.  So I ask it dozens of questions: “Is this what a blood clot feels like?  Should I worry about this?  Is it nothing?  Did I sleep on my leg strangely last night?”

It gets my attention, and then it clams up and looks in the other direction.

When I was trying to conceive the twins, I spent a lot of time each month listening to my body.  I dutifully noted all the fertility signs, even when my cycle was being controlled by the RE.  I obsessed over every drop of blood, every ovarian twitch, every clench of the uterus.

What did any of it mean, all this chattering on inside my body, not allowing me a second to forget about what was going on?  Josh would go to work and forget for hours at a time about my cycle.  But my body never shut up.  It was always talking to me while I was trying to do other things, reminding me that I was waiting for an answer and doling out hints that I could never interpret.

Was that cramp implantation or pre-period?

Sometimes I got an answer at the end of the cycle, but other times, my body simply went silent, never telling me what anything meant.

I don’t get the point of this: of talking so much and then coyly holding back what anything means.  Aren’t we supposed to be on the same team?

How can we work together when you never tell me what you mean?

Image: Calsidyrose via Flickr

My phone gave me no problems. In fact, on the day that this story happens, I had listened to podcasts in the car and sent a few emails and played WordBubbles.  Nothing was amiss.

Until it was amiss.

We were driving home from camp when the Wolvog informed me that he couldn’t wait the additional hour for dad to pick up his library book.  Could we please go to the library despite the fact that I have driven 3 hours today running errands and return to the library for a third time*?

Sure.  Let’s go.  There is nothing I want to do more than go to the library again and spend more time in this car.

I told the Wolvog to take my phone and text daddy so he didn’t go to pick up the book.  He sent the message and then began chatting with Josh about his day.  And then I hear a little voice from the back seat say, “Um, Mum?  Your phone keeps resetting.”

That’s odd.  It had never happened to me before, but I was sure that it was just a problem with the battery.  It had been at 69% when I got in the car, but no worries, I’m sure that I’ll plug it in and give it a charge and all will be fine.

Except that when we got to the library and I looked at my phone, I noticed it wasn’t really resetting.  The Apple logo was flashing on the screen.  On for a few seconds, off for a few seconds, on for a few seconds…  I tried rebooting the phone, but it wouldn’t turn off.  Or, if I held it down long enough, it went off, but when I turned it back on, it resumed the flashing logo.

We went into the library to run the errand, and I said that I would deal with the phone when I got home.

At home, I booted up iTunes and plugged it in.  It wouldn’t recognize the phone.  I Googled around and found a few things to try.  I tried updating the software.  I tried restoring to factory settings.  I tried shaking the phone gently.  Nothing worked.

Josh came home and then took the phone and drove out to the Apple store because I was too spent to get behind the wheel again.  He called me from the store telling me they would have to wipe the phone.  I would lose all the photos and contacts and calendar appointments and notes I had made since my last backup.  I just wanted a functioning phone, so I told him to go ahead.

It still didn’t work.

The phone was toast.  They couldn’t get anything off the phone.  Anything that hadn’t been backed up was gone.  Forever.

The last back up I did had been before the BlogHer conference, so if it would load onto the phone, all would be fine-ish.  I would lose a few things, but a few things was better than all things.

Josh brought home a new phone, and we plugged it in and hoped for the best.  I’ll admit that I didn’t have a lot of hope.  I backup to the computer — not the Cloud.  If this didn’t work, I would have to try to re-enter all my contacts and my calendar appointments.  I’d have to find and reload all the photos.  I had most of them, but they were in dozens of different folders.  I would lose all my notes, my voice memos, pieces of the book, frequently used directions.

My life is on that freakin’ phone.  It is the only thing between organization and chaos.

It took over an hour to reload the last backup onto the phone, and while I lost a few things, the vast majority showed up on my new screen.  My contacts were there.  My notes.  My calendar.  My apps.  My books.

But most importantly, my photos.  Not just the photos I had placed on the phone.  The thing I thought was gone forever — my camera roll — was back on my new phone.

The moral of this story: don’t wait until your phone shows you trouble to back it up.  My phone was completely fine until the logic board went out, and once it did, there was no way to get anything off the phone.  So back up.  Often.  But especially after you take a lot of pictures, add contacts, or add appointments to the calendar.

This has been your public service announcement.

* It was the first time for the twins, but it was the third time for me.  To be fair, the first time I went the library was closed because I got the opening time wrong.  The second time I went, I dropped off books.

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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CNN had a great article about alone time a few months ago; its importance and the reason why we’re reluctant to take it: “The not-so-fun part comes in when you’re thinking about how others are perceiving your aloneness and worrying that they simply think you have no one to hang out with.”

I like doing things alone.  I mean, I like time with Josh or friends or the twins, but I also like going out to eat by myself or to the library by myself.  I am equally cool doing something with other people and doing something alone.

I once took a vacation by myself to Norway.  I saw friends while I was there, but I was mostly on my own, day in and day out.  It was an odd experience, traveling by myself.  I wonder if it would be different if I went to the beach or somewhere where the point isn’t to learn and explore but instead to plop down and relax.

Have you ever taken a vacation by yourself?  Does it sound appealing if you haven’t tried it?  Where would you go?

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored posts.

Director Ava DuVernay spoke about something at BlogHer that I’ve been turning around in my mind ever since.  She made the point that women are taught a culture of permission.  She said,

Women have been trained in our culture and society to ask for what we want instead of taking what we want. We’ve been really indoctrinated with this culture of permission.

It’s part of a larger speech about going after what you want instead of waiting for someone to guess at what you want and hand it to you.  And, moreover, not listening to that little voice inside your head that tells you to wait because you’re not good enough.  That talks you out of taking action and turning your ideas into reality.

I love that she tempers the message by saying that we don’t have to take what we want with a sense of privilege but we can act from a sense of personhood and own that every single person on this planet is entitled to go after their dreams. (As long as their dreams are not to harm other people… but does that really need to be said?)

It’s hard because sometimes I think the asking of permission is not just about hanging back and thinking that you’re not worthy.  I think it’s sometimes about gathering feedback, about gauging a multi-source reality with the goal to save you time and heartache in the long run.

But I am thinking hard on what I’m asking for instead of simply taking.  And whether taking is always the route to go, or if asking sometimes opens more doors in the long run.  Knocking and waiting vs. twisting the knob and entering both get you through the door, but I worry at times that if one always enters without knocking that people will, over time, lock the door.

What do you think?  Are you more a taker or an asker?

I think I may be more of an asker.

Side note: tomorrow is #MicroblogMonday.  Get working on your post.