Writing
Charlotte Rains Dixon  

Whac- A-Mole Comment Feature

So, it appears I’m having an issue with my comments feature.

It reminds me of the game one finds at carnivals and fairs, which are among my favorite things on earth.  (My daughter constantly tells me I have a tragic tacky streak, and I trace it back to my love of all things Carney.  More on that in a moment.) 

The game is called Whac-a -Mole, and it consists of a bunch of fake moles popping up quickly and in random order.  Your job is to take a huge soft mallet and whack as many of them on the head as possible.

Well, my comment feature is emulating Whack a Mole.  Every time I respond to one of my lovely reader’s delightful comments and finish up on the spam prevention page, all of a sudden, my blog page begins repeatedly opening.  Try as I might to whack them closed, they keep opening….and opening…and opening.  I whack at the little red x like a fiend, or a person playing Whac-a -Mole, but they open faster than I can get them closed.  It would be quite amusing if it weren’t so annoying.  Not quite sure what makes them finally stop.  Once I had to shut the computer to get it to quit.  Tonight I fussed and fiddled and whacked and finally it quit.

Now here’s the really sad part: every single one of those opened pages then counts as part of my stats for people who have viewed my page.  Sigh.

So, I’m hoping that others are not having this issue and if so I deeply apologize and hope that you will not let it prevent you from commenting in the future.  I’m going to contact Typepad and see what’s up.  In the meantime if I don’t respond to a comment right away its because the moles have got me cornered and I’m cowering beneath my desk in fear.

But the good news is that this Whac-a -Mole issue gives me the excuse to gloat about one of my claims to fame.  I don’t have many.  In fact, this is probably the only one, so thank you in advance for giving me bragging rights.

Here it is:  I know Carney. 

Carney is the secret language that carnival workers talk to each other in.  So, when they see a sucker walking down the midway, they communicate that to the next carney, sort of the way crows talk about  you when you walk beneath them all sitting on the wire.  Carney is the language they use to make snotty remarks about fair-goers to each other, and so forth.

It is really just the best thing on the planet to know this language.  I used to be able to use it to tell lurid secrets about my past in front of my children, but then they caught on. 

So if anyone else know Carney, give me a shout, and I will pray that leaving a comment does not transport you to Whac-a-Mole land.

0 thoughts on “Whac- A-Mole Comment Feature

  1. Zhu

    Ooops… happens, blogs little oddities, we’ve all been there!

    By the way, may I suggest something? I lost my comment a couple of time because I forgot to type in the Capcha (or whatever it spells!) which opens in a new pages… just because on most blog, the Capcha is right under the text area or not at all (basically, yours is the only one which open in another windows and adds a step).

    Might have happens to other readers too… so would it be possible to change that? Put it right under the “post a comment” text area maybe?

  2. Charlotte

    Cautiously, I am posting a comment, hoping to not have a Whac-a-Mole moment. Since this is a Typepad blog, I’ve always just assumed that the comments are what they are, so to speak. However, Typepad has just made some changes to the comments feature. You can now subscribe to comments in a string, for instance. So perhaps I can figure out how to put everything in one convenient place. Thanks for the input! I’ve actually got a friend lined up to do a bit of design work on this baby, so perhaps we can get that incorporated in the overhaul.

  3. Zhu

    It really is a small thing! But I like when people give me feedback about my blog cause there are so many little things we don’t notice… so I thought I’d let you know!

    I’m not sure how flexible is Typepad. Do you have access to your CSS, comments sheet etc.?

    If yes, I’m pretty sure you could have ajax comments and solve the Captcha (finally found the spelling!) fixed.

    Oh, I’m having a nerd moment… lol

  4. Charlotte

    Zhu, you are way too cool to have a nerdy moment. I actually went and investigated the comment feature on Typepad and haven’t yet figured out if I can change it. I’m not so good with the technical details. But I’m hiring my friend to do some work on the blog, and she is a whiz, so I’m hoping that she can fix it. And I do appreciate your comments, because you are right, I’d never think about it otherwise.

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