March 2002

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If you ever want to annoy the hell out of me, there's a very simple way to do it. Make something I need to do harder than it needs to be. Case in point: some new members have been added to the links page for the crafters. The person who's in charge of the list didn't just send us the new members' links to add. She sent the whole freaking list again, with the new links worked in. I'm sure this made some sense to her, but it's annoying me no end.

It wouldn't be so bad, except when she first did the list, she did it in order of the links having been sent to her. Then she changed that, to work with her existing table structure, so as the list members came and went, she filled in blank spots with new ones. This, of course, meant new and old got mingled.

When I first used the links list, I left it in the order in which she had done it. After almost a year, it came time to redo the list. I decided the original way was too cumbersome, and went with an alphabetical order list. We were given plenty of notice that the new list was to be posted by a certain date, and mine was, with a day or so to spare. This is a reciprocal links list, and if you're on it, you're supposed to post it to your site, making some changes so it won't get you banned on search engines. (If you're beginning to get the idea this is a labor-intensive piece of work, you're right.)

Now, when it isn't a redo point, several new members have been added to the list, along with one previous member who asked one week to be dropped because her site host went bankrupt, then a week later, asked to be reinstated because she had found a new host. This would be all well and good if the new or returning members were put on the list in some conspicuous way. But no, they're worked into the damned thing.

And I'm having to spend part of the weekend comparing the new list to my existing one, which is taking way too much time and effort.

Don't get me wrong: I'm happy to add the new people and to reinstate the returning one. But I'm not happy to have to spend the time comparing lists.

I will give you a hint, though: if you ever have to do something like this, printed versions of the lists involved make the chore much easier.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Beth has started a ring of journallers who plan to update daily for the rest of Lent. The ring is called "Saving Kymm's Soul," in honor of Kymm's pledge to give up reading journals for Lent. She'll need a handy list of archives to search as she celebrates Easter, and we thought we'd help her out. The list of ring members is here.