It’s been a bloggers nightmare over the past 5 days here. If you haven’t noticed yet, we were down for 24 hours, with some serious scripting problems. It’s not the first time it’s happened. For the past several months, we’ve been wanting to change the look of our blog and thus starting experimenting with new templates, adding new widgets, plugins and such and then BAM!! On Saturday we got hit with a scripting problem which completely took every off our blog except for the header. When we tried to restore the back up (which all of you should back-up your info more often), our blog suffered another MAJOR HIT! Not only did all of our previous posts get scrambled and all links got crossed, many of our previous posts were lost.
Losing all the hard work you put into your blog, posts and photographs is crippling.
We think we understand what’s going on now (we’ll share this with you all later) and are working to salvage what we can. But the most damaging hit we took was the loss of all our subscribers to our blog. We think all the subscriptions got cleaned out, so if you were a subscriber, could you tell us if this is correct? Are you still receiving our feeds? If all feeds were eliminated, we’re sorry.
But you can re-subscribe to our blog here: 
UPDATE: Thanks everyone! Looks like the subscriptions still work. Whew! At least there’s still hope. We’ll just have to scrap together what we can of lost posts.
Pouring the medicine to cure all computer troubles…
In the meantime, we’re in serious need of cocktail therapy to sooth our nerves and prepare us for another all nighter of re-coding and html corrections on the blog. Since our last taping for “The Culinary Cocktail Hour” show, we haven’t shared any of the cocktail recipes yet. It seems appropriate to write up one of the cocktails and indulge. So for tonight’s session of inebriation therapy, we made a couple of “Island Taxi” cocktails.
A single is not enough tonight…
The “Island Taxi” cocktail is kind of a rum variation of one of our favorite cocktails, the Sidecar. We replaced the cognac with a light rum, swapped the triple sec to curacao to give it a beautiful color, then we played with the citrus to find a nice balance to the new alcohols. The result is quite refreshing. Both the hosts of the show, Cindy and Roxanne, loved these pretty, pretty Curacao cocktails. But for tonight, we might have to make a few more to soothe the pain for all the loss of blog posts.
We’re keeping our fingers crossed and instead of screaming at the computer, these curacao cocktails have calmed us down enough to whisper sweet nothings to Wordpress.org. Maybe this strategy will get us back to blogger central.
Bartender Todd, please make that a double Curacao cocktail…for each of us.
Print This Recipe
Island Taxi Curacao Cocktail Recipe
Ingredients
1 oz Light Rum (Havana Club if you can get it)
1 oz Curacao
1 1/2 oz Fresh Squeezed Orange Juice
3/4 oz Fresh Squeezed Lime Juice
dash of Simple Syrup
sugar for the rim
lime wheel for garnish
1. Chill a cocktail glass. Moisten the rim with a piece of lime, then sugar the rim.
2. Add your cocktail ingredients to a shaker, add ice and shake vigorously for 15 seconds. Strain into cocktail glass and garnish with lime wheel. Lick & sip.
More cocktails that you might enjoy:
- Chili Martini – vodka, peach juice, simple syrup, crushed chili
- Pina Colada – rum, pineapple juice, coconut cream
- Blackberry Tom Collins – blackberries, gin, club soda
- Champagne Cooler – champagne, cognac, triple sec
- American Flyer cocktail – champagne, rum, lime juice
- Limoncello “So Cal Sunrise” – limoncello, blood orange/lime juice
- Blood Orange “Midnight Ride” – cognac, triple sec, blood orange juice
- Mango Margarita – tequila, triple sec, mango puree
- Apple Sidecar – calvados, lemon juice, apple cider
- Classic Sidecar – cognac, triple sec, lemon juice
- Pomegranate Cosmo – vodka, triple sec, pomegranate juice
- Between the Sheets – cognac, rum, lemon juice
- Margarita – tequila, triple sec, lime juice
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{ 41 comments… read them below or add one }
Oooooh, ouch! I’ll drink to a speedy recovery. (And go back up my own stuff.)
This post showed up in my Google reader, so there’s one you didn’t lose.
Beautiful blue color indeed! I hope you guys have had a chance to relax now. It will please you to at least know this came into my preexisting feed just fine
Poor you! I wondered why some of your posts were truncated and some were full feeds. Do you get all of your posts emailed to you? I do that and save them all just in case anything ever happens. *Knock on wood.* My feed shows previous posts in full so if you subscribe to yourself, you can get your old posts. Then it’s a matter of cutting and pasting. A pain, but at least all is not lost?
Hey guys,
I get the feed in the Safari bookmarks and I got this one OK – sometimes it takes forever to load but I just assumed it was the weight of all those gorgeous photos…
Poor thangs. I’ve got your feed on google reader, and that hasn’t been wiped out. Phew.
The feed showed up in Bloglines, so here I am. But the feed itself looks a bit weird (your blog title is showing up as an Http link).
I was poking around to see if I could dig up any of your older posts out on the internet (e.g. google cache, wayback machine, etc), but didn’t have much luck. The drink looks great and it definitely seems like an appropriate time for it…I could only imagine how frustrating this experience has been. :-/
Ouch! An Island Taxi is definitely needed. Love the color too.
I have you on Google Reader and the feed is still updating but is titled “undefined”
Argh! Sounds like a nightmare. Silly question – how do I backup my blog?
Oh nooooo! All of that beautiful work! You must be devastated! I hope that you guys can get it sorted out and recover as much as possible.
This is why I am so terrified to change anything on my blog. I am clueless about HTML, coding, scripts, etc., and I know if I tried to do these things, my computer would explode and my blog would be blown to smithereens!
Good luck, and drink an extra Island Taxi for me!
P.S. I’m still getting feeds in Google Reader.
What a bummer about your HTML troubles! I’m glad the two of you were able to patch things up.
I love your blog!
oh no! I’m glad to see everything back in action… FYI, I’m a software engineer and do a fair amount of web stuff, and am happy to help my fellow bloggers when website troubles arise
As for cocktails, my favorite as of late has been the Blackberry Bramble: muddle 3-4 blackberries with some sugar, add cold gin, and a splash of seltzer water. Garnish with mint — yum!
OH NO!! What a nightmare…email or call me if u need help. I’m actually pretty good in Wordpress
What an ordeal. Hope you will restore all your posts soon. I dread this will happen one day and if someone can give us a link where we can back-up our files that would be great.
a nice way to celebrate your blog’s restoration. glorious colour.
Ugh. How horrible!
I know just how it feels to be messing with back-end website disasters when all you want to be doing is cooking and eating. Or blogging. Or really, anything other than server and software issues. Best of luck on the cleanup process!
Cheers!
Miss G.
Oh how I can relate to that one. I’ve had something like that happen twice. I now have my first blog sitting out there in the virtual world: you can read it, you can comment on it but I can’t edit it. One day I’ll take it down.
You showed up in my RSS.
oh I am so sorry you had to go through that. I will drink to you.
I’m getting my feed through yahoo… I would flip out if I didn’t get my white on rice… have a drink for me too!
ah, there’s nothing like some blue booze to clear the stress away. i love the action shot!
Major bummer! Looks like you’ve done a great job in recovering stuff, though.
Keep drinking the Island Taxis. They’re clearly helping.
Hey guys, I hear your pain. The same thing happened to me. I tried to upgrade Wordpress, something went horribly wrong and I lost the whole site for 2 days. It was absolutely crippling as you say. I really didn’t know how awful it would feel to have the blog gone. I cried! A lot! Anyway, I managed to sort things in the end, as have you but I now realise the importance of backups, backups, backups and I will never let anything like that happen again.
Whatever platform you use, wordpress, typepad etc, you should install a local copy of it on your computer (instructions on the web) – that way, you can mess about with the design as much as you want without fears then when it;s ready, upload it. Don’t know if you’ve already done this but thought I would mention anyway.
Good luck and hope to see your blog here every time I click!
I am pretty ignorant about this entire blogging process, so I just fly by the seat of my pants. Your tale of woe put the fear of God into me. Just reading it made me want a stiff drink!
My heart skipped a beat just reading this. I have no idea what I’d do. Eek!
Delicious looking drinks!
I’ll join you all for a double too. What a week huh?
Navigating the dodgy world of blog editing always calls for a drink or two with me. Of course, that might also be the reason why I have the worst luck making changes to my blog too.
I hear that you are meant to back up your blog often.. Problem is, I have no idea how, and no idea what to do with the backups when I have them!
Sorry to hear about all the problems. I’m sure it’s nothing a lovely drink can’t ameliorate!
Have I told you, you have absolutely stunning photographs?
Well, you have absolutely stunning photographs.
I have been drinking a similar drink for over 30 years, a recipe straight from Playboy’s Bartender Guide. It’s called a Chapel Hill, and needless to say, that’s where I went to college: UNC-Chapel Hill. Go Tar Heels! Here’s the recipe as I remember (drink) it:
1 jigger whiskey, 1/2 oz Curacao, simple syrup, 1/2 oz lemon juice, juice from 1 slice of orange. It’s a little darker than your Island Taxi, but it sure is good.
I feel the pain. What a nightmare.
Glad that finally you could sit down and relax sipping this beautiful drink. Cheers!
Sorry to hear about your troubles guys. I hope you’ll be able to resolve the problem soon. I know how frustrating it can be to loose some precious work. The feed seems to work fine though.
I’m drinking with you. Cheers!!
Sorry to hear about your troubles. I’ve had some issue myself and know how frustrating it is. That drinks look like a fantastic diversion from fixing a blog though:-)
oh, no! I don’t even know how to back up my blog… is there a feature on word press that does that?
the good news is that the feed seems to be working! i hope you get to recover everything!
Ouch, sounds like a nightmare. The good thing about having our own domain is that all the published pages will still reside at the FTP even though they got wiped out from the blog management tool. But it’s a pain.
Such a pain to have all your hard work messed up! Hope that it has righted itself now. One Island Taxi for me please! (Love the colour!)
Oh dear..it happened to me once too when I went to change the layout of my blog. Ended up everything gone and I spent hours restoring it. It was a nightmare and I was crying and scolding myself for hours.
I hope you will sort out all your links and stuffs soon.
Looks like the kind of drink that could get me into trouble. Tastes so good that you drink more than your share and then bam…you are stumbling around.
Glad you are back and running.
Hey guys – I’m truly sorry to hear of your coding issues. It’s amazing how 1 tiny, miserable piece of code can mess up a whole blog, but I know it happens. Best of luck getting everything up & running at 100%.
Now… onto the really good stuff. Holy Moly! This drink looks delicious! I’m spending the month of July in Florida and am getting ready to visit various beaches over the next 2 weeks. Are you familiar with those little tiki hut bars found near oceanside pools? I’ll be looking for these “Island Taxi’s” in the days to come, and if the tiki bar bartenders are lame and don’t know how to make these (off chance, but still a chance,) I’m printing this recipe, making copies and handing it to him or her, with instructions to keep the glasses coming while I soak up some serious sun & waves! Cheers in advance…
oppppsssss…..glad to see you back! and glad to know that you didnt resort to drinking chinese cooking wine like some people did (no no not me) LOL
Thanks for all the sympathies, everyone. D. was pouting pretty hard while things were messed up. There are still some posts truncated that will take some time to recreate. WAPITA. (What a pain in the ass!) Several have asked how to back up their sites. We are on Wordpress, and there is a plugin that will automatically back your site up regularly, but it didn’t work for us correctly when we tried to restore the site. We are still researching why. A probably better solution would be to follow the methods listed on the wordpress site listed here :
http://codex.wordpress.org/Backing_Up_Your_Database
http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Backups
It probably works for other platforms as well, but we don’t know for sure since we’ve only used wordpress. And Sandie, don’t harass the bartenders too much if they don’t know how to make an Island Taxi. It is our own creation. Just tell them they have to start reading our blog. Thanks again everyone for the support. T.
Thanks for the info about backing up a blog. I’ll have to look into that.
OMG!!! How horrible. I would make that drink a triple! You guys work hard enough as it is. God, I never even thought of backing up my blog. Jeez, I’m gonna have a drink or two for you!