Evil Google Overlords

You know how there are a lot of things in the world that are stupid? Like Speidi, believing the Moon landing is a hoax, calling something "The Slap Chop" and hitting your thumb with a hammer?

Well it might shock you to know there are way, way more stupid things than those. On a Global Scale of Stupidity, those rank about a four out of ten.

Maybe five if you’re Speidi…. Six even. Seven on a day with a “y” in it.

But do you know what else is stupid? Google. Google is sort of a frenemy to me. We have a love/hate relationship. I seem to have acquired its many goods and services without blinking, but suddenly they all CONNECT and it’s freaking me out, man.

First I had Gmail. Gmail’s good, right? A logical email program that keeps all your related threads in one email, instead of having 20 emails on the same subject cluttering up your inbox like unwanted Menudo songs in your head.

After this I got the Google Reader. Makes sense. Keeps all my reading material in one convenient place and lets me know when all you glorious bastards update your blogs. Sure, it takes its own sweet time about it, but it works.

Later, I broke up with my fiance, Firefox, who was just taking too long to do anything, so I downloaded the speedy Google Chrome, totally on the rebound.

Then of course, there’s Blogger. Blogger also links to Google. You can log in with your Google account.

Now it’s getting a little confusing. Bear in mind, my brain’s the size of a gnat’s ass, so maybe it’s just me. Now if I log into Gmail, I am automatically logged in to the Reader AND Blogger. It’s like a giant conspiracy of convenience.

HOWEVER, one day I noticed that the Google Reader has little built in thingies I hadn’t messed with before. Like a profile.

Naturally I had to pimp mine up just a touch by adding some of my high-class illustrations. So I clicked the “add photos” button, expecting a box to pop up asking where on my computer these photos were.

Instead, it was an action which lead me to the King of Stupid – Picasa. Until this moment, I didn’t know Picasa had a goddamn thing to do with Google OR Blogger. I didn’t know that the fact I have a Blogger-Google account meant I also, by default, have a Picasa account.

I mean what’s next? I go for a “Wendy’s sandwich and find out I need my Gmail password to get anything vaguely “waaaaay delicious”?!

I noticed (because I didn’t come down in the last storm) that there were already several albums installed in my Picasa account and they were teaming with photos and illustrations – mostly stuff I’d posted in my blogs or graphics I’d made and not used. So I thought “When you add a photo to your blog it must save a copy in here too, in case you want to have a little photo album!”

And I thought, “Isn’t that nice of them?”

And I thought, “Bless their kind little Googly hearts!”

Then I thought, “What’s the point in having all this shit cluttering up my account when all that stuff is already in BLOGGER?!?!”
Yup. You already see where this is going, don’t you?
I DELETED EVERYTHING IN PICASA. Every photo in that fucking account.

Yesterday morning I get up and check something on my Photo blog. A blog comprising only of photographs, I should add. And what do you know? There’s my blog right where it should be. Only is there one, single, solitary, stinking photo anywhere?
NO THERE IS NOT.

And I realize that all those pics you upload to your blog? They don’t get stored in Blogger’s memory or cache, oh no. They are hosted by PICASA. Which I just DELETED.

Yes.

This made me laugh and laugh.

(No it didn’t. It made me say a bad word and punch a pillow.)

So I spent all of the afternoon reposting every photo back into the blog. And talking to myself. A lot.

“Alles gut!” as they say in Deutschland.

And all WAS good. Until I came over here to respond to a comment and found - what a SHOCKER - there are no photos or illustrations over here either. NOT ONE. And you know me, I’m all about the photos and illustrations! And about 50% of them are stupid web photos I have no copies of!

I know!!! Isn’t it great?

Needless to say I was underwhelmed with delight. And it took THREE HOURS to re-acquire and re-publish everything with the photos back in. I sulked the whole time and it’s entirely possible that I might have called Google/Blogger/Picasa a “pigfucker”.
And now I’m getting it off my chest.