Blogger.com Registration Failure

2003 September 17

The first time I clicked 'start now' it took me to a regular logon page, and that of course didn't work.  Whatever I clicked on on the screen telling me that I didn't exist took me back to the home page, and this time 'start now' took me to the create new account page.  It first told me my username was taken, I changed it and replaced my passwords that had been removed, hit submit, and it told me the passwords were null, I back-buttoned and went again, and this time it would tell me my username was taken.  This cycle continued no matter what I put in.  Including:

Sorry, "tasonefyadgca" is already taken. Please try another username.

I went back with a fresh browser, tried it again, it told me "melancon" was taken, I changed it and replaced my passwords, I got the message "username or password is null" and I'm in the same stupid loop.

Something about that form needs help...
and I'm trying to sign up...
can you check if "melancon" is really taken?
I'm pretty sure "bmelancon" isn't, and I know "I3IVIIVI" isn't, but it told me both of them were taken too.

Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2003 14:58:31 +0000
From: Blogger Support
Subject: Re: [#8794] Registration Failure
To: melancon@student.umass.edu
We wanted to let you know that we've received your support request.  We make every effort to respond quickly to all of our users problems and questions.

Then, the first real but equally useless response:

I've checked into the names that you requested and they have all been taken by other users.  You may want to just keep trying.  I just created a new account without any problems.

Thanks,
Kimmy

I replied, rudely and stupidly and uselessly:

"tasonefyadgca" is taken?

right...”

And the polite but useless reply:

Yes, as hard as it is to believe. "tasonefyadgca" is already taken.

I know the system was screwing up, because I had longer and even more nonsensical names that I had tried before “tasonefyadgca” (which is what you get hitting the dvorak keyboard with the palm of your hand; granted you get some of the most-used letters and blogger has tons of users but the odds of several dozen-letter Dvorak nonsense words being taken are pretty much nil.  I should have told them I used the Opera browser and done something to stimulate more thought on that end.  Logic, Blogger people, Logic!  Given my very description of the problem, it should be clear that I was creating ghost accounts in the process of my registering that prevented me from registering properly.

I’ll probably host with Blogger anyway, but I now suspect that even though they’ve been in business a long time I may have to write my own web logging web page to get the functionality I want (chiefly, if they can’t give me drag-and-drop or one-key-combo links of web pages I’m surfing into the blog, I’ll make something in PHP where at least it gets put in my links pages and on my blog at the same time).