Technical difficulties

My apologies to anyone who's been trying to leave a comment and wonders why it didn't go through or why it hasn't shown up. We're having a so-far inexplicable problem.

It started when our IT folks tried an experiment overnight Thursday in requiring registration by commenters. This was an attempt to block the spam comments, sent by overseas computers (!), that have been flooding this blog in recent weeks, far outnumbering legitimate comments.

However, registration doesn't work as it should with this blogging software. Commenters were told they had to register, but there was no way for anyone to do so! So the registration feature was disabled Friday morning.

End of problem? Everything back to normal? No. For unknown reasons, no comments are getting through, even ones that we're leaving to test the system. (Well, not entirely true -- spam is still getting through. Sigh.)

I'm hoping this is cleared up soon and that any comments you've left will emerge from limbo at that time.

* Noon Monday: The blog seems to be accepting comments again. Now we just have to find the ones you've left the past few days.

* 4 p.m. Monday: OK, any comments left Friday through Sunday are toast. Sorry. But otherwise we're back on track. If you tried commenting, feel free to resubmit your thoughts about ONT, Casa Moreno, the July Reading Log or whatever.