If It Takes All Summer…

We don’t usually do “behind the scenes” posts about things that happen within the ECW admin team. But there is a scene that happened in the last few weeks that may provide a chuckle to a few of our loyal followers. Now that it’s all over, I find myself able to smile at it too…

Picture these scenarios:

Chris Mackowski and I spend significant portions of time on the phone trying to figure out what went wrong and why we don’t have subscribers. We try to be hackers (of our own account settings). We ask for help in support chat boxes. We email with support teams. We click buttons. We make more phone calls. And for over six weeks, nothing works.

We huddle with our dueling laptops at the Mackowski kitchen table. Maxwell wants to play with dinosaurs. Mrs. Mackowski graciously offers me a cup of tea or bowl of soup as the scene repeats week after week. It just doesn’t seem to be getting better.

Everyone at ECW is frustrated. Some authors send regular reminders that things still aren’t working and then quickly send more “thoughts and prayers” when we told what is going on. To shorten the story…we are now fully aware that we are historians and writers, not tech geeks!

Finally (I promise there is a funny part! You just have to understand the setting first), after another episode of pacing through everything we had tried so far, I said something along these lines to Chris. “I’m going to keep at this. We will get our subscribers back. I’m not giving up, even if it takes all summer.”

General Grant and his memorable quote. In a dark moment of technology at Emerging Civil War, we could still get inspiration from the past.

If I remember correctly, Chris responded: “It better not take all summer…”

And we got our breakthrough on a foggy, raining morning! Thanks to the good people at support desks who listened to the problem and were willing to give some clues which lead to our solution, we got the ECW Brigade reunited. It’s pretty awesome and crazy to thinking that we have over 3,000 subscribers.

I can’t tell you how glad I am to have the ECW “family” back together on the blog. Thank you, thank you for your patience. I am working through emails now; that situation and our contact form should be fixed over the weekend or sooner.

It’s been a “character building process,” but I’m certainly thankful it didn’t take all summer. Six weeks was enough for me. And I think the Editor in Chief would also agree!