MyDearDiary, JournalCommunity and Importing
A few weeks ago another diary site, MyDearDiary, went out of business. We have had the good fortune of having many ex-MDD users wash up on the shores of OD, and I think many of them are enjoying their new home here (at least I hope so). A similar situation happened back in April, when another diary site (JournalCommunity) suddenly went offline and many JC users ended up here.
After working out the TOD import (see yesterday’s entry), I’ve been working on other diary import and merging utilities, all of which I hope to release very soon. One of the things I want to do with these utilities is to allow ex-users of these other sites to import their entries from export files into OD. Meaning, if you were an MDD user and you have a copy of your diary that you exported from MDD, I want you to be able to import it here.
I am lucky enough that one of the ex-JC users has provided me with all the formats of the diary exports JC used, and I am almost finished with the import routine for bringing JC files into OD. However, I don’t know what the export files look like for MDD.
If you are an ex-MDD user, and you have an exported file of your diary that you wouldn’t mind lending me a copy of – please leave me a note and we will work out getting a copy of it. That would be a huge (well, invaluable, because I can’t do it without a sample file) help in getting an MDD import routine set up.
I’m also looking into other formats to allow imports from (like LiveJournal or Blogger) – if there are any suggestions of files that people have that they would like to import, let me know.
In unrelated business, I made some fixes over on OD Mobile this week – the biggest being a change to the notes page – whereas somebody with a lot of notes used to get dozens of links at the bottom that took forever to load, now there is a simple next/prev paging link that loads way faster (suggested by an OD member, thanks!). So, the notes page loads much quicker now (and if you haven’t tried OD Mobile yet on your cellphone, go to m.opendiary.com and check it out).
Thanks,
The DiaryMaster
You know what bugs me? When you’re checking out at Wal-Mart, on the cash register, the thing that the credit card machine is attached to. There’s the little platform between you and the cashier where the card machine is, and it’s attached to the whole checkout stand by this skinny piece of sheet steel – every Wal-Mart I’ve been in is the same way, so I’m sure it’s a corporate standard. Anyway, the steel is too thin to support the card machine properly, so it wobbles back and forth – so you swipe your card, it starts swinging back and forth – and then, you have to hit the fifteen different buttons to complete your debit transaction, and every time you hit a button the whole thing moves. So it’s punch button-wobble-punch button-wobble-punch-button-wobble, etc., etc.
Somebody must have tested this setup before they installed it in twelve million cashier stands in a million different Wal-Marts. How could they not notice that doing a debit transaction would make a person’s fingers seasick?
Anyhoo, with all the real troubles in the world, that’s way too much ranting about something stupid.
Yesterday was my birthday (and I’m not saying that to troll for late birthday wishes – it’s just a fact, my odometer has rolled over another number). We had a nice time – wife took me on a surprise picnic to the beach, so I finally got in some ocean time before summer was completely gone. It was way fun.
Aloha… That is so incredibly nice of you… to allow the new members to import their entries here… More of the “spirit of aloha” that we current members experience at this site… A hui hou…
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There may be some people out there with exported diaries, but for the majority of us there was no warning, so we lost everything. Thanks for making us all feel at home here. It is wonderful to reconnect with so many of our old friends and make new ones here. 🙂
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Trolling or not, happy birthday! A picnic at the beach sounds amazing right now 🙂
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Aloha (again)… Here’s wishing you a belated “Hau’oli la hanau… Aloha oe…
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Happy belated birthday!! I saw your pic under the meet the staff link and if I was your wife I’d surpise you for your birthday as well but it wouldn’t be out in public! You’re a cutie. I can’t believe you call yourself a computer geek. And now for the first time ever I wished you allowed unsigned notes because I really don’t want to sign this but it’s the truth so I will.
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Happy belated birthday. 🙂
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On a separate note; any improvements to OD mobile are welcome so thank you. I do the majority of my reading & noting from my blackberry. I think I may have said this before but with the old version of OD I was able to read & note from the blackberry without a problem. It was the same as if I was logged in on my pc. It wasn’t until you rolled out the new version that I had to switch to OD mobile. I’ve no idea why that happened?? I tend to replace my blackberry’s often (I’m not joking when I say I mainly use the bb for reading & noting OD so they tend to wear out quicker but don’t tell my boss since it’s a work device).I think between the new version of OD & my latest blackberry somethings not working correctly so I rely on mobile OD but I preferred being able to read & note on the regular version.
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happy belated birthday! yesterday was also my nephew’s 8th birthday. 🙂
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I really like the ability to save my diary in PDF format but will there ever come a time when I can save more than 14 entries? For instance, what’s the point in being able to save a chapter if said chapter is more than 14 entries I can’t save it as a chapter? It’s kind of annoying. I realize that saving a PDF takes a lot of resources but once I’ve saved my diary I don’t do it again for a long time. Perhaps instead of limiting it to saving 14 entries at a time, you could limit how many downloads per month or something. I’d love to be able to save my entire diary in one PDF and would only want or need to do this a few times a year.
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Happy belated birthday wishes 🙂 I’ve stopped doing transactions while holding my 18 month old, he knows how to pull those things off completely. Beach fun during summer is way essential. 😉
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happy belated birthday! yesterday was also my nephew’s 8th birthday. 🙂
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Happy belated birthday to you! You run an A #1 site here. Keep up the great job and thanks for all you do for us. 🙂
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Thank you for providing a place for us MDD Survivors to land. We missed each other and its nice to reconnect!
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Is there a way to import old OD diaries into a current one? I have files of old diaries I would love to add to my current one. In regard to OD mobile, my iPhone screen is still dominated by the boxes you put in your entries.
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ahhh its my DREAM to go to wal-mart before i die 🙁 or at least have one open up in australia!
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Happy belated birthday! Since I cannot access the boards I thought I’d ask if there is a fix coming to the mobile site so there is a save button on the write an entry page? I have the blackberry curve 8310. Thanks! 🙂
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Dear DM…happy birthday to you. Blogger. I’m there but only as a mirror site for here. Yup, you are a kind good man who needs to go to the beach more often. 🙂
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happy belated birthday!
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Happy birthday! I’ve always been a fan of how usable you strive to keep the site.
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Aw, Happy Belated Birthday! Glad you had a wonderful day!
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You rule.
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Happy belated birthday! I’m way excited for the import utility, so don’t get me wrong. Love it love it love it! Thank you! Another thing I’d REALLY like to see is the ability to download just the text of my OD entries. Yes, I know you can currently download entries, but they are filled with code and notes and all that jazz. Is there any way to download just the text of the entry? In quantities, like a month at a time? I’ve been copying and pasting each entry manually (and tediously) by hand–correcting the font style, size and color with each and every entry, and now that I’m about 5 months behind, it has also become daunting. Any suggestions?
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Hey, weird, our Walmart debit/credit machines don’t wobble, I’m up in Canada though … maybe its just a US thing. Happy Belated bday
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Happy birfday! Also, the first line in the sidebar thingie made me think of the Family Guy episode where Peter gets a job with the local news doing a segment in which he begins by saying “You know what really grinds my gears?”
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Wow… seems like a lot of diary sites are shutting down lately, DM. Thanks for offering them all a place of refuge here. As always, I appreciate all the hard work that you do.
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Happy Birthday…and stop shopping at Wal*Mart! That company is terrible news for the small business community and is the largest reason American manufacturing has been exported overseas. Yous shopping dollar at Wal*Mart supports anti-unionism and depressed wages for American workers.
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Thank you so much for welcoming us from MDD, I am happy to call this my new writing home 🙂 ~Tons of love
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Brave of you to admit shopping at Walmart in front of this crowd. Happy B.
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odometer has rolled to another number, huh? leave it to a guy to relate a birthday to a car. 😛
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A belated Happy Birthday!I wanted to bring your attn. (if you don’t already know) to The Nat’l. Day on Writing, a project of the Nat’l. Council of Teachers of English. The day is set for Oct. 20, but activities are ongoing. Nat’l. & affiliated galleries of writing have been set up, incl. “Writing in the Online Environment.”http://bit.ly/hOGRLNCTE site is http://bit.ly/nx0CrThanks!
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look carefully at the pivot point of the debit terminal. you see little spring loaded balls holding it at a particular angle, with more holes for adjustment. Generally the springs start to wear out and that tends to cause the wobble. It bugs me every time, and sometimes i’ve whipped out my tools while in line and adjusted it so it stops annoying me. Generally, i get weird looks.
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Happy Birthday, DM!
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Dear OD, Thank you for never going bust. Love,
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HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU, HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR DIARYMASTER….HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!! That is the one and only time you will ever hear me sing…until next year! :O)
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Thanks so much! I saved all my entries from JC but it’d be great to have them on here again! 🙂 Sounds like a lovely Birthday!! 😀 It’s my Birthday today heehee
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re: your note: RYN: I’m working on a utility that will let you download your entire diary (or an entire chapter) in PDF – but it will require you requesting it and coming back for it later. I hope to have that working soon. [The DiaryMaster] ——————– That would be really great. I look forward to that! Thanks for the reply!
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Yeah, where did this summer go? Glad you got some beach time in, and thanks again for all your hard work!
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Happy Belated birthday!
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I had no idea you were a Virgo! Happy Belated Birthday! 🙂 ~*Samantha*~
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When we were going bust, many of contributed $100 to keep our site going. I would do it again.
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HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! I’m typing this from mobile Od! 😛
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Happy Belated birthday to you! And I got an email saying it was your bday. You were once on my aim when some of us had an aim chat open so yeah, thats how I knew.
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Wow, I’ve decided that OD is my new home since washing up on the shores of MDD and that, even if it were to miraculously reappear, that I’d be staying here because OD has so many cool features and has a site master who actually seems to give a damn! I have an export of MDD and it’s HTML format – if you wanted a copy as a sample file then I’d be happy to provide you with one.
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Oh, I also have some LJ exports as well if you were interested in them too.
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what do you mean an export? i have mydeardiary downloaded. it is in txt format and looks nothing like the mdd web page. i dont know if that would be helpful to you. happy birthday btw. its not stupid to rant about that. its a legitimate complaint.
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Belated happy birthday! Picnics are great :o)
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i’m glad you got to have a beach picnic. sounds like the perfect way to celebrate a birthday and end the summer. though, according to the weathermen here, it’s supposed to get back to the low 80’s next week. take care,
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Well fine then I won’t wish you a late Happy Birthday! hehe xoxo
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I see that one of my faves (catpea) may have the info you’re looking for…that’s nice to hear. I’m not sure how many of us have our diaries downloaded, but I’m afraid it’s few….I guess I just never thought of it maybe going away some day. But thru the friendships we developed there, many have joined here…and more will come in the future as word spreads…I hope so; I miss my friends.
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I want to thank you for your site, and it’s been a pleasure meeting many here already. I feel like I’ve already begun sinking my roots here, and it’s just like being back home. You’ve got a nice place here……
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Happy birthday – and, God forbid, if OD ever stops existing, I hope we’ll get a good head’s up.
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Happy belated birthday!
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Happy belated birthday wishes! I had no idea those other diary sites went down 🙁 xxx
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i’m so happy to read this as i am a former Mdd-er. i had been writing there every day for about 3 years, and am so upset over all the little memories i had put in there of my daughter. i had also started a journal of letters to my daughter that i would love to have back. thank you so much for trying to put in the time and effort to try to get our memories back to us.
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Happy Belated Birthday!! The ocean is a great way to spend a birthday. I’d love to do that sometime but my birthday is in Nov. I’d have to go wayyyy south.. haha! Hope the weekend is good for you.. *Hugs*
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*sings* (That would be your cue to stuff your ears with earplugs) Happy birthday to you! You live in a zoo! You look like a monkey! And you smell like one too! :o) Really though, happy belated.
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I LOVE mobile OD. And good for you for adopting orphan diarists! 🙂
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OD is the best – sure, some glitches here and there, but still – the best. btw, happy birthday and may this be your best year yet.
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Happy Birthday to you. May the coming year bring you time for family and friends, more moments of finding joy in nature, peace here on OD, & time for finding new & interesting programming adventures. I hope you realize how much you are appreciated by many of us here. Enjoy the coming year!
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I see it’s your birthday so HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY 🙂 It’s very cool of you to toil so hard so that all the other diary website users can migrate over here!
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Hey Happy Birthday! haha thanks for the warm welcome back! Oh and what was the Mexican-Irish restaurant called? lol
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I had a number of friends on Blogmark in South Africa lose their service when the local newpaper could no longer support it. However, it was a really weird format. I would like to see a section for bloggers from Denmark. Are there many?
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actually I do, how do you want me to send it to you?
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happy birthday! i would love some beach time but seeings how i live no where near the ocean a surprise trip is not in my near future plans. lol the walmarts here got an upgrade inside and out recently and the problem you described i was well aware of seems to have been resolved. at least while they are new anyways. im not sure about the rest of the country but here they have gone from a blue exterior to a tan and then redid the floors and registers inside. being in arkansas maybe we saw it before a lot of other areas but like i said, i have no idea since i dont live anywhere else. lol
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Good to hear you had a lovely birthday, you deserve it 🙂 xxxxx
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i’m thinking. it was a private diary so i have a bit of reservation and discomfort. i know it would be selfish of me not to send it, so i will. i’ll try to do it tomorrow (i want to find the briefest version of it).
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Wow I use to write on mydeardiary so long ago!
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I got the same error for both of these diaries: Annerire Sorto, and Anti-Arnica Thanks for looking into it 🙂
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Glad you had a great B-day. I hate shopping at Wal-mart. I never use my charge there… instead I love to say when my order is all rung up and there is a huge line behind me, “Oh, all I have is a third party check drawn on an out of state bank, but I know it is good!!!” I get some really great reactions!! LOL!!
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Happy birthday 🙂 & thankyou for welcoming us [MDD users] to OD.I wish i had downloading a copy from my 352 entries 🙁 which hurt me to think about it,but no one warned us that this will happen and we lost everything. Thank you again 🙂
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hahahaha…im am sooo cracking up at your wal*mart rant…I thought that I was the only one who noticed!!! Everytime i swipe my card i have to turn to my husband and say “that seemed to be about a 5.5 on the richter scale)…. i get a little annoyed myself at all the buttons as well…if i was “ok with the amount” the first time you prompted me to press yes, im okay with it the next 5x’s you ask!
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Welcome to those who’ve left other sites. And it’ll be great to be able to read past entries and get to know them more quickly. Thanks! —
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For some reason I can’t type more than one line of text when leaving notes via my blackberry.
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Happy late birthday…my son’s is 9 today..(09/19) so party time! I wish I could go to the beach…lucky you!
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i’m sorry, i figure since catpea has her diary in html form it would be most useful. mine is just the text. there are no codes, no spacing, no paragraph breaks. it looks nothing like the original entry and even to copy and paste into another document the formatting is all messed up. idk maybe there is a way to “retrieve” formatting that i am unaware of. if you truly need it let me know…i’m sorry
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That’s awesome about what you’re doing. Now if we could only getting the layouts to work. [What I’m talking about is when you go to createblog.com you can pick from several layouts for MySpace, LJ, Blogger…and nothing for OD.] Why is that? I mean don’t get me wrong, the classic style is fine, but for people like I like to put some sparkle to my front page. Just a thought. ♥ Amanda
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HAPPY B-DAY TO YOU HAPPY B-DAY TO YOU HAPPY B-DAY DEAR (insert name here) HAPPY B-DAY TO YOU!!!
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ryn: Thanks so much! 🙂 It is very good to be back!
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You’re a good, decent man!! Nice work on the importing/exporting things. Also, i’ve been using ODM a fair bit. i do like it alot!
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Ocean Time is crucial for brain development, you know, especially considering you’re getting older 😉 Hap Birth DM!
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thanks(:
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thank you for the mobile site. i have found that i am able to do a lot more things and faster while accessing with my msntv. you probably have had it for years…but i am just discovering and am thrilled with mobile apps!
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Happy Birthday *smile* A little late of course…but late is better than nutin. *smile*
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Hey now, I work at walmart and our card machines are firmly bolted to the stand. Although, the actual card read stops working half the time. Maybe the swaying motion keeps some sort of gyro working inside to prevent failure, and we killed all ours by bolting it down ;P
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Oh, and by the by, I won’t wish you a happy belated birthday. I simply will say A very very un-birthday to you!
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Thank you for your warm welcome and for taking the time to read my first entry! and nearer the time of my run, I will let you know my justgiving.com page so it can be added to the news, thanks again for the encouragement!
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Happy birthday child :>)
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i love odmobile, thanks for making it even easier to use 🙂
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Glad you had a great birthday. One at the beach sounds fabulous. And kudos to you DM for welcoming all the nomadic blogger out there looking for an oasis. Opne Diary is certainly that and more. Best on the internet in my hunble opinion!
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happy reeeeeaaaaallllyyyy belated birthday!
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happy belated, and many more 🙂
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Surprise picnics on the beach for your birthday are a good thing. 🙂 So what’s the deal with this? http://www.opendiary.com/entryview.asp?authorcode=D738879&entry=10561
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Along this same line, i would really like to see an export button for OD. I have been a member here since 2000 and consider my Diary very precious to me. I would feel INFINITELY better if I had a backup copy stored on my home drive in case of more hacking etc like we have seen in the past. Thanks
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happy belated Birthday to a fellow September born….Mine was 2 days ago… Thanks for looking into the whole MDD thing, hopefully we will beable to get our old entries back… Have a blessed day… Love and HUggs Janica
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Thanks for your entry.I’m a MDD user and I have copy of some of my entry in text format. How do I provide to you.
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RYN: I don’t know that I have a thing for O foods. I simply tried to think of the most heinous Halloween candy I could (and Bit O’Honeys immediately came to mind), and Spaghetti-O’s… well that’s just good comedy.
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RYN: Thank you 🙂 It’s hard to regret anything that ended up making me NOT hate life.
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Most of us at MDD didn’t get a warning that the site was getting shut down. Most of us found out only when we tried getting on and it took us to Google search engine or we looked for why it was shut down on google. So most of us MDD users lost everything we had.
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As a former JC writer, thank you for doing what you can so I can still have those entries as part of my “complete” diary.And, I’m so totally jealous that you got a beach picnic as a part of your birthday celebration. My birthday was also in September, but in Indiana, no way was a beach party happening. :/
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