Just a thought, but how about changing the label on the “Submit Reply” button below the text box for posting to something like, “Hey asshole, if you spent an hour and a half writing and checking a helpful, detailed, well-researched and charmingly humorous post in the above text box, you might want to go ahead and fucking press CTRL-A and then CTRL-C first so that you can later paste your post back in the box after you click this button and find out that your login timed out and the post is lost (and don’t even bother following the instructions in the subsequent message about pressing the back button and resubmitting and shit; we just put that there for laffs), because otherwise you will feel like a pathetic nimrod who just wasted an hour and a half of his life for no reason. For about the fifth time this year, numbnuts. Or, here’s an idea, you could just write that crap in Word or something in the first place, and then copy and paste out of that, you meathead.”
Because I personally would find that button label to be very helpful. Thanks.
If there is some preference setting I can make or something else obvious that I can do to avoid this problem, I’d appreciate a heads up, along with info about how to tie my own shoelaces, chew gum and walk at the same time, or how to find my own asshole. I have a map and a flashlight, so you would think it wouldn’t be too hard.
The ‘standard suggestion’ is to write your post in word/notepad and then copy it here but I see you already figured that out.
Also, I see your actual problem is that you’re getting logged out, do you have it set to make sure you stay logged in? For most people here they never log out unless they’re at a public computer.
As for selecting everything, you have to be really careful. When you have everything selected, all it takes is one little slip and it’s all gone. For example, hitting the v before you hit Ctrl would replace all that text with a v instead of copying it. An ever so slightly better idea is to right click on it, hit select all, then right click again and hit copy. Carefully because they put ‘delete’ right next to copy, but at least you only have to watch out for that one button instead of every button on your keyboard during those few seconds between highlighting all the text and copying it.
Yeah, but only because you suddenly find a way to condense a 4 paragraph post into two sentences and a few cuss words.
??? This happens to me from time to time, but it’s not a total loss like the OP says. If I’m already logged in (or so I think) and somehow I’m not still logged in when I click on Submit, it just displays a new login window. So I log in again, right there on the spot, and voila! my post is posted.
That said, there have been occasions when I’ve lost it all. This tends to happen, rather, when the board has gone down during the time I was composing.
And yes, despite all that, I too have learned The Technique: Always copy to the clip-board first! And/or compose in a separate editor window.
Oh, one more tip: If you’ve highlighted the Whole Nine Paragraphs then accidentally type a letter and lose it all, it’s still not all lost (as Joey P seems to think)! Did you know that Ctrl-Z will UNDO that, and restore all your “lost” text? (ETA: On a Mac, I suppose that would be Command-Z)
ETA: To find assholes, whether your own or others’, look in The Pit.
I was already laughing at that point, but expected something more like “Hey asshole, if you spent an hour and a half writing and editing and spell checking a helpful, detailed, well-researched and charmingly humorous post in the above text box, you might want to consider why you are wasting so much time on a message board rather than putting it on your blog or on Facebook, because if it’s really that great it should be there. If it’s really well researched and it’s something nobody else knows, it should go on Wikipedia, and then you can just link to it, otherwise you will feel like a pathetic nimrod who just wasted an hour and a half of his life for no reason.”
“Especially when the internet eats it and you have no copy. Seriously. If you have that kind of energy and writing skills, make it permanent and meaningful. If it’s just about your cat or a movie/TV show/youtube you just watched, then go ahead and post it. But make a copy first.”
My problem is I’ll fumble futz my fingers and accidentally give a command to refresh the page or some shit and lose all my hard work that way. No control Z or back button can fix that. :mad: Yeah, typing in a separate edit window would fix that, but that’s a cumbersome fix for something that isn’t that frequent.
At one time, I did do a lot of composing in Notepad, when I was having connection issues and losing posts left and right. Glad I solved that issue.
That is not a “slightly better suggestion” unless you’re like 85 years old and do everything on a computer in the most cumbersome way possible. Keyboard commands are almost always more efficient than going to the mouse. Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C, and Ctrl-V with the left, and use your right on the mouse to click wherever you’re pasting it to. (Or alt-tab it, if you’re a real pro)
And I’m not sure why you’d have to “look at every button on the keyboard.” Don’t you know where the common letters are? I use keyboard commands including CTRL-Z,X,C,V,Y,A,F,H,P,S,I,U,B, Ctrl-shift versions, and ctrl-alt-shift, versions, all day long without even thinking about it. Sometimes I even use Alt.(and F2 and my beloved custom macro Ctrl-D in Excel) I use the keyboard to move all around documents, select text, etc. etc. etc. I’m never “really careful” about using keyboard commands. Ctrl-Z heals all wounds.
Drive me batshit when I’m trying to show somebody something on the computer and they do everything the slowpoke way. I try to be patient, I really do, but my brain is yelling “Jeebus, just ctrl-shift-left left left!”
Well, that is enlightening. I thought “remember me” just stored my user name and password to log me in again automatically the next time I visited. I didn’t realize it actually kept the login from timing out. Thanks.
Actually, when I first opened the thread, I thought you might be a newbie, because I didn’t remember seeing your username before. Apparently this is because you had your “Remember Me” box unchecked.
Yeah, I actually experienced that happiness once, but all other times the system denies any memory of my having been typing anything, and invites me to log in again. Yeah, right. As if I would fall for that trick a sixth time.
Failure to check the Remember Me box might explain numerous facets of my life. I had not realized just how invasive the Internet has become in modern society. Thanks for the heads up.
Do you mean that you get a login screen, and you type your name and password, and then it asks you to log in again?
If so: Yes, that happens to me from time to time. Every once in a while, when I type my name and password and click the log-in button, I get a message that says “Thank you for logging in, Senegoid” (so far, so good…) and then it just displays the log-in window again. So I just type my name and password and click Log In again and it usually works. But sometimes I have to repeat this several times to get logged in.
Is this what is happening to you?
I have started some ATMB threads in the past about this. I think others have mentioned it too. The mods have consistently said there must be something wrong with my browser settings, or suggested I clear all cookies, or something like that. (I think they got their Customer Support training at Comcast.)
Sometimes it has gotten so bad that I simply could not log in after many attempts.
A while back, the board was taken off-line for a day or so to re-build all the indexes, or whatever massive database maintenance they did. This was during a time when there were many complaints about board performance. Afterward, things were much improved, including my complaint. Gradually, these things begin to happen more and more, so I’m thinking that the database may be getting corroded again, and in need of periodic maintenance.
No, sorry for not being more precise. I’ve never gotten two login screens. I meant “it asks me to login again” in the sense of “I was logged in, timed out, and now it wants me to log in again.”
When I lose a post, like yesterday, what happens is that I hit Submit, and then get a nearly blank screen with a message (if I remember correctly) along the lines of “You cannot perform this operation because you are not logged in. Click the back button and login and then resubmit.” When I do that, I log in and get the posting text box, but it is empty.
Today, however, I posted this morning, went out and ran errands, went to the coffee shop, returned, and find that I am still logged in! Thank you “Remember Me” box! Thank you to all who pointed out this easy and (in hindsight) obvious solution!
Just tested this and it works, in both the normal reply and quick reply boxes! In fact I’ve probably had to use this before, but I know it doesn’t work in the program I use most often in my job - instead, it helpfully zooms in so that the screen fills with the empty space you have just accidentally created be deleting paragraphs of text :).
