Announcement! Pearl-Guide.com Hiccup

[jshepherd]

It seems there was a problem with PG and some accounts were deleted. The system was pruning old accounts that belonged to non-posters and it apparently caught some accounts from actual members. We're really sorry about that. If your account was affected let me know and I will get it fixed for you.

[jshepherd]

So apparently it does not look like accounts were deleted, it appears as though a lot of posts from members were set to "guest" somehow. As soon as I can reach Kevin we will see is there is a way to revert the forum to a recent back up.

[PearlA]

(I'm glad I'm not crazy. I'm reading through a lot of old threads, and the names gemgeek, boo, and slreap, to name a few ... ones I'm becoming used to ... are suddenly losing their icon pics and showing as guests. At first I thought I'd gone too far back in the threads and old threads were kind of decaying or something. I need an emoticon for hitting myself in the head.)

[Slraep]

....... I'm reading through a lot of old threads, and the names gemgeek, boo, and slreap, to name a few ... ones I'm becoming used to ... are suddenly losing their icon pics and showing as guests.

I did not know I wrote so many posts! Actually, I did not write many old posts at all. I guess it is my unforgetable moniker...

[PearlA]

>I guess it is my unforgetable moniker...

Well I admit I do keep trying to pronounce it as a word.

I've been having one heck of an education the last couple weeks. It would be impossible to name a 'most informational' thread ... it's just an incredible wealth of information. But I can name the most amusing thread I've seen. ... A woman who was convinced a necklace from a thriftstore was South Seas, no matter what you all said. A sales lady (I think?) at a boutique store told her it was real, and you all tried so hard and so long to politely guide the poster, no matter how hard she argued. Then there was the 'Zeide' and 'Lop Noor' story I spent part of this afternoon figuring out. I'd thought there seemed to be 'missing' posts in some older threads, where people would reply to a Zeide, but I could never find her earlier on the thread. Today that finally started making sense when I found some explanations from Caitlin.

And the personal icon that keeps catching my attention is from someone named 'youngster'. I went to her profile and saw she's no longer around ... I'd love to ask her if that's a pomello rind on the cat's head.

--Pearl

[Mikeyy]

Didn't they tell you not to touch that button. You just had to see what would happen.

[Mikeyy]

OMG I've disappeared.

[jshepherd]

I am going to stop banging my head against the desk trying to figure this out and go back to helping Natalie arrange all the beader-special lots. The show must go on and this issue is definitely above my head.

[Slraep]

... Then there was the 'Zeide' and 'Lop Noor' story I spent part of this afternoon figuring out. I'd thought there seemed to be 'missing' posts in some older threads, where people would reply to a Zeide, but I could never find her earlier on the thread. Today that finally started making sense when I found some explanations from Caitlin.

--Pearl

Hi Pearl,

I'm sure Caitlin filled you in about the "basket case" known as Zeide G. Erskine. Although many of her posts containing ridiculous claims have been erased from P-G out of pity for newbies, the memory of her pearl-crap meistering lingers on like a bad case of shingles, much to our amusement.

The Lop Nurs...that was bold of her.

Slraep
PS. Hah ha! I am back to being a Magnificent Pearl Guru!

[Hanaleimom]

Sheryl, a lot of us have lost our avatars. It looks like yours is back.

Slraep, I like your new avatar.

I wonder after I post this if my avatar will be restored.

[Slraep]

I am going to stop banging my head against the desk .....

Yup, we really do need a little head banging emoticon.

[PearlA]

>I'm sure Caitlin filled you in about the "basket case" known as Zeide G. Erskine.

Actually, no, she didn't. My path of trying to figure the whole thing out these last few days has been as follows:

Initially I'd been reading along thinking Zeide was simply one of the pearl experts. Then I started noticing that there were times when someone would post as if they were replying to her, but I wouldn't have remembered seeing her earlier in the thread, and indeed, going back, she wasn't there. So I'd figured out that somehow some of her posts had disappeared, but didn't know how/why. I figured she'd left and deleted a bunch of her posts on her way out the door (I've seen that happen before, as I've been a mod on a different internet board for about five years or so). So I went to Zeide's profile and tried to look at her most recent posts, trying to figure out why she might have left. That told me nothing, possibly because the most recent had already been deleted.

Then I noticed a running joke about 'lop noors', but had no idea where it was coming from.

Then today, I was going through an old thread and found a discussion about her having lied, that she made a lot of stuff up ... Caitlin kept talking about -- 'hooey' -- I think was the word she used, and that she'd been misrepresenting freshwaters and had finally been banned. That thread also talked about the lop noors again, and that's where I read that some of 'Zeide's' posts had been deleted (which finally made those initial missing posts make a little more sense ... where people seemed to reply to her even though she'd been 'absent' from the thread). So finally that first 'mystery' had been solved.

I think I understand it now, but no, what I've figured out has just been from a h*ll of a lot of reading. (I do have more leisure time at the moment ... hubby had gall bladder surgery just before thanksgiving so we're still taking it a little more easy, plus I'm in the lull between the Thanksgiving and Christmas 'family/inlaw' invasions. I've read a lot ... and I mean a lot. But as I said, it's an incredible, incredible education. )

[Miriam Reed]

Slraep, I like your head banging emoticon! I think I've got my avatar back. Once I post this I'll know for sure.

[Caitlin]

She made 1,500 posts in 11 months and I managed to get rid of 500 of them.

The Lop Noors are a running joke mentioned in many threads. They inspired several sellers to replicate them with incredible dyed Chinese cultured freshwaters. It is amazing how good they look on people.
Faux, faux Lop Noors are the new chocolate. TeeHee.

Zeide's Lop Noors were faux Lop Noors because there are no genuine Lop Noors. So replications of the imaginary Lop Noors are faux, faux Lop Noors.

[Eugenie]

Looks like the forum is recovering? I wonder if it's doing that by itself, like a living being ))

Well, these things do happen, and it's very upsetting, especially if you don't have a recent backup. We had our hosting crash a couple of months ago, and I have a fairly popular forum about dogs, about 1.5 times smaller than this one but still big enough for our country (and very much loved), so we lost all that and it couldn't be recovered. This was an awful shock! So we cried a little and then established a new forum, and in about a week found that the old one was restored! And the two forums couldn't be merged so we had to leave the newer one of course, and some people were unhappy about that just as they were unhappy about the loss of the old one.