As you will have noticed there was a bit of trouble with the blog. Typepad, the provider of the blog hosting service, closed the comments and prevented me from posting because of a payment issue.
The story behind that problem:
The credit card through which Typepad bills me had expired. I entered the renewed credit card data -only the expiration date had changed- and thought everything was fine. Then I received an email from Typepad saying they could not verify the credit card data. I again entered the data but that would not verify either and they blocked the blog because the credit card issuer assumed fraud.
After some back and forth we found that my office address attached to my Typepad account, and which is also used for credit card verification, did not fit the credit card address to which the card was issued to. But the credit card belongs to my office checking account and to my office address or so I thought. Everything looked correct to me.
After two days of phonecalls with the credit card issuer and my bank I found that the bank had issued the new credit card to the address of my private checking account instead of the office account where it belongs.
So I again entered the data and changed the address to my private one to which the credit card was now suddenly issued. That did not end the problem though. It still doesn't verify but Typepad now says that the problem for that may be with a changed verification process on the credit card issuer side. But after some SCREAMING at their help desk they also reopened the blog.
I 'll be back with some regular posting tomorrow.