Look! There is a thing!

 

I always (well, almost always) develop problems that no one has ever encountered before.

So, for the past few weeks, I've been trying to save all the fic for myself. I'm currently going down the list of authors from Cascade Library, trolling archived sites on the Wayback Machine (after checking to see if the author has their stories at AO3 or Squidgeworld).

(Why, you ask? I don't know. I'll never be able to read it all, but my brain won't let me stop. Too much has already disappeared; grab the rest before it does, too.)

So this evening, I was saving fics from Loui, who wrote in several fandoms. The site was very nice, easy to access and save fic... when all of a sudden, the stories started saving in text only. Very weird -- each page opened in neat HTML view, but saved as text. I shrugged and made a Word doc to copy the neat HTML view for each story; I figured there was a glitch in the way it had been archived in the Wayback Machine.

After I finished with that site, I went to a couple of new AO3 fic announcements in my email, opened and saved the first... and IT saved as text only! Um... that's not kosher. So, I updated my computer, then restarted my computer to (hopefully) clear out any glitches.

Tried again. Same result. Actually, I get two saves at once, but that's SOP. The first is the normal AO3 save with automatic_underscored_title. I always copy and paste the name like this: Automatic Underscored Title - 3,2K (for example), then hit save to get a 2nd copy. So #1, the automatic save is in proper HTML. But #2, which I've renamed, is text only, where before it has also been HTML.

<huge, gusty sigh> Okay, I can work around the stories at AO3, and rename the underscored proper HTML copy. But on every other site, I'll be able to get only text copies. That pisses me off, and I want to fix it.

And note -- when this showed up, I had saved half a dozen stories on the page without any issues. Then the next story -- boom! text only -- and all the stories after.

I'm afraid I need to give up and go back to my new computer (which I haven't taken out of the box since it was repaired 10 months ago). I hate to do it -- it's such a hassle to get a new computer set up, transfer all my data, and I don't like the "feel" of that one as much as the comfy workhorse I'm using. *pats it gently*

Does anyone have any suggestions other than update and restart? Seriously, I have never heard of such a thing. I don't even know what search terms I'd use to look for info on how to fix this.

<sighs with frustration> My age is showing. Machines are supposed to work, dammit, and when they don't, there should be an obvious reason, and an obvious way to fix them. Unfortunately, the nearest computer tech lives in Artesia, about 90 minutes away. And I doubt that this will require a simple parts replacement...

If you have any ideas at all, toss 'em my way; maybe something will work.

Thanks.