<p>I've been a reader of the MIT blogs for more than a year now. About two weeks ago, I suddenly lost the ability to open up any of the MIT blogs. Whenever I try, I get a blank page and the message "The operation timed out when attempting to contact ...."</p>
<p>Any ideas what the problem is? My default browser is Mozilla Firefox, but I also have Explorer installed on my computer. I get the same message with both browsers. I also tried disabling my firewall and antivirus programs (ZoneAlarm Security Suite), but I get the same result.</p>
<p>The MIT blogs are the only sites where I have this problem. I'm frustrated. BTW, I originally had the MIT blogs on Live Bookmark. I first realized there was a problem when I got the message "Live bookmark failed to load."</p>
<p>mapesy, just go to one of them, let's say Ben's or Matt's, using their direct blog links (below), and then click on the individual bloggers' links from the right-hand column to get to the others.</p>
<p>I've tried every roundabout way I can think of to access the blogs -- my old live bookmarks that worked for more than a year but suddenly stopped working, the MIT admissions page, and googling the bloggers. I can't get any of the links to work. All the other links on the MIT website work just fine.</p>
<p>It's really weird. My son is home from college, so today I asked him to try and access the blogs from his computer. He had the same result as me.</p>
<p>So....could it be our ISP, which is Comcast? How else could two different computers have the same problem?</p>
<p>I really appreciate everyone's help. We haven't been able to open up the blogs for two weeks and our family is frustrated. My daughter is especially upset because she plans to apply to MIT next fall.</p>
<p>Clicking on the links provided on the MIT admissions page and Google doesn't work -- nothing works! I just get the error message "The operation timed out when attempting to contact...."</p>
<p>Well, since it's MIT I'd call Monday morning and ask them what's going on.<br>
Surely they've got enough tech people that someone can figure this out. </p>
<p>I'm not very computer savvy, but it sounds as if they blocked you somehow (although I don't know if that's possible). </p>
<p>p.s. I'll send my son an email and ask, but don't know when I'll get an answer.</p>
<p>Thanks, over30. I never considered the possibility that MIT might have blocked us. Still, it's strange. My son couldn't open the blogs from his computer either (while in our home.) Wouldn't his computer have a different IP address than our family computer?</p>
<p>We also have a child at MIT, but she knows almost nothing about computers. At first, I thought our problem might have something to do with her MIT certificates on our family computer, but I checked and her certificates are still valid. Anyway, we shouldn't need MIT certificates to view the blogs.</p>
<p>I just sent off an e-mail to the MIT computing help desk.</p>
<p>Bingo, mercurysquad! The proxy worked, so it must be our ISP. Thanks for your help. Thanks also over30, mootmom, and mollie -- you're all wonderful sources of knowledge and wisdom. Your posts are always very helpful.</p>
<p>We had nightmares last night about being blocked by MIT from viewing the blogs! What could we have done to be banned, we wondered? lol</p>
<p>Update: I received an e-mail from the MIT computing help desk regarding my problem accessing the blogs. The e-mail said the blogs server was recently updated and provided links to check the blogs. </p>
<p>Voila! I still don't know what my specific problem was, but I can now view the MIT blogs again without using a proxy. Thanks again, everyone.</p>
<p>It's true that blogs.mit.edu was recently updated, but that's different from mitblogs.com - our admissions blogs have their own server and we haven't done any updating in the last year.</p>
<p>So apparently we still don't know what the problem was, but in any case I'm glad things are working for you! :-)</p>