Blogger Permalink - Not Really

Over at LCB we ran into an interesting problem and I've just run into it as well on my blog. The situation reminds me of one of my favorite Seinfeld scenes when he goes to get his rental car, but they are out of cars:

JERRY: I don't understand, I made a reservation, do you have my
reservation?

RENTAL CAR AGENT: Yes, we do, unfortunately we ran out of cars.

JERRY: But the reservation keeps the car here. That's why you have the
reservation.

RENTAL CAR AGENT: I know why we have reservations.

JERRY: I don't think you do. If you did, I'd have a car. See, you know how
to take the reservation, you just don't know how to *hold* the reservation and
that's really the most important part of the reservation, the holding. Anybody
can just take them.

It turns out that the people behind Blogger (now Google right) don't really understand the concept of a permalink.

The intent of a permalink is a permanent link (a URL) that points to that blog post. That way, anyone in the blogosphere can point to the URL.

Well Blogger seems to mysteriously add version numbers in the URL as you edit the post. Thus, we started with a URL that looks like:

http://learningcircuits.blogspot.com/2006/10/big-question-for-october-should-all.html

then we edited it and it became:

http://learningcircuits.blogspot.com/2006/10/big-question-for-october-should-all_02.html

then it became

http://learningcircuits.blogspot.com/2006/10/big-question-for-october-should-all_04.html

Now, it seems to have stopped changing at _04, but we aren't sure why or how it stopped or when it will change again. The same thing just happened on my own blog when I edited one of my posts.

Of course, this messes up everyone who linked to the post originally. And it messed up within the blog.

You see Blogger, you know how to make a permalink, you just don't know how to *hold* a permalink and that's really the most important part of the permalink, the holding. Anybody can just make them.