Every now and then I lose a post that I am composing to the "ether".

It doesn't happen very often, but when it does it's very bothersome, particularly when I'm composing a complex thought that's going to be hard to duplicate in a redo.

I'm wondering if there's a way to retrieve these things (and before you jump the gun with the obvious answers, see mine enumerated below) when all else fails. I mean if the NSA can retrieve this stuff, and if I typed it on my keyboard, you would think that it would be maybe in a temp file somewhere, but so far I've been unable to locate these things that seem to just evaporate (and a disconnect, for example, can cause that to happen).

Now there are several solutions to this, but none really answers my question of how to retrieve them.

1. Don't compose anything beyond a paragraph or a few sentences, like in IM's. (I've done this now and then, but it's not really a solution as much as it is a pre-emptive measure, plus this eliminates any effort to explain a complex situation).

2. Compose in Notepad, save, and then copy and paste into the posting window. (Sometimes I remember to do this, particularly when I have a complex or lengthy thought, but I'm looking for the solution for those times that I just type away in the posting window and don't do this and the post "disappears" before I hit the "Send Post" button.)

3. Save the post periodically to a Notepad file (a variation on the solution above, but still not an answer to my question).

4. Use the back button of the browser. (Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't.)

5. View the history in the browser. (Again, sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't.)

6. Search on a keyword you remember from the post, and look for a file with a time stamp around the time the post was made. (I've tried this, but it's never worked).

So, my question is: When the solutions above don't work, how can I retrieve what I typed. It seems like it's GOT to be somewhere. Is there any software, short of an expensive recovery utility (if that's all there is, then I'll just suffer through a redo . . . and I'm not talking about deleted files . . . that's a whole different topic), that will do this??

(BTW, I DID compose this in Notepad before posting it).

Bob, you need to install a keylogger! I mean a friendly one, not a mean one. There must be something out there that will log your keystrokes for you, not for some nefarious purpose. I just have no idea what you would use. For me, I use #4 when a post starts getting long because I have lost them, too.

Too bad the NSA doesn't just store their keylog files as a plain text file on your system. Or they could give us a login to ECHELON where we can access our stolen personal info!

When I write a long post on any website, I typically do Select All and then copy it to the clipboard before I hit the submit button.

The meta cache tag is a problem that I need to look into.