Ah, the power of the internet.

Way back on Feb. 3 … yes, all of seven days ago … I wrote an item on this blog asking the Los Angeles Times to fix the problem that kept me from being able to read any of their blogs. The “hook” to the story being that Steve Dilbeck, my friend and colleague of 30-some years, is now the latimes.com Dodgers blogger.

At first, it was suggested that the problem was at the Arabian Peninsula end of the process. And, to be sure, some websites are blocked here. But nearly all of them have to do with people not wearing clothes, or gambling, or religion. Not Dodgers baseball. (Even if some people might equate it with sex,  gambling and religion.)

So, anyway … guess what:

On Feb. 7, four days after the blog post “I Want My Dilbeck” went up … Leah tried opening one of his blog entries … and it came up. She e-mailed me the news from the office. I went to the site, while sitting in the Teeny Apartment. And it worked for me, too. And has, ever since.

Just like that … nearly four months of zero access to latimes.com blogs … over.

A little history/background.

Steve got wind of my blog post, and last week sent off a note to someone who works at the website. The person at first suggested that, yes, it was about the UAE. He noted that urls with the word “blog” in them were banned in some countries.

However, we read items on blogspot.com every day here. Without a single interruption since arriving back in October. That “blocking the word ‘blog'” thing didn’t withstand scrutiny.

It was specific to the L.A. Times. I was almost sure of it. And specific to latimes.com blogs — because I always was able to call up anything on the site that was not a blog.

Which people tended to have trouble believing. (Most tech people automatically assume “operator error.”)

The reality: I wasn’t getting any latimes.com blogs, whatever the cause of the problem. And I was prepared to resign myself to fate — or to some workarounds that readers suggested (the words “proxy server” came up more than once).

Then, four days after the post went up … voila! Steve’s blog came up. And so did the blogs written by everyone else, at latimes.com. (Hello, Mark Medina!)

So, I see only two potential explanations for this event:

1. After deciding to block all blogs from the Los Angeles Times (but not the New York Times,  L.A. Daily News, etc.), authorities in the UAE decided, suddenly, to drop the ban against latimes.com bloggers.

Or …

2. Someone at the L.A. Times, a tech person, poked around, flipped a switch or rebooted or added “UAE” to “countries we hope will read us,” and now their blogs can be picked up in Abu Dhabi.

Which do you think is more likely?

Yeah, me too. (Funny, how often it is not operator error.)

Anyway, I’m glad they fixed it. Now I can read about Stevie and the uncle who made him a baseball fan, and Vic Scully and Chien-Mien Wang, who probably will not become a Dodgers pitcher. I read it on his blog about an hour ago.

And here is Steve’s blog, if you care to go have a look. You can join me.