Dopp Juice Archive

Originally uploaded by metasin.

The GoodI get along with technology most of the time. My entire livelihood, skill development, and future aspirations are a direct result of the internet existing. I check my emails as I walk down the street. I keep in touch with hundreds of people who live in other states as though they lived next door. Technology is really freaking cool.The BadBut anything that provides this much good stuff has got to have its drawbacks. The problem with technology is that sometimes it throws temper tantrums. Like a stubborn little kid who doesn’t want to eat his vegetables. You try to be tricky and outsmart it, but sometimes there’s nothing you can do but sit back and wait for the tantrum to pass. Step back, take a deep breath, walk around the block, and try to reason with it on a clearer head later on — or learn to live with its existence. The UglyEarlier this week, my web server got hacked and my email was used to send spam. Now, Thunderbird (my generally-awesome open source mail client) can receive my email, but it won’t send it. My outgoing mail server is SBC-Yahoo (my DSL provider), not my personal hosting, so I don’t think this is a direct result of the hacking. If it is, I haven’t figured out how. My troubleshooting female intuition says to call SBC and ask for their help. The email worked yesterday, it doesn’t work today, and I didn’t change any settings… so something’s going wrong somewhere, and maybe it’s on their end. The trouble is, the account is in my ex’s name (he’s in New Hampshire now), and we can’t change that because of our contract. So getting any kind of customer service is a major hassle for me, and there’s no guarantee that after I wait on hold for an hour, they’ll even give me any information at all. I’m trying to sit back and not get upset about these things. Take them in stride, use workarounds until the solution arises… I’m doing surprisingly well. But pretty soon, I’m going to break something. And it just might be my monitor.

Okay, this really isn’t funny. My email inbox is still loading. It’s up to 500 messages now. Still going… They’re all return emails. Could not be delivered. You’re being perceived as spam. Address doesn’t exist. Leave us alone. I scroll down, check the email, and yes, sure enough, I’m trying to spam people with a Wells Fargo information phishing scam. Great. Isn’t that just how I needed to start my day. We’ve clocked in at a total of 840 email messages. And these are just the ones returned. How many people out there just got spammed by “me”? Did someone hack my server (perhaps through b2evolution? This blog software is not on my good list this year)? Did they just throw my email address onto “reply to:” for good luck? Who’s neck do I need to wring right now?

After much grief, I finally got insurance for my PDA cell phone (Treo650) from Sprint’s third-party insurance provider, lock/line. And I’ll have you know, it’s covers damage or loss from just about everything except for nuclear explosions and acts of war. They really felt the need to point that out to me in bold type.My first thought was of mild impending doom. “Even my phone company thinks we’re about to be obliterated!” My second thought was, “Now where is their patriotism? If they’re expecting acts of nuclear war to destroy my phone, why won’t they replace it for me afterwards in the name of Uncle Sam?”Here ends the story of my cell phone gripes. Go in peace.