Here is my day today: I sent out a group email to all 500+ of our members via my Compuserve account regarding our 2nd anniversary and other administrative things.
I was told - when AOL absorbed Compuserve and we were switched over to the AOL mail system a couple of years ago - that I could send as many emails as I wanted as long as I didn't have any individual "address groups" that had more than 20 names in each. So, I broke down my groups to under-20 names each, and now have to send to 30 email groups to cover all 500+ Blogcritics. So far so good.
Well, due to the relentless onslaught of spam, AOL/Compuserve have changed their rules AGAIN, and now sending emails to 30 address groups, with under 20 names per group, is against the rules, and they blocked my account as the 30th email dashed off into cyberspace via my cable modem.
I had an idea of what was up: being kicked offline just as your 30th group email goes out seemed a bit more than coincidental, especially in these paranoid times. So after trying to get back online a couple of times I called tech support - in India. I love those cheerful Indians! No, I mean I really do, and I find the accent charming, if sometimes hard to fully comprehend from 12,000 or so miles away.
But it wasn't a tech problem, it was a policy problem, and the Indian gentleman named "Washington" sent me back to America to the clandestine group of operatives called the "Community Action Team" - sounds like people you would call to haul away the dead raccoon clogging up the storm drain, but they are in fact the email police.
The email policewoman asks me if I was aware that I had just sent out "30 emails to over 500 individual addresses," and if so why? I explained my role as administrator for an organization (Blogcritics) and that I sent out group emails like this a couple of times a month and had been doing so for years without any problems. She said the rules had changed. I said fine - spam sucks carrion dong and I'm all for efforts to stamp it out with extreme prejudice - but that didn't apply to me as I am a responsible administrative type who is just doing his communicative duty for the home team.
Article comments
1 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
god, man, i know i shouldn't laugh but... that was one funny post.
Hehe. I know exactly that frustration, man. When i switched to broadband there was three or four days when NOTHING would do ANYTHING and nobody anywhere in the world seemed to know a damn thing about it. And then suddenly it wouldnt let me go into secure sites and so on. Eventually i had to restore the factory settings. Oh well. Alls well that ends with a funny line or two, as they say.
2 - Justene
but, but, we got an email from you saying you couldn't send email.
3 - Dawn
Technological innovations, it's irony at its most ironic.
I sure hope you are in a better mood when I get home - cheer up, it's only email, not like the site is down and you are dealing with bloodsucking hosting douchebags whose only goal in life is to create misery and rape children. (not that I am mentioning any names though)
4 - Eric Olsen
Thanks all, I am in a slightly better mood because I have now eaten and spent approximately 1/2 hour in a car with a shrieking 8 month-old, and had a chocolate chip cookie shoved into my eye by a 4 year-old. Hence I have better perspective on the relative importance of email in the grand scheme of things.
5 - BB
Crikey, maybe life ain't so bad after all. Thanks for makin' me feel better about myself Eric.
What's that? Misery loves company?
6 - Eric Olsen
Thanks BB, glad to be of service!
7 - Stepahn Upton
I seriously siggest, that we all learn a little bit about the following before u call a tech support, after all its an advantage if u know how to make them happy:
1. Cricket (yea, fckn boring game. & they beat the brits every time on it)
2. Philosophy (Indies are deeply philosphical people. they wrote the first thesis on dualism and acute singularism around 4000 bc.)
3. ballywood (a song & dance movie, thats some 3 hours long!)
4. DemocraZy (sine they are the biggest, they like to rub others nose in sand about advntage of it)
What shouldnt be talked.
1. Pakistan. they hate them. dont know why, think its a muslim vs the rest thinggy.
2. Poverty. million of them there.
3. cast system. something very bad, dont know much. but very bad.
hope it helps LOL