She said no prob, we'll sign you up for our bulk email list as long as you are not a) sending porn, or b) sending to people who don't want to hear from your skeevy ass, or something to that effect; and I said "no" and "no" respectively. She said you are unblocked, but you can't send any more bulk email for the next 24 hours, after which time your new bulky status will take effect. I saluted, thanked her and got back to work.
I got back in to Compuserve fine, got my email fine (dozens more had accumulated, I get several hundred a day, about 75% of which is spam), but when I hit "send" to reply to a fine missive from one of you upstanding citizens, I got the "hourglass" instead of the usual snappy "your mail has been sent."
I waited, and waited, and waited. Finally, it timed out. I tried again - same thing. I called my CAT pals, they said "we didn't do it, call tech support."
So, back to India, a land of excellent food, acute philosophy, beguiling women, and tech support for every fucking American computer and online service. The polite and animated woman wanted nothing more in the world than to solve my problem, I could tell. We deleted my cache, checked this, checked that and tried it again. Same thing. "Mr. Olsen, it must be a system problem on our end - I will put in a report and it will be fixed within 24 hours. No problem. Okey-dokey?" I love that they care enough to throw in the colloquialism for my personal comfort. "Okey-dokey," I replied.
Back to the email (the one constant in this ever changing world in which we live in, sing it Paulie): I open one, reply, try to send it, get the hourglass, say "shit," then go to file the email, because people, it's a KEEPER. I click on "file message," only none of my filing cabinet folders come up - not "Blogcritics," not the cleverly titled "Blogcritics Admin," not even my beloved "Posted Review Material"! Where is my filing cabinet with my 13 different categories and 2000 crucial stored emails, some of them 7 and 8 years old?!? It is gone like an Enron retirement plan, vanished, hoovered from existence.
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