This week has been really long. I had to get up at 4:30 am the last two days to get stuff done for early morning deadlines. One was a 10-minute presentation at 7:30 am. Ugh.
Anyway, suffice it to say that my brain and the rest of me is really tired. And a wee bit stressed out. Like a lot of people who spend a time working at a computer, sometimes it’s necessary to whine to others to deal with stress and work overload. Fortunately, my sister puts up with my whining on almost a daily basis. (Venting is a good thing, so hey thanks C.)
Speaking of whining, I need to whine about Earthlink. I’m a recovering Earthlink user, so I feel even more justified in saying that I’m just about at the point where I won’t respond to e-mails from Earthlink subscribers anymore.
As most readers have figured out by now, I get a lot of e-mail from people asking computer questions. Some I can answer and some I can’t. Some answers I include in Logical Tips to help others. For questions that are really specific and not much use to the general public, I just reply as a public service. I tend to think of it as a small volunteer effort and my way of giving back to the computing community.
However, recently responding to questions from Earthlink subscribers has become a giant pain because of their broken challenge-response system. I spend time composing a thoughtful response to someone’s question and then get mired in Earthlink’s autoresponse stupidity. The form you have to fill out doesn’t work half the time, so presumably my e-mail never goes anywhere.
Here’s the bottom line. Don’t send me e-mail asking for something if you’re going to use a challenge-response system, particularly Earthlink’s piece of junk. Get a free Yahoo account or add me to your list of accepted senders first. I’m sure I’m not the only one who is tired of jumping through hoops just to try and send a helpful reply.