The Ramblings of my Disorganised Mind

Email problems

Yeah, the title says it. I thought these had been fixed, but apparently not. It turns out that at least two people have sent rather important emails to me in the past couple of weeks that I haven't received, and this is a long, ongoing saga I have with froggy, who is about to be given the flick, hopefully for broadband, if it's not too $$$

What can I say, email hasn't been my highest priority lately. It's one of those things I've put off until after the divorce, moving, blah blah blah. Think I won't wait.

Basically, if you send me an email that needs an answer, and I haven't responded within, let's say, 2 days (at current answer rates), then please presume I'm not ignoring you: I didn't get it. I don't just ignore people, even if there's nothing to say, I'll often send a ":-)", mostly because this is a long-term problem. Alternatively, I did send you a response, but you didn't get mine. If you really need me, SMS or phone. The mobile's always on.

I am definitely receiving emails from the yahoo lists I'm on, as well as comments that come through this site. I have known problems with any ISP that is owned by IINET (who owns froggy), including whale-mail and their other subsidiaries. Optus can bounce back as spam from my ISP, as will some hotmail and yahoo addies (although, for some reason, not all of them and not all of the time). This has been a problem ever since the ISPs blanket-installed SpamCop. The trouble is, while most good ISPs allowed the end-user to regulate their own spam filter, froggy won't let you do that, so even the Qld Red Cross server mail won't get to me most of the time (I had at one time last year 2 different people sending from the same RC office, and I rarely received their emails).

The real problem is, that emails won't bounce back, usually. They just don't get delivered to me, and the sender doesn't get a "bounce", so we're all in the dark until someone casually asks, "did you get my email about...?" and I'm like, "no? Did you get mine?" "No?". I feel very unreliable because of it though. (What can I say, I'm female, I'm a mother, I've been a fundamentalist Christian and gome through that DV thing: I have guilt issues. Honestly, it's almost gotten to the point where I'm about to blame myself for the Crusades. I should never have gone to see Kingdome of Heaven).

This is a very on=off thing (the email problems, not the guilt), I have a friend in Finland who some emails come through, sometimes when they all do and then there are long periods where emails just don't get through either way. There seems to be a size correlation there, but not always (It's the "but not always" thing that always stumps me). I know I was having problems last week because I received a response to one of his emails (sent to a group of us) when I hadn't seen his email... although the email he originally sent that had already been answered and then that answer had been answered by me, arrived two days later.

On the up side, knowing that there is this problem can save a bit of heart wrench. I sent a long rambling email with to a friend a while back (no, not the one I sent you, Edi, don't worry :-D) that wasn't responded to, so I choose to think it was froggy's fault, not a symptom of impending non-friendness. ;-)

Froggy. Great in the garden. Sucky at computers.

posted by Heather @ 8:40 pm