Earthlink's Playhouse

No blogging for a few days. I’ll pick it up again on Sunday or Monday.

Getting through today was like driving across a field of molasses. For internal and mysterious reasons, Earthlink decided early today that I was unfit to send e-mail through its servers for a while. Then I was OK. Then persona non grata again. All the while, I could receive messages, however, so I didn’t miss any important spam.

On-line chats were initiated with techs in remote locations. Suggestions were made, settings were changed and then changed back. One suggested I upgrade my e-mail program, and I could almost sense what he was thinking: “That guy’s a caveman.”

I’m no caveman. I use bronze-age computer tools, you know, ca 2000. My attitude: if it ain’t broke, don’t upgrade it. But I have a feeling I’ll have to upgrade some things soon. Not because anything’s broken, might you, but because the information technology industry hates when people hang on to things for years, and so makes life hard for people who do.

Finally I called Earthlink. That tech, a nice fellow really, concluded that sometimes my e-mail would work, and sometimes it wouldn’t. He has been right so far.

I needed to file some stories today, so I needed e-mail. I tried to set up a hotmail account. I input everything, and then click submit. Nothing. Fine. I tried G-mail by Google. Submit, click. Nothing. Then AOL. “We don’t support your browser, get Safari.” Go to Apple, discover that trogs who used OS 9 don’t have a place in the Safari world. Get OS X. No, I don’t want to spend the money today, and then monkey around with it.

All the while, my DSL connection took coffee breaks, as it usually does. Finally I go to Yahoo! and get an account. A miracle! It actually seems to send e-mail, though it’s a much clumsier process than Outlook Express. So I file my stories. Whew. I decompress in the evening by watching Pee Wee’s Playhouse on DVD with Lilly and Ann. A world that makes more sense than the high-tech one.