Computer Recovery!

In the past, when I have not had a computer to access, sometimes, I was able to access personal email at work.  Or go to the library and use a computer.  By accessing the Suddenlink Home Page  on my smartphone, I was able to keep updated on my email, clean out my email box, read the important email, and defer the rest.  That was good.

I also did one game,  The Set Game, that is part of my routine and does not have an archive. The others I play all do have archives.  

One thing I always I do, is to play Words with Friends.  Well, I have that application on my smartphone, and use it a lot, so I was more or less able to keep up with that.  And, I met the challenge the week this all started.  Not sure about this week:  I spent a lot of time getting caught up with email, newspaper headlines, and the many games I play each day. These games include: The Uclick Sudoku,  the AARP Daily Crossword,  and  the Merriam Webster Cryptogram.  So, I picked up the computer Thursday night, and by Saturday I was "caught up," which surprised me that it went so quickly. But that is why I may not meet the Words with Friends challenge. 

That is okay, I used to do everything I could to meet the Words with Friends challenges. But I found I was neglecting other activities, and decided that I would no longer do that. 

I also really like the new keyboard.  It is awesome!

Email Weirdness

So, when I got on my computer this afternoon, I could not download my email.  It appeared to be a server problem, but my Internet connection was working just fine.  So, I went to the Suddenlink home page http://home.suddenlink.net/ and tried to get into my emails on the website.  I have two active accounts and neither one would load emails. That was weird.  So, I decided to do some other things and get back to the email problem when I was prepared to call Suddenlink and be tied up on the phone for a while.

Well, when I tried later one, everything worked the way it was supposed to work. That was good!

A Strange Email

So, when I have tried in the past to send myself pictures from my IPhone to my suddenlink email account, it has not always been successful. I do not know why, but sometimes, the email shows up several hours or even days later. Sometimes, it does not show up at all.

Today, I did some things on my phone shortly after 1 PM.  This afternoon, when I checked my emails, I had one from my IPhone that was a picture from my IPhone, sent today.  The picture was taken in December 2015.

I do not know what I did to send this picture. I do not know why it came through so quickly. I do not know anything.

My ISP and SPAM

A couple of months ago, I noticed that I was not getting my online ebill for my AT&T credit card.  I have had this card for years, but do not use it much.  But occasionally, I do.  And, I know when I do.  I check my bills paid online a few times each month, and noticed that I did not pay AT&T one month. So I checked the website, and sure enough I had an amount due.  I checked back through my email, and could not find the ebill.  Well, I made the payment in time not to owe a finance charge, and thought nothing of it.  Then. Until, next month the same thing happened.  What the heck was going on?

Well, this past Saturday night, I sent myself a picture from my IPhone http://www.apple.com/iphone/.  I have done this before, and have noticed a delay in the email showing up on my computer.  But by Sunday morning, there was no picture.  I tried sending the picture again.  Multiple times. But it did not show up. 

I checked the phone user's guide, and learned that it might be my Internet Service Provider (ISP) blocking the photos.  Grrrr.  I went to the Suddenlink http://home.suddenlink.net/ email online website, and checked the settings.  I changed a few, including the one that said to dispose of SPAM and not show it to me.

The photos showed up shortly after I made those changes.

Well, lo and behold, I had no idea how much SPAM Suddenlink was filtering out from my email inbox.  And, I am glad that is happening.  But today, as I was browsing through the SPAM, there was my AT&T bill!  What the heck was going on?  I am not sure, but I sent the email to my inbox, and had my bill.

I have since added that email address to my contact list, in hopes that the future ebills will once again show up in my inbox, and not my SPAM box!

Emailing an Author

I am on Goodreads https://www.goodreads.com/, and decided to email Troy Soos about the Mickey  Rawlings series.  The response I received was very quick, and I suspected it was "canned."  Well, I sent a very different message to Troy Soos today, and I received the same exact response very quickly after the email was sent. My suspicion was confirmed.  That is really, really cheesy, Troy Soos.

re: The Mickey Rawlings Series
message:	I'm delighted that you're enjoying my books, Joyce! Thanks so much for letting me know. Best regards, Troy

My Email Was Hacked

My email was hacked July 3... in my two accounts with Suddenlink, I had over 800 mailer demons or bounce backs, on July 4. On July 5, I was notified that my sending privileges were suspended until I could contact customer service.  I have had this problem before, and it has taken me multiple phone calls to Suddenlink, and several hours to resolve.  I ran the anti-virus before calling Suddenlink, because if I had not, they would not fix anything until I ran the anti-virus.  It took the technician less than 10 minutes to reset my Suddenlink passwords.  He said he sent the email to the supervisor to reset my accounts, but it could take up to 48 hours to reset. He also reminded me that I would have to reset my passwords in Outlook.  At first, Outlook would not accept the new passwords, but when they did, I knew Suddenlink had reset the emails for me, and my accounts were available to send emails.  I sent a test from each account to the other, and they went through.  The technician I got tonight, George, knew his stuff and did GREAT!  Thanks Suddenlink!

Sending Emails

So, recently, I have sent some emails.   I sent an email to President Obama, supporting his efforts to provide emergency help and re-educate Central Americans regarding the immigration policies of the United States.  I agreed with him that we needed to do something to offer a humane response to the people coming from Central American with false expectations of humanitarian assistance from this country. I agreed we needed to provide humane aid, and we could not ignore the problem of the need of political asylum.  That could not we ignore the needs of the immigrants who made it to the United States. And that we needed to educate the citizens of the countries of Central America that the United States could not always offer the asylum they wanted.  On the other hand, we needed to be sensitive as a country to their dire and desperate needs for asylum.

It took several weeks, but I received a very canned form letter from the Office of the President. But, I did receive a response. By the time I received the response there were so many other emergency issues in the world, that the response seemed very anti-climactic.

Last week, I sent an email to the Prime Minister of Canada, The Rt. Hon. Stephen Harper, P.C., M.P., expressing my condolences to the family of Corporal Nathan Cirillo, and to the Canadian peoples. I was horrified at the terroristic attacks on Canada, I received a response today.  I was surprised at receiving a response.  It, too was a "canned" response, but it was very timely, and lent the air of concern and interest.

Monday night, I sent an email to the mayor of Lubbock, http://www.ci.lubbock.tx.us/city-council/mayor Glen Robertson.  I had been at the Mahon Branch of the Library of the city of Lubbock, http://www.mylubbock.us/departmental-websites/departments/library/library-home.  The light in the primary parking lot of the library was out, and I was concerned about safety for library customers.  I sent an email to the mayor about that. I was astonished to receive a phone call from the mayor's office.

This was a bit of a misdirection phone call: The information was that the light had not been out long, the Lubbock Power and Light was having some difficulty getting it repaired, that the mayor's office was concerned about Library customer safety.  They would keep me advised.

Well, I understand it might take a few days to replace lights.

But Lubbock Power and Light is not getting any slack from me.  The incestuous political dealings in Lubbock have given Lubbock Power and Light free rein to misbehave, provide poor service, and to gouge citizens for electric service costs. They increase rates wantonly, and because the City of Lubbock voted to expel Excel http://www.xcelenergy.com/. there is no competition for LP&L.

So, anything the mayor's office tells me about the workings of LP&L is taken with a grain of salt.  The mayor's office said I would be apprised of the progress of getting the light fixed.  I think LP&L is "blowing smoke" to the mayor's office, and they are complicit with this. 

I will be agreeably surprised if this is not the case.  This is one email I can follow up on. 

Microsoft Outlook: Grrr

So, I am using Microsoft Outlook for my primary email program.  Suddenlink is my Internet and email platform provider, but I choose  to download my email to my computer via Microsoft Outlook.

When I first set up Outlook, my emails would disappear!  I could not figure it out.  Eventually, I figured out how to use Outlook and not lose my emails.  Or so I thought.  Today, I downloaded several emails, but did not process them, as I have to do for my main email, but not the secondary email.  I deleted them from the Suddenlink email program, but then, the unprocessed emails disappeared.  I sent them again, and again, they disappeared. So, because by then I had deleted the emails from my Suddenlink account, I could not resend them to my email. But they were still in my "trash can" on Suddenlink, so I copied and pasted the body of the emails I wanted, and sent them to myself.

Lesson learned, I will need to be sure that have downloaded and processed the emails before I delete them from the Suddenlink mail box.

Phishing

I have three email accounts with Suddenlink. I no longer use one, but the other two are very active accounts for me.  

Tonight, I was in my secondary account, and I opened an email ostensibly from Suddenlink. It basically said that they wanted to verify that the account was still active, and to "click here" to verify the account. Well, I was going back and forth between both of my accounts tonight, and I did not get a similar email for my primary account.

This was suspicious. My secondary account is very active, so there was no reason to need to re-validate it (as if it had been inactive for a while, which I would understand.)

I called Suddenlink. The IT technician I spoke to was Lance.  He verified that Suddenlink had not sent anything to either of my emails, and it was most likely "phishing." He said that since I did not click on the link or give them my information, I probably was okay, but I it would not hurt to change my password. (I think I will do that, if I can figure out how.)

He took my information, said they would check into it and thanked me for reporting this, acknowledging that they probably have other customers who are being "phished" and they want to investigate it.

Checking Email

I am an inveterate checker of email.  I am probably compulsive and obsessive about checking email.  Yesterday, I was on and off the computer throughout the day: looking things up, checking Facebook, and playing games (Scrabble and Words With Friends on Facebook, Solitaire on my desktop), and my repertoire of regularly played games.

Well, I would have sworn that I check my email throughout the day.  But obviously, I did not, because when I signed onto my email today, there were emails from yesterday, sent before 2 PM central time. Interesting.  I just never did check my email throughout the day. That is so unlike me.

Why did that happen? Who knows.  It just did.

My Other Job

I belong to the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) http://www.naswdc.org/.  When I joined the local leadership was tightly held, almost secretive and closed.  I was not happy about this, and because of my angry comments, I was included in the leadership circle. I started trying to work for the local branch, including trying to do recruiting activities. 

But, then, I got on the committee that produced the yearly workshop.  That was a niche I really liked.  I have been engaged in that activity since the early 1990's. I have seen this committee morph over the years: We did workshops with other agencies in town. We did workshops with a large committee doing the planning . We did workshops with two or three of us doing the planning.

The last few years, two of us have done most of the work, except for contacting the speakers and getting their presentations approved. I have even helped with that, but only by default.

Some 10 or so years ago, I took over the job of sending out the monthly meeting announcements.  These have morphed, over the years from a newsletter (before my tenure), to a postcard. I told the steering committee I could do the postcards, and not need labels, but print the addresses on the postcards. From their we started collecting emails and have converted to sending out emails about our meetings to those for whom we have emails addresses.

And from our monthly meetings, and annual workshops, we have collected email addresses, and added those to our email list.  I now have an email list for members, non-members, and other interested professionals (marketers, non-social workers) depending upon what the message is. 

We send out monthly meeting announcements, job openings, community resource information, and requests for help for clients by email.  Usually, we do not send out political information, and marketing or fundraiser information.  If something is questionable, I consult the steering committee, people who are thoughtful about what we should send out and how I should use my time. If there is a request from an NASW member outside of the usual, the steering committee helps to determine the appropriateness of the request.

I also review the licensure list once a year to find new names for our mailing list, for our annual workshop.

Keeping up with the email addresses, and mailing addresses of people is a lot of work.  I do "group emails" sent bcc.  Many get returned, sometimes because they are treated as SPAM, sometimes because I have entered the email incorrectly, sometimes because people change their emails.  I tell new members to the list  to add the email address I use for NASW: naswlbbnews@suddenlink.net to their contact list, so the group emails are not treated as SPAM. I try to keep up with who is being added and removed from the email list. Recently, my email provider has started suspending my email account, if I get too many returns, so I have to edit those right away.

This is all very time consuming. Added to that, I try to make sure that not only the people for whom we do not have emails are on the snail mail mailing list, and anyone for whom we do not have a valid email is also on the mailing list.

For most of the year, this takes a few hours every month. But in the beginning of the calendar year, things get busy.  March is Social Work Month.  We send out ballots to nominate people for Social Worker of the Year, Citizen of the Year, Agency of the Year, and Elected Official of the Year.  We then send out a ballot to elect the nominees. And an invitation to the dinner we host to honor these people.

And, in the spring, we do our annual workshop. So, the brochure gets emailed to those folks for whom we have valid emails.  And, this is the time of year I cull our snail mail addresses, add to them for those for whom the email address we have is invalid, and search the licensure list (if I have time.)  And, then we print labels for brochures for the annual workshop.

So, this is my other job.   I enjoy working on the computer.   I enjoy having something to do as I watch TV.   This is the beginning of NASCAR season, and it is too cold to be outside playing unless I am doing vigorous yard work. So, the fit is good, as I can watch the races and work on NASW activities.

This is my other job.  I am not allowed to do this at work because of security reasons: concern about viruses and such.  But the truth be known, if I did this on work time, it would severely impinge upon my work duties, as it is very time consuming. And, the truth be known, I do not mind doing this at home, in my comfortable clothes, in comfortable surroundings watching TV or listening to music.

.

My New Best Friend?

I wonder if Suddenlink is my new best friend. I have certainly spent a LOT of time on the phone with their Internet service technicians lately.  Tonight, I received something that looked like SPAM, supposedly from Suddenlink.  I called, and the technician agreed it was SPAM. 

Well, at least I have them on speed dial.

More Computer Problems

Once again, last night, my secondary email account was not working.  I contacted Suddenlink http://home.suddenlink.net/ again and got a very nice technician.  He spent hours helping me to fix the problem, but in the mean time, tried to convince me to set up a gmail account instead of using what I had.  He said it was because Outlook Express 6 was outdated, but that made no sense, because if I set up a gmail account to load onto my computer, it would be to Outlook Express 6...

Anyway, he basically routed my secondary account through my primary account, taking a very long time to do so ( a couple of hours.  I was so tired, I could hardly stay awake.)  When I explained that the secondary account was for communication with my professional association, and I did not want all that email on my primary account, he took about 20 minutes to fix the secondary account! 

Tonight, when I was using my emails, I realized the secondary account could send email, but the replies to the secondary account went to my primary account.  It took me a while, but I fixed it.

I hope this is the end of the email saga.

Email, Suddenlink and Customer Service

My Internet Service Provider (ISP) is Suddenlink http://home.suddenlink.net/, which changed from Cox Cable about 5 or 6 years ago.  Except for the increasing prices, I have generally been more pleased with Suddenlink than Cox, with whom I had had running battles for years. 

With Cox, I battled misleading advertising, poor service, rude customer service and  untimely service.  Suddenlink has done better. But not by much.

Most of the time my internet and cable TV service has been pretty good. I have learned to refresh the TV cable boxes and the internet connection modem and routers without having to contact Suddenlink.

Generally, when I have a problem, customer service is pleasant. When I had to have someone come to my home, that person was nice. The last time that happened, the technician told me my modem was outdated. I wrote to Suddenlink, and told them I could have had restored service sooner, if their online staff could have told me the same thing. They were very nice. That was a while back.

At the end of November 2012, Suddenlink had a serious problem with it's email platform.   I realized this because not only could I not access email on my computer, I could not access email from their website. Suddenlink acknowledged the problems with their email platform. It took a couple of weeks to resolve, but it was resolved.  My main email account was less affected than a secondary account I have. (I have a third account that I no longer use at all.) 

Since Suddenlink acknowledged this problem, they gave credit to my account (and I assume, the account of others) for the problem.

However, since then, I have had intermittent problems with my secondary account.  A few weeks ago,  I could not access my secondary account because the password was rejected. It was a night when I really needed to use the account.  I called Suddenlink  for technical assistance, and talked to a very nice technician. We reviewed the connections, and she decided that the problem needed to be referred to an engineer.  She said it might be 2-3 days to correct, and if was not corrected, to call again. The next night, the secondary email account was working.

Friday 2-1-13, I experienced the same problem.  I called it in to Suddenlink and after reviewing my connections, the technician said the server was down, and connectivity should be restored after a few hours.  (I told the technician of my previous problem, and how it had been resolved by referral to an engineer. He said in this case, since the server was down, there was no need. He acnowledged that if the problem did not resolve in a couple of hours, I needed to call back and have the problem referred to an engineer, and he would note that on my account.)

It was late, I was tired, and went to bed.   Saturday 2-2-13, the secondary account still did not work. 

I called in agan for help. The technician I talked to did not want to hear about the history of my problem. More than once, after giving me instructions, he said the problem was fixed when it was not. At one point, he told me it was a Microsoft problem, but I refused to accept that answer.  When he realized the account was suspended, he told me to run my anti-virus and call back. He totally refused to accept that the problem should be referred to a supervisor or engineer. 

I did run the anitvirus. To no avail. When I called back to Suddenlink,  I told the technician the entire history of my problem, including the fact that I was so upset with the attitude of the prior technician that I was ready to leave Suddenlink.  I insisted that this technician listen to every prior report of  my problem and my story. When we went through the technical problems, and she realized that I had run the anit-virus and was still having problems of having my email account suspended, she immediately said she would refer it to a supervisor. She told me it would take 20-30 minutes, gave me her name and extension.  She said she would call me if they needed to talk to me about something else. She said I could call and ask for her extension, if I needed to talk about something else.

About 30 minutes later, the email program started to work approriately. I waited an hour and did not hear from the technician. I called and asked for her, but was told she was away from her desk. I told the technician I was talking to that she did not need to call back, but could he tell her I was calling to thank her.

I also sent a complaint to Suddenlink.  They agreed that my Saturday morning experience was inappropriate and would be addressed.  I hope they give kudos to the technician who helped me, but that was not part of the email I recieved.