Day 2402

I discovered today that one of my own clients was blocking me for sending spam. Am I a spammer? Definitely not. Do I share an mail server with someone who is? Probably. This is the problem with all shared mail and web servers. You don't know who your neighbors are. I called my hosting company and asked them to fix the problem. It's not that easy, they said. Thousands of customers could be using the same IP address and most blacklist e-mail filtering software will block the entire IP address instead of an individual user. Is there a solution to this irritatingly common problem? The hosting company said to just wait ten minutes and send my mail again. "If you send the mail again, it will probably be routed through a different mail server," said the tech support guy. OK. You would think that they could come up with a better solution than that. About half my mail went through today and the other half didn't. It would have been easier to just call my client on the phone.

This is why many doctors and hospitals still prefer to Fax medical records and apparently why the Defense Department still runs our nuclear missile system using a very old IBM computer and 8" floppy discs. Simple is often more reliable.  The more complex a system is, the more likely it is to break. My AT&T U-Verse service is spectacular when it works, but it really doesn't work all that well. Apparently the same can be said for my new e-mail account.

Dot still can't walk, but she is beginning to put weight on her left front leg again. This is a very good sign. I'm taking things very slow and giving her plenty of time to rest. She's a difficult patient, because she still wants to be active. You can tell she's frustrated when I hold her up using her harness and inch her around the house. That's all she can do at the moment though. If she keeps making progress at her current rate, we should be walking again in two to three weeks. It is very tiring dealing with a sixty pound dog that only has one good leg. I'd gotten used to supporting her back end, but it's much more complicated to provide effective support for her front and back legs at the same time. Today she peed on my foot when I took her outside, because I couldn't figure out how to get out of the way in time.

Dot is calm as long as Dash is calm, so I'm having to spend extra time with him to avoid the usual barking episodes that prevent Dot from getting the rest she needs. I've started giving Dash extra long walks in the morning, which seems to help. There are no easy solutions though. At this point in time, these are very high maintenance dogs.

I tried to get caught up on writing assignments today, but since most of them were going to the client who was blocking my e-mail, I have no idea whether they received the files or not. The client didn't even know they were blocking me. It was the anti-virus software they were using that is causing all the problems. The tech support guy I talk to this morning said that they monitor all outgoing mail using a special algorithm to detect spam messages and eventually the offending spammer will be identified and their account will be terminated. How long will this take? Who knows. I never realized how good I had it when my mail and web sites were hosted on a small secure private server. It's too bad that my friend who ran the company retired. Now that I've joined the modern world, I've had nothing but problems.

I guess the president was in town today but I never noticed. I was too busy cleaning up dog poop.

Winston is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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