Day 4772

I hate Bluehost. I practically spent all day trying to get my e-mail account to work and each time I called customer service their suggestions made the problem even worse. In the beginning only the laptop e-mail didn't work. All I wanted to do was enter the desktop settings in the laptop, but when I tried to sync the two computers, the bad laptop passwords got transferred into my desktop computer instead. Now both computers couldn't send or receive e-mail. Bluehost customer service wouldn't tell me what my good passwords were, so they advised me to delete my account and start over. When I tried this I had even more Bluehost passwords stored in my Apple Internet settings and none of them seemed to work. After a while nothing associated with Bluehost would work. I couldn't access sealander.com or even the Dalmatian Rescue website.

Customer service kept telling me that it wasn't their problem and to call AT&T instead. I knew this wasn't the issue, but I did call and AT&T ran some tests and said everything looked good on their end. Offshore customer service reps are frustrating to begin with. They are off in India or Malaysia and it is very hard to understand what they are saying. They must all be in a big room somewhere because you can hear lots of other service representatives talking in the background. The phone connection always seems very poor as well. I talked to three different Bluehost customer service reps today and none of them were able to help. They didn't even seem to want to help. These guys kept saying that I had configured my computer wrong. Nope. The computer was configured correctly. It could connect to everything else in the world, except the Bluehost servers.

I shut everything down, took my long walk, and ate dinner. This evening I tried to configure Apple Mail again using the same setting I'd been using all day and everything worked. I hadn't changed anything. Why couldn't Bluehost just admit to me that the problem was on their end? They kept trying to pass the buck and blame someone else. I'd switch my account but almost everyone is using offshore customer service these days. Most of these people are just reading from a script. I miss the days when you could call a real software engineer who actually understood your problems and could come up with a solution on the spot. Apple certainly isn't helping things either. There are settings stored in System Preferences, in your Browser Preferences, and in Apple Mail that all have to match. Sometime there are iCloud settings as well.

Needless to say, I didn't get my article about the Falcon Heavy launch to my editor today. I'll try again tomorrow, assuming that I don't lose all my setting again overnight. I can't believe how much time I wasted on this today. Dawn got a nice walk in the morning, but I took a much shorter walk about 3 PM because I was tired and more than a bit frustrated.

We're going to move the rescue Dalmatians to a new kennel tomorrow. They've been in  a temporary kennel for months now and Janet and I haven't been able to visit them. Now that the dogs have a permanent home again, we should be able to go play with them on a regular basis. We have some new dogs now and Janet and I should have a chance to meet them tomorrow. Visiting the dogs will be a nice change of pace from today's Internet woes. Today wasn't a total loss though. I did get everything from my trip unpacked and put away and did a load of laundry.

Chief is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day