h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I know I'm incompetent, but this time, I don't think it was my fault. Really.

It's not quite two o'clock in the afternoon, and I'm exhausted, and I hate all online companies. In fact, I hate computers. I want to get in a and go back to another century. When? Anytime when they don't have EMAIL.

Yuck. About a year ago, Yahoo.uk wanted me to try out their new mail browser. I did, said, 'Do Not Want'. I thought that was it. Mais non...

About 3.30 ack emma, Eastern Standard Time, this perfidious bunch ninja-changed my email. When I got up and turned on the computer, I found, to my horror, that:

1. My mail browser had gone all funny, and I couldn't find any of the buttons.
2. My inbox was full of messages from outraged h2g2ers who claimed I'd spammed them with ads for unwanted tchotchkes.
3. I couldn't send an email from this email address, so I couldn't apologise to all the h2g2ers who got spammed. (Consider yourselves apologised to. You know who you are.)

Okay, #1 was a problem I could solve. Read all the buttons, find out where they put stuff. But #2 and #3 were posers. Here's what I think happened:

2. When they switched the email browser in the dead of night, the night-shift geek did something dumb. (Why am I not surprised?) He set the default to 'Do not allow automatic showing of images UNLESS the mail is not in spam.'

Aha. I think that's what allowed those sneaky spambots to email themselves. Because I NEVER open spam. I swear on the Gheorgheni gods. That switch must have opened them by robot. I'm sorry, HAL, but we'd like to throw you out the airlock...

3. I'm still confused as to why it won't let me send any email. I think it might be because the inbox is so full. They've made bulk deletion so time-consuming, however, that I can't test this out until I can set aside a whole day to do nothing but delete emails. I'll let you know.

In the meantime, just in case you didn't get the bulk email I sent out announcing this, or - like Magwitch - assumed it was More Spam (since Yahoo courteously delivered it into your Spam Folder) and hid from it:

I've got a new email address. It's dmitrigheorgheni-at-yahoo-dot-com. That one appears to work.

That wasn't all that went wrong today: then I lost an email from the Post Team's Gmail account. (BAD Editor, bad.) benjaminpmoore was kind enough to send another one. (He's patient, very patient. He has practice.)

I saved the document, and then tried to open it. And got an annoying error message from Word. Now, Word's often annoying, but this time, I thought it had gone too far.

It said (I thought):

'This file cannot be found. I couldn't care less. Gimme a break.'

I got mad, until I realised that 'I Couldn't Care Less - Gimme a Break' was the title of the file. Which I found, and edited, and got a chuckle out of, as usual.

I've decided to take a few deep breaths, and then go away and meditate on simpler times. So if you've got a , you can probably find me in ancient Mesopotamia, having a late lunch.

In the meantime, if you send me an email to the new address, or courtesy of the Postbox, or even on h2g2, I promise I'll try to figure out how to answer you.

Your fumble-fingered friend,

DG

See you in ancient Mesopotamia, my friend. Computers, whoooooargh.

It's not your fault, happens to the best of us, two very computer competent friends of ours had the same thing.

I feel for you, its just soooo invasive and funny weird feeling when this happens.

Take care. Nice red wine and grapes in ancient Mesoptamia.

cc

Oh dear, I hope I didn't add to your woes! I'm glad you manged to get a chuckle out of it in the end.

I did, indeed. And no worries. I just wanted to make sure h2g2 knew where to go to fuss at the editor here.

oh, my headless chicken routine wouldn't have helped

I'm sorry that it was such hard work sorting it all out

S'alright dude, I think the emails to you were to make sure you knew

Dmitri, send us a mail at the ops account, please? Just to make sure I update the mailing list right?

I clicked the link, saw what it was, and changed my password immediately. Curse you, Spammers, for banking on the fact that I love getting emails from Dmitri. *shakes fist*

Thanks, folks. I think it's sorted now - and I'm suspecting they did it to a lot of people. Service has been, er, slow...

I wondered whether to e-mail you, but figured you probably knew already.

Hope it sorts itself out soon

I didn't know whether to email or not. It was like reporting a trouble ticket to the IT department. If you don't report it, no one does; if you do, everyone else does, too. Hope it's sorted now - such a frustrating thing to have happen (and one of many reasons I need to ditch Hotmail).

I think that's sorted now. Spammers are a strange species. Why do they think we will buy their Viagra, or talk to their hot Russian babes, if they send us so many emails?

I agree, psychocandy - it's always the way, if you don't say anything, maybe nobody else will, either. It's like, 'You have spinach on your front teeth.'

It happens. Do you want me to send you the QotD list again, or have you got it saved?


Geggs

I have it saved in my trusty Word file, if you mean the one from three days ago.

I do. I'm not ready to send a new list yet. In fact, there's only been one Quote submitted since then...


Geggs

Send quotes, people.

I was on the verge of it a couple of hours ago, but rethought. That quote was inflammatory.

have I missed somethingpc bad happening crap stuff is MY department

Oh, my, and here I was, assuming Geggs'd get that quote lots of times

It wasn't me. I didn't press any buttons. Honest


Yes.. please send your quotes, as many as you find. We have to keep Geggs and Dmitri busy


lil x

QOTDerr! month maybe

"It wasn't me. I didn't press any buttons. Honest"