I am testing my post-by-email function. I’m pretty sure it will work for LiveJournal, and I think it will work on WordPress, but I’m not 100% sure. I don’t really have anything useful to say, I just wanted to try out my email posting! (I am sending this to two addresses, rather than posting to WordPress and letting Live+Press do the dirty work.) Whee!

Well, it’s done. I’ve deleted the catch-all address I’ve used for years at my domain. I’m actually pretty scared of what’s going to happen…I don’t know if it’s an aversion to all change or if there’s legitimate reason to be scared of losing mail at this point. I visited 233 websites and changed my registered e-mail address. There are another 139 addresses that were either already established as legitimate, or for which I couldn’t change the registration information for whatever reason. The legitimate ones are being forwarded to my Gmail, and the ones I couldn’t change are being forwarded to a webmail account on my host that I can check periodically.

I’m pretty sure everything I would want to receive has been taken care of in one way or another, but it’s still nervewracking. Cutting down on the 1000+ spam e-mails I received daily (and all the bounces from falsified headers) will be nice, but I’m still nervous about possibilities. I’m not sure if I should bother enabling Dreamhost’s Junk Filter on my domain…if it doesn’t apply to forwarded addresses, then it’s only good for whatever is getting delivered to that spare account. I think for now I’m going to leave it turned off; if I continue to get lots of spam in either my Gmail or the spare account maybe I will use it.

If you need to reach me, the e-mail address you already use probably still works. Ask if you have questions about that.

I used to use a catch-all e-mail address on my domain as a form of spam tracker. I signed up for JobsOnline.com using jobsonline at my domain name, for Callwave.com using callwave at my domain name, etc. Originally, this was not a bad idea. Several sources refer to this as a practice that was effective in the past for making sure mis-addressed e-mails didn’t get lost, but those sources also acknowledge that it’s no longer a good idea to use a catch-all because it’ll overwhelm you with spam. I get over 1000 spam e-mails per day, to addresses like zvwrlkj at my domain, etc. That doesn’t count the spam I get in the form of bounced e-mails from people spoofing addresses at my domain. But I’ve been doing e-mail this way for years, and I was just putting up with it.

Now I’m trying to consolidate my accounts into a couple of e-mail addresses. I reviewed my “Site Registration” folder in my e-mail (I knew I kept that stuff for a reason) and I came up with a list of about 400 e-mail addresses I have registered with in the past. Now I’m visiting all of those sites and changing my e-mail address to meredith at my domain. That’s what I’ve spent a lot of today doing. I’d really like to be able to turn off the catch-all and use Dreamhost’s junk filter, so I am going to go through these 400 or so addresses, and then try turning it off and seeing what happens…

• The ants are still there after all. They’ve got their babies up there with them now. Oh goody. Fortunately there was absolutely nothing interesting in the mail today.
• I have not received any e-mails in over five hours. Not spam, not test messages sent to myself, not anything. I normally get 3500+ spam messages a day, and LiveJournal comments throughout the day, and Freecycle/mailing list updates throughout the day…none of them have shown up for five hours. I have contacted Gmail support, and replied to their auto-response (sent to a backup address), but I don’t really expect a response. I don’t know if this is an outage, a bottleneck, or what.
• I also checked out the “Problem solving” section of the Gmail category at Google Groups. While there, I found the dumbest person on the Internet. I hope it’s a joke, because the enter key has been around since the typewriter.
• Not having e-mail is extremely annoying, but fortunately I bought a mouse the other day and I can play Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 again now. I never got the hang of it before because the scroll wheel is an essential part of the camera controls, and there is no scroll wheel on a laptop’s touchpad. But I re-installed the game a couple of nights ago and it’s been great!

I’ve been freaked out all weekend about my e-mail situation. Dreamhost [...]

Whoa. Phew. When I went to the Dreamhost weblog to find the permalink to the post that freaked me out, I discovered another entry that was posted a couple of hours ago saying the reason for my freaking out has been remedied.

You can probably piece it together from the two blog entries, but if you don’t feel like reading them I’ll just summarize. They were going to prohibit catch-all addresses, which I have depended on for years, from forwarding to outside addresses. All catch-all mail had to go to a Dreamhost mailbox. I immediately e-mailed them and let them know how much I disliked this plan, and I pointed out that the domain I wanted to forward to, gmail.com, had not to my knowledge put them on any blacklists (which was the reason they were instituting this change). I begged for an exemption and made reference to possibly being willing to pay for it. Fortunately they’ve decided to allow catch-all addresses to forward to Gmail, so everything is now back to normal after a full weekend of having to check multiple mailboxes and actually visually sort through spam. Whew!

Bulleted update, with the help of little mushrooms from binkybeads!

• I have been feeling vague passes of colds lately, like lots of sneezing or just feeling icky. Today it’s a sore throat, although I didn’t notice it until I had to do a bunch of voicing.
• Interpreting a phone call between a deaf client and a completely incompetent helpdesk tech is quite possibly the most irritating thing I’ve ever done. I used to be a helpdesk tech myself, I knew exactly what the answer was, and I was powerless.
• Today I am dropping off a FedEx package with some forms for that government job application I mentioned a while ago. Keeping my fingers crossed but not raising my hopes too high.
• I finally cleared out the 21,000+ spams in my Gmail spam box. I wish you could change the threshold for when it clears it - 30 days is obviously way too long, since my account turned out to be about 10% spam in less than a month. It seems okay for my trash bin though.
• This weekend I will be going off my official diet for the first time since January 3rd. We are going to NYC this weekend (I am interpreting at the Leather Leadership Conference and A will be attending several perfume-related events) and leaving Thursday night, so I can’t pick up the food on Friday night like I’m supposed to. I’m going to buy some cereal and frozen meals so I can at least approximate the Diet to Go experience. I’m a bit wary, but I’m looking forward to it because DTG was getting a bit old.
• It feels so good to park in the regular lot. Contractors have had to park in satellite parking for three years (the entire time I’ve been here) and take a bus back to the main building. They finally opened up the new parking area to us yesterday; my commute has been reduced by a minimum of 15 minutes and it often took longer than that for the extra time to/from satellite parking.

Bwahahaha. This happens every day around the world, but rarely do I get to see it. This was on a mailing list from the linguistics department at George Mason University.

From: So-and-So
Subject:Subject: Master’s/Doctoral Student or Prof needed to share townhouse
I need a second person to share a townhouse in Herndon. This is a 3 level townhouse in great neighborhood (quiet, safe) in Herndon just off the Dulles Toll Road and Fairfax County Parkway, [etc. including pictures]

From: Somebody Else
Subject: Re: Master’s/Doctoral Student or Prof needed to share townhouse
For me or for you?

From: Complete Bozo
Subject: Re: Master’s/Doctoral Student or Prof needed to share townhouse
for you, silly! i already got a house.. actually, i looked at the photos and am thinking the person who posted this is a dumbass. might want to clean the kitchen before you take those pics, asswipe.

From: Complete Bozo
Subject: Re: Master’s/Doctoral Student or Prof needed to share townhouse
biiiig whoops!! sorry!
i take it back! didn’t mean it! christ..