I’m using Mac OSX as the server for Obtainium, and it works great for websites, php, mysql, all that cool stuff.
Then there’s email. Oi. Seems to me like every setting in the email server/client software is designed to prevent me from sending or receiving email, on the grounds that I may not be who I say I am, I might be a spam bandit just pretending to be me. This is all thanks to spammers who use other people’s email servers to send massive quantities of junk mail. Or used to – I can’t believe most of them don’t just set up their own email servers these days. So anyway, even if my email client logs on to the server with an encrypted password (I yam who I yam, to paraphrase Popeye) sometimes the settings won’t allow it to pass my mail. And since there are several settings, determining which setting is causing the problem (without breaking something else) is nearly impossible. And woe to me if I try to respond to email, from a different address than it was sent to, especially for mailing lists.
Then there are the the net cops, companies like ordb who have taken it upon themselves to determine which servers are “open relays” allowing just anyone to send mail – and then somehow other people don’t send mail to you, or accept mail from you, if you’re on the ordb list.
It gets worse. Sometimes the mail gets rejected; sometimes it just vanishes into a black hole of electrons.
Worst of all, I’m the email administrator, so I can’t complain to me if I have problems, because I really don’t give a damn about petty user problems.
Part of the problem is I just have too many email addresses. There’s the classic justfred&netcom.com (addresses obscured to prevent yet more spam) which I’ve had forever, which doesn’t even exist anymore, but it still redirects to fheald&earthlink.net, so I go ahead and check that even tho it’s mostly spam. justfred&sideshowfreak.com vanished when sideshowfreak was stolen from me by a “domain name squatter” (who happened to be a jackass, besides). Then there’s justfred&obtainium.org (as well as aliases fred&, fheald&, webmaster&, postmaster&, admin&, and several others which should all redirect to me) – I’m trying to consolidate all the others to that as my “main” address. Fortunately, I take no responsibility for administering fheald&cybertelcorp.com aside from checking it, from a different machine. And there’s justfred&mac.com and fheald&cox.net neither of which I use but who occasionally send me important service notices so I’ve got to check them, too.
Why do people have such attachments to email, anyway – checking it manically every five minutes, wanting to have it pop up on their phone, saving it forever. I’m as guilty of this as anyone. But…most email can wait! One of the funnny things about Burning Man is seeing how many emails I’ve gotten when I get back – and you know that’s one of the first things I do (after I’ve showered, of course!). Maybe this time I’ll get over it and just delete them all without reading.
Or let the server bounce them as spam, which is most likely what it’s doing now.
