Whew, what a day

It has been one of those days. I spent the day trying to figure out why my email software client was being blocked by the servers of some of the customers that are on our email newsletter list at work. After scratching my head for several hours, I finally called my brother, Mike, who is a computer networking administrator and Unix / Linux expert. He was able to diagnose the problem pretty quickly. 1) our IP address had been blacklisted with www.spamhaus.com and 2) stupid me had been sending out my email newsletter without a throttle, meaning WAY too many emails were being pushed through a Cbeyond SMTP server WAY too quickly. I was essentially making myself look like a spammer.

One of the ways to resolve the issue was to use a different SMTP server to send the messages. Which required a phone call to my company's web hosting company. Whose customer service is less than stellar. The guy I talked to treated me like a stupid female who was wasting his time by asking all these technical questions that he felt didn't pertain to the real issue. So he decided to grill me about how my brother and I had reached the conclusions we had. He was a real a--hole, and after taking his shit for a few minutes, I finally decided to start flinging it right back. I hate to fight fire with fire, but sometimes it works.

Anyway, I finally got what I needed from Mr. Helpful, and I think the problem is resolved. For now, anyway.

In other news, I am SO EXCITED about my pending trip to San Jose. A group of us are getting together to help a friend celebrate her birthday and I think we're all going to have a blast. I'm also going to get to see my other brother, Chris. And ride on his motorcycle for the first time ever. Here's hoping he drives safely!