Three unrelated problems in the course of 7 days — proving that Murphy’s Law is very real. (And apologies to everyone waiting to hear from me by email.)<\/p>\n
Three unrelated problems in the course of 7 days — proving that Murphy’s Law is very real. (And apologies to everyone waiting to hear from me by email.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-web-exclusive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nI was cut off from email on three separate occasions for three entirely different reasons in the course of less than a week. When you are as dependent upon email as I am, you can imagine how difficult this was.
\nThe amazing thing was that there was really no relationship between the three problems — they just came together, as trouble does, in a batch.
\nFirst, the company which provides my anti-spam filtering, Email Filtering co.uk<\/a>, decided on Friday the 13th (last week) that, well, it being Friday the 13th and all that, they weren’t going to take any chances. They simply froze up the email.
\nMy email was stored on their servers for a couple of days.
\nAt least the support people there answered my emails, twice.
\nSecond, once that problem had resolved itself and I was finally getting my emails the usual way, I decided (stupidly, in retrospect) that now would be a good time to upgrade the email client software on my PC.
\nI run Red Hat Linux<\/a> which effectively removes the dangers of email-borne viruses (and means that I don’t spread them either, as I don’t use Microsoft Outlook Express). My email client is Ximian Evolution<\/a>.
\nI decided to update the software from version 1.2 to version 1.4, using their automated Red Carpet upgrader\/installer. Everything went fine — as it did several months ago when I first upgraded to version 1.2.
\nBut then, boom, the program wouldn’t launch. Produced error messages. It was Sunday, 15 June, and I couldn’t access my stored (archived) email on my disk. I could still see the new mail coming in through web-based facilities on Email filtering and on LabourStart’s own server, but couldn’t access my files which included hundreds of unanswered emails.
\nI visited the Ximian site, discovered that you could purchase 30 days of support at a reasonable price, did so, and sent off my request for help. But after 24 hours, I lost patience, sat down at the PC, and basically figured it out. An hour later, the email from Ximian arrived telling me what to do.
\nI did make further use of their support, so that wasn’t a total waste of money.
\nThe problem was that Mozilla<\/a>, my web browser, had installed files with the same name. They had to be copied to the Evolution folder.
\nWas it right to upgrade?
\nIt was, because there were two features in version 1.4 that I wanted: I wanted to be able to synchronize my Palm PDA with Evolution so I wouldn’t have two separate calendars and address books, and I also wanted Evolution to work like the rest of Red Hat 8.0, meaning — I wanted anti-aliased fonts. I look at email all day long and I want it to be easier on my eyes. So in the end, it was worth it.
\nThird, and finally having sorted out Email Filtering co.uk and Ximian Evolution, you’d have thought everything was smooth sailing.
\nBut then, boom, the company which hosts LabourStart’s website and email — Positive Internet<\/a> — starts giving us problems. The website and email server become inaccessible. First for about 20 hours, then a couple of days later, for two more hours. Things only settle down on Friday afternoon, 20 June. The reason for the problem: no one knows, yet. Still investigating. Maybe it’s something we’re doing on our server, they say.
\nSo in the course of 7 days, separate and distinct problems at Emailfiltering.co.uk, Ximian Evolution, and Positive Internet all cut me off from the very air we wired activists breathe — our email.
\nMurphy proven right again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"