No, damn it. I don’t want to see “This American Life”, I want to hear it. That’s why it works. Oh, this is all wrong. Ira, what happened? ~

I just got through this two hour tech support nightmare, during which I realized that big companies have started training their people to know just enough to think they’ve trapped you in the act of lying. Case in point: BellSouth blocks port 25 like a lot of big ISPs. This means that if you use some other ISP (or your web host) for your email you must authenticate through BellSouth first, so they can see if your mail is some giant spam bomb or just pictures of the grand kids. I can live with that. I usually use Gmail for everything anyway, so no biggie. The only problem is that no one could tell me what to do. They all knew that port 25 was blocked, and gave me these heroic explanations as to why (”we’re helping to keep you safe from unwanted emails”). But no one could tell me how to get authentication working. So they’re all reading the tech manual at me (”tell the customer to go to ‘Control Panels’”), thinking I must be some spammer who’s mad that he can’t send out these 12,000 Viagara emails. So then this happens.

Tech Person: Change your password setting to “none”.
Me: Wait, “none” as in “none”? Like, no magical spam defeating powers “none”? Like, let me send any mail I want through your mighty gates, unbidden by any safety protocols whatsoever?
Tech Person: Yeah.
Me: Type type type click type send.
Tech Person: And?
Me: Thanks.

Disaster averted. Mail sent. Free-lance opportunity salvaged. I need a nap. ~