THE ‘I T’ non factor- “ITs” NOT ME!!!

UPDATE: this morning I tried to reach the Lorain Port Authority and am “blocked” are you all trying to tell me to go away _ I will you know 🙂 Anyway this “spam protector is SORBS that they are using – I would like to tell them I am not a spammer BUT I can’t access to tell them and from their website – errrrrrr is anyone checking on their “protection” SIGH!!!!:

IMPORTANT NOTICE: SORBS has recently experienced issues which may have impacted you. We would like to reiterate that it is our ongoing goal to create the most reliable and secure system on the market. While this is our aim, our efforts in a complete rewrite of the system over the past year have not come along as fast as we had predicted. Over the past few weeks SORBS has experienced technical issues at a small number of datacenters and these issues have led to deterioration in the quality of service and responsiveness.

”

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May – might have been frustrating as far as the weather is concerned – rain, rain and more rain. And in the grand scheme of things when so many are dealing with flooding and natural disasters having IT problems pale in comparison

BUT

In the past few weeks, emails to the City of Lorain have either been not getting through at all or are hit and miss.

Now we know this “blog is blocked” and it should be I don’t want city workers wasting their time reading my words while at work ( even if in some cases they might learn something about what is happening in their city 🙂 I have no problem with that.

I even understand since I send out a great many emails to the city to various depts ( that is what happens when you get an “involved” volunteer who tends to follow through _ now that is a novel idea ( follow through) in and of ITs self 😉 ) that I sometimes end up in their spam box.

BUT

The City of Lorain server has been having issue with intermittent emails. I have called a number of times and emailed ( some get through) to tell them in at least the past 5 weeks what is happening and quite frankly I get the distinct impression they think it is ME… IT is not ME

As the emails come back about 18 hours later the reason clearly states in every case :

Mail server for “cityoflorain.org” unreachable for too long

Then to add insult to injury because I couldn’t let one of the city people know through the work email information with regard to CVSI projects that involve the city I was given their private CenturyLink email as a back up. Sigh…….

I love CenturyLink– they have been wonderful to this community and organizations to which I belong. I am a customer, we work together on projects especially Settlers’ Watch – heck they are such a driving force behind that project – I don’t know where I would be without them.

CenturyLink volunteers May 21st 2011 – Photo Lisa Miller

So I was hurt and dismayed when email to my friends with CenturyLink) emails came back as undeliverable because I was an abuser…..horrors!!!!!!!!…….

I contacted the postmaster at CenturyLink proclaiming my innocence
and I received this:

Hello,

In our continuing efforts to protect our users from unsolicited email, CenturyLink does not accept SMTP connections from IP addresses or SMTP servers listed as spam sources on SpamCop. If you are seeing this error message, please do not retry sending your message using the same service.

If you think that the IP address has been listed in error, you or your email administrator (Yahoo) should contact SpamCop. Once your IP is delisted by SpamCop, CenturyLink will automatically unblock the IP within 48 hours.

Thank you,
CenturyLink Postmaster
postmaster@CenturyLink.net

I rushed to contact SPAMCOP and ran my IP number- you see I know this sometimes happens – has happened before and you basically have to tell the SPAM watchers that you are a real person and not a spammer and the issue is resolved with a few hours….BUT

This time however I wasn’t showing on their blocked list so I couldn’t be removed- another email to the CenturyLink postmaster…

BUT

guess what I “was blocked” so I couldn’t tell them I am not on the Spamcop list….. SIGH

IT must be ME. Now I have to use the phone to tell my CenturyLink friends I can’t send them an email- could this be a conspiracy to get me to use the phone more…… nah!!!!

However, I did speak to a CenturyLink representative who was gracious enough to look into it for me but to be honest with all the other “IT” that is happening I haven’t had the courage to check to see if I am still considered unworthy………….

You see next up -IT Time Warner Cable and that has been an IT epic worthy of ITs own post

TO BE CONTINUED ……….