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May 23 Do Not Trust Email!I learnt an unfortunate, embarrassing and valuable lesson this past weekend.
Do not trust email as your only means of communications!
Here’s the story:
When it was decided I was driving to New Brunswick, I dropped a note to some good friends asking if I could impose on them for a couple of nights. I had stayed with them the last June when I was out for Kristyn’s graduation.
They are a wonderful couple and I was sure they would say yes and usually they were very prompt in responding. But this is a very active couple who motorcycle regularly and take weekend trips often. Being a long weekend I thought there was a chance they would not be around.
Alas I heard nothing. About a week later I sent a follow up note and still heard nothing.
It was only a week before I was scheduled to be in Saint John and either needed a place to stay or to find a hotel. Not wanting to impose on anyone else I sent a note to a few people asking if they could recommend any good motels in the area. Fortunately another good friend sent a note saying I could stay with them.
When I sent a note to set up a breakfast meeting I got a reply back from the original couple announcing the arrival of a grandchild. I immediately assumed that they were very busy with this and simply forgot to reply to my email. No big deal, as I had a place to stay.
On Saturday I was with a friend when their cell phone went off. It was the original couple looking for me and worrying because I had not showed up on Friday like I said I would.
After talking to her I found out that not only had she replied to my original email, she also replied to my follow-up email. I did not receive either!
I felt terrible. This wonderful couple was willing to open their home to me, waited up for my arrival and then worried something happened when I didn’t show. All the time I was merrily making myself comfortable with my other friends.
The original friends felt terrible because they didn’t want me to think they had ignored me.
AND you know all of this could have been avoid if I picked up the phone and called to see if they got my email. But shyness, and not wanting to look pushy kept me from calling. In the end we both felt terrible over the situation that was entirely avoidable.
I still need to check why the replies would not have reached me. When I had them “forward” the notes to my email address I got them and my address in the replies looks OK.
The lesson learned – email is not perfect and not 100% reliable. If I ever do not receive a reply to an email, I will follow the old fashion way, with a phone call! What a revolutionary concept – actually talk to someone!
Have a great day. June 07 Take that you miserable virus!So I got nailed with a virus the other night. Despite the antivirus (AV) protection program I run, my heightened awareness and supposedly knowledge of these things, I got hit with a malware virus / trojan.
What a pain. It hijacked my Internet Explorer homepage and directed it to a company that promised – for $59.99 US – to remove malware viruses and trogans! Every time I tried to reset my home page, it would set it back.
I wasn’t getting a “warm fussy” feeling from the AV program my company (me!) markets for free to our Internet subscribers, so I downloaded “Avast!”. This is a pretty good free AV program, which I became acquainted with last Christmas while at my parent’s place.
Avast was going nuts! Kept telling me I had a virus, but when I tried to delete or quarantine the suspect file good old windows would tell me I couldn’t because the file was being used by another program.
Thank goodness for some very good forums, where knowledgeable, good hearted people give of their experience and knowledge to help those of us less knowledgeable or experienced.
I had to download several new programs, which I had never heard of before, and after a couple of hours of watching my system being scanned I have been able to purge my system of the virus. I think it is purged. My AV programs are not raising flags every time I launch Internet Explorer.
What a pain! But it wasn’t as bad as it could have been and I’ve learnt a good lesson. I WILL NOT accept automatic upgrades to programs that appear when you are doing something on the Internet. If a program requires an upgrade to perform an action or run a program, then I will go to that supplier’s website and download it directly from there.
Lesson learned! April 16 Does anybody knowDoes anybody know why MSN requires people to sign in with a .NET Password before they can leave a comment on my blog?
Have a I set something incorrectly in my settings or profile or is this a recent change MSN has decided to implement?
If anyone knows how to turn this off so anybody can leave a comment I would appreciate knowing.
Thanks,
The Proprietor of this Space.
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