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<grumble>

(I can't believe[1] I let this happen)

Remember that issue I had back in September where I accidentally let
the softdevlabs.com domain temporarily expire?

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hercules-390/message/43899
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hercules-390/message/44182

If you do, good, because that particular event is significant in that
it pertains directly to the subject of this post.

If you don't, then I apologize for perhaps wasting your time with
this post.

But even if you don't remember the incident itself (or perhaps
weren't even aware of it to begin with), I may still nevertheless owe
you an apology.

Why you ask?

Simple. Because ever since that time any/all email sent to
softdevlabs has been sitting UNREAD in my emailbox until just
yesterday. :(

To make a long story short, when we (my partner(s) and I) had that
domain registration hiccup, we decided at that time to switch our
site over to a different hosting company (one we felt was more
reliable/powerful from a site-management [by the domain owner]
point-of-view). As soon as we did however, we inadvertently broke all
email communication for all softdevlabs userids, including "owner at
softdevlabs.com" as well as "fish at softdevlabs.com"! :(

We didn't realize it at the time (okay! okay! *I* didn't realize it
at the time![2] This is all my own fault after all (keep reading as
to the reasons why)) but as a result of our having moved our hosting
over to a different company we lost all of our email forwarding
settings. (Duh![3])

I (yes it was *my* responsibility!) was supposed to do that -- set
all that up -- for/by myself (especially since I asked *specifically*
for that ability/responsibility whenever we switched, since this new
hosting company came with a spiffy new site-management
package/control-panel interface), but I, um, ... forgot. :(

Since early September any/all email sent to softdevlabs has been
essentially going nowhere. It's been *reaching* softdevlabs, sure!
But that's *all* it's been doing: just getting there.

It hasn't been read. It has been deleted. It has been *anything*.
It's just been sitting there rotting in my inbox. :(

(($%*!@#)*+{&!:@+*#!!!!))

It was only by sheer accident that I even noticed it. I received a
telephone call last week (or was it the week before?) from someone at
some contracting agency called Minecode[4], asking if I was
interested in working at Microsoft again[5]. I said "Sure!" even
though I wasn't really all that excited about it (working for the
Evil Empire(tm) that is), but hey, an income is an income, and when
you're as poor as hungry as I am you'll do pretty much anything to
stay alive. (It's amazing how much one is willing to compromise their
own standard/principles in order to survive / stay alive.)

Well she said she'd send me an email within the hour or something and
went back to my programming, only periodically checking[6] my email
as I usually do. When it never showed up I figured she simply forgot
about it and/or it might show up tomorrow, etc. Point is I never gave
it much of a thought.

But then something -- I don't know what it was -- made me think that
maybe something was wrong with out webs site again, so decided to
send myself a test email to make sure it got through. When it didn't,
I knew something had to be wrong.

So I called my partner and asked him about it, and he immediately
said "Oh you probably just forgot to setup an email forwarder is all.
Did you forget that *you're* in charge of doing that now? You said
you wanted to be!"

(DOH!)

<grumblestupidstupidforgetfishgrumble>

(sigh)

So anyway, that what I've just finished doing (yesterday and today):
setting up my email-forwarder and verifying that email sent to
softdevlabs.com is indeed now actually reaching a real person (i.e.
ME!), instead of just going to an inbox and sitting there to rot.

Took me a while to go through my several spam hundred emails to pick
out the legitimate ones too (those damn spammers/scammers can find
you anywhere can't they?), but I eventually did so. NOW all I have to
do is send each an apology for having seemingly ignored their pleas
for help. :(

SOOOO... If any of you have written to softdevlabs asking for help
with something Hercules related you now know why your plea for help
was never answered: because, due to my own incompetence, never
received it! :(

Well that's it I guess. That's all I wanted to say. Just wanted to
explain what was going on and to apologize. Now All I have to do is
say the same thing personally to about 17 other people whose emails I
only just now received. :(

Guess I better get to it....


(p.s. New version CTCI-W32 is looking good. Hope to start beta
testing is in the next couple days.)
- --
"Fish" (David B. Trout) - fish(at)infidels.org
Fight Spam! Join CAUCE! <http://www.cauce.org/>
(Any HTML email received will be deleted unread)
PGP key fingerprints:
DH/DSS: 9F9B BAB0 BA7F C458 1A89 FE26 48F5 D7F4 C4EE 3E2A
RSA: 6B37 7110 7201 9917 9B0D 99E3 55DB 5D58 FADE 4A52

[1] Actually I *can* believe it, seeing how I'm rather new at this
sort of thing!

[2] Largely because I'm sort of new at this thing, managing a web
site on my own. Usually I leave such administrative duties up to
someone else (like my partner) so I can concentrate on my
programming.

[3] Did I happen to mention I'm kind of new at this sort of thing? :)

[4] http://www.minecode.com/Enterprise/Default.aspx

[5] As a Software Design Engineer in their Sharepoint Portal Server
group this time. (I had worked there before (as a contractor) in
their Product Support group a few years back.)

[6] Checking, but not necessarily reading. Whenever I get busy
(involved) in my programming, I tend to let responding to email slide
since it takes so much of my time, figuring that I can always respond
to it later whenever I'm done with what I'm doing.[*]

[*] Of course the flaw in such reasoning it that I seem to *never* be
done with what I'm doing! I *always* have something to do, whether
it's working on one of my many other programming projects, routine
maintenance of my computer system or just normal everyday household
chores. Seems I *never* really have time to do any of the stuff I
suppose I really should be doing 'cause I'm always spending it doing
something else. "So much work [to do], so little time to do it all
in." (sigh)

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