I'm a Mac user and I need help

[Xairbusdriver]

This has been one of, if not the, worst days in my interweb life. And it ain't over yet!

I need a shoulder to lean on, a supportive ear to talk to, a human voice to respond to my troubles...

First thing, my wife gets another announcement that our Comcast servers have what they think must be a virus on one of our Macs. It's the old "too many emails, too quickly" routine. Got that cleared up, I think, in only 3 hours. Ended up back on port 587. Talked to several helpful people. including one who finally realized I was using 'comcast.com' when trying to set/change passwords/profiles. She informed me that I should be using 'comcast.NET' After making that simple but somehow elusive change, things improved rapidly.

Second, attempting to straighten out passwords at .Mac, I discover that .Mac email is 'out of service' for a while.

OK, let's go work on the Mindspring stuff. That was about 3pm, that's not fixed yet. They are also having email server problems! All I wanted to do is find out exactly why I have two 'profiles' set up on our account instead of using aliases. A 'profile' actually costs $5/month! I did manage to delete one, so don't try contacting me at 'airbusdriver at mindspring dot com', I don't exist like that anymore. But when I try to create an alias I get a message that I have reached my free alias limit. That appears to me ZERO for the cheapest setup. What a surprise.

Of course, speaking with the young lady in the PI was fun and interesting. She now knows what an email alias is. And she also got to experience the frustration of not being able to create one, four different ways! I told her she lived in a beautiful country and bid her fairwell.

"Live Chat" sounded interesting, let's try that, at least reading english should be easier than trying to figure out what was behind the 'accented' words. Not so fast, Grumpy! EarthLink only works as expected with Internet Exploder and Netscape (of who knows what vintage!). Well, what can it hurt, FF should be close enough..."Close but no banana!" The drop down menus simply quit working after a while. Same with trying to use an "Explorer" user agent façade. Safari, is probably banned, outright, no luck there, either.

Oh well, tomorrow is a new day. Surely they wouldn't make to bad ones in a row!

[Paddy]

At this point, a glass of wine might help.

[kimmer]

Oh gee ... sounds like a chocolate chip cookie day to me.

My sympathies, ex 'airbusdriver at mindspring dot com'.

[Gregg]

[RNKIII]

Been there!  Done that!  Bought the T-shirt! (and it faded all over everything the first time I washed it )

Luckily my two problems have been resolved, one by unblocking the Intertube,   and one by a search and destroy mission of my own making..  

BUT I KNOW HOW FRUSTRATING these helpful    devices can be!!!

Think sunshine and spring flowers, green grass (Oh nuts, I gotta mow!!), and a cool refreshing beverage of your choice out next to the fish pond..

Bob K.   rnkiii

[Texas Mac Man]

Compare your current problem(s) with some of your worst days as a pilot, or other experiences. Where do your current problems rank?

[Xairbusdriver]

QUOTE

Compare your current problem(s) with some of your worst days as a pilot

Sure! But I got paid to endure and/or solve those. I fear these are mainly caused by factors way beyond my contact, much less my control!

But thanks for the sympathy. I'm all better now! And I found three tiny wild bunny rabits on my daily trip to un-do the beavers nightly work . I didn't see their parents but told them to get back to the burrow before some hungier animals came around! They then hurried off into the briars.

[Xairbusdriver]

Final chapter (I hope!).

I even downloaded NetScape since the page at EarthLink said that browser supported their forms best (along with IE, of course).

I knew it had been dropped by AOL but I didn't know how far. The main "NetScape" page offers three links to other browsers instead of an easy link to DL NS! It also says they have gently laid NS in a sealed box and don't plan on opening it in the remaining part of this century. But if you must have a copy, there are links to the last surviving examples.

I was hesitant to install it as I feared it might try to 'adjust' data created by FF. But it didn't seem to bother anything and I think I've found everything it installed. Fairly simple and easy, drag 'n drop.

Unfortunately, the 'latest' NS was no better at using the EarthLink forms than Safari. It simply didn't load the required pop up lists the form needed to establish how to handle the users problem/question. NS and its files now reside in my Trash, awaiting the scheduled arrival of the trash man.

My last resort was to try the phone again. Sending an e-mail required going through the same forms that neither Safari/NS/FF could display. So, with great reluctance and angst, I dialed the Support number.

Amazingly, an American, or at least some one who sounded like one answered! "Parker" (no relation to ours) asked how he could help and repeated my questions to be sure he understood exactly what I wanted to do. And before he flipped the virtual switches, he made sure he was doing what I wanted.

Whether it actually worked as we want will require some additional checking, of course. But we should also see a $10/month decrease in the monthly EarthLink bill! Thank you very much! I was even told I could have an alias, which their site kept telling me was forbidden. But all I really wanted to do was to change the original email address to the one that Judy depends on and has been in use for mant many years. If she loses that because of my persistent measures, I will be in need of serious and immediate medical attention! :crossed-fingers:

Seems to be working OK. And we now have two less addresses to worry about. Of course, iot is requiring a lot of work getting anything I registered with the dropped address changed to the new one. But I'm being 'paid' $10/mo for that!

[Xairbusdriver]

Who said, "It can't get any worse!"

Hadn't even finished my breakfast when my wife screamed called from the computer room that there was something wrong with POPmonitor. All it was saying is that it had lost its connection to the mail servers. I started up FF and showed her how she could verify that the connection to the outside was down by looking at the one external link on her home page (the file itself is on her drive). Sure enough, I looked at the cable modem and saw only one light! Time to call Comcast.

"1" for 'customer', '1' one for problems, '2' for interweb, listen to elevator music for w very short time and up comes a pleasant voice saying they were doing maintenance and the System would be back up about 6 am. Checked my clock, yep, it's after 8 am...

I called back at 10:22 am and this time I noticed the recording said it was "Thursday, May 15..." and the System would be back in operation by 6 am. They must have started working after 10 pm local? Got to an English speaking tech who was unaware of any problems. But that turned out to be because he was not a local guy. He agreed that the System was down but had no info about when it might return. He also agreed that it would not be by "6 am"!

Apparently, they were waiting for my call as the modem lights started blinking within 5 minutes of my call. I didn't know they even knew I was a customer! Everything's fine now, except I had to wait on TS, it kept stalling after the banner appeared for about 10 minutes and several refreshings and tab closings.

[Gregg]

Good thing come to those who wait.