| Tuesday, May
28, 2002
Something or someone is forging mail with my return
address and sending it as spam everywhere. I have received a couple of
dozen returns as undeliverable, all to an address I don't use to send mail
(and have never used to send mail). The addresses they are sent to vary
all over the map, most of them not being in my address book, so it is
unlikely that anything here is sending them. Still, I was
concerned for a moment and tried to run Norton Anti-Virus update. That
didn't work. It trundled for a long time over "verifying your
subscription status" with nothing happening. That got me really
worried since some viruses do try to muck up Norton. Today I let
that run again, and this time it told me my subscription was about to
expire (June 21, that's "about" to these clowns). OK, I like
Norton, I used it, I'll renew. Thus began a nightmare
that hasn't ended. It won't accept any of my credit cards although all the
ones I entered are valid. It directed me to customer service which wasted
fifteen minutes with sending me to different web sites before taking me
back to the one I started with. I will I suppose eventually look for
a telephone number to call them and do this, but any company that works at
wasting its customers time may need some revisions. Bad. If anyone knows
anyone at Symantec, tell them this is stupid: I have a couple of weeks
left on my subscription, I want to get the update, I would have been
willing to pay for the update and upgrade although I know I can get it
free if I go to their press relations people, and if I can't manage to
renew and say to heck with it, I am not likely to be the only customer
they have lost. I did manage to update Norton -- if you
keep insisting that you want to ignore their unworkable system for
renewing and just want to get the virus updates, you can -- and checked
everything. My system is fine. But someone is forging my return address on
spam and other stuff. Sigh. Incidentally
the spammer that is using my return address is hyperimmune and
gives these telephone numbers
(918)222-8559<BR>
(918)222-8566<BR>
(918)222-8576<BR>
(918)222-8560<BR>
(716)812-2144<BR>
as places you can call to get their products. I don't know
the area codes, or who these people are, but surely there is something
illegal about sending spam with my return address? They send thousands.
They have this web site WWW.hyperimmuneegg.org So
surely it must be possible to find them?
The Los Angeles Times had a bit
about Russell Seitz finding the Olmec Blue Jade, and mentioning that I had
been on an earlier (and unsuccessful) expedition to the same area on the
same mission. Monday May 27, 2002, page A-13. And we are
having some real problems with the Microsoft Installer on Roberta's reading
program. Actually it's the UNinstaller that seems to have problems
with Explorer 6. Meanwhile Roberta gets two messages a day about
downloading and installing critical updates to Microsoft Outlook, which
she does, only to get another, and my attempts to reach the Microsoft
update. But if you have the responsibility to see that
someone learns to read English, from age 5 or so up, you ought to look
into her program. And yes, you have to be
fairly patient to buy a copy, our web "store" not being a lot
friendlier than Symantec's. At least it's faster. One day I need to fix it
but first I have to understand what it's doing. And
if we don't have enough to worry about, tons of cyanide have gone missing.
See mail. And
for arguments against getting further involved in bringing down Saddam
Hussein, see http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0206.marshall.html which
is a good analysis of the situation. But until we decide if we are a
Republic or a world peacekeeping Empire, we can't decide what to do about
Saddam Hussein; or how far we must go in solving Israel's nearly insoluble
problems. But see also Robert Kagan http://www.washingtonpost.com/
wp-dyn/articles/A7629-2002May24.html And
Microsoft is bombarding Roberta with notices about needing updates, but
the Windows Update page isn't available. Dead. Unreachable. Why not?
Finally got it after about 20 tries. Interesting.
Current Mail
TOP |
CLICK HERE for
a Special Request. 
