LaserBlog.com

(see below for update)

I own a few domain names. One is for my blog and one is my main domain which is the email address I use for most contacts.

I also have a small web-design business which is a different domain name. When I email my clients I have to change the From field to the domain name of my business.

I have other domains, such as one that I use for secondary emails for stuff like online shopping, email newsletters, etc.

I use Mozilla mail, and I set up different accounts in Mozilla Mail for each From address that I’d need and when I send mail, I use the drop-down box in the Compose window to select what the From field will say.

I have a legitimate need for using different From fields.

But now Earthlink (my DSL ISP) seems to be blocking any mail that I send because my from field is never @earthlink.com I NEVER use the earthlink mail, I have no need for it since I have my own domains. But now I can’t send mail unless my from field is my real Earthlink domain.

This sux. How can I send email to my clients and family and blog friends? I don’t want to have to use various webmail interfaces. It’s been so nice to use pop mail w/ Mozilla mail: all the different domain emails forward to my main email account so I only have to check one email pop account, and w/ Mozilla Mail’s ealy drop-down box for selecting the From account, it’s all so easy.

But now I’m dead in the water.

I wonder if I can easly set up my own smtp server at home? I have several spare PC’s and can use one as a linux gateway.

Here’s a question for you all: Is there a free or cheap smtp server service I can subscribe to that will give me flexibility?

I need help, I can’t send any email! Fuck! And no, I don’t want to use various web-mai interfaces. And because most of my domains are actually sub-domains, I CAN’T use webmail for them.

F*************ck!

UPDATE: I’m pretty sure now that it’s not Earthlink, my DSL ISP, but rather the ISP of one of my email recipients that’s causing the problems. Other people whom I thought didn’t get my emails did get them, but had their own problems re. answersing (lost email, crashed outlook, etc.). My mom uses a small independant ISP who I believe is blocking all email whose from field is not matching the isp, so I will either have to email the owner or just send mail to her yahoo account (which is stupid). Anyway, looks like Earthlink is treating me just fine.

I’m so depressed. I just got off the phone w/ M who told me that on Slashdot they are saying that Comcast just bought TechTV and Leo Laporte is no longer going to host The Screen Savers (!) and they are going to Merge TechTV w/ another network! I AM SO DEPRESSED! I fell in love w/ TechTV a year ago when we got satellite, then we turned it off, and now a year later, we got it hooked back up JUST for TechTV and not even a MONTH after hooking back up they are going to RUIN IT! FUCK!

URL to story:
http://slashdot.org/articles/04/03/25/1838233.shtml?tid=126&tid=129&tid=149&tid=188&tid=99

I am SO happy w/ this software I found: VeriChat, which is like Trillian
for the Palm Pilot. I got it at download.com:
http://download.com.com/3000-7242-10221365.html
It works REALLY well, and I can use either WiFi or use Bluetooth and use
my cell phone as a modem (using my cell phone internet provider).

[ Posted by mail via qmail2mt.pl ]

I’m SO tired of this! I have two, TWO! external firewire hard drives for backup. I use Cobian Backup for the Western Digial one (it does LIVE backups which I prefer) and a Buslink one for what I call “Drag Backups”. I keep all my files in certain folders and so periodically I like to drag-n-drop them to the Buslink drive.

Well, since day one it’d periodically just lose the connection halfway through a large backup. MONTHS of research showed that it might MIGHT be a firmware problem. This does not happen in windows ME but ME sucks and caused more problems than I can list, so we tried xp and that’s when the problems started, so then we put on 2000 pro and it’s still happening. Now today, I got an IO error dragging a large backup to the Western Digial drive!

I swear, I am SO anal that I have TWO backup drives but NONE of them work!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!

/pull hair out

Heard from my friend who is a Barnes and Noble employee that “The Barnes And Noble Cafe Which Proudly Serves Starbucks Coffee” (NOT to be confused with an actual Starbucks Cafe), should have WiFi by September. I don’t know if this is nation-wide or Florida-wide or what. But I’m happy. There’s not enough wifi in this town.

I can’t figure out how to move multiple files at once off my Clie. I have to move images one at a time which is very time-consuming. Can’t find anything in the manual, and nothing online except a mention of needing to use third-party software, but I can’t find anything that says it’ll do it. Hmm.

Seems like every time I head out on another road trip, I’ve got newer technology at my fingertips. In August I had my new camera phone and was thrilled to be able to snap a picture and upload it immediately from my cell phone to my moblog on the web.

Then recenly I got a new tiny laptop that’s no bigger (footprint-wise) than a mousepad. Taking that on roadtrips meant all I needed was a WiFi connection and I was good to go. Stopping at a Borders or Starbucks meant I could get online for a while.

Now on this last road trip, I had my new PDA, a Sony Clie UX50 (look up “ux50″ at SonyStyle.com), and was able to use the built-in bluetooth to connect to my bluetooth-enabled cell phone and use it as a modem, using the cell phone’s AT&T mMode internet service. This means that I can be practically ANYwhere (so long as I have a GSM signal) and surf the web.

The UX50′s browser is great, when surfing you view the web pages pretty much as you would with a PC, (pic) …I’m not limited to stripped-down WAP sites like I am when surfing on my cell phone. When surfing the web using just the cell phone, it will load just about any website, but it works best with stripped-down WAP sites. But the Clie’s browser is full-graphical and it’s almost like surfing at home. My mMode package is for 8mb a month, so I leave graphics off sometimes and limit the use. If AT&T comes out with an unlimited plan, you know I’ll be signing up. They may have already, for all I know.

Being a techie, I’m beside myself to be able to get online literally ANYWHERE. When we took our last road trip, while I was driving, I had M get online and look up the phone # for our fav Asian Grill to see how late they were open. I can now surf at the sushi bar, wifi or not. It’s addicting, though.

Ugh. I wanted to downgrade from my sony clie nz90 to something smaller and lighter, but something that had (or could add on) wifi and bluetooth.

Well, the sony clie ux50 is lighter than any clie I’ve ever had and has built-in bluetooth and wifi AND when webpages load, they look just like they do on a computer (full graphical, not like wap sites). Must have. Drool.

(click)

(sonystyle.com’s links always break, so for more info, just go to sonystyle.com and search for the ux50.)

Hey Palm fanatics, is there a good Palm OS based pda that is thin/small/light and has WiFi AND Bluetooth?

The Tungsten C has wifi but not bluetooth, the T2 and T3 have bluetooth but no wifi.

I’m shopping and open to suggestions.

I have the clie nz90 but it is so thick and heavy I leave it home most of the time now. I miss my clie nr70v, it was thin and light, did grafitti AND had a keyboard, a swivel lo-res camera: but no bluetooh, can’t remember if it did audio recording (I use that alot).

It’s like I can’t find one that has everything: I need:
small/thin/light
keyboard
grafitti area
bluetooth
wifi

I’m probably going to have to comprimise. But my MAIN concern at this point is weight.

Babbling.

This article really pissed me off.
What other industry is at war with it’s own customers and completely distrusts it’s customers? It’s totaly bullshit that now there are laws in some states allowing theatres to search purses etc, looking for cameras.

Article: States Outlaw Digital Taping in Cinemas

Yes, it’s illegal to copy entire movies and share them. (I’m not saying I wouldn’t buy or watch a copied movie.) It’s just… what I’m getting at is that if I want to take a 30-second snippet from a movie that I’m watching in the theatre and send hat file to my friend via email to say “dude, you gotta go see this movie”, this should NOT be a felony!

I should be able to go into a theatre with my phone that has a camera and video capability… my palm pilot that has camera/vidao/audio recording capability… and not be detained – and oh yes, the MPAA has lobbied and WON- some states now allow theatres to detain you (while they wait for police) based soley on what you carry in your purse!

Jesus christ.

My god, at any given moment I have ON ME: a phone that does camera and video with sound, a palm pilot (sony clie) that has a 2mp camera with flash, video with sound, and audio recording, and my tiny mousepad-sized laptop that is featherlight and fits in a purse. More often than not I also have a small digital camera on me too, either my tiny Pencam or my small U60, both of which do video.

Now, let’s see, let’s invent all this PORTALBE high-tech stuff and then create a society where one is detained for questioning just for having it on them!

Quote:
“At a preview for “Honey,” guards walked through the darkened theater wearing night-vision goggles to check for cameras.”

OH COME ON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is not even remotely necessary!

The truth is, even those who WATCH pirated movies don’t want ones that were filmed in a theatre with room noise, crowd noise, laughing, coughing, etc. I want my pirated copy to be CLEAN!

This kind of thing makes me, a person who has never copied a movie from a theatre, makes me want to go in and try to copy every single movie I see and put it online. Just to fight back. You want a problem? I’ll GIVE you a problem!

And the stupid MPAA even dispute the FACTS found by third-party research! God forbid some univolved party figure out that the “problem” is not really such a big problem afterall! The MPAA then just whines like a baby saying that flawed data was used. My ass.

It’s all an effort to blind and control.

Fuck them and the RIAA. I think I’ll go download some movies and songs, just because they pissed me off.

/rant

My head is going to explode.

My new mp3 player, as much as I love it is being a pain in the ass. Besides my original complaints about it playing back in what amounts to random order, now there’s this:

Click below to read more…
(more…)

I don’t know what goes thru the minds of the people that design stuff. I got a christmas gift which I just LOVE, I had wanted one so badly, this teeny tiny mp3 player for the gym. It ROCKS! It’s TINY. But, the thing is, it plays songs in random order only. Oh, the manual SAYS it plays it NOT in the order of filename… but in the order which the files were placed on the player (NOT timestamp). I did a select-all on the files for my book (I want to listen to a book-on-cd which I ripped to mp3) and dragged them over, and the player WILL NOT play them in order! It absolutely CANNOT play files in filename order. Oh, the OLD firmware did that, but they “improved it” buy making it now SUPPOSEDLY play files in the order in which they were placed on the player. But it doesn’t actually DO that! It is so assinine I want to hunt down the bastards that designed it and pummel them. I mean… when u pick out an mp3 player from the bunch, you look at internal memory, memory card options, does it have a display, etc. etc. You never look for, nor do the boxes SAY, “plays songs in order”. I mean, DUH! How STUPID of me to make such a niave assumption that the device would actually play songs IN ORDER! And since they don’t advertise this feature of randomness on the box, the only way to fix this is to return it, get another one, take it home, try it, take that one back, get another one, take it home, try it, take that one back, etc etc… And people got PAID good money to design that thing! If it weren’t for that one little feature of randomness, it’d be perfect, it’s TINY, it has a display, it sounds great, comes with an armband for the gym, it’s uber-stylish, i love it i love it I LOVE IT! Except that I can’t use it for what I bought it for, but I guess that’s minor, right?
/rant

Ok, so I got this new laptop and it came w McAfee already installed. It’s bogging down my system something terrible!!! Somebody please recommend to me a better virus protection program that will not kill the performance of my machine!

Do u have an internet-enabled phone? Can u upload photos? Surf the web? What is YOUR monthly usage? I think I used 6mb last month, but I’m not sure. I’ve used 837 k in six days. Maybe it was just over 4. I have to watch for my bill.

Maybe I’m wrong. But my first impression of Friendster is that it sucks. I mean, you have to invite friends in order to do ANYTHING on that netowrk.

“Invite Friends” = give out your friends private email addresses. NICE.

Ok, ok, they SAY they won’t sell, lease, give out, share, your email address, but suppose the database gets hacked or they change their rules? I would KILL anyone who gave out my private email address to something like friendster. I certainly wouldn’t do that to a friend.

So, since I won’t violate my friend’s privacy, I can’t invite anyone, and since I can’t invite anyone, I can’t DO anything on Friendster.

Yes, *I* have “spam buckets” that I use for stuff like this, but most of my friends/relatives aren’t net-savvy enough to have and use a spam bucket themselves.

Screw it. What WAS good was the old “Six Degrees” website. Anyone remember that one? That site died. Now it seems it’s in some beta-mode of a new incarnation, but nothing like the original, so it’s irrelevant. But at the old Six Degrees, you could SEARCH for people and use a spambucket because nobody HAD to be invited. You COULD invite, but you didn’t have to in order to do anything in the site. I miss the old SixDegrees.com.

fuck, i’m in a bad mood.

I hate thinking up subject lines.

All this stress w/ sick brother, I am exhausted, so I end up napping, the result being I’m not tired enough to go to bed at reasonable hour. Then, even when I do get tired, I don’t want to go to bed cuz I lay there worrying.

I’ve been surfing for decent i n d i a n
p o l y p h o n i c ……r i g t o n e s for my phone. (don’t want google searchers to come here looking for them when I don’t have them.)

Searching for poly ringt’s is impossible, let alone hard-to-find stuff.

I find that most sites are fake sites, w/ just keywords and links to crap that either doesn’t work or is not available to buyers in the US.

I have downloaded a ton of great mp3′s, if only I could c o n v e r t them to midi, then I could get them to my phone.

I am tired, but I don’t want to go to bed and lay there worrying. Why do I do this to myself.

We had satellite for a while on the main tv, and cable on all other tv’s. This was because cable was part of our homeowner’s association dues, so we had to pay it either way. Now, if I want satellite on our main tv, we have to pay extra for cable on the other tv’s (or get 3 more satellite reciever boxes and run wires to each… and pay for them). But even paying for cable plus satellite on one tv is more money than just choosing one service. This whole thing sux. The local cable service (Comcast SUX!) does not even carry tech tv. I’m going thru major TechTV withdrawl. Call me a nerd, I don’t care. *snort!*

I’m finally back in the APPLE world again. I was ALWAYS a Mac person. Then when M moved down in ’98, the PC came with and was much newer/faster. Since then it’s just been easier to stay PC as I accumulated software. But we finally got a new Mac, an eMac. We got a deal at CompUSA on our last road-trip as they had used floor-models on sale reduced. We’re psyched about iTunes and plan to get an iPod eventually. I’m just a bit stumped because I have NO SOFTWARE for it. Mainly I’m going to want Photoshop. All in good time I guess. But I’m just so happy to be Apple again! =:D