It wasn't till yesterday that I started to put the pieces together. On Sunday, Christine had called from California to ask if I had gotten her e-mail about speaking at a conference in April.
"No, actually, I didn't get it." I replied. "Send it to my gmail account." She did and this time it worked. Later in the week, someone else said an email they had sent me had bounced back. By yesterday, a handful of people had contacted me about their replies getting bounced. What is going on? I asked myself. My partner, Richard, had the novel idea of calling the folks at my old college, where I have a so-called lifelong account. It's that account which has been causing all the problems.
"We've tried to contact you since November that the domain name was changing. I guess your information was not updated, and we couldn't reach you. Last Thursday the domain contract ended." Ah. That's just about when it all started going wrong.
I had sent invitations to Richard's birthday party, desperately asking people to RSVP for the second time. I had sent out a job application. I had sent out a request to my Mom to talk about her helping us get a mortgage for a house we wanted to buy. In short, myriad minor disasters ensued, due to the invisible wall the e-mail problem had built around the virtual me. Most replies bounced off this wall and returned to sender.
It made me realize how dependent I have become on e-mail, in practically every sphere of communication life.
So, I thought I had solved the problem yesterday, when I sent a huge mass mailing to everyone I could think of who might need to know, that they should use my gmail account.
It turns out, that message still had the defunct Smith address in the reply-to field! AAAARRRRRGGGHHH.
I learned this while walking to Kate's house to give her her weekly Creative Speech lesson. I saw Kate walking toward me, away from her house, with a friend.
"Uh, Hi, Kate. Where are you going?"
She explained to me in her Downs Syndrome accent that she was going to get a manicure, and that her mother had e-mailed me about the change in schedule.
"Oh." I replied. I had not torn down the wall.
So at last I came home. I tried sending an e-mail to myself. The reply-to field still showed the defunct address. Livid, I called the woman at Smith to whom I had spoken to yesterday, asking her why she had failed to fix the problem.
"It's got to be some setting on your g-mail account," she replied, "because there is no problem here."
Tears began to well up. This had happened me before. I call it bureaucratic ping pong. It goes like this.
Department A: "That's not our problem. You need to contact department B."
Me: "Hello, department B, I have a problem.... (explain, explain)"
Department B: "Sorry, I'll need to transfer you to department A for that kind of problem."
How much longer would I be on my desert island, and how many phone calls to techies would I have to make before at last I'd begin to even survey the damage???
I took a deep breath and looked at the top of my screen.
I clicked on the gmail help button. Who knows, I dared to hope, maybe it's a straightforward thing to fix. I typed "reply to" in help box, pressing my lips together hopefully, wondering whether the computer would "understand". There, in three steps, were instructions for fixing my problem. Someone, some time, had put that Smith address in my reply-to box, God knows when or why. Maybe it was even me. But I fixed it my very own self. Yay!
As for the other invisible wall, the one that I feel around me, even when my e-mail is working fine, that may take years to disassemble!
If you want to reach me, please use claire.mcconnell@gmail.com
And have a nice day!
