Okay, I feel better now. Whew.
Actually, I should watch what I say about Microsoft. I live rather close to their headquarters. The black helicopters from Microsoft may just rise up over the hills and spirit me away.
Hmph.
So here I am, happy as a clam, using three Hotmail accounts. One for personal use, one for business use (everyone should have two emails just for that reason), and one for my dear hubby. I use Outlook Express in order to check all three email accounts at once, which makes life very easy for me. One button, and I get new email in three accounts.
Yesterday I emailed my husband a ton of articles from CNN.com. Since he has no internet (he's underway in the middle of the Pacific somewheres), I have to cut and paste the information and send it that way. I sent him seven emails yesterday. All of a sudden, I got an error message in Outlook Express to tell me to visit Hotmail.com. I did so, and I was told I had to verify that I wasn't a spammer by looking at numbers and letters in a box and typing them in.
Fair enough. I did so. I then sent mail from my account in Outlook Express to Kurt.
The next email I attempted to send got the same error. Again I proved I wasn't a spammer.
The third or fourth time in under an hour that I had to prove my identity, I got fed up and emailed tech support for Hotmail. I got an email back rather quickly telling me that this process was to protect me, the user, and that she's sorry for any inconvenience. No mention was made of why I had to re-verify my identity so many times in a row.
It's not that I minded the process. Anything to get rid of spam is a good thing in my book. But to have to verify my identity four or five times in an hour, indeed, EVERY SINGLE TIME I wanted to send an email? Ridiculous.
Since Kurt is in the middle of the ocean somewhere, my only contact with him is through email. So I have to have something that works. And with a four-month-old who really doesn't like me being on the computer, I can't be spending that kind of time logging into Hotmail to verify my identity every time I want to send an email. It's why I use Outlook Express in the first place!
I sent off two more emails to Hotmail tech support. I haven't received an answer to either of them yet.
At this point, I am really stressing out. I know I shouldn't, but I tend to over-stress about the stupidest stuff. It's why I will never have gorgeous long fingernails (like Michele does... grrr). I tend to chew them off.
I finally see through digging around Hotmail's support site that if you want to be able to use Outlook Express with your Hotmail account, you have to PAY for it! $20 a year, but still -- paying for Hotmail?! Insane! I am not paying $20 a year per account to be able to use Outlook Express, which is the cheapie cheesy version of Outlook to begin with!
The only way I found this out, however, is because I went digging around tech support. There was no email sent out to Hotmail users, although, to be fair, it could have been in the latest Hotmail newsletter and I just didn't pay attention. Somehow I doubt it.
I am a pretty computer savvy person. Kurt's much better at the administration of computers and whatnot, but I am not exactly technologically inept. So I cannot imagine what the "normal" folks would do who encounter this problem. Then again, maybe "normal" folks don't use Outlook Express.
All this boils down to my having to switch my email account. The whole reason why I had Hotmail to begin with had to do with being military. I cannot guarantee that wherever I go, I will have Comcast internet like I do now. If I go back to Virginia, now I have to change my email to a Cox address. Not a big deal, but having a very portable Hotmail account was supposed to prevent that.
At least I am no longer over-stressed. Rather pissed, but not over-stressed. Thank goodness for small miracles. :o)
On that note, I leave you with the following image. I had put Gracie on her mat to play this afternoon, and sat on the couch to do some stitching. I have to admit that when I'm on the couch, I can't exactly see her because the coffee table is in the way, but I knew she was okay because I can certainly hear her. She's quite the little chatterbox. After I had been stitching for probably ten minutes or so, I looked over at her because her voice seemed to be coming in a slightly different direction. And sure enough, she'd pushed herself way off the mat, as you can see!! What a nut! When I come into her room in the mornings, she's pushed herself up so her head is touching the bumper at the top of her crib. If she liked being on her tummy, I could see that she'd be near crawling already!! Lord have mercy on me then!