Saturday, June 17, 2006

You'd think the little challenges with creating a newsletter would end once the publication was done. Think again. After sending out all of the newsletter e-mails I had a couple of people tell me they didn't get it. That happens occasionally when either their IP or their e-mail program has a limit on what they can receive. Usually I can just re- send and they get it OK. Every now and then the size of the newsletter just exceeds what they can get in e-mail.

It's not a major problem now that I know what the issue is. A secondary web site is created where they can go and download the PDF. Walking a novice through how to download Adobe's Acrobat and assuring them that the program is perfectly legal and safe to use; explaining to them how to set up their browser so that they can receive the file and change back the settings after it's received has just become part of the process.

Suddenly with this newsletter my website software decides to throw a hissy fit. One minute the password access to the secondary website is working and the next minute it isn't. I would have been having fits, but being married to a programmer does have it's advantages. Rob checks all of the html coding just to make sure nothing's wrong in the uploaded files, re-sets all of the security settings and trys again. And again. And again. Finally he makes the call to Tech support.

Two hours later, most of which has been spent with either Rob or I on hold waiting for their most senior tech, they admit they don't know what's wrong and tell us they'll check it out and call back. An hour later they call and report that it's working now. They can't explain why it wasn't working before, they don't know why it was working intermittently, not can they assure us that it won't work intermittently in the future. Give me back my shuttles, I need to be making lace.

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