Still Not Productive

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But that’s actually okay, because Sundays should be lazy whenever possible. We lounged around this morning, cuddling the dogs and talking, and now Fuzzy’s out getting a hair cut, and when he returns we’ll go get a few groceries, pet food, and maybe hit Jamba and/or Starbucks.

I spent a few hours today surfing San Francisco hotels and Tuscany villa rentals. The former I need for August. (OMG four months!) the latter, was just for fun. Maybe next year we’ll spend a month in Italy. Or I will. Fuzzy’s job doesn’t allow him the luxury of long rambling vacations.

Last night I had fresh strawberries for the first time in years. I’ve been going through a phase where I couldn’t eat them, I thought it was a true allergy, but I think it was a reaction to the summer of 2004, when I practically lived on strawberries, and then one day my body decided it had had enough of them.

They’re such a cheery fruit, and set so erotic as well.

We went out for sushi last night, to Hanasho, to celebrate me getting into the concert. Hanasho does great bento boxes, but Sushi Zone, despite their silly name and slightly disreputable location in the back of a fading strip mall in Arlington, does better sashimi plates.

I should go shower, but I’m enjoying my lazy mood too much to break it.

Oh, well.

Procrastination

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Unless cleaning the kitchen, and paying for my registration for the conference I posted about earlier counts, I’ve been singularly unproductive today, writing a little, reading a lot, cuddling Fuzzy and the dogs, and catching up on sleep.

We did manage to leave the house (once the car was returned to us with working A/C – a MUST in this climate (it cost $1620 to repair.)) for a lovely dinner at Hanasho where I managed not to drip soy sauce into my cleavage – barely.

I’m caught up on work. Laundry day is usually Sunday. The housecleaner will deal with vacuuming and such. But one task I still haven’t managed is to do the taxes – I who usually do them on February first, cannot seem to drag myself up to my office (the computer where TurboTax lives) and actually plug in numbers.

It’s not so much that I think we’re going to owe, because even as a full-time 1099’d writer I’m showing a loss on paper, as that I hate my current array of office furniture so much that my office doesn’t feel welcoming or pleasant, it feels like a prison.

I hate that feeling.

And so, here I sit, blogging and chattering via email about a script proposal, instead of doing anything remotely useful.

Oh, the laziness of me.

I GOT IN !!!!!!!

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And I owe it all to the support of my friends and family.

I’m talking about The Algonkian Novel Camp in San Francisco. I heard from them just a few minutes ago. Here’s the email.

Dear Melissa,

Hello and thank you for your application. The Algonkian Park workshops will show you the craft and knowledge needed to produce a manuscript able to compete in today’s tough marketplace.

Have read your application with interest. It is clear you are a serious writer and one capable of writing a manuscript that editors and agents will want to see. Additionally, your prose sample is indicative of a competitive commercial fiction style. In the workshops we will study and apply craft enhancement techniques that will improve your narrative and make your ms even more competitive. Our goal is to provide writers with realistic advice and work with them to create a plan for publication.

They only take 15 people.
I’m hyperventilating.

Mmm. Blueberries.

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I woke up this morning to a pounding headache, one that had been threatening to arrive all day yesterday, but didn’t really come on in force until I tried to go to sleep last night, and the sound of Fuzzy grumbling in the bathroom. It seems that L, our new housekeeper, did such a great job of cleaning the bathroom vanities, that he can’t find anything.

(Mind you, he is afflicted with the inability to see any object that requires moving another object. I always thought this was limited to looking for items in the fridge, but it’s universal, apparently.)

Outside, while the temperature is mild, the wind is not, and it’s making a howling sound that the dogs are clearly disgruntled by. Poor sensitive chihuahua ears. Zorro’s been giving me his patented slitty-eyed look all morning. As if I can control the wind.

I found the perfect way to soothe my own grumpiness, however. I made oatmeal, laced it with honey, and mixed in half a container of fresh blueberries.

Mmm. Blueberries.

My head still hurts.
But I’ll survive.

AT&T, SMTP & External Email

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I’m posting this as a service for all those people who have AT&T Uverse or DSL, who need to use the AT&T smtp server to send mail from non-AT&T accounts.

I was thisclose to throwing patio furniture at the next AT&T truck to enter my neighborhood, when I finally found the necessary solution on an external forum. Because I KNOW I’ll need it again, and because I suspect there are folks who don’t want to hunt down forum posts, I’m posting it here.

Several months ago, shortly after we canceled our ComCast account and switched to Uverse, which also required killing our backup DSL account (also through AT&T), we had to change all our mail settings because AT&T blocks port 25. No big deal, you just set your mail server to use port 465, and use login/password authorization based on your AT&T account.

For a while all worked sweetly. Then, one day in December or January, I stopped being able to send mail. Now, while I HAVE an at&t address, I don’t actually USE it, because I have my own domains. I also have work email addresses at their own domains. My Dreamhost accounts all have their own smtp servers, so that was fine for sending, except my parents’ server in Mexico wouldn’t accept relayed mail. The work pops don’t HAVE smtp service.

We called AT&T and explained the error, which at first was intermittent – maybe one in 12 email messages would bounce back with an error message that the server didn’t recognize my address. AT&T said, “Oh, we’re having a glitch.” The next day, all was well.

But then we started getting the error again, more and more often. Another call to Uverse tech support. “We can unblock port 25 for you, until we figure out what else to do.” Fine, okay. We have anti-virus and anti-spam software like crazy on our systems. We could deal with that. Except that after three weeks of this, we got a note from AT&T telling us that if we didn’t stop using port 25, they’d forbid us from relaying anything.

We complained about that. They apologized.

Meanwhile, when I tried to use the secure settings, I was getting more and more errors, until finally, this morning, I could not send mail at all. I sent in a ticket, they said, “We can’t find a problem, and we can’t reproduce it.”

I began searching the net for external information – users talk, after all – and found out that in order to send from an external email address, even if you’re using your own mail client (Thunderbird, Mac Mail, etc.) you have to log into your AT&T/Yahoo webmail, and add and verify all your external accounts.

Now, while this is time consuming, it’s not that difficult, and I’d have happily done so months ago, but AT&T NEVER TOLD US TO DO THIS. There was never an email sent, when the secure servers became required. The various calls and letters to tech support never included this information in their responses. And honestly, who would think to go to a webmail account they never use to set up external mail relay for sending through a regular client?

In any case, I spent about twenty minutes going through the necessary steps this morning, and while Thunderbird still can’t FIND my smtp server on my MacBook, Mac Mail works fine, and Thunderbird on my windows machines works fine, and life is good.

If you, too, need to make external email work on AT&T’s secure servers, the instructions you need are here:
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/original/manage/sendfrom-07.html