It Just Makes You Feel Naked

Got up at 5 this morning turned on my computer and checked email.  Nothing there.

Hotmail wnated me to set up a new account.  Didn't want to that.  I like my old account.

After an hour of trying to activate it I called a techie friend of my from CHUM.  After an hour on the phone with him we hadn't rounded off the corners on square one.  I went to Staples. They had a look and finally figured out that they thought sympatico wasn't available to me anymore and I should hook up to Hotmail.

Why not call Bell and get the straight goods?  After being put on hold for 3 to 15 minutes with each of the 4 Bell reps I spoke with  they finally flipped me to sympatico.  More lonely time on hold which I spent vacuuming, cleaning kitty litter and doing a laundry.  When I explained the situation to rep no. 3 and told him all I wanted to do was save my old emails he sai "oh"."  But it wasn't just an "oh", it was one those "ooooooohs".The kind you really don't want to hear.  He passed me on to what I have to assume is the company hatchet man, bringer of bad news, their third horseman of the apocalypse.   In a very low tone he said, sir, I'm sorry they're gone forever.  We can't get them back. They don't exist. 

All my email gone to the great cyberspace heaven up there somewhere.  How could that happen?  Here's how.  I live in a dead zone so I have to have a turbo stick to connect with the internet.  Got it, plugged it in 3 months ago and it's been working tickety boo ever since.

Until this morning when they stuck it to me with the stick.  Turns out the turbo stick doesn't use sympatico which the young lad at the store didn't tell me.  He didn't tell me that 90 days after I shut down my old land line account sympatico would be gone for good.  The guy on the phone told me I should have had a new server. 

At that point I thought I was going to lose it, but then I thought the sympatico rep would call Mike Boon and he'd nail me on his blog again.  So I got in the car and took a drive in the country. 

I don't think I've ever felt so helpless.  Every contact I had was on my email.  I hardly ever use the phone.  I email.  Lawyers, contracts, contacts, friends, enemies, parents, sibblings, kids. All of it gone.  I never wrote anything down.  It was in my emails.  Didn't bother getting anyones phone number.  Just email them.  So I've spent the last couple of hours playing 6 degrees of seperation with email addresses.  I remembered 2. Wrote them asking them for emails I needed which will get me 2 more which will get me 2 more etc..etc...etc.

If they gave away a Darwin Award to people who do stupid things but don't actully get killed in the process I'm at the top of the hit list.