Today’s Cool New Web Toy comes courtesy of the Librarian Avenger. Have I mentioned how much I love and adore librarians? I’m a librarian wannabee.

Today’s toy is Frappr!, which basically allows a group of people to visually show up on a Google Map. Think one level of Friendster, but on a map.

So PLEASE, join my Frappr! map. I’m curious about how my "real world" friends and new Internet friends distribute on the map. Or make your own map.

Ok, I have to admit that when I posted my mini-rant about being trapped on SpeakEasy’s email list, I hoped that they had someone in the company whose job it was to look for things like what I posted.

Apparently, that person is Adam!

Hopefully I really won’t get any more mail from them. I’m just slightly skeptical, since that wasn’t the first message I’ve gotten, just the first in awhile and the first I’ve blogged.

But now I know how to reach Adam, so if it does happen again, I have some faith it can get fixed. (For example, I can email him from the email account I used when I tried to open the account. It does seem like they’d need that to stop emailing me, and it isn’t the same one associated with this blog.)

And on the assumption it worked anyway, Thanks, Adam!

Fruit & Veg Count, 12/1: 1 organic gala apple

We leave shortly for a weekend trip to Milwaukee for another babyshowerlicious weekend, plus time with family and friends there. I love these apples so much that I’m thinking about a quick trip to the farmers market to get some to take along.

When I first moved to Decatur, I needed to set up high speed Internet access.

Given my job, the first thing I tried to do was get EarthLink DSL. Nope, too far from the DSL switching point. I had friends who raved about SpeakEasy, so I tried them too. Same problem. Eventually, I gave up and went with the incarnation of evil, my local cable company.

Unfortunately, I’m still trapped in insane customer service hell with SpeakEasy.

I can’t get off of their email lists.

This morning, I got a message apologizing in advance for some mail server downtime that they will be having in order to implement new anti-spam technology.

I hit "reply" and sent them this one-line message:
I am not a speakeasy customer. Please remove me from your list.

Perhaps a minute, maybe two minutes later, I got this response:

Hello,

Based on the information in your email, our system could not recognize
you as Speakeasy customer with an active account. This typically means
you either have emailed from an address not associated with your
account. Because of this, we were unable to create a Speakeasy Service
Ticket for your account via email.

We ask that you try your issue submission again, online at:

http://www.speakeasy.net/myspeak/create_ticket.mpl  [login required]

It is important that your service ticket be associated with a valid
Speakeasy account so that we are able to research and respond to your
ticket in a prompt manner.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

They are a real, valid company. I don’t WANT to report them as spam and try to get their authentic customer service email messages made undeliverable. I know how frustrating that can be for companies that send legitimate, non-spam email that their customers wrongly report as spam.

But I feel like I may have no other escape route.

When I first moved to Decatur, I needed to set up high speed Internet access.

Given my job, the first thing I tried to do was get EarthLink DSL. Nope, too far from the DSL switching point. I had friends who raved about SpeakEasy, so I tried them too. Same problem. Eventually, I gave up and went with the incarnation of evil, my local cable company.

Unfortunately, I’m still trapped in insane customer service hell with SpeakEasy.

I can’t get off of their email lists.

This morning, I got a message apologizing in advance for some mail server downtime that they will be having in order to implement new anti-spam technology.

I hit "reply" and sent them this one-line message:
I am not a speakeasy customer. Please remove me from your list.

Perhaps a minute, maybe two minutes later, I got this response:

Hello,

Based on the information in your email, our system could not recognize
you as Speakeasy customer with an active account. This typically means
you either have emailed from an address not associated with your
account. Because of this, we were unable to create a Speakeasy Service
Ticket for your account via email.

We ask that you try your issue submission again, online at:

http://www.speakeasy.net/myspeak/create_ticket.mpl  [login required]

It is important that your service ticket be associated with a valid
Speakeasy account so that we are able to research and respond to your
ticket in a prompt manner.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

They are a real, valid company. I don’t WANT to report them as spam and try to get their authentic customer service email messages made undeliverable. I know how frustrating that can be for companies that send legitimate, non-spam email that their customers wrongly report as spam.

But I feel like I may have no other escape route.

I’m having a moment of being really proud of what I do.

Here’s a nice AP article about a project that has consumed a ton of my energy over the last few months.

I think the Anti Spyware Coalition has the potential to really educate consumers, the media, policymakers, and the Internet industry on how to avoid and combat spyware, and for companies, how to engage in responsible software downloading practices. I’m excited to be working on this stuff.

I’m mostly a wanna-be geek, but in some ways, I’m a authentic geek.

One of the ways that I am a geek is that I manage my own email, and also my Mom’s, through several domains that I own. I would also do Jill’s if she let me, but she’s attached to the bells and whistles of her ISP.

Since I own the domains, I have an infinite supply of potential email addresses. When I sign up for a mailing list, or purchase something from a new Internet site, I create a unique email address for that list or store. (I got the idea from the wonderful geek world of Slashdot.)

That way, I can both filter the mail from them to an appropriate folder, and I can tell if they are a source of spam. For example, if I bought something from store123, and give them my email address as store123@mydomain, then I get email from store456 that is addressed to store123@mydomain, I know that store123 is giving away my email address.

At big mainstream web sites, this is no big deal. No human being ever even sees my email address.

But at obscure expensive (and typo-filled) Mom & Pop web sites that sell sun-protective gear, this is worrisome and confusing. So they called the house yesterday, and reached my lovely wife. Fortunately, she knows I do this, so they didn’t manage to get her worried. She assured them that I wasn’t doing anything illegal (!!!), it was just so that I could filter my email.

BTW, I own some cool domain names, and the odds of my using my full allotment of email bandwidth and storage are extremely low. So if you want a vanity email address or 2, leave a comment and I’ll follow up with you by email. (These aren’t the ones I actually use for these email projects; these are others that I own. Believe it or not, I own 22 domains.)

Basically what happens is that I have a cool idea for a web site, I register a domain (or several) with the idea of actually doing my idea, and then life gets in the way and I don’t do anything with the domain after all. But I don’t want to give them up! I don’t know why — they’re just cool.

I have lots of "small thoughts" for today, in no particular order.

• Earlier this week I had a flattering Internet experience that I feel a little funny about blogging about. I’ve been enjoying the "connect the dots" world of LinkedIn since one of my colleagues persuaded me to join earlier this year, but for me, the experience has been more ‘fun curiousity’ than ‘professional networking.

  Until the charming email from the currently-coolest-brand-name-Internet-company’s recruiter arrived earlier this week.

  It was the kind of invitation that I had to fantasize about, but after enjoying the daydream (including the "I wonder if they’d pay enough for us to actually enjoy life in the Bay Area?" part), the facts "I’m having a baby in 4 months and Jill just moved down here in June!" brought me back to reality.

  I sent back a nice note saying that I was flattered by their interest but not interested in changing jobs — or regions of the country! — at this time. I can’t even imagine taking on another big change right now. But wow was it flattering to be asked to dance.

• Lil Smudge is getting a lot kickier. I’ve spent most of my life vaguely dissociated from physical reality — absorbed in a book, a conversation, or whatever I’m thinking about at the moment. So all this physical stuff is jarring on so many levels, and the action keeps me from being able to ignore it.

  My prenatal yoga class* has added an interesting layer to all of that.

  Over the last few years, I’ve come to ‘get it’ that I have a thing about being supposed to know how to do "this" — whatever "this" is. It doesn’t make any sense, it’s just a thing I do.

  In most of life, I’ve learned how  catch when I’m doing it and laugh at myself.

  In the physical realm, not so much. I suspect that’s why the last few times I’ve tried to start exercising, I’ve made it about 3 weeks and then given up or gotten hurt. (I believe in the power of subconcious sabotage. Sometimes an accident is just an accident, but sometimes it fits into a pattern.)

  My point is that this prenatal yoga class has been incredibly confronting for me. I know I’m not as good at this stuff as the other people in the class, and I hate that feeling. It brings up that thing I do.  

  So yesterday, I did a new thing I’ve been learning to do to handle myself and the situation when I catch myself doing that thing I do. I busted myself to the instructor after class. We talked about how much I was resisting her corrections in class, and how confronted I was. I think it helped her too, so she knew it wasn’t personal or anything she was doing wrong.

  And now I have a friendly ally who will help and support me getting physically ready for Smudge to be born, and who will be able to remind me that I’m doing this because of a commitment that’s bigger than me.

• Fruit & Veg Count, 10/26: 1 banana. The downside of prenatal yoga is that I can’t eat dinner before, and I don’t get home until about 8 pm. At that point, I want the fastest, most filling dinner option available. Jill made pierogies, and I inhaled more of them than I planned.
• God, I hope someone senior in Dick Cheney’s office gets indicted today.

  And was anyone surprised to hear Jeb Bush ‘take complete responsibility’ for problems getting water/ice/food to survivors of Hurricane Wilma? W can’t blame the locals in the gulf coast but not in Florida, so Jeb has to be the fall guy for FEMA failures there. Speaking of government "actions" that hopefully will lead to people being indicted at some point.

* The prenatal class is not ‘hot yoga,’ in case anyone was worried.