Back from Vacation

I've got some good news and some bad news.

The good news is that I'm back from my vacation to Cancun, Mexico. My trip to the Caribbean was fantastic and can't wait until I get to do it again!

During my stay, the sunny weather in Mexico ranged between 85 and 95 Fahrenheit (or 29 ~ 35 Celsius). Humidity wasn't much of an issue, and the strong coastline breeze provided a much needed rest from the over-powering sun.

Addressing web site concerns while away on Vacation

Believe it or not, I receive 150 ~ 200 emails a day. To prevent my mailbox from getting clogged, I decided to leave the office computer check-and-download emails every 5 minutes while I was away. Without this kind of intervention, my email account would have undoubtedly run over-quota and legitimate emails would have bounced.

Shortly after leaving for vacation, my mailbox was literally bombarded with the Friendship ScreenSaver Virus. The combination of Spam and Email Viruses have made sorting through legitimate mail difficult and extremely time consuming.

To alleviate this problem, I will be removing all direct-contact email addresses (editor@infopackets.com, support@infopackets.com, etc). I will replace the addresses with a web script form-mail online the infopackets web site so that users can contact me.

Once the form mail has been sent, I will use an Outlook Express Message Rule to scan all incoming emails for a watermark which will be injected into the form-mail. This should eliminate 99% of all Spam and Email Viruses which have been plaguing my Inbox as of late.

Side note: A form is an object placed on a web page which can be used to collect information from users visiting a web site. A form-mailer collects and delivers form information to a specified email address. The email address will be embedded (hidden) in the web script located on the web server, so that Spammers cannot harvest (collect) the address and abuse it.

And now, for the bad news...

Does it get any worse? Unfortunately, yes.

After standing vigilant for 2 weeks, the office computer failed to boot the next day. Apparently one of my hard drives went corrupt and needs replacing. Miraculously, I was able to retrieve all information from the corrupt drive: although, it took 1.5 days to complete.

For now, I'm using a temporary hard drive and have just enough set up on this computer to read new emails and write the newsletter. Correspondence will be limited while I sort through previous mails which have collected during my absence. Once the new hard drive arrives, the backed-up data will be copied over, and Windows will be restored via Disk Image.