Hot hot hot

[susandennis]

Not outside this time, but inside. Our building is having an air conditioning problem. Only in some areas - I got the short straw. I'm giving it until 3 (45 mins) and then I'm out of here.

American Express continues to amaze me. For more than a year now I have been trying to get a new advisor for my Mom's account and the address changed on my Mom's account. I finally got the address changed. The advisor must have naked pictures of the American Express CEO doing it with a donkey or some other hold over the corporation. Removing him from an account appears to be impossible.

I tried paying my dues to the Microsoft Alumni Association - their website says they accept American Express, Discover, Mastercard and Visa. Turns out they only accept Mastercard and Visa. I think the other two must be listed to annoy people. It totally works. Micrsoft does some very good things. But Microsoft also does some things very stupidly. But, they are clever enough not to have an established, recognizable pattern. (The Alumni Association is only loosely affiliated with Microsoft but still...)

I'm giving serious thought to one of those spam filter services. I use sort of one now but I want non-whitelist people to have a shot of getting to me - a simple test or at least a response saying why I might not have seen their email. The service I use now is really for reporting spam. I'm not that good a citizen. It lacks some services I want.

I'm spending more energy than necessary worrying about this stupid appraisal tomorrow. I'm trying to work through all the various options of what might happen and get ready for them all. It's more than 24 hours away. I need to set it on the shelf until then.

Comments

[androkles.livejournal.com]

American Express are like that over here, too. If not worse. The only way to deal with them is to refuse to pay up until appropriate action is taken. Like getting another manager. Thoughi guess some useful donkey photos could help us all.

[susandennis]

Sadly, the only thing in this account is two long term care policies for Mom. I do not want to take a chance on their cancelling them, so the withold pay option isn't there for us.

Interestingly, I have a fabulous financial guy who happens to be with American Express. I love the guy but tell him that his company sucks. He has even tried to fix the problem with no luck.

Maybe I'll photoshop up some pictures with the advisor we want to dump and a donkey... would that be fair to the donkey? I'm getting desperate, I'm sure the donkey will understand.

[idajo.livejournal.com]

hehehehe*haw*he*haw*hehehe!

_{OMG, did I say that!!!}

SpamBayes

[cinenaut.livejournal.com]

InfoWorld recently gave SpamBayes (http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/05/16/20TCspam_1.html?applications) a pretty good write-up -- specifically on the Outlook plug-in version.

My ISP uses Postini (http://www.postini.com) which captures, I would say, about 99% of the spam I get. Unfortunately, their services seem to be ISP-only at this time. My only gripe with Postini is that they don't have a 'bounce message' feature like MailWasher (http://www.mailwasher.net), and reading HTML mail via their interface loads all the graphics, which I rather it didn't.

Re: SpamBayes

[susandennis]

Good suggestions - all of them, but I'm after the service, not a client. I access the same email addresses from my computer at home, computer at work and, sometimes, my Treo. So I need the kind that filters before it gets to my ISP.

Spamcop actually does that. All of my email goes there and the good stuff is sent onto my secret email address that only Spamcop (and I) know about. Problem is that their blacklist isn't strong enough for my spam so I have to run it to filter out everything unless I specifically have the address or domain on my whitelist.

This means if you pick up my email address off of say LJ and send me an email, it gets hung at Spamcop until I find it there (because I don't have your email address on my whitelist). I check several times a day but I also get 300-400 emails caught there a day. And if you use a subject line about penis growth, I might just pass you right over! See the problem?

What I need is one that does the same thing except it sends you a note and says 'you've been hung up at Spamcop, please verify you are a human'...

But, I haven't found a really good one yet. So, I'll keep Spamcop for a while anyway.

Whew... this isn't a comment, it's a treatise!

[pinkrose70.livejournal.com]

About the appraisal...I too have spent large amounts of energy, worry and just plain feelings of apprehension about these "appraisals" at various jobs over the years.

One very wise mentor once told me, "It's just ONE persons' opinion, don't even worry about it"

Besides, yours will undoubtedly be glorious, sing your praises, and have you walking on water.

Seriously, about those "options"...if you were going to be "fired" it would have already happened. Employees getting terminated don't have scheduled appraisals, and they usually get a few warning. ;)

[pinkrose70.livejournal.com]

great, how did I double-post?

[susandennis]

Pas de sweat on the double post. I fixed it. And you are right, of course, about the appraisal. I don't remember getting this stressed about one before and lordknows I've had a gazillion. Maybe it's just memory loss.

I just hope my tongue stays in the vicinity of my brain. Or better yet just takes a nap.

[kyrielle]

I admit, I just do email by using filters in my email program. I file away anything I want (sometimes to the inbox) with an instruction to stop processing after a match. The last filter is 'If you got here, put it in the not-whitelisted box' and I periodically shovel that out.

I love Eudora.