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Wednesday, December 01, 1999

Megacorp and The Road to Computer Hell

All I was trying to do was to read my work email. But Netscape, for whatever reasons, won't let you use POP for one host and IMAP for another, and since I'm using IMAP for my personal email, I can't use Netscape to get my work email. So, I'll try Eudora. Megacorp (work) has it site-licensed, so I try to get it there. But no, I can't use Appletalk over VPN (the proxy that gets me into Megacorp's internal net), and they seem to have all their site-licensed Mac software only available via Appletalk. There is ftp access, but I tried to get the files that way and they end up locally as arbitrary binary files rather than proper two-forked Mac files so that didn't work at all. So I gave up on Eudora Pro, and went and fetched Eudora Light off the net. Seemed to work, but Wham, crashed the machine. Uh oh.. now the machine won't boot, at all. So I boot from the system CD that came with the computer, and run the disk repair utility. It doesn't work. I still can't boot the computer from the disk. The disk repair utility claims the disk is fine, but it ultimately refuses to actually mount it. So I boot my older Mac, and go in search of Norton utilities on the web. I find them, but the older Mac is failing to extract the Norton hqx file into a usable installer. So I need a newer extractor. Back on the web, find the newest version of Stuffit Expander, used that to extract the Norton hqx files, installed Norton on the old Mac, booted the new machine from CD, remotely mounted the old machine's disk on the new machine, and finally ran Norton over the remotely mounted disk. Norton actually managed to fix the disk, and I was able to reboot, but I still can't read my Megacorp email without crashing the machine half way through fetching it.

I discovered today I can pay my property taxes online. Oh gee.

I stopped in Scripps dermatology group, and had them biopsy a couple of moles.

Now that I'm covered under Megacorp's health plan, I need to quit Blue Cross, but they really don't make it easy to quit, especially when they've got you set up on automatic debit. They require written confirmation, which they claim they'll take by fax, but I fax them things and they claim they never show up.

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