Comments, email, and other frustrations

I wish I better understood the world of computers and the Internet, but this old dog has a hard time learning new tricks. Either that, or someone is plotting against me.

For some reason, my settings page is no longer alerting me when comments are received, so several have been awaiting moderation and publication. I only reject those that are spam, and have never blocked one sent by a reader. This morning I finally found that "dead letter office" containing the comments I had never seen. I apologize for that, and will make a point of checking the site more often.

Email is another issue that has me scratching my head. I received an email from a reader and replied, but it was refused as undeliverable. I had simply used reply, and didn't make any changes to the address, so have no idea why it was rejected!

Two weeks ago, I sent two forms in separate messages to my wife's public email address, but only one made it to her. The other has been sitting in my outbox and will not send, so I sent another copy and it went right through. Go figure! Of course, that doesn't compare to what happened about a year ago. I had received complaints that I wasn't responding to emails that I swore had never been received. They seemed to have disappeared in cyberspace. Then one day I received 35 emails at one time. Some had been sent up to six months earlier and were from different people...some who mail often. Where had they been sitting for those many months? Why did they arrive in one group? No one has offered a reasonable explanation so far.

Computer software and hardware keep changing at a pace I can't keep up with. Everything is faster, does more, and looks prettier, but something as basic as email remains problematic for decades. Ditto for setting up Internet connections. Other programs, like Quicken are full of new and amazing tricks, but the same old reliability problems remain, and user friendliness suffers.

Still not feeling well this morning, so I'll be spending more time on the couch with a book than under the car.