Rogers, for what ever reason, uses Yahoo mail services. I certainly hope Yahoo gets a cut of Rogers income, because Rogers has a LOT of customers…. Anyways, it’s the combination of all three that led more to this rant/article 8-O  than anything else.

Her email has been working fine for a long, long LONG time, then all at once, it refuses to send any more emails, it recieves fine, but you can’t send anything out. I can log in and send, and I can send from other packages but Thunderbird wont send…. or to be more specific Yahoo wont let Thunderbird send anything…. all you get is this wonderfully cryptic email (with a link that doesn’t work!)

Transaction failed : Cannot send message due to possible abuse; please visit http://postmaster.yahoo.com/abuse_smtp.html for more information

(If you want to avoid my rant and go right to THE SOLUTION at the bottom.)

Now I KNOW BETTER, but for some reason, while I was testing the email through Rogers portal (which of course worked) there was a little box that said, Click Here for live technical support and I did…. yeah I know. And while I could argue that I had a headache, was tired, and in a hurry, there really is no good excuse… I did it.

So up popped “Valentino” to walk my through my problems, thankfully, or probably because I was already online trying to chat with him, he didn’t start off by asking if my computer/monitor/router/modem was turned on.

Upon seeing the error he responded that the problem seemed to be between Thunderbird and Yahoo… ummmm that is what is being used at both ends yes…. and then recommends that if I turn off all HTML formatting and just send all emails in plain text (ie no pictures, bold, formatting, charts, etc etc.) that all would be well…   Okay so if I roll the clock back say 20+ years in email formatting it will work…. ummm NO. That wasn’t an option.

He then argued that he tried Google mail and other mail services using HTML and it worked fine, but her Thunderbird didn’t… it kept coming up with an error (the same error that I had already told him about by the way – which comes from Yahoo). So “obviously” the problem is with Thunderbird, which as far as he is now concerned is an unsupported program.

Now what is interesting is that he also randomly throws in a couple of links at the end of this bit, which ‘sort of’ hold the key and he ‘sort of ‘ addresses it. But without actually mentioning what ‘IT’ is.

So while I am going on about how this is not an option, ‘Valentino’ continues on telling me how I will need to change all email output to plain text in future…. finally he catches up with my arguments and says he ‘understands’ and is only trying to give me work arounds (without actually saying what it is I’m trying to work around) and gives me another ‘work around’. Now he wants me to change the white background on her email to a different shade of white, not much just a little….   I KID YOU NOT! Arrgghhhhh. I lose it

I am also beginning to think I’m talking to a machine, more that a person. ‘Valentino’s’ argument is that Thunderbird is an unsupported program and he is giving me a ‘fix’ for it. My argument is that the problem is at their end, and they need to fix it! I ask to speak to  someone higher in authority, ‘Valentiono’ says sorry, no , there is no one available for an ,unsupported program’… I give up in disgust and go look on my own…. Here is the full transcript, with all it’s warts, for your enjoyment/mutual frustration….

5:05 PM You have granted full permission to Technician. To revoke, click the red X on the toolbar or press Pause/Break on the keyboard.
5:06 PM Connecting…
5:06 PM Connected. A support representative will be with you shortly.
5:06 PM Support session established with Valentino.
5:06 PM Valentino: Hello and thank you for choosing Rogers Hi-Speed Internet. How may I help you today?
5:06 PM Rick: We are getting an error when trying to send email from the server
5:06 PM Rick: sorry – we are using Thunderbird and Yahoo is creating the error
5:07 PM Rick: Transaction failed : Cannot send message due to possible abuse; please visit http://postmaster.yahoo.com/abuse_smtp.html for more information
5:08 PM Rick: By the way – that page doesn’t exist
5:08 PM Valentino: whast your email address and program that you are uisng
5:08 PM Rick: beetham@rogers.com and the email package is Thunderbird
5:09 PM Valentino: This issue appears to be something between ThunderBird’s HTML mail format and YAHOO’s servers. If you change your email format to plain text, it sends just fine. As a test of ThudderBird’s HTML format I sent HTML formatted mail via gmail, and hotmail with no issues.
With your forward-to or reply-to message open, go to
Options…Format and set to “Plain Text Only” (i.e., not HTML). If
you’re creating a new message, you have to set not-HTML by going to
Account Settings…Composition.
In summary: I was unable to send messages and got the “Cannot send
message due to possible abuse” message. When I made sure the message
was not composed using HTML, then the message sends fine. “””

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=2441147

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120309234536AALeZkp

5:10 PM Rick: The email is addressed to two other rogers.com accounts and one bmtnet.com account all valid account holders
5:10 PM Rick: So you are trying to deliver the email? It’s got a Sending Messages window up now and is stuck at 79%
5:11 PM Valentino: you will need to that for all of them
5:11 PM Rick: Email seems to work fine with every email except that one – changing it to text only will destroy the formatting of the current message
5:12 PM Rick: Telling me I have to “dumb down” the email isn’t a solution – it’s a work around. HTML email should work fine… it has in the past
5:13 PM Valentino: i understand, its not a supported program but I am providing a workaround for you..you canalso try this one if you wish
5:13 PM Valentino: Changing the default background colour from #FFFFFF (white) to anything else absolutely works. I changed the value to #FFFFFE (only one value away from white) in Config Editor (Preferences/Advanced/General/Config Editor.)

msgcompose.background_color = #FFFFFE

This is a successful work-around that does not look noticibly different than a white background..
5:15 PM Rick: Again – no. There is a problem at YOUR end. Tweaking colors etc should not and is NOT a fix.
5:16 PM Rick: Sorry I’m stunned – i’ve worked in computers for over 25 years and managed some of the best in the business (support personnel) I would fire anyone that tried to tell any of my users that this was a ‘Fix’
5:16 PM Valentino: other programs works fine
5:17 PM Rick: And so does Thunderbird until this email – the error comes from YAHOO servers not Thunderbird – ergo….
5:18 PM Valentino: I apologize for whats happening, its not a supported program and i am giving you a solution that works, there is not much i can do regarding the issue
5:19 PM Rick: You really are quite useless then…. is there anyone else I should talk to or should I just wait until YOUR problem goes away?

5:21 PM Valentino: there is no one else for an unsupported program
5:21 PM Valentino: You can try removing and readding the account to Thunderbird. If it does not work, you would need to troubleshoot with Mozilla or try a differnt email client.
5:23 PM Rick: You really don’t know anything about computer support do you – of all the stupid answers. I can’t wait to write about this on my blog – it’ll go viral…. what a waste of time

5:24 PM Rick: Good bye 5:24 PM Valentino: You’re welcome and thank you for choosing Rogers Live Chat Support.

Well that was fun…. er not…. but you can see why it looks like it’s an attempt at an AI response. Also note that he tells me maybe I could deltee her account and re-add it, or maybe just go with another email client. Essentially just going down a list of things that would make the error code go away… ergo, in Rogers opinion, make things work… But here is the kicker, the problem isn’t and has NEVER been with Thunderbird but with Yahoo! See that lovely setting up above, where ‘Valentino’ recommended I change the background color a little – msgcompose.background_color = #FFFFFE

Well it appears that, for what ever reason, Yahoo servers randomly choke on the background color if it is set to all F’s in upper case when coming from Thunderbird…. silly, strange, but true. if  your settings in Thunderbird are msgcompose.background_color = #FFFFFF Yahoo will eventually declare all your mail as originating Spam…. if you change the settings to lower case f’s as in msgcompose.background_color = #ffffff everything will be fine!

By the way, for those less technically astute – it’s the SAME COLOR!!!!!!!

The answer was in the links that ‘Valentino” so randomly popped into the conversation. It’s a known problem with Yahoo servers which has been going on for a very VERY long time – go figure. You know a real person should have acknowledged that yes there is a problem at Yahoo and unfortunately this is what you need to do to fix it…. instead of telling a client that their software is unsupported and they need to send only in text format  – forever more! SAY WHAT!

By the way, the reason the change from HTML to plain text works…. no colors! What a simple easy STUPID workaround! May we one day be saved from stupid AI’s and help desk people who don’t know, nor care what your problem really is.

THE SOLUTION

You can go to the link  forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=2441147 to get all the background on this if you want. But here is the work around for Yahoo’s screw up:

• Go to the Thunderbird menu bar
• Click on Tools > Options > Advanced
• In the General Tab press the “Config Editor” button
• Note the warning message and click that you will promise to be careful
• Scroll down, or search in the top window to get to the setting msgcompose.background_color
• Double click on that line
• Change the #FFFFFF to #ffffff ( the same color )
• Click on “OK”
• Close the Config Editor
• Problem Solved!

Oh, one other little tidbit, if you have any drafts pending, you will need to copy and paste them into a new email in order to get rid of the #FFFFFF that is embedded in the draft…

Strange but sadly true….

Unfortunately, due to the fact that I am not as active on the site as I would like to be AND that there is a LOT of garbage out there, I have to crank the security on this site way up.

As a result many of your comments, as innocent as they appear to me, don’t get through to my ok-ing them. I’ve pulled what I thought were the most valid of the bunch out of the cesspool and it is possible that there are a few other’s that I have missed. If I did, I again apologize.

This all has to do with the garbage out on the web these days, the spam robots out there are ferocious! When I first set up this site, it was literally buried by them. I would get hundreds of garbage replies a day and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t keep up with manually deleting the stuff out there. My only recourse was to tighten things up as much as possible.

Unfortunately, this usually causes any quick one liners to get put in the spam filter, but why the others about Gipp Forster or the CherryPal fell into it boggles my mind, it could be the ip address or it could be something else. I really don’t know.

I will try to take a much closer look in the spam sewer in future – in hopes of rescuing other valid comments, but until then, let me again apologize for missing your comments. They really REALLY are appreciated. Even if the computer doesn’t like them….

Rick

As it should happen, I’m in a position right now to spend some money on a new toy.

To be specific, I’ve been torn between a new laptop, a kayak, and an iPad. Of the three my heart was leaning towards the iPad, but it had a major problem (for me) it came with no hard-drive and expandable storage. Now for most people this shouldn’t be an issue. The iPad is really a consumption device more than a  “work tool”, but I was feeling claustrophobic thinking about how limited my options might be in future.

A laptop can always be expanded easily just by popping on a USB drive, a Kayak…. well it’s got every river, lake, stream, sea, ocean in the world if I want it. It was just the iPad…. could I “live” with a measly 16 or 32 GB knowing that there would be no way to expand it easily for storage purposes? It has no SD slot, nor no easy USB ports…

I decided to see what was out there that would work for what I wanted ( unlimited storage space. ) I first decided to look at Cloud storage services. This is essentially other companies who offer storage space on the Internet that can be accessed by one or more machines. The data is secured by passwords and or encryption and backed up by the company itself. One of these I’ve talked about previously dropbox.

My problem was that while dropbox is great for temporarily sharing data I found it beyond cumbersome when it came to easy access and in most cases to use the data you had to transfer it all over to the machine you were working on before you could use it. This can be a real drag to a limited machine ( in my opinion).

What I wanted was something that looked and acted like a disk drive to the computer and data could be accessed when wanted, but not necessarily stored permanently within the computer itself… and I found such a beast. It’s called ZumoDrive and it works really well with Windows, Mac’s, iPhones, iPads AND Ubuntu! It sounded like a match in heaven…. Watch the video to find out more…

After installing it on 2 windows machines and 2 Ubuntu machines I am able to access any data within the ZumoDrive on any machine and it really does act and work like a normal disk drive! Problem solved!

So now I’ve decided an iPad2…. unfortunately I have to wait until the end of the month to order one (I’m not in the US. ) I just have to try and not buy any other toys until then…. By the way if you like what you see you can sign up for up to 2GB of free storage to check it out, and if you use this link here, and I’ll give you a little a bit more -> Click Here

Well that’s not quite the end of it…. by complete serendipity, I was given another solution by a friend of mine, which will work quite well for sharing media ( like songs, pictures, movies, etc). It’s called AirStash. This is another cool device that goes on my “want” list… The neat thing about this device is that it actually acts like a networked drive using your WiFi connection and SD Cards but you aren’t dependent on the Internet. Some examples on the website show using it in the car while traveling. This video will give you more info on it – the only thing that doesn’t seem clear is whether it can be accessed by other operating systems….. still it’s on my want list for my iPad ….

No deals available that I could find but I’ll let you know if I find one!

So check both of these solutions out! I think you’ll be impressed

The trick is that you will need to download and install on your kindle a “book” application that is available off of the kindle users forum. This book has approximately 50 already available newsfeeds but more can be added later using their web interface.

I’ve found that the easiest way to get the feed you want  on the book you installed is to:

1. Set up the feed online through your normal web browser on your computer after you have logged into the forum. The Kindle User Forum will then assign it a number based on your account.
2. On the kindle, open up the book and go to tools then add a new feed. Page down to page 2 and enter the number you generated in step 1. Then open that feed.

In future that feed will be presented at the top of your “book” along with any other feeds you have subscribed to. Just click on the feed link and it will open automatically in your Kindle Browser.

You can certainly do all this on your Kindle, but I find that the ease of using the computer and cutting and pasting links and such to be so much easier. Now note that I really glossed over the instructions. I just wanted to show how easy it was. Follow the prompts and guides online and you shouldn’t have any issues.

 

Some have asked me why I didn’t get the iPad, and others have asked why I didn’t go with another e-reader ( there are still quite a few out there. ) So let me explain here….

I needed something to read all the ebooks that I have been accumulating from different sites, the majority of which were free ( there are hundreds of thousands of free books and articles out there. )  I’ve tried reading them on my computer, but it isn’t viable to sit at my desk for hours at a time reading ( although I still do that some what for other reasons. )

I’ve tried reading books and articles on my Palm, but the small screen makes it painful. Having to turn pages quite often due to the small size of the screen. I’ve tried a laptop in an easy chair, but man it gets HOT after a while with it on my lap!

I really Really REALLY wanted an iPad. It would be the ultimate portable device for me, replacing both a notebook/netbook as well as several other devices ( like my trusty Palm Tungsten E5. ) Yes it will also work for reading ebooks and PDF files ( something that the Kindle line still has a few challenges with ) but the price is still prohibitive. You have to remember I’m “RETIRED” so I can’t run out and buy any toy that strikes my fancy ( not that I could before – but hopefully you understand that of which I mean. ) 

Even with the Canadian dollar doing so well against the U.S., for what ever reason the iPad still runs close to $700 here! Unfortunately, one can’t just order from the states and pay the almost at par exchange rate. This is where the Kindle came in.

I’ve read for years how much better e-ink was compared to an LCD screen. All the ebook readers out there used e-ink but the e-ink technology is still only Black and White, they have yet to develop a good color screen. When I did my research, I found the Kindle had the highest number of grey levels of any e-ink device out there ( in my price range .)

The Kindle, like the Sony eReader,The Barnes and Noble Nook , The Indigo/Chapters Kobo and several others had a large 3rd party support organization ( multiple websites and services. ) The Kindle supposedly didn’t support some types of ebooks that were out there ( epub being the largest one ) but with a tool like Calibre ( an amazing tool which runs on both Windows and Linux ) that really wasn’t an issue. I highly recommend that anyone who is interested in ebooks  ( with or without an ereader ) to look at Calibre.

In the end, after numerous articles and reviews I found the only real contender was Sony’s ereader, but it didn’t do as many gray levels ( which is good for pictures and such ) and it cost a bit more.

My logic actually went like this:

• I could get the Kindle or
• For a bit more get the Sony
• But if I’m getting the Sony, for just a little bit more I can get the Kindle DX ( an iPad sized reader )
• But if I am getting the Kindle DX for a little bit more I can get the iPad

The iPad almost won out…. except I’d have to explain a major outlay of funds to my better half, and I knew it wouldn’t fly….

In the end I started asking myself did I really need a dedicated ereader…  just one more night with a stiff neck from  my monitor convinced me that I did.

I decided to try the least expensive route – the Kindle -  since I didn’t need the 3G phone model, their WiFi gave me ample access to the Internet, both at home and when I’m traveling. I had to order it from the states via Amazon.com and so I actually paid only $139 US and the minor exchange rate.

I figured $139US was an affordable gamble that, failing all else, I could resell if I didn’t like it. After all I was buying a piece of technology that I had never tried before nor even laid hands on – for me this was a gamble. Would it do what I wanted it do do, and would it be worth it.

Now that I have it, you won’t be able to pry it out of my hands! It’s been over 30 days ( almost 45 ) since I had to charge it and I have never turned it off! ( I have turned the WiFi off when I didn’t want it, but not the actually Kindle. ) Talk about impressed! Then reading it is indeed just like reading a book, it is effortless, and the buttons are perfectly placed for turning a page. Yes there is a time lag between page turns, but no more so than the time it would take turn an actual page and bring your eyes to the top of the next page!

The resources out there are phenomenal! Aside from Amazon themselves offering free books, you can find many, many more elsewhere ( too many here to list. ) As you may, or maybe not, be aware the Kindle also allows subscriptions to newspapers and magazines ( for a fee ) and if you live in the US to selected Blogs as well. However, an ingenious blog/website called Feedbooks has found a way to help all of us to subscribe to any blog or website that has an RSS feed. Check out this little page on how to do that, hidden within their site!

Books are enjoyable at the best of times but adding a little technology,  like the Kindle, makes them even better. It’s the icing on the cake and I think everyone should have one! Wow am I impressed!