Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Newsletter Problems

The Apostle Paul suffered a lot during his earthly life, but there is one hardship he never experienced, the hassles of dealing with tech support. I discovered several months ago for some unknown reason I suddenly could not save anything when trying to put a newsletter together. I never had this problem before so I was stumped. I use a web based service to create my newsletters. When I discovered the problem online chat was closed for the day so I sent an email. Several days later I received an email asking me what browser I used and I promptly responded. It took a week to get a response from them, but basically nothing was happening. So I finally contacted them using the online chat support. After an hour chatting, the tech said he would look into my problem and email me. I never got an email. So today I once again logged on and clicked on chat support. I spent one and half hours with chat support. This tech discovered my template had a bunch of extra codes, but never gave me an answer as to what caused the problem in the first place. I was able to save items in the template a few months ago and now suddenly I cannot. Why? In the end he said he and others needed to clean it up and he promised to email me later. Well, as I write this the chat support is closed for the day and I still have not received any emails from them. I went and tested my template and it still will not let me save. Needless to say, I am very frustrated. Believe me; I want to send out a newsletter. But until this problem is solved I cannot create newsletters.

On March 13, 2008, while walking to a bus stop, I twisted my left foot on a broken brick. An MRI would reveal I broke my navicular bone. A year and a half later I still suffer residual problems from that injury. I have always been baffled how I could fracture my foot just walking. Well, this past Saturday after praying with a friend I hung up the phone, got up out of my chair, and walked towards the kitchen. I have no idea what happened but somehow my right toes caught on something and I am now lying on the couch with my foot propped up on pillows. It is swollen and very colorful. I went to an emergency walk-in orthopedic clinic today. The doctor said he did not see anything on the x-rays but said sometimes a hairline fracture will not show up for a few weeks. I have a follow-up appointment with the doctor who treated my left foot last year. Hopefully by then all the prayers being said for me will be answered with significant healing.

I really do not have time for all these problems. I am in the market to buy a vehicle. I have been researching exactly what I want to purchase. Last week I spent several days visiting used car lots with one purpose in mind. I wanted to narrow down my list by sitting in vehicles to check for blind spots. I have driven a few cars over the years belonging to my friends. They had no trouble seeing out the windows, but I did. Of course, in every case the friend was much taller than me. I did cross several vehicles off my list, some for a variety of reasons. Hopefully by the time I finish my online research and am ready to start test driving, my toes will be much improved. Somehow I don’t think a dealership would want someone wearing a medical shoe and on crutches test driving their cars.