Chuck’s Life and Brain

Has MSN clamped down on their email forwarding to outside domains?

MSN.com error message showing that now email will only be forwarded "to a custom domain" or to "an e-mail address that ends in hotmail.com, msn.com, or live.com".

On Feb. 17 I helped a friend set up her Gmail account.  Her plan was to have all of her other emails forward to the Gmail account so she wouldn’t have to log into so many different sites.  When I initially set up her MSN.com email to forward to Gmail it worked perfectly.

A couple of days ago she told me that the forwarding was no longer working.  So I once more opened her MSN.com email account to the ‘forward mail to another e-mail account’ dialog.  Surprise…the forwarding had been reset to the default ‘Don’t forward’ !

So I set it back to ‘Forward your e-mail to another e-mail account,’ typed in her Gmail address and clicked ‘Save.’  An error message popped up, highlighted in yellow, proclaiming that email would only be forwarded to ‘a custom domain or an email address that ends in hotmail.com, msn.com or live.com.’

I then tried resetting the address to the Gmail address that had worked 11 days previously–FirstnameLastname@gmail.com–which brought up the error message shown above.

Does this represent a change in policy?  Is our only recourse going to be emailing all of her contacts and telling them to please use the new email address?

I can’t hear you…I can’t hear you!!

A woman holds her fingers in her ears to avoid hearing home equity loan ads

It has started again…or perhaps it never really ended…the litany of financial hookers hawking their tarnished wares on radio and tv, in magazines and newspapers…have you heard them?

“Put your home equity to work for you” calls one.

“Free up the savings stored in your home” beckons another.

“Get the credit you deserve” shrieks another while extolling the virtues of a home equity line of credit.

Have we learned nothing in these last few years?  Are we still supposed to think of our homes as a magical lantern with a cash-dispensing Genie inside?

In Greek mythology Homer wrote of the plight of  Odysseus and his shipmates when they had to pass by the treacherous cliffs and rocks inhabited by the sirens.  Supposedly their songs were so seductive that sailors would navigate too closely to the rocks and founder.

In order to avoid this fate, Odysseus had his men tie him to the mast and plug his ears with wax so that he could not succumb to their tempting music and thereby lose his life.

Friends, perhaps it’s time for the rope and wax if we are to save ourselves from repeating this financial shipwreck. Maybe our s1st Century tools will be a good set of noise-canceling earphones and an mp3 player loaded with podcasts by Michelle  Singletary and Suze Orman.  And don’t forget to apply liberal doses of the Mute button on your tv controller when the siren songs begin.

Chuck’s Brain

This site is a place for me to share parts of my life and my brain with anyone who cares about either. Eventually it may include any of the following-

• Retirement: planning for it and (the part I’m now doing) living it, including-
  • Making a budget (not easy if you’re not used to doing it)
  • Living on that budget (same as above, on more so!)
  • Dealing with the expectations of those close to you (since it appears to them you have just ‘inherited a million free hours you don’t know how to spend)
  • Getting things you need or want for free or on the cheap
  • Ditto with giving away things to other who can now make use of them
• Exploring new interests
  • Gardening
  • Being  a 68-year-old artists’ model
  • Snowshoeing
  • Freecycing (hint: has nothing to do with transportation)
  • Dialog on usability (website, software, electronics, and everyday gadgets)
• Accessibility to these same resources, except focusing on those who face specific challenges such as-
  • vision limitations, including blindness and color blindness
  • hearing problems
  • physical coordination and dexterity
  • adult mental limitations including ADD, ADHD, dyslexia
• Our changing relationships with the machines in our lives-
  • the thin line between infatuation and love and between love and disillusionment
  • robots- the Japanese are ready…but are the rest of us

Sometimes I’ll be giving you my opinions; sometimes I’ll be asking for yours (most of the time a combination of the two).

Thanks for visiting!

~Chuck