Gremlins

Dispatch 10

I have been typing at my keyboard all day. This is not my favorite thing to do, but it needs to be done if I want a website and a newsletter. I do, so here I am.

When the internet was a baby, I decided I didn’t want much to do with it. I thought it was neat, but I had a lot more interesting things to do in the physical world. Looking at my screen right now, I still can’t say I regret that decision.

But the internet grew up and now, not only do I carry a calculator everywhere I go, but I can also fit a library in my pocket. Take that, fifth grade math teacher. Beyond that, I want to give something back if there’s anyone who wants what I give.

That brings me to the website. Of course I know nothing at all about building a website. What is DNS, anyway? SEO? SSL? Aren’t there enough three-letter organizations in the world? Do they have to take over the web too?

I feel like I have spent the day crawling around a dirty tractor with a flashlight in my hand, trying to figure out why the manure spreader stopped working. Really, I have been crawling around the internet with MX records, servers, and DNS, trying to figure out why the email won’t go through.

ChatGPT has held my hand through this whole process. I had no idea how involved it is. My domain is usually full of old trucks, trees, paths, rivers, and maps. ChatGPT walks me through each step, one at a time, like I’m a child, until all the bolts are tight.

The big test fails. When we get everything connected, the email doesn’t work.

I can send an email, but it doesn’t arrive. No “mailer-daemon” message telling me it’s hit the dead letter office. The gremlins have simply run off with my work. After hours of crawling around looking for the problem, we find that we left out an important step. We forgot to tell the internet where to send it.

I fix the problem, putting lines of code I don’t understand into the program. I schedule my email to send and sleep the sleep of someone who has accomplished something.

The next day I check my email for the scheduled missive. It is not there. What is going on? A frantic search through the programs and several more hours with ChatGPT reveal the problem: the email has been delivered as scheduled… to my spam folder.

There is something a little too funny about a newsletter full of old things and forgotten places being delivered to a spam folder. I want to be angry, but I just can’t. Maybe the gremlins have a sense of humor.

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