Sharon Bowman
Sharon Bowman
This is a tale of wine and computing.
My eyes have not missed the fact that many people hereabouts seem to know one or two things about computer issues. I have one such issue, right now. Do not tell anyone, but I am currently surfing on "borrowed" wifi.
Hold on. I had some wines, too.
NV Larmandier Bernier "Terre de Vertus" - I get a little shudder whenever I come back to the Cte des Blancs. This is the first time I've had this champagne outside the lineup of the producer's other offerings, so it was interesting to see it work its charms on its own, and not be the curious, slightly backward cousin of Vieille Vigne de Cramant. A full and very expressive nose transits into a first flush of chalky chardonnay and then that Vertus weirdness, something a little sunnier and fatter, that slips into a wiry finish. Good lord, nice bubble.
So, here I am using a MacBook purchased just about a year ago, and a 2004 version of Microsoft Office, which of course includes the e-mail program Entourage. Not only is Entourage not compatible with files from the PC program of the same ilk, "Outlook" (this is not usually a problem, but one does wonder why that should be so), but all such programs seem to require ridiculous knowledge, viz. the address of an SMTP server to send outgoing mail.
2004 Paolo Bea Montefalco Rosso "San Valentino" - Ooh, silkily complex, Northern Rhnish wine. (Shh, I know my idiom is France, people; please do work with me, here.) On the palate, this wine, while young, is strikingly vibrant and open. Slightly reductive but just as appealingly tentacular, it stretches out into fruit and forest. It makes me think of a really good Cte Rtie or of an unsulfured Allemand Cornas. Silken fruit. Gorgeous depth.
Now, with my e-mail account, which is French and ends in the tag .fr, I do have the possibility of using webmail. But, oh, my friends, and oh, my enemies! if you should see that webmail site, and the slaughter it does to my outgoing messages (cutting off lines, losing messages because when I hit send it refreshes the page and requests me to enter my password again, etc.), not to mention its pre-technological slowness, you would hold my hand in embittered solidarity. This is why I use Entourage and drink to excess.
1990 Antinori Tignanello - An appealing nose of somewhat matured Bordeaux, here. Let's sip, huh? Oh. Uh-oh. Wow. Square-jawed, lumbering, oaky, candied, spoofy! Spoof city! Am I in Italy or am I in Argentina? Or in Bernard Magrez's back shed?
So, I can enter the account information into Entourage for receiving my mail, and I do this fine. But now, as the identity of the SMTP server of my generously lent wifi connection is unknown to me, I cannot configure outgoing mail. Which means that when I respond to a message from someone, I have to copy and paste into the webmail browser and everything gets jumbled around and takes half an hour and I don't finish my work and creditors are banging on my door.
1971 Chteau Palmer - Who says I never drink Bordeaux? Who says I only drink Bordeaux when I've been wined up with Larmandier-Bernier and some gorgeous Northern Rhnish red? In any event, this was the stuff. The juice. The niceness. The older tobacco-leafy, underbrush, tertiary, leather, lovely, old-plum fineness. Long on the palate and tender. Gorgeous.
Therefore, I get to my question: is there any other way of configuring or discovering an SMTP server so that my life and sanity will be safe and secure? I don't want to configure it to GMail, because that will require me to "send" from the GMail account I will have created only for that purpose, though the "reply-to" address may be my French one. This will confuse everyone and dilute my hard-won sense of self.
Many thanks.
My eyes have not missed the fact that many people hereabouts seem to know one or two things about computer issues. I have one such issue, right now. Do not tell anyone, but I am currently surfing on "borrowed" wifi.
Hold on. I had some wines, too.
NV Larmandier Bernier "Terre de Vertus" - I get a little shudder whenever I come back to the Cte des Blancs. This is the first time I've had this champagne outside the lineup of the producer's other offerings, so it was interesting to see it work its charms on its own, and not be the curious, slightly backward cousin of Vieille Vigne de Cramant. A full and very expressive nose transits into a first flush of chalky chardonnay and then that Vertus weirdness, something a little sunnier and fatter, that slips into a wiry finish. Good lord, nice bubble.
So, here I am using a MacBook purchased just about a year ago, and a 2004 version of Microsoft Office, which of course includes the e-mail program Entourage. Not only is Entourage not compatible with files from the PC program of the same ilk, "Outlook" (this is not usually a problem, but one does wonder why that should be so), but all such programs seem to require ridiculous knowledge, viz. the address of an SMTP server to send outgoing mail.
2004 Paolo Bea Montefalco Rosso "San Valentino" - Ooh, silkily complex, Northern Rhnish wine. (Shh, I know my idiom is France, people; please do work with me, here.) On the palate, this wine, while young, is strikingly vibrant and open. Slightly reductive but just as appealingly tentacular, it stretches out into fruit and forest. It makes me think of a really good Cte Rtie or of an unsulfured Allemand Cornas. Silken fruit. Gorgeous depth.
Now, with my e-mail account, which is French and ends in the tag .fr, I do have the possibility of using webmail. But, oh, my friends, and oh, my enemies! if you should see that webmail site, and the slaughter it does to my outgoing messages (cutting off lines, losing messages because when I hit send it refreshes the page and requests me to enter my password again, etc.), not to mention its pre-technological slowness, you would hold my hand in embittered solidarity. This is why I use Entourage and drink to excess.
1990 Antinori Tignanello - An appealing nose of somewhat matured Bordeaux, here. Let's sip, huh? Oh. Uh-oh. Wow. Square-jawed, lumbering, oaky, candied, spoofy! Spoof city! Am I in Italy or am I in Argentina? Or in Bernard Magrez's back shed?
So, I can enter the account information into Entourage for receiving my mail, and I do this fine. But now, as the identity of the SMTP server of my generously lent wifi connection is unknown to me, I cannot configure outgoing mail. Which means that when I respond to a message from someone, I have to copy and paste into the webmail browser and everything gets jumbled around and takes half an hour and I don't finish my work and creditors are banging on my door.
1971 Chteau Palmer - Who says I never drink Bordeaux? Who says I only drink Bordeaux when I've been wined up with Larmandier-Bernier and some gorgeous Northern Rhnish red? In any event, this was the stuff. The juice. The niceness. The older tobacco-leafy, underbrush, tertiary, leather, lovely, old-plum fineness. Long on the palate and tender. Gorgeous.
Therefore, I get to my question: is there any other way of configuring or discovering an SMTP server so that my life and sanity will be safe and secure? I don't want to configure it to GMail, because that will require me to "send" from the GMail account I will have created only for that purpose, though the "reply-to" address may be my French one. This will confuse everyone and dilute my hard-won sense of self.
Many thanks.