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By: Susan Goldfein / Susan’s Unfiltered Wit<br />
Are you reluctant to share your age? Are<br />
you reluctant to share your email address?<br />
If you answered “yes” to the first question, and<br />
“no” to the second, and are an AOL user, you’re<br />
screwed!<br />
According to popular wisdom proffered by millennials, if AOL appears<br />
after the @, you’re fat, over 80, a technology dinosaur and live in the<br />
suburbs. Furthermore, AOL users are clinging to an antique and should<br />
never be taken seriously.<br />
About anything. Because we’re blithering idiots.<br />
Back in the day, if you wanted an email account and internet access,<br />
AOL was it. Their disks were everywhere, free for the taking.<br />
So we took. It was simple to establish an account, and soon the little<br />
yellow man was running across the computer screen, assuring you that<br />
your dial-up was working.<br />
That’s when I began using AOL. I did have a free “Hotmail” account<br />
for a while, but true to its name, it flooded my inbox with enticing ads<br />
for penile implants, pills to enhance my sexual prowess, and numbers<br />
to call if I was interested in a three-way. Eventually, Hotmail left me<br />
cold.<br />
Despite the fact that AOL email shaming is rampant, I won’t be<br />
intimidated. So to people who say, “Why do you still use AOL?” I say,<br />
“Why not?”<br />
If something’s been working for 20 years, why change? Why go<br />
through the trouble of contacting every person and entity you know or<br />
have been doing business with for two decades?<br />
AOL has good security, adequate storage, spam protection, friendly<br />
interface, and access to mail on my other devices. Do I really need<br />
By: Heather Latimer / Heather’s Self-Help Tips<br />
An aged lady complained to me that she was<br />
forced to ask a neighbor to get her mail<br />
from a cluster box at the end of the dead-end road<br />
on which she lives. I promised to look into the<br />
matter and thereafter inquired at the post office on her behalf.<br />
The postmaster informed me that there is a Hardship Mail Delivery<br />
Program. This may be made available to someone who is disabled,<br />
lives alone and has difficulty collecting mail due to a steep driveway or<br />
faraway location of the box.<br />
There is no preprinted application form so you must follow the below<br />
procedures instead:<br />
1. Ask your doctor to write a statement confirming your mobility<br />
problem and why it makes access to your mailbox unsafe.<br />
2. Write your own note giving the location of the offending mailbox<br />
plus your name, address, phone number, and email (if you have one)<br />
and attach it to the doctor’s letter<br />
3. Place both in an envelope with a stamp on it and send to the:<br />
Postmaster, United States Postal Service, Las <strong>Vegas</strong>, Nevada.<br />
18<br />
Is Your Email Address Telling on You?<br />
Mailbox Out of Reach<br />
August 20<strong>19</strong><br />
more? If someone invents an email account that vacuums and washes<br />
windows, I might consider switching.<br />
I am aware that cooler alternatives to AOL do exist, like the popular<br />
“gmail.” But I find Google so pushy. They always want to know where I<br />
am and are constantly offering to store my passwords.<br />
Frankly, I think they’re up to something. And what makes Google so<br />
cool anyway? Big deal that everyone shows up for work wearing T-shirts.<br />
And there’s “Yahoo.” But do I really want an email address that has<br />
the resonance of a drunken cowboy slapping his horse?<br />
Therefore, I will stand up to the derision, keep my AOL and continue<br />
to take comfort from the familiar voice informing me that I’ve got mail.<br />
But I can foresee a time in the future, perhaps when I meet my<br />
maker, that I might have to switch. Because in heaven, the only choice<br />
may very well be the “Cloud.”<br />
Susan Goldfein’s newest book, How to Complain When There’s<br />
Nothing to Complain About, is available at Amazon.com, BN.com,<br />
Read her blog at: www.SusansUnfilteredWit.com. Email Susan:<br />
SusanGoldfein@aol.com.<br />
A postal official will visit to determine if your condition warrants<br />
Hardship Service. Also s/he will check the exterior of your residence to<br />
determine a suitable site for a personal mailbox to become a fixture.<br />
Those details will be relayed to the USPS regional office and, if approved,<br />
installers will mount a mailbox close to your door.<br />
Heather Latimer is a nationally recognized specialist in making<br />
difficult subjects easy and author of 17 books. Her biography, and<br />
latest non-fiction “How To Overcome Once-Easy Tasks That Are Now<br />
Pains In The You-Know-What,” can be found at: amazon.com/<br />
heatherlatimer/howtoovercomeonceeasy.
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