Early in this oddyzee we mentioned how most cyber cafes only allow the use of their computers. Occasionally we find an exception, and when we do we go to get our Internet business taken care of. Last week's update was sent out just after we got into Ireland, where we'd found a cyber cafe in Donegal that allowed us to plug in. Incoming mail and web site updates merrily flew through the wires, but outgoing mail was refused by our Earthlink server (for our techie friends, the message was "relay denied"). We had a similar problem in Glastonbury (where the server wouldn't respond at all), and when we complained to Earthlink, we got a reply that said something about spam protection. "If you're using an Earthlink dial-up line, you can't send mail through another server such as yahoo, hotmail, etc." They got the problem bass ackwards, as we couldn't get to the Earthlink server while connected through some other ISP. At any rate, their spam protection doesn't seem to be working, as about 50% of our incoming mail is now spam (insert sound bytes from appropriate Monty Python routine here).

Perhaps this public flaming will inspire Earthlink to solve these problems, otherwise we must once again go shopping for yet another dial-up provider. Anyone who plans to suggest AOL or any subsidiary of Satan ... er, Microsoft ... can save their electronic breath.