troubleshooting

Troubleshooting is a good skill to have, says my Web developer. Yes I agree. It is a challenge to troubleshoot something when you don't know exactly what you are talking about though. Yesterday, I was knee deep in 'name servers' and DNS and FTP and SMTP and ISP. And strangely I know a lot more today about these once-mysterious three letter 'words'.

Did you know that certain email providers such as cable companies are blocking Port 25 which governs your outgoing e-mail? Well I didn't. But now I do. Did you know that if you can use your ISP to bypass your URL to FTP (but you can't FTP with your URL), then it might be a DNS issue? Did you know that SMTP and FTP problems are unrelated? I was thinking they were. But now I know they're not. Not necessarily.

Three tech calls (Web host, cable company, e-mail provider), two trouble tickets and one case number later, I had the problem fixed. I worked on the problem from 8am to 7pm. Yes I can be dogged. Then we went out for Mexican food. phew. And bought a strange chocolate drink made out of almonds. Really!