(Continued from page 1) -The Brabec Bulletin SAMPLER

GMAIL: One Solution—
but Read the User Agreement!

I recently had to stop using an email address I had successfully protected for ten years when a hacker got into the web server where my domain was hosted and started sending email through my website’s URL.

In writing about this experience in my Bulletin, a reader sent that issue on to her son, who replied to her, and then she sent his reply on to me. He wrote: "I believe her problems are typical when using anything that has the name Microsoft attached to it. First they don't support standards, but break them instead. For example, the email name would not have been a problem if she weren't using Outlook. A lot of the problems with spam are related to MS not following STANDARD practice in the beginning. The Internet standards are specified and very clear, but MS has regularly ignored them for quick turnaround on their products. The consequence is lots of viral infections and SPAM as well."

His advice to me was to get rid of Outlook as my email client and run all my email through Google instead. I have no problems with Outlook because I have a powerful anti-virus/spam/spyware/firewall program, but his remarks finally prompted me to investigate Google’s free email service.

Everyone seems to LOVE gmail, and I agree that Google is offering a great service here to people who don't have a website or good email client, but don’t think that Google is offering this service for any reason other than profit. I agree that Microsoft products have a lot of flaws, but after forty years in business with twelve of them on the Web using MS software, I’m not about to switch to a MAC like some friends have suggested, or stop using Outlook. Change of any kind has always been hard for me, but especially hard now given my age. My rule is and always has been, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

I did finally get a gmail address, but as for using Google instead of Outlook to manage my correspondence, I don't like Google's User Agreement that gives them the right to use one's private email content. I don't want my correspondence anyplace where I can't control it. I wonder how many gmail users have actually read this clause in Google's User Agreement:

<<< You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty free, and non exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.>>>

Maybe I’m reading this wrong, but I take "submitted content" to be email messages being stored on their server. As an author, I'm already upset with how Google has violated copyright laws, so I'll stick with the devil I know rather than one I distrust where my intellectual property is concerned. I am using a gmail address now, but I'm downloading mail from that address into Outlook where I can control it and my replies to it.

Chuckles in the Junk Mail Box

I sometimes wonder just how dumb foreign junk mailers think we are here in the states. I occasionally read a message in my junk box just to see what's happening out there (which is how I first learned my good email address had been hijacked), and every once in a while I find one that cracks me up, like this one (reproduced exactly as written):

"My name is Mr. Mike Barry I am an FBI foreign agent we discover your funds the sum of $8.5m, all I need from you now is to provide me your home address and telephone number and also let me know how you need your funds, is it check or cash? You can call me now for more details: +234-8032261818 Waiting for your urgent respond."

Oh, I’ll be very quick to respond to such an enticing offer, Mr. FBI foreign agent. And cash will be just fine, thank you very much!

Pruning Your Life

One morning as I sat in my patio enjoying my new backyard landscape after having worked with my landscaper to remove a hedgerow of forsythia bushes, I suddenly saw a connection to pruning those bushes from my life and just pruning my life in general. Wondering if others had something to say about "pruning your life," I searched for that phrase and turned up a wonderful blog by Laura Filbert, a professional writer and creative event coordinator whose creativity is well expressed in her articles. Two of her articles really spoke to me that day. One was on how to use music to increase creativity, something I've done all my life. The other was on the topic of pruning one’s life to encourage growth. In this article, Laura said, "Just as it is healthy to prune trees so that they may grow, we also need to prune our lives so that we can make way for new ideas, growth and opportunities."

Aha! I thought. That was exactly what I needed to hear at that time. Earlier in the year, I had announced that I was withdrawing from active involvement in the crafts and home-business industries so I could focus on writing and publishing books I had been dreaming about for years. I didn’t look at it like this at the time, but I had already started to prune my life then to make it simpler and easier as I grow older. The older we get, the more important it is to rid our lives of things that are stressing us, taking more time than we want to give them, or are simply becoming a burdensome physical responsibility.

My literary agent, Barbara Doyen, who also loves to work in her yard, put it like this: "This summer I ended up getting rid of quite a lot of flowers and shrubs plus a couple small trees. Just too much for me to keep up with. I commented to my husband that it was bad that I'd even think of destroying beds I'd nurtured for 25 years, and he said not to think of it as destroying them but of redesigning the landscape. It was the perfect thing to say as I love to design and it reframed my attitude."

Yep, 2010 was the year I redesigned my landscape, reframed my attitude, and made room for new ideas to grow. How about you? Is it time to do a little pruning in your life?

Yogi Berra Wisdom

As I continue to learn new things as a widow and entrepreneur, I remain in awe of the kind of things that happen each time I take ONE step in a new direction, meet a new person, ask questions, or ponder my options in one area of life or another. Every new thing I’ve ever learned or done has usually led to something else that came as a surprise, and everything I've been learning and doing lately has been leading me in unexpected new directions as an individual, writer, and business owner on the Web. Sometimes these new steps have saved me money; other times they have paved the way to new income opportunities.

The new ideas that present themselves as I continue to move through life are sometimes mind-boggling to me, and I often recall this great tip from Yogi Berra: "When you come to a fork in the road, take it."

Lately, in observing how everything everywhere is changing on a daily basis, I've decided that Yogi was years ahead of his time when he wryly observed that "The future ain't what it used to be."

After sharing a couple of my favorite Yogi Berra quotes in my Bulletin, Louise Saulnier sent this message:

"When the work day is quickly rolling by and I haven't finished what I wanted to do, I'm reminded of another of Yogi's quotes: ‘It's getting late early tonight.’ It makes me giggle and I realize that I'm not the only one in this predicament. It also makes me realize that the work will still be there tomorrow. Thanks to Yogi's wisdom, I don't sweat the small stuff anymore."

Do you know that there is an official Yogi Berra website? As the site proclaims, Yogi "has moved from a giant in the sport to a cultural icon, whose ‘yogi isms’ are quoted by everyone from young children to Presidents of the United States."

If you have enjoyed this Sampler and learned something from it, then I urge you to join my mailing list now so you can receive future Brabec Bulletins by email. Please tell your friends about it, too. Thanks!

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