As we gently roll into December, I come to the point in my blog where I begin to reflect. Reflect on the year almost out and the new year about to spark to life. 2007 began with great optimism, more than usual. In fact I will go as far to say that more so than ever, my hopes and dreams and rested on this year. Quite a burden I agree, but it started so well. We even turned bad news into good, before the foggy end to 2006. Within the first month, I was liberated and to a certain extent given the opportunity to be myself. I tried hard, for a few months things went well. There were so many highlights, trips to North London for memorable nights, learning the piano, the curtain raised at Wembley, my first trip clubbing in Central London. Like the advert on television goes, LG – Life’s Good and it was for a while. So where did it all go wrong? It is difficult to pinpoint the precise moment or chain of events. A colleague had predicted much of the domino effect in January but little did I know how much it would affect me directly. I know I should not plan things, only God knows what the future will bring but at times I feel I have not helped matters. Friends move on, no matter how hard I find it to come to grips with. Some friends are gone forever. Another MSN contact is moved from the Work group into Friends. Rather symbolic don’t you think? I find it difficult, extremely difficult to express how I feel in my own words. I have use song lyrics (as I have done throughout the five year history of this blog!). A case in point once again, I would use “The Living Daylights” from the same title James Bond movie. The lyrics are perfect. We are where we are. There is little I can do to change the past, as much as I wish I could travel through time. I have to realise that I must focus my energies on the present and forget about what has been. (Quite hard when you can quite easily look back through rather rose tinted spectacles at the last five years years of your life under almost daily microscope!) So with 2008, very much like the England football, I start with a fresh piece of paper. I must concentrate on work and prove myself. No targets, no big objectives. Try as much to go with the flow? Now back to our schedule programming. Back in August Sky (broadband arm, not the television leg) informed all users that their mail service was porting over to Google. No problem there, I had my own personal Google mail account and thought nothing more of it. When the move took place over early November, we were sent a PDF with full instructions on how to update our e-mail clients. The servers had changed as had the web mail login (with a complete revamp of the entire sky.com web site). While this was not a problem and I was able to change my settings across and eventually pick up my e-mail. (Apparently quite a few people had a problem) I had a major issue. The old SMTP server was fine but the new Google powered server added the following to any e-mails sent out not originating from the Google mail account mail @ t-e-g dot co dot uk on behalf of teg family @ sky dot com address. It just is not practice to send out e-mail with two addresses on the top, particularly as someone could respond to the sky address. An account I do not check regularly. Therefore I headed over to Sky User forum to get some advice. There was quite a few other people reporting the same problem. I had to bite the bullet and purchase a outbound mail service to be able to send my mail. It was just a case of which one? Plenty were recommended. In the end I opted for the DynDNS service. I found it by accident really while speaking to Pav about setting up my own FTP at home. Their Mail Hop Relay service costs $15 a year, which with a strong pound is about £8. I get to send limit of 150 relays per a day, which for me is too much. I rarely send more than five or six e-mails in a good week. Nice to have this issue solved. Now, start to write my action list for the weekend. Set My Hopes Up Way Too High Living’s In The Way We Die