Ray's X-Blog

For years I’ve been tolerating the same problems with my apartment.  Now someone else would move out but my options are limited with a fixed income, no big bank account, no car.  Also this location is convenient, a short walk to downtown and also on the bus route if I need to travel some distance. Recently I had to spend a few days outside the city at a motel in a semi-civilized area.  There was more for me to do downtown, places I could go and hang out like the library, but to get to downtown that was a one hour – two mile walk usually in the energy-sapping heat.  And the motel location wasn’t a good spot to catch a bus.  My landlord didn't mention he would reimburse me for travel (taxi cab) and meal expenses outside those I could make at home (apartment kitchen was unusable).  (Yes, I kept all my receipts for my out of pocket expenses.)  I made sure that he was paying for the motel room. The motel was OK, standard.  At home I don't have...

Over at his fanzine, Fadeaway, Robert Jennings has mentioned the problem of Too Much Stuff.  TMS occurs when  various items pile up but these items have some value, it's not easy to just toss them out. In Richard's case he is not only a SF/fantasy/OTR fan but also a dealer.  I'm just a fan and while I haven't accumulated the mass Richard has I still have a surfeit of stuff. This is one reason why I haven't moved away from this apartment after suffering through the same problems for decades.  The problems would be fixed – or so it appeared – and I avoided another Big Move. Other people have commented Plattsburgh, NY apartments compared to those in other places are overpriced.  Someone who moved here – and is now leaving – told me that he was upset that he was paying $500 a month for a place that included fleas.  He had to spend more even though he didn't need a lot of space and lived alone. But it looks like I'm going to have to move albeit while st...

Besides uploading this zine to efanzines.com I also send it out via email to subscribers through the TinyLetter newsletter service. As usual with other XR editions #122 was re-formatted for TinyLetter and I thought it was ready to go.  I hit SEND and – nothing.  The newsletter is frozen in the queue.  I get the following message: So I investigated and learned about TL's Omnivore program: “If you are notified that your account was flagged by our abuse prevention system, it doesn’t mean we think you're a spammer. It means that Omnivore has detected something that flagged the account for review. (Omnivore was created to maintain MailChimp’s sending reputation by analyzing vital data to protect the email ecosystem, and now it does the same for TinyLetter.)” I emailed TL about the matter.  I heard back my newsletter/zine was OK and I could send my latest edition.  Curious about the problem I asked what was flagged as being so bad.  But I never got a re...