from rscottjones

Being of the web domain owning type, I naturally use a variety of custom email techniques to make life easier. One of these ways is having an email address that forwards to both my wife and I. This is particularly useful for “shared” accounts, like a streaming service or our internet provider or a hotel rewards program; basically any “simple” account that we both might want access to (especially for 2FA login codes). It’s rarely a problem for it to be a simple email forward, instead of a full-on email account with an inbox and smtp.

After my dad passed away last year, we discovered that he had a small investment account with Vanguard that we had totally missed when we had taken over his finances almost 5 years prior (haha, whoops!). We had assumed the account balance was zero, as the last statement he had added to his file folder indicated, and we never noticed any statement to the contrary. But alas, there was indeed a balance; not much, but enough to spend the time to claim. We’re guessing that he had accidentally switched to electronic statements, and well, those must have all gone to his spam folder for the last decade or so.

Jen was handling much of the paperwork after his passing¹, but as the heir, I’d need to complete a bunch of the tasks to claim the money. We normally use separate email accounts for financial stuff, but this was just going to be a simple “send me whatever funds are in the account and close it” type request, so I used a shared email address. That way, I could take care of the transfer and she could still have access later for any other paperwork and tax reasons.²

Well, the transfer process was much, much more of a hassle than it seemed like it should have been, and I ran into roadblock after roadblock, error after error, run-around after run-around. Thoroughly frustrated, I gave up and just opened my own Vanguard account, which allowed me to transfer the funds much easier, for what seemed like dark pattern reasons. Whatever, at least it’s done.

Fast forward a year and we haven’t done anything with the account. But I get lots of email about it. Countless marketing messages and account updates and blah blah blah. There’s seemingly no way to unsubscribe on the email message, and there are no account settings that I can find that govern these types of email notifications either. The messages simply ask you to email them if you want to change your settings:

If you prefer not to receive emails of this type, simply email us. Please do not reply to this message to opt out.

The word email is a custom “mailto:” link, which must have some account-specific tracker. But unfortunately, that means that I need an actual email account, not simply an email forward.

This is frustrating; they should have a web-based way of turning this stuff off, too. But I get why you need to email from the actual account email address for basic security reasons.

Unfortunately, this means I have to establish a full email account for that shared email forwarding address, which is going to require a whole bunch of steps.

But, I’m sick enough of getting these emails and figure I may run into this issue in the future, so I start the process. I set up the website on my email hosting service that allows me to send properly encoded emails from your site. Part of that verification process involves, naturally, changing some of the DNS records at my domain registrar.

So I head over the registrar and add the various records. Then wait a few minutes, click verify and…well, looks like I need to wait a bit longer for the records to propagate. So I set an alarm, and come back and try again. Nope, not ready yet, apparently. Rinse and repeat, many times. Gah, I’ll check again tomorrow. Nope—still not working. So I delete and re-enter the records, and try again the next day.

Still not working. Gah!!

Oh shit, I know why! I set the nameservers to my hosting company even though I don’t have site up for that domain. So I was changing the records at the wrong place.

Ok, let’s try this again. I log in to the hosting company and start adding the records there. I click verify, and wait, come back later to click verify again, still no. Wait a few more hours and try again. Nope. Repeat that waiting process for the next several hours. Delete the records and try again. Still a big fat error.

Sigh. So I give up for the day.

The next day, I’m back at it. I can’t believe this thing isn’t working. Why am I still using this fucking company?!!

And then I notice. I had changed the DNS records of the wrong domain at the hosting company. Now, it’s a very similar domain name to the one I needed to change, so perhaps an easy mistake to make if you’re rushing and already irritated. But also: it’s the wrong one. Of course it wasn’t working.

I added the records to the correct domain, and voilà—it immediately works. IT WORKS!!!

So now I had the email set up, I just had to wait for Vanguard to email me again so I can click that damn unsubscribe link. All that work, and I’m finally to the point where it finally, finally pays off.

And then, just a day later, Jen comes into my office with a suggestion. We have an investment account that we opened for my bestie’s daughter. We “tax” ourselves every major trip we take (plus birthdays), and invest the money on her behalf, so that her daughter can take a gap year or at least a big trip after high school.

Jen suggestion is that we keep the Vanguard account, and use it for the daughter’s travel account instead of the one we currently have it in. That would make things easier, as we can then more easily designate the daughter as a beneficiary of the entire account in our wills, and it’ll make record-keeping easier for us, too.

Which makes complete sense. But it also means that ALL OF MY WORK WAS WORTHLESS. Because we’ll still need to get those damn emails.

It looks like there are still nearly a dozen obvious AI clones of my kayaking guidebook on Amazon.

Each of them features:

• an improbable title (often with multiple colons),
• an author name with a middle initial (many with a misplaced period), - a photo that’s very clearly not the Salt River
• they’re all much longer than you would expect for a normal guidebook (122-124 pages), except that it mimics the length of my own (I included a lot of additional information and history that few guidebooks would incorporate)
• they’re all listed at $11.95 or $12.95 paperbacks (mine is a $4.69 ebook).

I give the book away for free on my website if you join the email list for the Alliance of Salt River Paddlers, so it’s pretty obvious how they got the copy to run thru an LLM.

I didn’t write it to make money, and it’s not clear that anyone has actually bought one of the clones. But I still find it annoying. And I wonder how many other small author ebooks are cloned this way.

Here comes the haboob!!

I rode my bike here, so guess I’ll be staying for another round or two 🍻

edit: and…it’s officially blocked out the sun.