stupid yahoo

I've been using Yahoo mail for almost 10 years now. For some reason, when I first signed up for an account, I had an email address that was different from my actual login name. It's been long enough now that I can't quite remember the reason why. It was either because there was some sort of glitch that prevented me from using the same for both, or maybe after signing up for a login, I changed my mind about my email. I don't know. It's not that important. The point is, I've been using Yahoo mail for a long time. It is my primary email account and I rely on it for many things.

Anyways, for the past couple years (give or take a few months), we've had DSL service through AT&T, which is partnered with Yahoo. This allowed me to 'merge' my Yahoo with the AT&T service and gave me access to some of their premium services. I thought nothing of doing this when it was offered, and in fact, had done the same thing when we had DSL in Austin. Well, we recently switched to Verizon's new FIOS service (which, by the way, is super sweet) and cancelled the DSL. That was over a month ago now. The other day, I got a warning that I was no longer subscribed to AT&T and would have to unmerge my account. No biggie, right? Well, yesterday, Troy points out to me that my emails are coming from a different address now, my login name @yahoo. I think, hmm, that's odd, poke around my yahoo settings, and think well, no big deal. Then today, I discover that my original email address has been completely disabled and all emails sent to it are bouncing. What the hell?! I'm guessing that this stems from the 'unmerging' although I really can't figure out why they would do that. I'm still waiting for a response from yahoo's tech support.

In the meantime, my options were to use the login name email (which I hate because it's a random combination of numbers and letters that most would probably interpret as fake/spam), or to just change to something else entirely. Being the bitter and vindictive type that I am, willing to cut off my own nose to spite my face, I opted for the latter. So I got to spend the better part of my afternoon migrating to my shiny new Gmail account, entering contacts, emailing people to let them know I'd switched, and then changing everything else I've ever registered for as well. Ugh. What a pain in the ass!

And can I just say? Gmail is weird. I'm so used to the Yahoo mail format that I think it's really going to take me a while to get used to another format. I'm also annoyed because my name is common enough that I don't think I will ever be able to have an address of myname @whatever without having a long series of numbers after it. I guess I should be glad I married someone with an uncommon and unwieldy name.

On the plus side, I suppose I should mention that sending out a mass email to update contact info is always a nice excuse to get back in touch with people. I heard back from people that I hadn't talked to in a while, and it was really nice to reconnect.