Email from politician was welcome

I have never been so thrilled about hearing from Mike Braun.

Actually, I hear from Braun daily, along with his November election opponent in the U.S. Senate race, Joe Donnelly.

Somehow, both Mike and Joe have gotten ahold of my email address. And both of them are making the most of it.

Joe usually asks for money; sorry Joe, those of us in the news business do our darnedest to stay an arm’s length away from politics and politicians.

Mike usually tells me how horrible Joe is and frequently reminds me how much he loves our current president.

But this was different: Our email had gotten screwy, and anything short of spam would have been welcome.

It started soon after we got back from vacation.

I had left our desktop Mac in the “sleep” mode for some reason instead of simply turning it off.

And when we returned, there were dozens of emails clogging the mailbox.

Most of them, of course, I’d already gone through, since the computer is in sync with my iPhone. But they clogged the mailbox just the same.

It was only a few days later that the computer started acting a little goofy.

To be specific, no new email was showing up.

It was showing up on my phone. It was showing up when I accessed it via the web browser.

But when I used the regular route — a software called Mail for Mac — I ran into hurdles, insurmountable hurdles.

The computer kept insisting that I had the wrong password to access incoming mail, so I did what anyone of my generation would do: I got out the little notebook where I keep all the passwords, the little notebook that by its very existence undermines the value of passwords in the first place.

Like most folks my age, I have a little trouble — OK, sometimes a lot of trouble — keeping track of all the passwords and pin numbers that have come to occupy space in my brain.

You start with a Social Security number, then add a bank account number, then maybe a corporate tax identification number, then a pin number for the ATM, then an Apple ID number, then a password for Comcast and a password for eBay and a password for PayPal and a password for Amazon and a password for Expedia and a password for Skype and a password for LinkedIn and a password for Pandora and before you know it the only password that comes to mind is Chico Marx saying, “Swordfish” in a movie made generations ago.

So when the computer balked at my email password, I checked the book. (Just as a side reference to any burglars out there who might be interested in stealing my forlorn identity I should let you know that the little book travels with me. Until, that is, I inevitably lose it some place.)

The little book offered the correct password, and I quickly entered it. It did not work.

Nor did it work the second, third or fourth times I entered it.

It didn’t work even after I’d conferred with my wife and she’d checked her little secret book of passwords (you burglars will never find it) and confirmed that I was entering the same set of letters, digits, ampersands and emoticons.

It didn’t work.

The next step was to try accessing email via our web browser. That worked. The password worked. But the Mail for Mac software didn’t recognize us at all.

I unplugged and re-plugged the Comcast modem. (That’s what all the Comcast technicians believe will solve every problem. They also assume we haven’t tried that first.)

It did not work.

What did work, finally, was focusing not on the modem but on the computer itself.

After a series of re-starts and running an Apple disk utility “first aid” program and re-starting yet again,  everything seemed to calm down.

The software began behaving normally. My password — which had been rejected for two or three days — was accepted again.

And the logjam of email was broken.

That’s when Mike Braun showed up, and no matter what his politics I was glad to see him.