I'm truly pleased to have met you. You seem to have limitless energy and obviously an extremely high typing speed. The speed with which you identified me, went through my websites, replied to my e-mail and posted it here is truly amazing.
We exist in a world where hardly anyone makes the effort to do anything unless there's a gun at their head (figuratively), and here you are, a ball of limitless ingenuity and determination. I'm still amazed... it has not yet sunk in.

Here's the e-mail I sent in reply, for all the world to also see:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Greetings Andre!
I didn't realize that Google had already listed that very new e-mail address for everyone to use to back-track to find my identity. Top marks for ingenuity, perseverance and speed and detail of reply! :-)
You must have spent almost all the time since I e-mailed you in going right through my website. You have my sympathy... it's not very interesting, as you found out by following all those links to all those little pages I've added at different times. I hope you had a look at all my photos of Sydney.... it took a lot of walking and going out on the harbour to get those. However I don't remember any Irish jokes on my website. Where are they?
I really am impressed with your reply, and the amount of research of my website(s) you put into it. I really mean it. Thank you.
I looked for "armitage" at www.thefreedictionary.com but it only said: "Word not found in the Dictionary. Did you mean: Ermita Amita ?". I'm not sure if it's complementary or an expression of your indignation at my e-mail.
Getting back to the original subject, you as a website developer must know that links right at the bottom of a web page to the site developer almost always take a visitor to some outside company who made the website for the company who owns it. The idea of contacting you via that link never occurred to me.
And getting even more to the original subject, your e-mail which is so full of details of my website, a lot of which I'd forgotten is still there, doesn't venture any explanation as to why it is that after I signed up with your esteemed file-forwarding service, attempting to log in only takes me to the main page again.
Surely your site isn't there to collect e-mail addresses to sell to the American Spammers you know I detest so vigorously for forcing me to use unreliable outside e-mail companies in Russia because my own are no longer usable, from getting hundreds of spams every day? You really do provide a file forwarding service, don't you? If so, please tell me how to make it let me log in and use it. If it works well, I sincerely promise that I'll put a link with some really nice words to it, somewhere near Hurstville Bedding. Their mattresses truly are fantastic, by the way. It saved me from becoming unable to walk or drive my car. And the fish and chips from Carlton Seafood are superb or I wouldn't have driven there with my Olympus C-350 camera to get that photo.
I look forward to hearing from you again. People with your determination and unusual approach are far too rare! I mean it. Thanks again.

Best wishes,
Bob (Parker)
[no tatoo under beard]

Huh. Now I like both you AND Bob both more than I did before I read this.

My respone for completeness:

Bob!

First of all, thank god people still have senses of humor. I know nothing about you, and I just had my morning coffee so I thought I'd be extra absurd for fun. I am always confused by the threat of someone not using something I made that I offer for free. If this was a business, I'd want to retain you as a customer, but since I get no money for my efforts, I like to have a little fun. Like I said in my post on my web site, I like to think of my site as an unmanned water cooler in the middle of the desert.

I was referring to the Irish joke you told in the first email. I have an aversion to jokes at the expense of other people's ethnic or racial background. I just don't like them. No big deal.

And I must disagree with you regarding your website. I am a fan of anyone who maintains and crafts a website as you have done. I am also an admirer of kit builders and electronics. As a programmer I understand the desire to make things and learn how things work.

Anyway, to answer your question, there are probably a few reasons why your account isn't working. Do you block cookies in your browser? Which browser are you using? We know that lots of people have problems using the service on IE browsers before IE 5.5. Something about their handling of cookies. Also, if you do have another browser on your machine, try logging in with that to make sure your account information is working.

Finally, if you don't mind, could you mail us the password you used to sign up? I can verify that it is the password we have in our database.

Have a good day, and please email me back so we can solve your log-in problem.

Andre

Ahh, case closed, Bob's browser was blocking cookies. All is well.

I love a happy ending.

Forget the whole dropload debacle; I'm still offended by that Irish joke - precisely because that WOULD drive me crazy.

Andre's comments have once again alerted me to the fact that the same thing can have a very different meaning/significance in a different country. Down here in Australia, there's no malice intended in "Irish" jokes. It's just a fun thing. However I can fully understand that in another society which has evolved in a slightly different direction, the same thing could be seen as intolerant and bigoted. Therefore in future I'm going to make those kind of jokes into spammer jokes. I can't imagine them being offensive to anyone but spammers, and they have no friends anyway except other spammers. Also I'll have to re-think my "Spammers' Hall Of Lame" web page. I don't wish it to be seen to have an anti-American bias, because most of my internet friends are in the USA. It's an expression of my frustration that the US authorities appear to have no interest in the fact that spam from there is completely destroying e-mail not only for Americans, but people around the entire planet to whom that spam is absolutely irrelevant, even if they were interested in the scams being pushed.
Thank you for reading this. You are very patient!

This is the weirdest tech support thread I've ever read.

Thank you both! That just made my day at work dealing with idiots a little funnier.

Now I'll going to be giggiling to myself all day while remembering your one-acts.

As far as there being no malice intended by the Irish jokes, I'm sure there's no malice intended by some Americans' use of Darkie jokes, either, but that doesn't make it kosher. Or funny, for that matter.

speaking of darkie jokes, did you hear the ... oh, wait, that's in bad taste isn't it? ok, so there's this family act... [wmv, nsfanyone]

Oh. My. God.

Andre&Bob vs the Spammers

hih hih..

i'm weird

Love it.

that was the best reading fun i've had on a comments section of a blog in a some time.

oh, "What a joke." i get it now.

i like how bob, in one email exchange, goes from clearly trying to insult you to kissing your ass.

the rule for racist jokes is if you're going to tell a racist joke you better make sure it's funny first.

Yep, that's what I was doing for sure. It's just so obvious. Have a nice day.

Y'know, I read it that way as well. But it was resolved nicely, so no worries.

Funny thread. :)

Thanks to everyone for visiting my website (which now contains two links to Dropload). Disappointing, wasn't it? :) All records for visitor traffic have been broken since this bizarre discussion started. I still have no idea what "Armitage" is all about, despite a considerable amount of web searching. Note to Andre: obviously e-mails between you and me are routinely vanishing in transit, probably thanks to over-sensitive spam filtering. It's been nice meeting you. Dropload is great. If in the future you think I can help you with something electronic, you know my e-mail address. Bye for now.

Not THIS is a blog! Nice going chaps!

Armitage!!!
Bob, armitage dude... armitage.. woohoo!!

i needed this laugh today.

TEH ARMITAGE!!!

do you do mostly web dev or application programming?

Amitage!

Since this discussion died down, Dropload has gotten me out of several difficult situations.
The best time was when my company was submitting an entry for a business award competition. I posted the 6MB of files on a CD-R disc to the competition people just two days before the closing date.
The disc was held up in the mail, so I sent the files to them through Dropload instead. We got to be a finalist in the competition because of this. I was delighted!
Thanks again Andre. :)