Today I received two emails addressed to myself (that I didn't send) after posting two different responses I made here on the Time Bomb 2000 forum to others' questions. A few days ago I received an automatic message from AOL concerning monthly electronic fund withdrawal for services, which normally comes like clockwork around the 20th of every month -- has for years. It was sent way too prematurely on January 7th. When I tried to email the billing manager to notify them about this, AOL's email service was down. None of these things have ever happened to me previous to the rollover date. Any others experiencing unusual problems that seem obviously out of the ordinary?

-- Patrick Lastella (Lastella1@aol.com), January 10, 2000

Answers

With AOL having just acquired Time-Warner for the tidy sum of $166 billion, maybe all 20 million AOL subscribers are busy sending congratulatory notes to one another...

-- Ed Yourdon (ed@yourdon.com), January 10, 2000.

I feel your pain! Mcafee crashed, ms dos ping returns zero packets, friggin' ZERO!

-- Hokie (Hokie_@hotmail.com), January 10, 2000.

The only AOL problem I had that I ascribe to Y2K was not being able to send to Japan for several days after the rollover. Now it's working.

-- Mara (MaraWayne@aol.com), January 10, 2000.

More like frightened "Did you see what AOL did now?" notes, Ed.

We're familiar with the service, don't own stock in it (are frankly amazed at the stock price) and don't relish the idea of AOL being in charge of CNN, HBO, Time, TNT, et al. If you thought they were more commercially oriented than quality oriented before, hang on to your hats....

-- harl (harlanquin@aol.hell), January 11, 2000.

I haven't used AOL that long, so I'm not 100% sure what is normal. (My primary account is from work but I don't want to use that to post around the net if it's not business related.)

I received email from someone asking a very harmless question that I plan on answering. My name and email address were acquired from this group. I haven't had time to reply yet, so I don't know if the address os legit.. It appears to be.

AOL has been *very* slow at times. Slower than I've observered in the time I've been using it (about 4 mos.).

Other than that, I've not noticed anything out of the ordinary. I've been rather surprised at the lack of junk email I get on AOL. My account from work and another free one I have get lots of junk email.

I very rarely use my credit cards, even when shopping at a real store. So, there wouldn't be anything for someone to find as far as that goes.

Have you seen the article in APB about a hacker that supposedly posted finacial information about quite a few people on his web site? If not, I suggest you read it. Apparently, some people's credit information was used to make false charges.

Regards, Chris

-- Chris Josephson (chrisj62954@aol.com), January 11, 2000.

AOL has been nothing short of a nightmare for me since the rollover. A couple of days past the first and I lost the ability to log on. After a couple of days of this attributing it to AOL, I noticed that some of the AOL files were missing mysteriously. I had to reinstall 4.0 because I had downloaded 5.0 and then log on and download 5.0. Now everytime I turn my computer on it automatically logs me on to AOL. I have taken AOL out of my startup file and also set up AOL to not sign on automatically. Still does it. After countless hours with technicians at AOL they finally told me to reinstall 5.0. I just did that and it still happens.! I am going crazy and ready to chuck AOL out the window! They spent all that money to acquire Time Warner and they can't even fix the glitches on their own software!!!! Sorry had to vent somewhere! LOL

-- Diane (cptlauthor@aol.com), January 11, 2000.