It was bad planning on my part to find myself in the air on the way to Washington DC the day after two of my favourite companies, Apple and Leica, both announced new things. It turned out to be a day from hell in other respects. A delayed flight, a two-hour line for passport control and then another 90 minutes stuck in a monumental traffic jam on the Beltway. It was then straight into a pre-arranged barbecue for 20 people at my hosts’ home in suburban DC. No time for work, no time for even catching up on what Apple had been up do.
Before going to bed I logged in to Reeder to check what had been happening in the world only to find I had been locked out of Google Reader and Reeder could not connect. Feeling extremely frustated I decided to call it a day.
This morning, bright an early, I received an email from Google to say my access had been blocked because someone had tried to log in from Verizon in Washington DC. This has never happened before and I have logged in around the world, including recently in Beijing. Curious. After going through the usual hoops I reconnected and was immediately flooded with some 400 news stories missed on Tuesday. I sent a load to Instapaper for later browsing but then discovered I was locked out of Instapaper. Things could only get worse. For some reason my Instapaper account seems to have been blocked. I have been sending my monthly subscription to Marco for ages but, suddenly, nothing works.
I then discovered my account flagged as “inactive” on all my devices and I was directed to the App Store where new subscription options appeared. I assume all this is something to do with Marco selling off Instapaper, so I tried to buy a new sub only to have the request rejected. I am still waiting and cannot do any useful work until I get all the feeds. Frustrating, to say the least.
Probably all this is coincidence but I have written off Tuesday, July as just one of those days. A Tuesday from hell. I will now see what Wednesday brings.
LATER, AFTER STRONG COFFEE: I found I could still access my Instapeper account in Safari, went in and confirmed my details and pretty soon after that the iOS apps started communication. I have no idea what the problem was.