A few MSDN Forums tips (which I learned the hard way - as usual)

I have grown dependant on the MSDN Forums not only as a place to get my own questions answered (as well as to try to give back and answer some questions) but also for learning by questions that other people are asking. Those really help me to think out of the box.

Tip #1: Can't Log In
For the past few days, I was unable to get into the MSDN forums and I was really frustrated. I guess I've become a little dependant?

Finally I tried on a different computer and got on immediately, which was a good clue that the problem lay on the original box. I'm not sure if it was because it was still morning and the caffeine was still making me bright and alert, but I got the bright idea to take a look in the forum that is for bugs & feedback on the forums themselves [ MSDN Forums: Feedback for forums and MSDN websites: Bug Reports for Forums website].

There I learned that two days ago, a service pack had been applied on the forums and some people, like myself, were experiencing login issues. The solution was to clear out the cookies in your browser. While many sites recommend this as their first line of fixing a problem, I hardly ever clear out my cookies as it means having to relogin to frequently visited sites. But for this purpose it was worth it and did the trick.

Tip #2: Not getting alerts

I have never gotten alerts from the forums and just wrote it off and stopped clicking the checkbox that is supposed to do this.

While I was in the bugs forum, I noticed a post under announcements titled "I am not getting Alerts. Help?". A popular "problem" with almost 11,000 views! Reading it, I discovered that by default, the alerts go to MSN Messenger, however you can change the settings to go to email. But that's what mine was set to do (go to email). So why do I never get the emails?

Another step in the instructions is to check out your MSN Alerts settings at alerts.msn.com/alerts/myalerts.aspx. When I got to that page, I saw that the alerts were turned off.