You go to a web site, you want to download something and you're required to give an email address, possibly to confirm you're a real person.  In most cases, I create an alternate SMTP address on my mailbox, acknowledge their message and then delete the address from my mailbox.  As an alternative, this site enables you to create any email address and receive messages which can be viewed through their site.  Be warned, EVERYONE can access this email so I would only use it in cases when the received mail is meaningless.

http://www.mailinator.com/index.jsp

If you work in the IT industry, you know regardless of whether or not the issue is on your end, you need to determine the location of the problem in order to prove your innocence.  ;)

When mail issues arise, we use:

http://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx

There are quite a few options on their site but at the very least, you can see if a mail server is blacklisted.

Did you forget to enable RDP to only discover your mistake after you were remote to the machine?  Me too.  If you can get on the network, you can launch the registry editor and then point it to the remote workstation.  Change the following:

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\fDenyTSConnections

Set the value from one to zero.