SharePoint 2010 Email Alerts do not get sent

I configured SharePoint 2010 and setup SMTP connectors to my Exchange 2010 server.   When I setup alerts to SharPoint 2010, it sends the email that an alert has been setup but SharePoint does not send any notifications.

I also configured SharePoint for Incoming Email and setup the drop folder at the default location, but the emails just sit in the drop folder and are not processed by the SharePoint 2010 Server.   Any help would be greatly appreciated as I have tried just about anything.

For reference on how I set up the SMTP connectors to Exchange 2010 I followed these steps:

incoming: http://sharepointgeorge.com/2010/configuring-incoming-email-sharepoint-2010/

outgoing: http://sharepointgeorge.com/2010/configuring-outgoing-email-sharepoint-2010/