A farewell to email
For those of you who are confused and thrown off by all these new words here on the main page, let me explain by saying that I did not plan to update the site today. I got all comfortable in my office chair to go through email but soon realized that I can't for reasons that I will detail below. So, rather than do something else, I figured I might as well throw a new post up.
Luckily I won't have to deal with these email woes anymore because I hereby renounce electronic mail. Unfortunately I'm awful at talking on the phone (who knew that was something you could be bad at) and am too lazy to write letters, so I think that leaves smoke signals and the telegraph for future correspondence. I know, it sounds inefficient and possibly dangerous, but once you hear the events of the past week you will agree that I really need to just give up on this whole email thing:
MONDAY
My friend T. BCC'd me on an email she'd sent to a girl who used to be a friend of mine. They'd recently had a falling out and T. wanted to get my input on her response to Former Friend. I gave her my very, very honest opinion and hit Send. But something didn't feel right. So I checked my Outbox right before the note was about to be sent. Ah, yes. I had replied to all. So that could have been, uh, really bad.I went to investigate how this could have happened. After all, I don't usually make stupid mistakes like that. I quickly found that I no longer have a Reply button in Outlook. Seriously. How does a Reply button just disappear? The fact that the Reply to All button is now in its place is setting me up for some serious social conflict.
TUESDAY
I check my Qurb spam folder and sift through 817 spams to try to catch any legitimate emails. Unless friends have started emailing me about Cialis and girls who like to **** **** in the ********* it was all spam. I go to my computer two hours later to find that I have 280 new spam emails. I also get a voicemail from someone I met at a social event who'd emailed me but never heard back, her email obviously lost in the depths of my Qurb folder.Meanwhile, most people using Hotmail, MSN and some other carriers don't get email from me at all. My main email account is on a blacklist ever since a spammer used it as his reply-to address a few months ago.
WEDNESDAY
I wake up to 593 new spam emails. I email J. to whine about this but my email won't send. I check my Outbox to see that none of my emails have been sent since Monday night. I immediately start cursing my server and start to investigate what the problem is.After torturing my server for hours trying to get my email to send I realize that it is not an issue with my server at all. I then blame my laptop. Nothing works. I slam my fist onto the keyboard in frustration and dislodge the Shift key. Meanwhile, I can still receive email so I communicate with J. by writing him messages using the "Tell A Friend" feature for Buttafly articles. So all my emails to him have the subject "Jennifer has sent you an article from Buttafly.com!"
THURSDAY
About 3,000 Google searches later I determine that SBC has prevented me from sending email from non-SBC accounts. It's a free feature that comes with their DSL package called "Surprise! We Started Blocking Port 25 and Didn't Tell You About It!"I dig out my last bill and call the 800 number for tech support. An automated message tells me that the number has been changed to a 900 number and it will cost $19 to call it. I curse SBC and vow to switch to cable as soon as possible but decide to go ahead and pay the ridiculous fee to get them to stop blocking the port on my account. After one ring I hear a garbled recording of some music and a woman talking in a low, husky voice. I decide I like the new ambiance of the tech support line. Nice touch. As usual I'm tuning out what she's saying and just waiting to hear what number I need to push if I'm using Windows. But then I hear something about "pleasure" and "fantasies" and realize that I am probably not on the phone with SBC. So, $19 later, I see that I transposed the last two digits of SBC's 800 number.
Anyway, I'll spare you the rest of the story since it just involves a lot of listening to hold music and trying to understand SBC tech support over a patchy connection to India just to have them tell me I can't make that request over the phone. But I think that you will all agree that I am just not meant to use email anymore.
Meanwhile, until I get set up with smoke signals or carrier pigeons or something, those of you who know me might want to keep me off emails sent to multiple recipients for a while since my tendency to talk smack doesn't mix well with the new placement of my Reply to All button.
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Hilarious. Great!