Email Ranting
Call me a curmudgeon, but I hate inspirational emails. Last Monday afternoon, when I clicked “Get Mail,” I noticed that 5 emails were incoming. I could see the header for the first one. It said, “Fwd. FW. Fw. If This Doesn’t Make You Smile, Nothing Will.”
I didn’t smile when I saw that the email had been forwarded three times already. I knew it was going to take a while for my dial-up connection to download. I hoped the other four messages didn’t require immediate replies.
Over 4 minutes in, my dial-up connection hung up. I wasn’t smiling. I reconnected and clicked “Get Mail” again. After 3 minutes and 16 seconds I was most definitely NOT smiling. I tried to surf the net while I waited for the download, but the connection was slow. That big email was screwing up everything.
At 4:48 minutes in, I was actively scowling. At 6:50, I was muttering curses. At 8:37 I was wondering when this email hell would end. At 10:09 (a waste of over 14 minutes!), all 2.7 megabites of it (with 28 attachments!)—came in.
The attachments, pictures of cutesy puppies and kittens, didn’t make me smile. I’d seen many of these pictures on various websites before. I didn’t need two sets (!) of them again. I have a bunch of my own cute animals that often make me smile. One of them—Eddie-Puss—was lounging on my desktop as the email came in. I don’t need outside smiling help from animals I don’t even know. Plus, I don’t like getting attachments that have been forwarded all over the place.
A few years ago a virus titled “If This Doesn’t Make You Smile, Nothing Will” was going around. Though that particular virus targeted Windows, I nevertheless ran a virus scan to make sure my Mac hadn’t been hacked by a later version. Only took 3 minutes.
The next day, my dial-up was kept busy for 7 minutes downloading an email from a poet announcing his latest achievement—some kind of award I’d never heard of. Now, if I actually knew this guy, I might be interested. I think he got my email addy from the Virginia Writers Club website, but I’m not sure.
Anyhow, his attached 1.2 MB jpeg was a newspaper article about him. Why did he not post it on his website for all to admire? Why share it with folks over 250 miles from him who don’t know him? Why send it to me when I’d emailed him a few months earlier asking him to remove me from his mailing list.
OK, enough ranting. But if you really want to make me happy, don’t try to make me smile.
I didn’t smile when I saw that the email had been forwarded three times already. I knew it was going to take a while for my dial-up connection to download. I hoped the other four messages didn’t require immediate replies.
Over 4 minutes in, my dial-up connection hung up. I wasn’t smiling. I reconnected and clicked “Get Mail” again. After 3 minutes and 16 seconds I was most definitely NOT smiling. I tried to surf the net while I waited for the download, but the connection was slow. That big email was screwing up everything.
At 4:48 minutes in, I was actively scowling. At 6:50, I was muttering curses. At 8:37 I was wondering when this email hell would end. At 10:09 (a waste of over 14 minutes!), all 2.7 megabites of it (with 28 attachments!)—came in.
The attachments, pictures of cutesy puppies and kittens, didn’t make me smile. I’d seen many of these pictures on various websites before. I didn’t need two sets (!) of them again. I have a bunch of my own cute animals that often make me smile. One of them—Eddie-Puss—was lounging on my desktop as the email came in. I don’t need outside smiling help from animals I don’t even know. Plus, I don’t like getting attachments that have been forwarded all over the place.
A few years ago a virus titled “If This Doesn’t Make You Smile, Nothing Will” was going around. Though that particular virus targeted Windows, I nevertheless ran a virus scan to make sure my Mac hadn’t been hacked by a later version. Only took 3 minutes.
The next day, my dial-up was kept busy for 7 minutes downloading an email from a poet announcing his latest achievement—some kind of award I’d never heard of. Now, if I actually knew this guy, I might be interested. I think he got my email addy from the Virginia Writers Club website, but I’m not sure.
Anyhow, his attached 1.2 MB jpeg was a newspaper article about him. Why did he not post it on his website for all to admire? Why share it with folks over 250 miles from him who don’t know him? Why send it to me when I’d emailed him a few months earlier asking him to remove me from his mailing list.
OK, enough ranting. But if you really want to make me happy, don’t try to make me smile.
posted by Becky Mushko | 10:04 AM
1 Comments:
Hi Becky I feel your pain so here are two solutions.
1. In Outlook (and I am sure it is the same for all email programs) you can go to Tools > Options > Mail Delivery and click the flag "Do not download mails larger than". Now select a sensible size, say 100 kb and you will never be bothered again.
2. Bring your laptop to the finest Coffee House in Smallville, buy a coffee and use our free braodband. Now you can reply to those bothersome emails with a 20 Mbyte picture asking them not to do that again.
Revenge the dish best served cold.
TCB
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