The Wonderful World of E-mail

Email has morphed into one of those things that, much like Blackberries for some people, we as a society are growing to become increasingly dependent upon. Back in the old days of the internet, email was intended to be an interoffice messaging service. It’s no secret that email is far from secure. In fact, many experts will tell you that sending an email is likened to sending a post card in the mail. Yet every day I will receive emails full of sensitive information, and/or including attached documents with personal information. As a general rule, I don’t send out emails with any sensitive information in it.

Anyways, back to the original intent for this blog. I’m not going to preach on email security, or ethics, or etiquette because we’d be here all night long. I have a hell of a time telling a short story as it is. This is just a story that happened to me that I found humorous. This isn’t a lesson teaching blog, just something to think about next time you fire off that next email. Here we go:

About a week ago I received a web seminar invitation via email. I’m not sure how many of you use Outlook as your primary email program, but for those who don’t, an invitation just lets you add certain events, or meetings to your calendar so you get a reminder when that day comes. It’s a decent feature, but I hardly ever use it. When you receive an invitation, you have the option of “accepting” the invitation, at which time the event will go in your calendar as mentioned. You can also reply and forward the invitation much like a regular email. In fact, this particular invitation was actually forwarded to me, as in I wasn’t part of the original email list that received these. The lady down the hall thought it might be something I would want to attend, so she forwarded it to me.

Now as much as I enjoy web seminars (about as much as I enjoy listening to Sean Hannity), this particular one applied to my department about as much as the migration habits of the humpback whale. I wanted to reply back to the lady (with whom I have a great working rapport) with a witty reply, but when I hit reply, I immediately noticed the original author’s email address in the TO: line. I canceled this out, and hit Forward, instead. I then typed in my reply which was something to the effect of “I’d love to attend this webinar, but I’ll be too busy counting the holes in the ceiling tiles”. I fired it off and waited for a reply. The reply never came, but I wasn’t too concerned.

Today, the lady that sent me the forwarded invitation stopped by my office and let me know that she just attended that webinar, and it was very informative. I said good. She then started laughing and said she had something to confess, but was a bit apprehensive about it. I told her to spill it. She said that when she read my reply, she sent me another reply saying something like “Haha, let me know how that goes”. Only later to realize that she hadn’t sent that reply to me, but rather the original author of the invitation. You see, when I hit reply, it wanted to reply to the original author too. Apparently, on invitations, no matter how many different people it has been forwarded to, it can only be replied to the original sender. She realized her mistake only after it was too late. Therefore the original guy is probably sitting there thinking “Damn, this guy would rather count the holes in ceiling tiles than watch my web seminar”. I just had to laugh. I told the lady that I didn’t mind since that was pretty mellow for one of my responses. Certainly it could have been a whole lot worse. It just got me thinking about the Reply All: nightmare stories I’ve heard of. Any of you ever do anything like that?

Par For The Course

I would like to just illustrate for you what it’s like to work with government agencies. I’m sure most of you have had the misfortune of having to deal with them before, so you know how fun it can be.

Here’s how it went down:

I receive an email with warm greetings and salutations, informing me that the latest patch of their computer program is ready for me to install on my server. Being a depraved nerd, I enjoy patch day. I look forward to it. It means I get to “fix” something before it’s broken. I say “fix” because that’s the intent. The outcome, 90% of the time, means actually breaking what was working just fine. It’s like getting a flu shot that makes you sick when you were perfectly healthy to begin with. But I digress. We’re talking about patch day.

Not to backtrack, but please notice I said the email informed me the latest patch of their computer program is ready for me to install on my server.

It’s patch day, and I’m going to By-God install the patch. I don’t even want to wait to notify the people who are using this program because I get a sick sense of satisfaction breaking something in the middle of a production day and having my phone ring off the hook with desperate, hysterical secretaries just trying to do their job. They don’t realize what day it is. It’s patch day, and I have no forethought. I’m too involved in a haze of holy patchiness to have any forethought. Besides, when you have the kind of confidence that I have, you don’t worry about taking precautions. How much confidence do I have? So much, that I start the patch install at 11:55. 5 minutes before lunch. Oh yeah, it’s patch day, baby.

At about 12:05 I’m gently roused from my haze by an ominous error message. Paraphrasing the error, it said “The patch failed, regardless of what day it is”. This is where a lesser experienced IT guy would freak out in anticipation of the impending barrage of phone calls he would have to endure any second. Not this guy. I waited with the same anticipation as say…Christmas morning. I like telling people “I got this”.

So after some troubleshooting, uninstalling, reinstalling, etc., I contact the aforementioned government agency to find out what is going on with this thing. Here’s a reenactment of the phone call placed to that agency.

{me} Hi there, I got your email telling me the patch was ready to install, so I did, and now we can’t get into the program.

{guy} Oh, well…it’s probably because we have to install it on our end first.

...silence...

{guy} Let me go ahead and install it on our end, and we’ll see if that takes care of the problem.

{me} ok, sounds good. Keep me updated. Thanks.

So I guess it’s standard operating procedure to send out a patch that isn’t ready, instruct users to install it, and then set it up on their end. I never thought I would run across someone who had an even sicker depraved love for patch day than I do. I have met my match, Mr. Government Agency Patch Guy. Touché good sir.

The Birth Of The "F" Word

Have you ever had something really frustrating you, but you couldn't put it into words, and then the lack of ability to accurately express those frustrations lead to more frustrations, creating an endless spiral? I think this is the reason certain swear words were created.