Another Another Reason I Don't Understand People

Oh boy. You know, I wrote this whole thing yesterday evening about this random email. right? Well, some smart aleks tossed around the question of this email eating up our 100Mb limit of space that those who store their emails on the server have been crunched down to, and they figure if this email doesn't die, it'll eat that space up fairly quickly. It actually won't since it's all text, but the thought of a single reply all email killing the space max is amusing.

Anyway, after yet another comment from someone about not hitting "reply all" to the email, it wasn't 15 minutes before yet another genius popped a reply all to request to be removed from the email list.

I mean, seriously, do you people actually look at your email and think before you hit reply? I just had to laugh.

If anything comes out of this, I'll bet the original sender will think twice before sending an email to that list again...no, probably not.

Another Reason I Don't Understand People

Email. Nearly everyone in the world has or has access to an email address, and most of those people have been using it long enough to get a misdirected email or two. Not spam, mind you, but just an email that went the wrong direction. It's an innocent enough problem, and a misdirecte email is nothing to get bent out of shape over. Really.

Well, on Friday, I got a random email having to do with some kind of approval. I glanced at the addresses on it, and found that it was directed to a group email that I logically would belong to, and whoever replied to this email managed to reply to a huge list across the organization instead of whoever they needed to reply back to. This isn't the first time that this has happened, but what's weird is the chaos that comes out of these misdirections is always the same.

The first part is logical enough. Person sends reply to the entire organization (whoops), and someone from within the organization (often in that person's area, by the sound of it) replies stating that they needed to reply to whoever or that they shot the email off the wrong way or something. That should be the end of it...but it isn't.

Enter three days of replies like this: "I am receiving these emails in error. Please remove my name from the mailing list." And then a handful of following emails that say "me too." This set of emails gets followed up by someone stating the obvious: "The email was sent in error. Please disregard." Is that the end? Nope.

You see, people don't read their emails starting with the last reply. They either start at the beginning or somewhere in the middle. They also don't read the email string to the end before replying to it. Hence, after this email of "please stop replying," we get a renewed round of "Take me off the list" emails, because all these people see is a bunch of replies to an email string they don't want to be a part of.

So today, after an even longer string of "please remove my name" emails, another email was sent saying "everyone got this in error, just disregard it." Not a minute after that email, came another "remove me email." And they're still coming. There was only one single email about the issue and one more stating that it was misdirected. Every subsequent email has been about people asking to remove themselves, and if they would just stop replying, it would be over with.

Finally, enter the last email today where someone has repsonded yet again telling everyone to not reply all, and adding to the mix that people have been sending emails that they are frustrated with all the emails. That makes me laugh because these people are perpetuating the situation themselves by replying all to the email string. They are sending emails to get something done about the emails they're receiving, and those emails are saying stop the emails even though they would have stopped the emails themselves if they never replied to them to begin with. Pretty whacked, if you ask me.

I just don't understand where these people come from or why they were allowed to touch a computer. I mean, on the one hand, the level of tunnel vision is amusing, but really, they need to stop hitting "reply all."

Heroes and Spiders

I accomplished something this weekend that, for me, was a pretty significant step. Last week, I wsa mowing the yard and the mower completely died. It had been misbehaving for a little while now, but it always started and chugged its way through the small yard I have to get through, but on Tuesday when it went down, it didn't come back up. My suspicion to begin with was the gas. I have had the same can of gas for the mower for several years (yes, years) and I finally hit the bottom of the can last week, so I figured the bottom of the can was worthless. I dumped the gas out of the mower, went down to QuikTrip and got some fresh fuel. I refueled and tried to start.

Nothing. It kind of started, and then popped, sputtered, and died. I couldn't get it to start back up for anything. That's not for lack of trying either, since I thought that maybe the gunk leftover from the gas had gotten into the lines and I just needed to work it out. I worked it out for 30 minutes yanking that cord, and it didn't work out.

Fast forward to Sunday. I had been meaning to try starting it again figuring that I'd perhaps flooded the engine royally on Tuesday by priming and pulling all night. I tried it, and no dice. It would start at all. It caught a couple times, but never for more than five seconds.

I did some research online to see what to do, and I read the horror stories. Most of them began with little more than a simple tune-up though: check spark plug, gas, oil, etc. So I put my mechanical hat on and instead of a computer, I set myself to dismantling the lawnmower.

I pulled down my tools and started pulling bolts off beginning with that gas tank. There was a screw on the top I figured had to come out first, and in doing so, I found the air filter...well, a hard sponge caked with mud and dirt that was supposed to be the air filter. So I washed the gunk off the sponge and set it to dry. I removed the gas tank, which was easy and all I found there was lots of old grass. I removed the spark plug and the business end of that part was black and caked with burned what-not. That was probably the big problem, but I went on. I checked the oil and found sludge.

Yeah, sludge. It looked like black paint. You know what color oil is? It's a sort of clear brown. Looks like thick tea (sort of). When I dumped the oil, this was something straight out of an oil derrick. So I was off to Wal-Mart with the Queen and Princesses to find a spark plug and oil to see if that would fix my problem, leaving the mower in pieces in the garage.

With the new parts in hand, I put it all back together and gave the cord a sharp tug. It roared to life and just purred. Time was, I would have said it was broken and headed to Wal-Mart for another cheap mower (which is what this was), but I decided I didn't want to spend the money for another mower, since I need to save for the princesses to have school clothes. So I fixed it, even though strictly speaking, all it needed was a basic tune-up.

Still, it makes for a "growing up" experience for me, since I might not have tackled it once upon a time. And it made me the hero of the moment to the Queen, since I did just take the mower apart to see what the deal was instead of giving up on it.

One thing I have found with age and how I've changed as I've grown up is another age milestone. As I look back, there was another age where the mind changed of its own accord, and I began to see things just a little differently -- I would almost say, more mature. This age is nothing new, though, as Tolkien nabbed it in The Lord of the Rings in the age in years that a Hobbit comes of age. This point wasn't made in the movie version at all because Frodo's age wasn't discussed on screen, but that birthday party at the beginning wasn't just for Bilbo -- Bilbo and Frodo have the same birth date. When Bildo turned 111, Frodo turned 33, and this party served also as Frodo's "coming of age" party. There's a lot to be said for 33 as an age of fuller maturity, because I grew up a bit at 33, more so than any age before it. I can't explain it beyond that, but during my 33rd year, I managed to get a lot of things in order that I just didn't feel capable of doing before, and despite the fact that my financial life remains in a bit of a crisis, it's more in line now than it has ever been before -- another point for the hero in our story.

And finally, you may have noticed that my subject includes something about spiders. Well, I figured the other resident of our house needed an entry, but not one to him/herself. Lately, we'd noticed a decline in the number of ants, and we weren't overrun by these red and black bugs we called stinkbugs. We they really stinkbugs? I dunno. The jury's out on that. But we noticed that recently there aren't any of those around at all, and we just didn't concern ourselves with it.

The other night, though, we think we found out why. As we were leaving the house, the Queen gave a sharp gasp when she saw a large, flat spider sitting on the wall next to our entry door. He wasn't moving at all and lay almost fully flat against the wall. He was probably four inches in diameter with his legs out like they were, and you could see (without getting close, mind you) the definition of his mouth pincers and such as he sat there. We have not seen him inside, and don't care to either, but figured that rather large arachnid was the reason we'd lost all the other, more numerous and annoying bugs we'd had before. We also figured since he was earning his keep and not going inside the house, he could hang out. If we find him inside, however, he's toast. We've seen him a couple more times, and believe me, we steer clear of him, and double check before we touch that or any other wall outside.

If we can snap a picture of him, I'll show him off.