Mysterical-E

The Hell You Say

Email Hell

Back when the world was created (or began evolving or whatever it did) there was not yet any internet, and there was not yet any e-mail. Some religious historians refer to that time as the garden of eden, and some as paradise, but none of them has tried suggesting that it was a time inferior to our own, although we now have both the internet and email, which surely are both good, aren′t they?

Well, actually no, they aren′t. They have, admittedly their points, but they have lots of details, and they′re in the hands of programmers (and executives who pretend they know how to manage progrmmers), and in those details and those hands lurks the devil. I know—some readers will insist that the devil does not exist. Well, he can lurk in the details without going to all the bother of existing, so that objection is by no means relevant.

In our little neck of the woods there was an entrepreneur who put together an internet service provider, complete with an email program. In fact there were several. Today′s sermon is about two of them. I dealt with one, which I′ll call company 1, to protect the innocent, and all went well (nearly) until I forgot the maxim ‟the devil is in the details.” After about fifteen years, more or less, the owners of that one decided they should no longer run an email service, and so they warned all us faithful to find somebody else.

Setting out to do so, I learned that the other one I want to write about—I think I′ll call his outfit company 2—had died, but his service had been acquired by a larger company, so customers were far from high and dry: they were now dealing with—let′s call it company 3—but their bills still came from a label familiar to them: company 2.

I received several recommendations for company 3, and went to sign up, but they were in the process of being acquired by another company—let′s see: shall we call it company 4?—but my bills and my new email account referred to company 3, so it looked like maybe all was okay. (A lot of vexing details that are actually relevant but not part of the main message are being omitted here.)

A certain learning curve was needed for managing company 3′s email system, and more than one person suggested that I really should go for one of the free email systems out there, but there was a devil in that detail: my old ISP was gone, and the new system included email, so why look a not-quite-gift horse in its obviously rather new mouth?

Oh, did I mention that my nine year old computer had begun to falter (for example it quit using MSOFFICE—including MSWORD—altogether. Never mind, I had OpenOffice on the machine, also, but since Microft had devils in its own details it couldn′t seem to acknowledge that I had a problem, so I considered buying new computer. And then I did it. I forgot to look for devils in its details, so didn′t learn until one day I needed to use a CD that it had no CD drive. Unheard of in my recent experience, but hey, I wasn′t going to bother you with side issues, like the fact that I couldn′t seem to find one with Windows XP on it. You may call that a blessing, if you like, because Microsoft is no longer supporting that OS, but personally I see devils in some more details.

But back to companies 3 and 4. Just as I'd got so I felt really glad I hadn't run around finding a free email program to use in working with company 3, the devils—well, executives, I guess—at company 4 decided to come out of the woodwork (which may be where devils hide when they are hunting around for details to infest), and announced that now we could and should switch to company 4's email program. They made the actual transition fairly easy (some devils may doze, occasionally) and now I have got to where I can receive and send email on their system. I cannot forward emails using their system, however, which could be sort of a relief to some of my friends. The instructions say I can do it, but company 4's programmer clearly never tried to do what she or he tells us mere non-geeks to do, or there′d be a fix in place already.

Meantime, I have sent my friends a new email address and a newer email address, and read quite a large number of replies that suggest that I get hold of a free email address because these don′t change every time my ISP changes. I did find a web page where users of various free emails tell what they like and what they don't. Only a couple like what they've got. None mentioned devils, but they all made clear that the free ones do change—the world of advertising, which runs everything today calls the changes improvements—and it's not completely clear to me that I'd be any better off if I did. At the very least I'd have to send my relatives and other friends yet another e-address.

Or I guess I could let 'em just keep using my company 4 e-address. Or, wait: corporations buy each other for reasons that we lesser mortals (except cynics) can′t guess, and then there′d be a company 5 to worry about, while my free email account changes character to accommodate the latest rage in cell-phones, tablets, or whatever the kids (yes, kids) decide it′s time to popularize.

I think I had a topic you'd be more interested in for you today, but this one had driven it out of my mind. Wait: the devil caused a typing error. I mean this one has driven me out of my mind.