Say After Me: Computers Are Our Friends.

There are some days that I just have to keep repeating it over and over again: "Computers are our friends. Computers are our friends. Computers are our friends."

These are on days like the one I had yesterday when my computer's e mail went berserk and began dowloading as new, messages that I had read and trashed from June 15th on. And of course my newest e mail of August 15 was the last to be downloaded and appear on the screen.

Because I live way out in the country, I am on dial up, so every task takes forever anyway, so this is particularly perturbing. And instead of just letting it do its thing and continue to trickle in all these messages that I have already read, I insist on sitting here watching the process unfold, as if my presence will somehow make it speed up.

Finally, after watching it download, and erasing some 50 messages at a time, it finally dawns on me that I could be over at the house watching baseball in high def, so I leave it to do its thing and come back when the ball game is over, only to find that it is now up to mid-July in its downloads.

Needless to say, it was pretty late by the time I got the two current messages that I hadn't actually seen before, but I shut down the machine secure in the knowledge that at least I had gone through it, had gotten rid of all the messages from hell, and tomorrow would dawn new and fresh.

This morning, I opened my e mail and the nightmare started all over again!!!! All the e mails I had carefully destroyed last night have resurrected themselves and are marching back onto my screen starting from June 15th!!!

So I call West Wisconsin Tech and they first tell me that there isn't anything they can do about it, I have to let it run its course AGAIN, but then, when its done, "it shouldn't happen again."

This is not the answer I want to hear. "Shouldn't" is hedging your bets, pal!

So I talk with him for a while, give him my pass word and he tells me to shut down e mail and not to try going back on it until I get a call from him as he is going to attempt to remove all these messages up to August 1st.

So that's where things are at this moment.

I don't understand computers. they have a will of their own and if they want to screw with your head they do -- by re-sending e mail over and over again, for one thing.

Yes, computers are our friends. And black holes of time consumption.

AARRRRGGHHH!!

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