I know parents that are like this - overprotective, always worried, always looking over the top of their books for their children, wondering where the next accident is going to come from.
That's me. Except I'm fending for a mini-zoo. And nine times out of ten, the only danger in sight is me and my clumsy feet. Still, that doesn't stop me from staring out at the dark clouds, listening to the thunder, and hoping that my fluffy kids are ok, and not too scared, all alone in the big dark house.

This feeling is not conducive to a happy working atmosphere. Mind you, I'm worrying about more than my four-legged children and the slick tyres on my 125cc.
I'm also worried about the state of current affairs. Having just told my official friend that everyone should lighten up, that times are not as dark as feared, etc, etc, I've read the news, heard the crashing rand wobble up against the railings of the edge of no return, and bid a friend farewell to the comforting hold of a prison.

Violence, poverty, fires, droughts, floods, weak economical situations and a lower standard of education. Panic is not only imminent, but is a foregone conclusion. As is a sudden desire for a less complex anthem and a dual-party political system. Who needs diversity in the face of crisis? A united front is required!
We don't want or need to be a Rainbow Nation any more, we want to be a homogenised culture, one man, one colour, one creed, and a simple song in our hearts. Something easy to remember would be nice, right?
Wrong.
Whether we are Xhosa or the minority white Seventh Day Adventists, what we want is a lot of peace, a bit of prosperity, good food, and you-get-what-you-pay-for services from our government. For my own sake, I'd add a garden for our kids. (Not quite the American white picket fence and fifteen metres of front lawn, just a garden.  A small tree wouldn't hurt either.) We also want the freedom to be ourselves. From the corporate suit to the middle-aged mama, no one of us wants to live according to other's definitions.
We are intelligent, hard-working, friendly, optimistic people as a rule, we just don't handle adversity with a cheerful countenance.
But then who does?
Not even The Apprentice's candidates wear smiles all the time. And their professional masks often slip when faced with Trump's curt 'You're fired'.
But perhaps we could practice a little stiff-upper-lipisms and take-it-on-the-chinisms. Perhaps we could try out smiling a little more often instead of snarling while lost in thought. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. 
Perhaps tomorrow we'll wake up and it will be no worse and no better and we'll forget to be gloomy and down-trodden for a day. 

The thunder has passed, and I've stopped glaring at everyone praising the beautiful weather. I'll be home in a few hours, and what else could be better than to know I'll have five beautiful, matted fur, muddy cuddlies waiting for me?

Lost the battle, skirted the email war...?

I don't know. My name, my email address, all has been blacklisted and banned from the world of email-lur communication.

No one, luckily, has sued us. But I have had to set up new accounts, throw buckets of water, and kisses and love onto people who have the idiocy to think I would be that blatantly stupid on PURPOSE, and generally tried to calm my boss down - which didn't work since she ended up sending me home with the little white pills.

I'm still annoyed. The company that held my reputation in its hands didn't bat an eyelid at my requests for information, assistance, feedback. They insisted that it was our fault that all of this had happened, and then promptly ignored us.
Two weeks later, and all of their clients have been informed of the latest Email Upgrade that has been deemed necessary by the higher echelons of Company I-didn't-do-it-and-you-can't-prove-it. Now it's become the most important thing on their agenda. Now that servers across the country fell over, that business was lost in bulks of days rather than hours, that information was deleted in a helter-skelter frenzy of belated and tardy panic.

I wish I knew what was written about us in their files, what comments have been logged against our names. I wish I knew how I could go about ruining their company again. I wish, I wish, all this impotent anger. I bluster along, me, the five-foot email estranger.

Argh.

Bad poetry to match my bad mood. What better way to end off this blog, than to say, once again, how I wish it hadn't been my name, or my number, pasted at the end of that little email slander, rather, in a fit of foresight, as suggested by a man of over-weight, attached the names and numbers of the company that assisted in this blunder by a complete lack of motivation to remove their behinds from their station situated by the mountain in the land of rainbow writers.

Could it get worse.... of course.
See the next blistering episode!

It hurts. It really does.
I'm new to the company, and on three bulk-emails I've sent out, I've managed to flop all three times.
The first and second, while embarrassing, are not momentous.

It's this latest and greatest edition to my world of oh-my-god that has got my ears ringing. Literally.

So what happened is this:

I compose email.
I attach signature.
I send email.
Email goes to
blind-copied MRA (An MRA being a multiple recipient address which holds the
actual addresses inside it).
Email leaves my machine once.
Email leaves
SMTP server, once.
Email leaves MRA two and a half thousand times.

The MRA contains over 5000 email addresses.

That means that I spammed a country of only 102,500 computer users, over 12 million times.

Collectively.

Individually, each recipient only had to download around 150 megs of data.

Over the past two weeks I have become intimately involved with the following specialisations in the world of email:
1. Failed mail returned to sender
2. Out of Office Autoreplies
3. Autoresponders
4. Antispam mails
5. People who respond violently, sadly and personally to my mistake

The sheer number of 'failed mail - return to recipient' variants out there, is mind-blowing and server-crashing. But with a few choice word selections, I manage to filter most out of sight, out of mind. It only much later (read: after I deleted the seemingly-useless email responses) that it occurred to me that I could use those returns, and clean out my MRA. Not completely, since not all 'failed mail' responses include the failed address in it, but it will be an instant weight-loss effect on my bulky address book.

Well, that will have to wait for round number 4. If I am still allowed to touch a bulk mail after this latest fiasco.

'Out of Office'. Most of these are of the depressing variety of actual holiday announcements:
"Hi,
I'm currently tanning my spoilt self on the white beaches of Tahiti - wish you were here!
I will respond, when I return in six months time."
Then you get those that are merely informatory on the job-status - "so-and-so no longer works for XYZ. You have lost contact."
'Out of Office' isn't half as annoying as an autoresponder - "Hi, Chirpy Joe and Serenic Serina have received your mail and will respond shortly..." blech.
It's even worse when the autoresponder is a request to sign up for THEIR newsletter!
The one I got was actually worthwhile, although I wasted a good hour reading it and snorting coffee all over my keyboard. A very kind IT Administrator thoughtfully attached three pages worth of NSFW auto-replies. They were brilliant, memorable, and made me smile.

Antispam mails. People are really objecting to receiving spam these days - they take it personally. You might say, it is personal - they are paying to download rubbish. But what would it cost to get someone (like myself) to go in and manually enter in fickle words into a text block to prove I'm not a spammer? Not much - it was all part of my day's work in sorting through the other responses.

The last point is the one that really gets my teeth clenched, my ulcer ulcerating and all sorts of hideous thoughts unleash themselves on my usually calm mind.
Why this would be particularly annoying is this: My company offers personalised classes to a database built up of interested people. Word of mouth, and request only. I am the other person in the company. The other other person is the owner.
Personalised, small, unique.
My email siggy, has my cellphone number in it.
It is really fascinating to hear how many people think that I believe that sending them 2000 copies of the same message, will get me any business at all.
How many people believed that I only did it to them.
How many people don't want to hear what you have to say, only want a chance to yell a little, and then swear once, before pressing the 'disconnect' button violently. And yes, it is possible to convey whole emotions with one button click.

While it is possible to maintain a semblance of horrified calm in the face of slathering yelloids, it is not possible to maintain this indefinitely. It turns out I can hold out for 2 days tops.

This is now the 3rd day of my saga.

In the world of computers, there has never been a more humiliating incident of spam. Nor one quite so thorough and efficient.

On Friday the 28th of October 2006, I achieved infamy.

All hail inefficient coding and shoddy security!