Tuesday, August 16, 2005

In One Week: Meet and Drink with Cool People (and Some Geeks) At this time next week, you should be making preparations to enjoy the Blogtimore August Happy Hour.  Our most gracious hosts, Fool and Epiphany, have been kind enough to pick the venue.  The details are below.  Date: Tuesday, August 23rd Time: 6:00pm to whenever Location: Red Fish,  2350 Boston Street, Baltimore, MD 21224 Come and enjoy the company of a potentially sweaty and tipsy pizza guy, an engaging discussion on the social acceptability of necrophilia, and a sweet wardrobe composed of IT schwag.  It's always a good time at these things, and this time it will not be outside in the potentially nasty summer heat.  2:57:45 PM    comment []  trackback []

Four Simple Rules For Email I don't ask for much.  I am known to be occasionally cranky, though, bordering on downright obnoxiousness.  This is one of those times.  Thus, my four simple rules for email.  Return Receipts When you are sending mail to a mailing list, you should never ask for a return receipt.  It is just bad practice.  Essentially, you start merely spamming the list as different users return the requested receipt to you.  "Oh, look, I have 12 different messages telling me that John Doe has read Idiot Newbie's email to the list."  DELETE and PURGE! Why bother turning this setting on in your email client, as most clients can easily circumvent it.  I never accept return receipts, so I have circumvented it.  There are others like me out there too, so why bother turning on a useless feature?!?! Do everyone a favor and turn this feature off.  Out of Office/Vacation Notification If you are going on vacation or will be out of the office at a conference, please do not enable this feature.  Are you really that important that when I send you an email that I need to know if you are out of the office, how long you are going to be out of the office, and when I can expect a response to your email?  Moreover, does every possible email list you belong to need to know the same thing when you are out of the office?  Email is driven around its rather instantaneous nature.  If I send an email where I expect a fairly quick response and one is not forthcoming, I will call the recipient for a follow-up.  If the person happens to be out of the office for any length of time, I will find out then.  I do not need to know by being spammed for the umpteenth time that you are out of the office doing God knows what.  Do everyone a favor and turn this feature off.  HTML Formatted Messages I know you are tempted to have a nice pretty email, with all sorts of colors and images within it.  Everyone is going to be jealous of your ability to send that email that looks just like a Post-It note.  Do not be tempted by this desire, though!  HTML formatted messages merely make your message physically larger.  Moreover, it never fails that some nitwit inevitably sends me a large bloated HTML message for the simplest of responses.  HTML messages are also dangerous, though, as they can be formatted to take advantage of the next great email exploit.  There is no reason why you cannot send me that message as plain text.  Please, I insist you do.  If you need to have it feel pretty, put it into a document and attach it to the message.  Do everyone a favor, and turn this feature off.  Using a Spell-Checker In this day and age of modern email clients--Outlook, Thunderbird, Entourage, and Evolution--there is absolutely no excuse for one to have misspelt words in an email message.  All of these clients have an integrated spell-checker.  Hell, even Pine has this capability.  I have no problem if it is a common error.  I think this error is much more egregious, though, when it occurs in a message you send to a large group, e.g., an entire organization.  Next time you have an interdepartmental or organizational message, do all of us a favor and re-read the message before clicking the shiny "Send" button. Do everyone a favor and turn this feature on.  I think for anyone who cannot follow these simple rules, all of that individual's computer and email privileges should be immediately revoked.  2:04:28 PM    comment []  trackback []

Holy Schnikes! On my way to work this morning, I passed the Royal Farms Store on Key Highway that I normally visit to fill the gas tank on my car.  I have found this location to be on the more inexpensive places to get gas in Baltimore City.  Fortunately, I filled up my car yesterday, when regular gas was only $2.55/gallon.  This morning--exactly 24 hours after I filled up--the price of regular jumped to $2.63/gallon!  I wish I had photos of the price board from yesterday and today.  I know that I am just one of a million people grousing about the price of gas, but I am glad I missed the 8 cent increase by a day.  Guess that's my Irish luck kicking in.  9:51:02 AM    comment []  trackback []