There's an old army story about a 2nd Lieutenant who had just been promoted to 1st Lieutenant and was getting frustrated that his buddies, all 2Lt's, weren't showing the proper respect that his rank demanded. A captain came alone, sized up the situation, and throwing his arm around the lieutenant's shoulder, said, "Ease up, Lieutenant. Haven't they told you yet that rank among lieutenants is like virginity among whores?"
I'm beginning to feel that way about integrity among email systems. A phone call from my youngest daughter alerted me to the latest email problem when an email supposedly sent to all six of our kids only made it to 4 of them. A second email sent to the same list apparently had the same results.
A month ago, it was a message I sent to the former treasurer of the Friends of the Sacramento Public Library. When she didn't reply to successively more urgent messages, I finally called her and was told that she had received none of my messages. And what really aggravated me is that neither of us received any notice of the failure to communicate.
Every once in a while we actually get a "failure to deliver" notice. I used to hate those but I changed my mind after getting a failure to send notice in time to correct the problem and fixing it. She checked the system trash bin as well as physical trash cans.
I think there's hope. Years ago if you had forgotten an assignment, and for some reason needed an excuse, you could with a straight face explain that it must have gotten lost in the mail. But that isn't a credible excuse any more. Will we ever get to the point where we know that our email has or hasn't reached it's destination?
For some unknown reason, sometimes an email to me ends up in my spam folder. So, I check that folder every couple of days just to be sure that I haven't missed something important. The server must have some filters installed that separates out some mail. I haven't ordered filters which would effect from some people. I have ordered filters on some stuff so that it goes directly to the spam folder. I suppose that all those mass mailed advertisements get through to enough people that the mailers continue to send them. I have them filtered out to spam, but sometimes mail that is not junk and has not been ordered to spam by me ends up there. Computers seem to at times have minds of their own.
ReplyDelete