As we say goodbye to the first month of 2008 (and I have met my goal of average one post per day each month), this is the ideal post. I have an ongoing email conversation with a friend (who might comment and reveal their secret identity) and we have started using foreign terms for farewell as something to do to end the emails. Here are the ones that have shown up so far:

Adios (Spanish)
Arrivederci (Italian)
Au revoir (French)
Ciao (Italian)
Kwaheri (Swahili)
Namasté (Sanskrit)
Sayonara (Japanese)

This is only the beginning. There are so many choices left. More languages than I can count (especially if you try to use Wikipedia). I will probably update this post as this silliness continues.

From Slate.com

Those of us older than 25 can’t imagine a life without e-mail. For the Facebook generation, it’s hard to imagine a life of only e-mail, much less a life before it. I can still remember the proud moment in 1996 when I sent my first e-mail from the college computer lab. It felt like sending a postcard from the future. I was getting a glimpse of how the Internet would change everything—nothing could be faster and easier than e-mail.

Read the article

Today I had one of those customer service experiences that was positive and professional, but it never should have happen in the first place. This morning I was unable to login and check my email. I always preview it on webmail before downloading through Outlook. I didn’t think anything of it at first. I just thought a server was down, or something like that. I thought that until I got an email (on my work address) from Meg telling me that she responded to my email from the night before and it was bounced back. It said the account did not exist.

I called Earthlink Customer Service immediately.

The rep told me what had happened, fixed it and stayed on the phone until I confirmed that everything was back to normal. That part was fine, but it was the cause of the situation that was bone-headed. When I moved two months ago, I transfered my cable internet to my new apartment. I made it very clear that I wanted to transfer my existing account. Well, apparently two months ago a new account was created for my Time Warner access. I never paid any attention to this, if I even knew it happened at all. I continued to log in with the account that I have had for nearly ten years.

So, last night, during a system check, they found people or locations (or something other esoteric criteria) with two accounts. Rather than contacting the account holder before making a change, or even making an assumption and combining the two accounts, they de-activated one of them. I don’t know what kind of idiot was in charge of this procedure, but in my case, they deleted my account that has been in existence for nearly ten years, has multiple email addresses, and if they checked their login records, is logged in several times during the course of the day. And they kept an account that has existed for two months that does not have one iota of activity. Even an automated program could flag these accounts for review, rather than delete the active one.

And the customer service rep told me that I was not the only one with this problem this morning. No wonder they laid off half their work force. Maybe it is time use one of the gmail accounts I have and do something else for broadband.

A recent study by a graduate student at Ohio State determined that job applicants with unprofessional email addresses were not considered for jobs. Some of the emails used were alliecat@, bacardigirl@, bighotdaddy@, drunkensquirl@, foxylady@, gigglez217@.

I might consider hiring alliecat, but not drunkensquirl.

Click here for article about study

This is a test of blogging by email.

I just received an email with the “Stormy Worm” and it was not caught by Earthlink filters. The Subject Line was Wrapped Up and it contained the attachment postcard.exe. Since I preview all my email in Webmail before downloading, I was not in danger of downloading this. I am concerned that it slipped by Earthlink’s defenses.

Read about it here.