Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"In reality, the syntax is the least important part of a language. But most people nowadays go into conniptions if you try to get them to program in a language without curly braces." -- jducoeur, in a parenthetical comment near the end of an entry about proposed virtual space

I'm home. Perrine is home. She was very quiet during the drive; apparently being up high so she can see out the windows makes a big difference. After so much time away, she had to visit every floor of the house for a thorough sniffing, but after that she started following me around. A few times she has gone upstairs and cried, but it hasn't sounded like her "in heat" wails; it's sounded more like the "I'm stuck / I'm lost / Where are you?" cry of most cats.

I think maybe she misses the other cats and the poodle at anniemal's house, even though she seemed to spend an awful lot of time there avoiding them. (It's also possible that t's anniemal and syntonic_comma that she's missing.) Over there she was showing signs of being frustrated by not having anything to hunt (I am so glad she's a hunter), because they don't have a mouse problem and apparently Perrine hasn't decided spiders are suitable prey; back at home she misses the other animals. *sigh*

But hey, she's paying a lot more attention to me now than she did over the past week or so. She nagged me to go to bed so she could curl up next to me last night. While in Arlington she acted as though she were still annoyed at me for putting her in the car to take her there, and ran away from me when she saw me dressed to go out; at home, she forgave me for the car ride very quickly.

I've got a lot of things to catch up on that have been neglected for the past week, and a lot of other people's LiveJournal entries are going to go un-commented-on, but I'm pacing myself. It's a chilly, grey, rainy day -- almost Octoberish -- that seems to invite a slow, measured approach to the day, with chunks of time set aside for reading (on the web or in books) in between taking care of some of the items on my to-do list.

I got a very thin envelope from one of my credit unions in today's mail. That made me nervous -- envelopes that thin contain notices smaller than monthly statements or announcements of new services, and that usually means a notice of a bounced check (which I was pretty sure I could not have done lately, but with my finances the way they are ...). It turned out to be a correction because at my last trip to an ATM I punched in the wrong number when making a deposit. Whoops, but a small whoops. Now to go check my money spreadsheet to see which number I entered there. If I'm lucky, it'll mean I've got more money in that account than I thought I did. Not that that's all that likely.

Yes, a slow-paced day. It's good to have days when the very weather tells me to slow down, so that I don't push too hard on a day when I feel well enough to do things, and thus make myself unable to do anything the next day.

It's a grey, rainy day. I've recently finished a cup of coffee (decaf), and there's a small silver tabby asleep in my lap. Somehow these all seem to belong together. Tranquility.

Don't mind me, I'm just annoyed and coping with that by venting (though I did actually mail this).

From dglenn Mon Apr 12 20:30:24 2004
To: [person who sent out a notice to a long list w/o using Bcc:]
Subject: Re: [aforementioned notice]

Please tell me you did not *intentionally* send a 137K message to people (like myself) on slow dialup connections.

Please tell me you did not *intentionally* include binary attachments on a message sent to a mailing list.

Please tell me you did not *intentionally* do both of the above to convey a *two* *line* *message*.

Please tell me you did not *intentionally* send a pile o' HTML and _images_ to a list where you do not know that every reader is using a MIME-and-HTML-capable mail reader. (Hint: at least one reader is using a mail program that does not display HTML, and reading mail over a text (telnet) connection.)

I hope there was no important information in those images, 'cause I'm not going to switch to a different mail program to unpack them then switch to a different type of program entirely (a web browser or a paint program) to look at them.

There is a right way and a wrong way to do this. That was, for multiple reasons, the _wrong_ way.

Looking at your headers, it appears you used a web browser to send the message. I'm hoping that your fingers merely slipped, causing the message you meant to send as brief text with a _pointer_ (URL) to a page with the pretty formatting and pictures on it, to be sent as a painfully large and pointless collection of binary attachements by accident. (And I'll try very hard to remind myself that you didn't ask my opinion of using web browsers to send mail.)

The actual plaintext message was so short that it became easy to overlook next to the badly-formatted HTML that came after it and used more space, so I didn't even realize there was a _legible_ copy of those two lines until the second time I looked at the message. And the HTML copy has enough extraneous stuff in it that I didn't see the meat of the message in it at a glance. Assuming your goal is to get your message _read_ by people, this is *counterproductive*.

And sending me a hundred-and-thirty-[expletive]ing-seven K-byte message to say two [expletive]ing lines is [expletive]ing annoying. It's downright _rude_.

DON'T DO THAT.

If this was a slip of the fingers, say so and I'll go "harpumph" quietly to myself about this elsewhere. If it was due to ignorance, I hope that I've educated you as to why it was bad. And if you need assistance figuring out how to get word out _cleanly_, I'm willing to volunteer some of my time to show you, as a gesture of support for [organization].

                                  -- Glenn

I figured the Bcc: issue can be dealt with another time, perhaps as part of the followup "how to send polite mail" tutorial if he takes me up on that.