Housework and email

I hate housework. Well, hate is a pretty strong emotion, I suppose, to apply to chores. Hate should be reserved for other things, like tomato aspic or people who are too lazy to return their shopping carts to the shopping cart corral which is only five feet from their friggin’ car. So let’s just say I dislike housework, with vacuuming and cleaning the toilet bowl at the very top of the dislike list. (I could go on about the real downside of cleaning the toilet after raising two boys but we’ll just drop that subject for now.) I don’t iron, either, in fact I went looking for my iron a few weeks ago so my husband could iron a shirt he was planning to wear to a wedding, but I couldn’t find it. I found the ironing board stuck in the guest room closet, but no iron. I told him to just throw the shirt in the dryer with a damp washcloth for ten minutes and call it good.

Why am I going on about housework, you may ask. Well, it’s because yesterday I thought the reason my email was taking so long to download from the server might have something to do with my downloads folder. A little background about my computer skills, they are greatly lacking. It’s why I’m still using a clamshell iBook running OS 9.1 and Claris em@iler. Which is a drag, when it comes to software reviews, no one is developing for OS 9 much anymore. That’s OK though, because I hate (oops, there’s that word again) upgrading software. Hardware now, that’s a different story.

Some household chores must be done everyday, for instance, the dishes. Mopping and vacuuming can be done once every week or two, and window washing maybe three or four times a year. (My theory is dirty windows filter the light in a nice way.)

The same holds true for my email client. Spam is deleted once a day, the in/outboxes purged every week or two, and the downloads folder gets attention a three or four times a year. It’s still a chore, like housework, except that you are sitting down and not expending much physical energy to get it done.

Our wireless internet was down at work yesterday so I needed to find something to do besides play Marbles so I thought, “Well, might as well clean out the download folder, it’s been a while.” Much to my chagrin (great word, chagrin), when I opened the folder I realized it’s been, well, five months since I’ve paid it any attention. And there were 7,148 items in there. Ouch!

Claris em@iler does not open HTML email. HTML email arrives as an attachment. Most spam I receive is HTML email. I leave em@ailer open and checking for mail every five minutes while the computer is on. I reckon I get anywhere between 70-100 spams in any given 15-16 hour computer day. So, spam comes in, Beth pushes “command delete”, spam goes in deleted folder which automatically deletes the spam when I quit the program, and there you go. Done with it. Except, of course, for the download folder.

Some things in the download folder I want to keep, for instance, attached pictures to saved emails. So that means slogging through 7,148 items to get rid of the bad guys. Some are easy, because they are all grouped together. But then scattered about are all the .gif’s and .pif’s and .doc’s and .exe’s and other stupid things Windoze users use when the create spam. (I wonder, do Mac users create spam? Or are spammers, aka the cretinous underbelly of society, all Windoze users?)

Short story long, the downloads folder was so packed that it took two hours to cull through it. And, there was so much of it that when selecting a group of downloads to delete, it took several minutes for the selected items to even move to the trash can.

Today, as the spam rolls in I resent it. I think about having to clean out that downloads folder more often and resent it more. Imagine having to wash windows once a week. Yeah, now you know how I feel today. I hate, and I really mean hate this time, spam.

Stay tuned.

CKS/BL tridiot rating: the cardinal number between six and eight