Thursday, November 13, 2008
Reason #23 why I sometimes wonder how I even have a job
“How hard can it be to email a webpage?” asked Smirk.
“Very hard,” I said.
“Why do you insist on using 80s technolgy?”
“Technically, mutt was written in the 90s, and can handle attachments.”
“Aaaaaaaaaarrrrrrg!”
I started using the Internet in the late 80s, back in a time when sending files via email was frowned upon, and every computer on the Internet was a true peer to every other computer on the Internet. And yes, intellectually, I understand that time has moved on and we've regressed to walled gardens of mediated digital experiences and people never think twice of emailing Microsoft Office to themselves so they can work on the Johnson Account at home (and least you think I'm engaging in a bit of hyperbole with Microsoft Office, I'm not—I handled the technical support call for just that situation a few years ago).
But it still just doesn't feel right to send files via email.
Anyway, I've tried using more modern email clients, and I found them all slower than the text based email client elm running on a 32MHz computer. But given that elm is no longer being maintained, I've upgraded to the slightly slower (if a bit more featureful) text based email client mutt (which is okay, because I'm running it on a 2.6GHz computer).
And in order to keep the speed up (especially given the size of today's emails—I mean, do you realize how big Microsoft Office is these days?) I read the mail directly on my server. That has two benefits—one, I don't have to suck down huge emails over a slow Internet connection, and two, I can check my email from any computer without being forced into using some horrible excuse of an email client over the web.
That means, technically, I don't check my email on my local computer here, and therefore, it's a bit difficult to actually send a webpage. In fact, for me to send a file via email, I have to upload it to the server, and if I'm doing that, I might as well put it in a web-accessible location and send a link via email. This also means that yes, things that most people would consider “trivial” (like mailing Microsoft Office) aren't “trivial” for me (and let's not even discuss sending me Microsoft Word documents … ).
![[The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades]](https://www.conman.org/people/spc/about/2023/1023.t.jpg "The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades")