.wmv Hell
Sometimes I think people should have a permit to get online.
Just as we don't let the inexperienced hit the highways of this country without at least proving they do have some ability and skill and basic knowledge of road etiquette, so should the great unwashed masses be able to show that they have some sense before embarking out on what most times amounts to a drunk driving spree on the 'information superhighway'.
It would save alot of us untold aggravation, time and unspeakable annoyance.
Of course, I'm referring to the email idiots. We all know 'em, we all have a few in our address books. They maybe close friends or just nodding acquaintances, but the havoc they can wreak from time to time can be maddening and enough to make an otherwise fairly normal person go postal. I had such a day yesterday.
It started with one lone idiot who had got a .wmv file in their email. A video file.
Apparently, they thought this was just too hysterically funny not to share with the rest of the world, so they forwarded it to me....and everyone in their address book or at least their "friends" list.
Unsuspecting lil' ol' me popped over to my household email account to check the mail and here it came! Now I know when that little icon with the notation "receiving mail" stays on for longer than 3 minutes with no new subject line coming up in the list I'm in trouble...someone is sending me a big file! Arrrrgggh. More often than not, it's something incredibly stupid, lame and not worth the bandwidth. But the process has begun-sure, I could just abort the download, but that's just a temporary fix...sooner or later you have to download it since it just stays, percolating away in your account-waiting...just biding its time. There's no escape...or at least none that I know of. So I let it go and went off to do something more useful while it downloaded.
A load of wash and a sinkfull of dishes later, I went back to see if it was done yet.
NOPE! It was still churning away. It had now been almost 30 minutes. I'm on dial-up, so my phone line is being tied up with this..and also contributing to the long download time for this whatever it was. This had better be good!
Go off to clean the bathroom. Come back-still loading!!
I let loose with a rather colorful turn of a phrase and it was as if I had utter a magic spell! It had finished! OK...let's open this thing and see if it was worth it and have my delete finger at the ready.
It was a short video of a commercial parody that I had got from someone else well over a year ago! I knew it immediately...DELETE! What a waste of time!
Whew, glad that's over...now I can get on with my life. Famous last words.
Whoever initiated this had also sent it to a group of friends who also have me on their list. Most of them in turn must have all at once thought: "Oh! I bet LM would like this!" and they all collectively hit the Forward button.
Soon the madness began again...and again...and again...same vid clip...from 6 different people. It's a wonder my poor emburdened rig didn't crash and burn from the stress...I know I was about to go insane.
In all it took a good chunk of the afternoon for all this to come through and be promptly deleted. I felt trapped. And the missed call list on my Callwave was growing because my line was being tied up by this mass stupidity. And yet, I wager not one, nary a single soul who partook in this exercise of blantant email rudeness ever once thought "Gee, maybe so and so already sent them this." or bothered to check the recipient list. Obviously, they didn't. They were just so tickled by being empowered by the novelty of being able to just with a click forward "funny" stuff to everyone that they just did it...without a thought or care. Gee, Ain't the innernet great, y'all?
A Columbian necktie is too kind for fools like these.
And don't even get me started about chain emails-those send to 10 people in the next 20 minutes!!!-type things, or poorly re-written Prayers to St. Carla, our lady of perpetual, raging agony that you MUST forward to assure good luck or .jpegs that are not resized but rather sent in their original full sized format that requires 4 monitors to view! (like 30,000 x 15,000) and 9 times out of 10 are a pic that really wasn't worth the bother to send in the first place! (hint: they always have a subject line like "this is sooooo funny!" or "you just got to see this!!!" or "this is so cool!!!!!!!!" No, it's not.)
Now I gotta go check my email...bet ya dime to a doughnut there's at least one idiot on the mailing list from yesterday who didn't get a chance to forward that 'hysterical' vid to me.
Just as we don't let the inexperienced hit the highways of this country without at least proving they do have some ability and skill and basic knowledge of road etiquette, so should the great unwashed masses be able to show that they have some sense before embarking out on what most times amounts to a drunk driving spree on the 'information superhighway'.
It would save alot of us untold aggravation, time and unspeakable annoyance.
Of course, I'm referring to the email idiots. We all know 'em, we all have a few in our address books. They maybe close friends or just nodding acquaintances, but the havoc they can wreak from time to time can be maddening and enough to make an otherwise fairly normal person go postal. I had such a day yesterday.
It started with one lone idiot who had got a .wmv file in their email. A video file.
Apparently, they thought this was just too hysterically funny not to share with the rest of the world, so they forwarded it to me....and everyone in their address book or at least their "friends" list.
Unsuspecting lil' ol' me popped over to my household email account to check the mail and here it came! Now I know when that little icon with the notation "receiving mail" stays on for longer than 3 minutes with no new subject line coming up in the list I'm in trouble...someone is sending me a big file! Arrrrgggh. More often than not, it's something incredibly stupid, lame and not worth the bandwidth. But the process has begun-sure, I could just abort the download, but that's just a temporary fix...sooner or later you have to download it since it just stays, percolating away in your account-waiting...just biding its time. There's no escape...or at least none that I know of. So I let it go and went off to do something more useful while it downloaded.
A load of wash and a sinkfull of dishes later, I went back to see if it was done yet.
NOPE! It was still churning away. It had now been almost 30 minutes. I'm on dial-up, so my phone line is being tied up with this..and also contributing to the long download time for this whatever it was. This had better be good!
Go off to clean the bathroom. Come back-still loading!!
I let loose with a rather colorful turn of a phrase and it was as if I had utter a magic spell! It had finished! OK...let's open this thing and see if it was worth it and have my delete finger at the ready.
It was a short video of a commercial parody that I had got from someone else well over a year ago! I knew it immediately...DELETE! What a waste of time!
Whew, glad that's over...now I can get on with my life. Famous last words.
Whoever initiated this had also sent it to a group of friends who also have me on their list. Most of them in turn must have all at once thought: "Oh! I bet LM would like this!" and they all collectively hit the Forward button.
Soon the madness began again...and again...and again...same vid clip...from 6 different people. It's a wonder my poor emburdened rig didn't crash and burn from the stress...I know I was about to go insane.
In all it took a good chunk of the afternoon for all this to come through and be promptly deleted. I felt trapped. And the missed call list on my Callwave was growing because my line was being tied up by this mass stupidity. And yet, I wager not one, nary a single soul who partook in this exercise of blantant email rudeness ever once thought "Gee, maybe so and so already sent them this." or bothered to check the recipient list. Obviously, they didn't. They were just so tickled by being empowered by the novelty of being able to just with a click forward "funny" stuff to everyone that they just did it...without a thought or care. Gee, Ain't the innernet great, y'all?
A Columbian necktie is too kind for fools like these.
And don't even get me started about chain emails-those send to 10 people in the next 20 minutes!!!-type things, or poorly re-written Prayers to St. Carla, our lady of perpetual, raging agony that you MUST forward to assure good luck or .jpegs that are not resized but rather sent in their original full sized format that requires 4 monitors to view! (like 30,000 x 15,000) and 9 times out of 10 are a pic that really wasn't worth the bother to send in the first place! (hint: they always have a subject line like "this is sooooo funny!" or "you just got to see this!!!" or "this is so cool!!!!!!!!" No, it's not.)
Now I gotta go check my email...bet ya dime to a doughnut there's at least one idiot on the mailing list from yesterday who didn't get a chance to forward that 'hysterical' vid to me.
posted by white trash republican at Tuesday, January 24, 2006
2 Comments:
So how many more times did you get it?
All told, counting the original email, 7 times.
7 x 40 mins.= nearly 4 hours of my computer's life it will never get back.
I should have just replied the damn thing right back to them all.
Alas, I'm too nice a person...and have better things to do.
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