Don’t smile, it’s only e-mail
It’s difficult to gauge the importance of the emoticon. It’s been annoying people for 25 years now (I know that because this article informs me that smiley faces just reached a quarter century). Just when you think you’ve got through an entire e-mail without an askey face, there it is, winking at you, making the entire preceding message seem that much more juvenile. But then perhaps the emoticon has averted wars. Maybe Bill Clinton, arguably the first e-mail president, fired off a few cheeky mails to the Kremlin, only to redeem himself by including a “just kidding” winky face at the end. 😉
The practice, thank goodness, has eroded since the 90s, due to the world’s improved collective understanding of e-mail etiquette and the appearance of far more annoying social trends like Facebook.com. If I’m writing about Facebook in 25 years, then Armageddon would probably have been a preferable alternative. 😉
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Dr. Wang’s doodle pills just a bad idea
Y’know, I’ve always wondered what would happen if I answered any one of the 200 Viagra ads I get in my e-mail every day. I keep expecting I’d receive a jar of blue jelly beans marked Viagra in crayon (and probably spelt wrong), but there’s always the chance I’d receive a bottle of the real deal and have some serious explaining to do at home. Well, I need wonder no longer. This article spells out the whole thing. The bottom line, not surprisingly, is: don’t order drugs from a 17-year-old Russian with a fat offshore bank account and self-taught computer science education.
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Segway wallies chase balls
There are some things that are just in bad taste: wearing white after Labour Day, picking your nose in public, ratting out a co-worker to your boss. And then there’s this. Well, at least someone finally found a good use for the Segway: giving people mallets and urging them to chase after a ball while wearing silly hats. I’m so glad Steve Wozniak is making good use of his spare time. The level of dorkery associated with this is so off the scale, I need a new scale. A much bigger one. But would I play if we suddenly started an office league around here? Of course I would.
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