Email Counting

Overall, I get too much email. I went back to a regular week from last October and counted the messages in my various email accounts.

• My Work Email Account got 1577 messages, broken down as
  • Paging: 985 messages. Little programs monitor our clients' systems, and send paging messages when they detect something that might require attention from an engineer. I doubt that I personally looked at many of them, but at least two people looked at every one.
  • Customer Service: 98 messages. These all have to do with a support case initiated by one of our clients. Each time someone opens a new case or adds a note to indicate that some work was done, I got a new message. I skim these, but don't read them all, especially when I'm busy.
  • BR Everyone: 16 messages. These are broadcasts to everyone in the Baton Rouge office. They tend to be HR notices, general corporate info, etc. I sort them out and read them when I have time.
  • Team Gladiators: 103 messages. These are broadcasts to the team that I work directly with. A lot of these are generated automatically on customer service things also.
  • From Alan: 144 messages. Alan's tend to be informational, where I'm on the CC line. I read them all, but they normally don't require any follow up. Although he sends enough to be broken out individually, this seems to have been a particularly email-heavy week for him.
  • All else: 231 messages. These are the true emails sent directly to me. I look at them all.
• bens@theskinnyonbenny.com got 2 emails. This is the one account that didn't get enough email. More on that later.
• My Rhodes list email got 149 messages. This is a specific account that I use for an email list with like-minded sailors. This is a pretty typical week.
• My Yahoo email address got 2658 messages, broken down as
  • 2553 items automatically sorted to the folder where they put my spam. This is the account I use for online shopping, so there's a lot of junk coming here.
  • 105 items that were in my inbox. 85% of this was also spam. I get a lot of messages from "Black Singles Connection" here, which would be fine if I were either black or single, but is annoying, since I am neither.

I don't look at hardly any of the spam. I recently opened one just to see what was there, and this was the message:

WHEN U ALREADY START READING THIS DONT STOP OR ELSE SUMTHIN BAD WITH HAPPEN.... READ ON TO FIND OUT WHAT.... AND DONT TRY TO JUST DELETE THIS MESSAGE NOW CAUSE i ALREADY KNOW WHO YOU ARE AND WHERE YOU LIVE.... SO LET ME INTRODUCE MYSELF........... MY NAME IS SUMMER...i AM 15 YEARS OLD WITH BLONDE HAIR AND BLOOD SHOT EYES. I HAVE NO NOSE OR EARS. I AM DEAD. IF YOU DO NOT SEND THIS TO 15 PPL IN THE NEXT 5 MIN., I WILL APPEAR UNDER YOUR BED, YOU WILL HEAR ME.... AND SEE ME FOR ONLY A SECOND....... BUT WIT MY KNIFE..... I WILL KILL YOU. THIS IS NO JOKE..........SOMETHING GOOD WILL HAPPEN TO YOU TONIGHT AT 10:22 IF YOU SEND THIS TO 15 PPL. SOMEONE WILL CALL YOU OR TALK TO U ONLINE AND SAY I LOVE YOU. DON'T FORWARD... COPY AND PASTE

So if you see any noseless, earless, dead fifteen year olds out there, slip me a heads-up. He/she is after me.

Now back to the bens@theskinnyonbenny.com email. I get a pathetically small amount of email from my web site readers. No one has sent me a written page to post, a picture of the day, a drawing they made during a meeting in weeks and weeks.

are actually only about five different people who have sent my anything recently. The rest of you have until the end of the month to amuse me. If you fail to email me anything, you officially suck.