Desultory Planes - Site Updated on Mondays and Thursdays
Alarm Cylon Thursday, 04 February 2010 09:09 |  Author: -Mich
I coincidentally had a fight with my alarm clock this morning just after finishing this “strip” last night. I awoke around six in the morning to the glory of not having to be up for another hour or so. I was at peace. I looked at said alarm clock, which just happens to be my old brick Nokia phone, and relaxed back into what I thought was going to be quaint slumber. In my careless rustling back to sleep, I managed to knock my phone to the ground thus ejecting the battery and removing any life from the device. Great… My lifeline for arousal had been disabled. So I lost a few more precious minutes of sleep to reconstruction and reconciliation. I don’t use normal alarm clocks anymore. I can’t stand the noise that protrudes from the depths of their bowels. I imagine a device so vile that after its normal duties of startling people from slumber, it moves on to bigger and more dreadful things; like snuffing out all human life in existence. I can conceive no greater terrible act than that to top waking me up. I’m not a morning person. The actual inspiration of today’s comic came from our most recent beloved holiday; a holiday that just doesn’t happen enough; for some of us. I kind of envy Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog Day as I’d like to get my hands on some more time to perfect some skills. Imagine how the movie would have gone had the day not recurred after robbing a bank. Maybe that would have made a funnier comic. Also coincidentally, my cohort, Elans, actually has his alarm clock phone wake him up to the comic verbatim. I’m not the only one harboring deep running, loathing prejudice for the infernal machines. - mich |
Email Whatiquette? Sunday, 31 January 2010 23:07 | Author: Elans
It’s quite obvious that this helpful, and sometimes annoying, tool called email is misrepresented day in and day out by individuals that don’t quite fully understand the definition of “e-mail etiquette”. Whether it is the use of all CAPS, the infamous reply-to-all, or just all around insincerity in word form, the email has been molded into this system of open communication that people find to be an easier way to talk without a filter. No wonder companies invest thousands of dollars in training courses for email etiquette. I know that the idea of sending an email to your ex at 2 am, after being drunk most of the night sounds like a good idea, but it’s not. Seriously, I’ve never done that. I practice good email etiquette. I used text instead. Ha! One item that most may not be aware of is the long paper trail that emailing leaves behind. For instance, when you send an email to someone, that email is copied to your mailbox and to their mailbox. Well that’s simple enough so far. Throw in an archiving system and you now have one copy in your mailbox, one in the recipients, and one in the archiving system. Ok so here’s where it starts to get tricky. Let’s say the individual you’re sending the email to have their normal online email account setup to use POP3 to an Outlook client on their work PC. They also have their crackberry configured to pull a second copy onto the inbox on their phone. Now you have a copy in your mailbox, their mailbox, their phone, an archiving system, and their work computer. What if their work computer also auto archives all mail? Then what happens if that person forwards an email to another person with a similar setup? That’s a lot of copies. Don’t forget about that metadata! With the addition of what is known as e-discovery, the law is beginning to intervene more and more with electronic documents. Email is one the most widely used tools today to communicate between individuals. A lot can be said in an email that could prove to be incriminating if a person’s mailbox is reviewed during litigation. It doesn’t stop there. All electronic documents are considered to be relevant forms of evidence during litigation. In that regard, you don’t even need an email sent to another mailbox in order to get busted. Anything put on the inter-webs shouldn’t be considered private at all; not even an email. So next time you think you need to really need to lay into someone for drinking the last cup of coffee, just walk over to them and say it. That way they can’t forward it to someone else and prove how big of a douche you are. - Elans |
