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17 JUN 04: WIDE-OPEN SPACES
I received a pleasant surprise this week about the Yahoo! account where you can write the blog. My mailbox size suddenly jumped from six megabytes - to 100! Is this another hint that I need to lose weight?
Before Tuesday, a free Yahoo! E-mail account had a "six-meg" limit. This compares with my offline "one-meg" limit - as in one Meg Ryan movie at a time.
You had to pay a monthly fee to get an extra-large Yahoo! mailbox - until Tuesday. Then suddenly, in a news story almost everybody missed, a 100-megabyte box became free. It was as if the late Ronald Reagan went to Silicon Valley and said, "Mr. Yahoo, tear down this firewall!"
But that's not all. My Yahoo! account now will let me send messages which are ten megabytes big. This sounds like the start of something new, once Yahoo! merges with Napster.
I wondered why Yahoo! suddenly was being so generous with its server space - but then a read a wire story explaining it. Yahoo! is trying to keep up with Google's new "G-mail" service. If these companies really want my attention, then give me the "free dinner" gift cards without making me sort through 40 offers for life insurance.
My main e-mail account is with Yahoo!, because it's the first one I set up outside work in 1996. But no, I'm not sentimental enough to still have my very first spam message....
I've been with Yahoo! long enough to remember when there was only one section to the mailbox, without a "Bulk Mail" compartment for spam. It seems so long ago now -- way back before people invented Viagra, body part growth pills and plots to smuggle millions of dollars out of Nigeria.
E-MAIL UPDATE: In keeping with our topic, here's an e-mail answer to some e-mail questions - Robbie Watson's comments about D-Day TV news coverage [7 Jun]:
First of all, after all these years Robbie should know "those who live in glass houses should not throw stones". Not that Robbie has ever noticed she has more windows in her house than anybody else.
Let's not even mention that a) Robbie works for a news gathering operation, and yet wasn't there either, b) Robbie's facts in her statement were wrong (surprise, surprise). Because if the "ORIGINAL" members of the 507th were jumping in to Normandy because they would be 80 years old.
It's easy to stand on the outside and look in, especially when you know nothing of the situation.
Justin Cazana
Ooh boy -- it looks like the unity and bipartisanship of the Ronald Reagan funeral faded in a hurry....
(Is this going to have to be my next big investigative project - going to the homes of e-mail writers, and counting how many windows they have?)
I don't know what unit they were in, but a group of 80-something veterans actually trained to jump at the D-Day ceremonies in France. They were not allowed to do so - and for some reason, former President Bush asked Brit Hume of Fox News to parachute jump on his 80th birthday instead of them.
Now other things that dropped on Wednesday like sweat from a jogger's brow:
+ Russell County Commission candidate Harry McElwee complained as many as 200 of his campaign signs have been stolen since last Friday. I don't know if this will make him feel better - but if someone stole 200 of Bobby Peters's campaign signs, we probably wouldn't notice the difference.
+ Auburn University's Southeastern Raptor Center released two red-tailed hawks into the wild. I'm presuming interim President Ed Richardson found some reason to fire them....
(We DO hope those red-tailed hawks are heading for Atlanta - because the Atlanta Hawks need a lot of new bodies for next season.)
+ WHAL-AM "Hallelujah 1460" played a commercial with "Trojan-Man." Yes, as in condoms. Considering this station plays gospel music, Clear Channel must believe those surveys -- that most people talk about waiting until marriage, but they really don't.
+ Peachtree City, Georgia held a workshop on a proposal to "ban smoking within 25 feet of non-smoking areas." At least, that's how the Associated Press worded it. You'd think they could simply make the non-smoking area bigger -- but of course, that's not how politicians and lawyers think.
(What would you call this 25-foot area - the DMZ? De-Marlboro-ized Zone?)
+ Instant Message to my family: No, I have NOT traveled to Atlanta to see the visiting Kansas City Royals play, even though it's where I grew up. I didn't even know the Royals were coming until Tuesday evening -- but from watching TV, I can tell you all about the Little League tournaments here.
BLOG-BLAH-BLAH: Did you attend the "Lose Weight With Hypnosis" seminar on Manchester Expressway Wednesday? If you did, we'd like to hear from you about it. Please write us....
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