mines more of a twig

I am still laughing out loud.
I should be crying - im getting increasingly angry with the amount of spam that i get in my email these days. I remember listening to a "futurist" only 3 years ago who predicted the death of email which would come about due to 1) people feeling overloaded by CC'd tasks, and 2) the increasing torrent of spam. his solution was to charge people to send email. At the time that seemed an outragous proposal as surely the whole idea of email and internet was the freedom and freeness of it all. Sadly i'm starting to agree with his thinking. I wonder what difference would become of our work day if we were charged say 5 pennies for each email sent?
One thing for sure it would dramatically reduce the amount of spam we'd recieve.

I must recieve currently about 50 spam emails per day (and i know some people recieve many more) any suggestions for spam filters gratefully recieved :-) and what confuses me is just how unimaginative it all is. Can it really be true that the only thing that requires spam attention is rolex watches, stocks, software and penis patches? and as for the sales pitch, im guessing that the copy is being thrown together by some dropout schoolboys who dont have english as their first language. And so ive been getting very bored and frustrated with all this garbage coming into my inbox.... until today!.....
At last some spammer somewhere has got a grasp of the situation and engaged me.
His email contained no more than a hyperlink that said "our site" and the best ever one line sentence that is still making me laugh....
"your penis will make more shadow than a tree"

raising my expectations

I made an email enquiry the other day about something fabulous that i want to buy (well, i got some money for my birthday ;-) and i couldn't find the exact details on the website, so i sent them an email......
and then i waited for their response.... 30 seconds, 2 minutes, 10 minutes, half an hour ... what sort of company was this, that didnt respond imeadiately to my email? by the end of the day i still hadnt had a reply from them and had decided that they were clearly a flakey two-bit outfit that obviously werent capable of fulfiling my needs. I really felt quite let down by them

itsnt it interesting how my expectations were so high? was it because i have grown to expect that people sit glued to their laptops and blackberrys or was it because i was so excited about potentially owning something fabulous and i wanted it "NOW"

I had a nice reply from the company the following working day, and they have exactly what im after, so all is cool-in-the-gang again, and i shall order this amazing thing from them.... now lets just look at the delivery date.... "3 DAYS!.. I cant wait THAT long!"

ive been distracted

Im back. I havent made a posting to my blog for nearly 2 months. What does that say about me and my ways? I get easily bored and distracted and i dont break old habits easily.
I could list here all the reasons for not writing, but that would simply sound like i'm trying to excuse myself. There is no excuse, Ive simply been distracted.

The distractions have been very good though :-) i might even draw on some of my new experiences to write about in forthcoming blog entrys :-)

So what have i learnt about myself and blogging during this time?

• Blogging needs time (it might well only need a tiny bit of time, but it nevertheless needs it and it needs it regularly)
• Its very easy to think that you dont have enough time
• when working abroad (or even away from your normal routine) the effort to create blogs is even greater
• Even when simplifying the process by posting entrys by mobile phone txt messages, this is not always as simple as you'd hope. I thinking particulary here about working abroad and in remote places
• Blogging needs to be habitual; a way of life. like trying to do more frequent gym visits, the moment you let your efforts slip, it is all too easy to drift back to your old habits. However...
• Like trying to do more frequent gym visits, you might fail a number of times but you can always start again. and so this is me - recognising that frequent blogging is a tough challenge - starting again