Finally, someone who gets it!
Why I’d rather be punched in the testicles than call customer service – The Oatmeal.
Ever get that email from one of your friends who has some sort of ‘bizop’ or ‘network marketing greatest and latest fuel saving gizmo’? How about the one where it’s a chance to make some sort of change in the world?
Most spam is from some nameless entity with no traceable website or contact info. This type of spam I’m gonna talk about is the one that comes from your brother, your mother (who’s so proud being able to email her son so sends him every hyped email she gets about some lost girl or the ‘truth about the flu’ BS), your girlfriend/boyfriend and then the random guy you met on Facebook trying to recruit you into Primerica.
All of these ‘invites’ are from completely non-techie people. Ok, sure you don’t have to be technical to send an email but damn, do you have to be clueless just because something is easy to use? Allow me to illustrate the latest email I received and responded to.
It starts….
Subject: Good news for singles
Hi everyone,
I have been working on a very special project for many years and now it is ready to go.
Like has been said many times: Necessity is the mother of invention.
I felt that there was dire need for a place where single people can get together in a safe environment and meet other singles in an intelligent and safe environment to discuss the problems of relationships and learn sound relationship skills.
We are all good people, but the problems are for one; we have not had the opportunity to learn good relationship skills and the second is that even if we have good relationship skills they can be very different from other’s idea of what good is, so we so often get in a situation where we are singing from different pages in the hymn book.
I have put together, what I think is the most empowering course in improving your relationship skills, that you will find anywhere. Such quality information is scarce in todays deteriorating social conditions….
*************
Ok, you get the point and I’m willing to bet many of you were wondering when ‘request for only $1 per day’ was gonna show up. In this case, it didn’t but still there’s more.
See, this particular email was sent out to 44 people at once and all were just simply CC’d. So here is my response to this particular friend.
“Hi,
Allow me to advise you on what we call Nettiquette and spamming. First spam. Spam is essentially defined as unsolicited email usually with a lean toward some sort of retail/commercial request. Current laws are in place that penalize persons/companies who do not have permission to send mail to recipients. So if you have something to offer people it is considered polite Nettiquette to send a brief requst email to see if people are interested in such info as opposed to just sending a big advertising email out.
Second, email and Blind Carbon Copy(BCC). Every email program for the last 20 years has had the ability to ‘BCC’ people. This protects recipients emails from being exposed to anyone else in the list. Learn how your program does this, a google search on it will help.
Also, I’m married so I am definetly not part of your target market.
Enjoy your new found knowledge and I give this info as a freebie. Next one won’t be so polite 
”
This is getting tedious. It’s like giving people cars but no rules on how to drive. They just get in, turn on the car, slam on the gas and careen about the world blindly.
There was one friend who send me one of those ‘forward this to 12 of your friends in the next 30 seconds or you will die’ type of hype emails. She did it once, I warned her. Second time she got flagged as spam. I got better things to do than to read that kind of crap.
Pass this posting along to your friends that do this to you.
Normally I keep to all techie stuff here but this dumb-ass fiasco by the local police needs to get out.
The event:
Hundreds of Hamiltonians came out this morning to support Esther and Gord Pauls and the Runner’s Den to raise money for Haiti. The event took place at Westdale school. We all had a great time and felt good participating in such a wonderful event. When I left as I was walking back to my car I saw cars with parking tickets on their windows. I am aware that many city streets only have parking on one side of the street at different times of the year…..BUT…..
I ask you this….is the Parking Authority and the City of Hamilton that heartless and cheap that they would TARGET an event to give out tickets? Are there mounds of snow on the streets? NO. Was it a weekday with tons of traffic? NO. Were tickets given out all over Hamilton on similar streets? NO. Gee, what time was written on these tickets? About 9:35 am….hmmmm right after the race started. Could the city not have left the citizens alone for 2 hours on a Saturday morning to support such a great cause. I was appauled and disgusted when I saw these tickets and I didn’t even get one.
I urge everyone to COMPLAIN to everyone you can think of regarding this ridiculous targeting of cars. Maybe the city should have put a warning on the cars and donated the money instead of grabbing more money for the city coffers. Hey, that would have been the kinder thing to do. I hope all of you who take the time to read this are as revolted as I am.
Email the mayor and complain!
Mayor Fred site http://www.mayorfred.ca/
Email: mayorfred@hamilton.ca
Telephone: 905.546.4200
Ward 1 Councillor
Email: bmchattie@hamilton.ca
Business Phone: (905) 546-2416
