What about that stint on the Iranian nuclear program? Bet you'd like us to think you've "forgotten" about that too, eh?
So much you have forgotten, Ogged. If I didn't know better, I'd think you sent me the marijuana question.
Latin geeks: What is the first person plural, active perfect conjugation of "Veni, vidi, vici"?
Like Ogged, I have all of my email going back to 1998ish. I don't go back through it often, but it's nice to know it's there for similar reasons. My favorite thing to peruse are emails from the early tenative stage of friendships that now mean a lot to me. I like watching how they unfolded.
I have some homework from 7th grade on this computer.
I've lost all of my email before about 2000, to my everlasting chagrin. My wife at one point had most of her archives, and for a birthday present one year presented me with a bound book of all of the emails we sent back and forth during the summer (of 1997) when we first met and fell in wuv. Too cute. So all of you with past emails, treasure them.
I have a folder containing most of the personal correspondence I have ever received in the mail, since I was 13 or so. (Surprisingly little for so many years.) E-mail I treat much more carelessly.
Venimus, vidimus, vicimus.
Serious cognitive dissonance: this just showed up on my guild mailing list, used by a guildmate who works with apo and thus, I assume, had asked him, and so on. I just saw two of my intertube lives intersect unexpectedly. I need a lie-down.
works with apo and thus, I assume, had asked him
Yep.
Mundane, probably, but also extremely weird.
On the email tip, the only email of which I'm extremely protective is the email I've kept after the other end of the conversation died.
atually, Apo wasn't asked, per se, but saw an excellent opportunity to test his hypothesis that 'if [he] posts the question online, it will be answered within 5 minutes.'
Unfortunately, it looks like it took 6, unless 'Val Venis' (and his pal...) is an acceptable answer.
For a while I was really anal about retaining email, and then my wife told me I was being weird, and that I should knock it off, and now I have gotten more careless.
Casually digging around my computer, I can find email going back to Sept 12, 2001, so I can now be reminded that on that day, a student I liked said we should "kill em all"
16: OK, now it's just weird. My worlds are colliding!
8: My wife's immediately-prior boyfriend had done this. It is extremely hard for me to accept that this is in my (our) house.
I had my college account for years after graduation, and it had a few gems in there, but then, when I finally lost the account, it was cleared out more quickly than I expected, and it was all lost.
A similar thing happened to my hotmail account - at one point I went 30 days without checking it, and 3 years of correspondence - including courting my wife - was gone.
A woman who was a senior when I was a freshman (90-91) had a thick binder of all her emails - still of the mindset that it was the paper record that mattered. What's amazing about this is that she had no floppy disks - virtually all her work was stored on the campus network.
13: I have my dad's last e-mail to me, sent the night he died and not received until after I found out that he was dead. It's completely mundane--he had no idea he was about to die. Very, very eerie.
I abandon email accounts and their archives purposefully. It gives spam a place to die, and lessens my chances of getting those "hey do you remember me from middle school" emails.
And if I ever need embarassing reminders of my life on teh intarwebs, I need but search the Usenet archives. *shudder*
20: My oldest sister's last email to me was about advice on buying a scanner and/or a digital camera. Unbelievably mundane but I cherish it.
I've kept my e-mails since about 1998 or so. I always thought that was kind of obsessive, so I'm glad to see that others do it as well. Of course, that doesn't definitively answer the "obsessive" question, but...
As for possible career paths not taken, my college roommates LOVE to tease me about the time during our freshman year that I applied to Senator Jesse Helms to be a legislative intern the summer between freshman and sophomore year. Luckily for me, I got rejected. I shudder to think who I'd have become otherwise.
God. I lost about 4 months' worth of email from a year or two ago that included exchanges between myself and a man I was falling in love with. Powerful stuff.
It's all still on my ISP's server, and I've been refusing to change ISPs, thereby losing access, until I come up with a plan to retrieve it all. I cannot seem to simply re-download it. Which raises the question: why let this stuff be saved on the server?
The thought of printing it all out, or re-sending each message to myself *now,* seems absurd.
I should let it go? But no, I don't think so. Fuck.
I cannot seem to simply re-download it.
What? Why not?
Now you know why you'll never make the McCarthur list for your free dance interpretation of Being and Time, you bastard.
What? Why not?
Uh, can't figure out how. Once the messages have been downloaded once, I don't see how to render them downloadable again.
This is an email account through my ISP, and I've got my email client here set to leave messages on their server.
When I check mail on my machine, it downloads previously undownloaded messages (recent messages). The desirable messages in question, from a year ago, were downloaded at the time, then lost on this machine. How to re-download them?
Hey, maybe I should call my ISP! And ask.
I have all my email back to about 2000, with the oldest messages being a series of love notes from a now-gay ex. The diary-x journal I kept my first year of law school, though, got nuked in a server crash before I downloaded it. Scott Turow's version will have to remain the definitive one.
I don't see how to render them downloadable again.
If you go into the POP download settings page, you should be able to reset it so that it goes back and grabs all of the messages again.
the oldest messages being a series of love notes from a now-gay ex
The Miss Manners obsession should have been a red flag.
Sad. I've lost most of my email before 2003, actually--the discs that 1995-2002 were backed up on got lost in a move, and I never really had the heart to start backing them up regualrly again. I just happen to have 2003-2004 backed up, and then I backed up my gmail after ogged scared the hell out out me earlier. I'm kind of glad though--I am cursed with an excellent memory and topped it off with a terrible habit of going over old emails and reading and rereading them. There was a lot of grief between 2000 and 2003 that I think it's better is lost to me. Sometimes it's better to forget.
In different threads. This site is MINE ALL MINE!
I'm not sure how far back my email goes, because after I did the big import into Gmail, everything I imported has a date of 6/2/2004.
Off topic, when I was at the gym yesterday at the alma mater, I looked up at the TV to see a guy from my graduating class (now a comedian in NYC) on VH1's "Embarrassing Celebrity Moments" show, saying something about Jude Law. That was weird.
Different ex, w-lfs-n, but I'll keep alert for any sexuality revelations on that front as well.
If you go into the POP download settings page, you should be able to reset it so that it goes back and grabs all of the messages again.
Thanks, MattF. I'll try this.
Back up your email, y'all. A friend of mine had his hard disk fail and paid an arm and a leg through the nose to get the data recovered.
I have my dad's last e-mail to me
I have some emails from my father, also before he died unexpectedly last year. It is eerie when I come across them. I don't keep all my email, but I'm not ready to let those go yet.