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Writer’s Bloc: From a Piece of Mail

As a part of the writer’s group I work with, aptly titled “Writer’s Bloc” — the “k” omitted on purpose — I set out to put something down out of a long distant memory. The subject of the assignment was “a piece of mail.” The memory I eventually picked was not entirely accurate or truthful perhaps, but in spirit one of my favorites. The time I chose was WWII. The experiences are still vivid to me and it was a period of history I was curiously fond of, in spite of the “seriousness” of it all.

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The Worst Weather for Mail Carriers

“Benedetto,” our postman, rings twice and arrives again in today’s blog post.  Yesterday, I spent an hour chatting with him — “chatting” means me listening to him and not saying a word — and enjoying his wild windings and I’ll share some of the learned fascinations with you.

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Up from the Hate Box: The Homo Retard Prom

Every day some sort of hate mail arrives in my Inbox and quickly gets filtered into the “Hate” label and away from my immediate eye. Two of the most popular triggers for an email to be filtered into the “Hate” pile are “homo” and “retard” and in a single message yesterday, both of those cue words landed in the heap.

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Google Gears Goes Offline

Google are making many surprise moves early in 2009 and I love them all.  The latest Google gift is the ability to use Google Gears to work offline with Gmail and your Google Calendar. 
Google Gears worked up offline access for Docs last year and now, as you can see below on my Mac Desktop, I have direct access my mail, sked and workload 24/7/365 and I could not be happier.

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Voter Caging Means Junk Mail Trumps Civil Rights

If you aren’t aware of the direct marketing junk mail campaign term “Caging” — and its relationship to “Voter Caging” and the stolen 2000 and 2004 presidential elections in the United States — you are not alone.

You were failed by the mainstream media as “tens of thousands” of minority votes were caged in the 2004 presidential election in Florida — 35 students at a traditionally Black college in Jacksonville alone — as well as the caging of over 35,000 voters in Ohio and many more in other states. Republicans challenged the legitimacy of Black voters via a junk email scam. Here’s how it worked:

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Hate Mail and Spam

I have decided there is no difference between Hate Mail and Spam. Nobody wants to get either one; they each share the intent to bother and wound; Hate Mail and Spam live to burden and bother.

Do you agree Hate Mail and Spam are the same thing?

If not, what’s the difference between the two?

What is the worst piece of Hate Mail you received?

What was the silliest Spam you found in your Inbox?

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I am My Own Trained Monkey: Getting the Gmail Out!

Type, monkey, type! Monkey Time! If you have been following my plight with Gmail as set down in my Getting Email out of Gmail article, you know I’ve been having a frustrating time trying to figure out how to get my Gmail out of one Gmail account and re-directed into another one in a simple, one-step, seamless merge.

I am disappointed to write there was no single-step solution.

I had to do it the old fashioned way with my monkey fingers on my monkey keyboard!

Here’s how I did it using Gmail and Apple Mail.

The solution was a mix of all the excellent advice I curried in my original article.

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Yahoo Mail Beta Disappointing

Last Friday I was finally invited to participate in the Yahoo! Mail Beta and I was immediately disappointed in the experience. From what I had read all over the internet since the Beta program was introduced, I thought the new Yahoo! Mail Beta was going to finally allow me to jump online and run all my 15 email accounts — I would settle for four — from one centralized location instead of having to use Outlook 2003 as my meter of reading, delivering and managing email.

Yahoo Mail Beta

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Stop Sending Me Mail!

I get a lot of mail. I get tons of magazines each week. I get all kinds of offers in the mail. While my mail carrier manages a meek smile when he sees me, I know deep down he doesn’t appreciate me breaking his back with my popularity measured in the pounds of paper he has to lug over every day. 

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