I have a feeling I will be writing a lot of apology notes next week. I don’t know for sure—I’m still waiting for the hundreds of emails that are locked in the Boreal Access email system to start downloading. But I’m sure amongst the many emails that are junk there will be some that were time-critical that should have been answered. Or worse, that should have been published in some manner in this week’s Cook County News-Herald.
When the email system stopped working on Monday evening, I wasn’t too concerned. There have been email outages before, fortunately for only the briefest time. I was confident the problem would be corrected quickly.
I found other things to do. I always have a backlog of emails in my in-box that need reading and saving. I did that, deleting old messages as I went along. It was a bit frustrating. Many emails I wanted to answer, but couldn’t. It appeared that I could send an email if I wished—the problem wasn’t with the outgoing piece of the mail system. But it doesn’t do any good to send an email when the person you are talking to is blocked from answering.
On Tuesday I was at the county board meeting in the morning so the absent emails didn’t worry me. I was sure when I got to the office in the afternoon, I would have a plethora of emails to peruse. Unfortunately that was not the case.
I spent Tuesday sending notes to our regular submitters, asking them to send their columns or photos or information to my personal email. I hated to do it. I try not to check my personal messages at work because it’s distracting. I am never able to look at just the one email of interest. No, like Alice down the rabbit hole, I notice another message that needs a reply…and another…and another…
Sometimes I have to open that home email because a friend or family member lets me know they sent something to me there. It’s not their fault. It’s the darn autofill feature in most email programs. When these regular correspondents type in “Rhonda,” my personal e-mail automatically pops up. And down the rabbit hole I go.
I hated to give an alternate email to more people, but I had to do something to get the information needed for this issue. I also sent text messages and Facebook private messages. We took a seldom-used Qwest email address and posted it on the News-Herald webpage and on the Boreal Access homepage, asking the community to send information to us at that address. We called businesses that send weekly ads to ask them to resend them. We called the county and school district to let them know if they had sent public notices we hadn’t received them. I called Cavallin Funeral Home to make sure we weren’t missing sad news.
But I know we likely missed something. The News-Herald routinely receives legal notices from law firms around the region, news releases from area businesses and organizations, obituaries from far off places and letters to the editor from all over. All of these arrive at random, so there is no way to know what we’ve missed. We can’t contact people that we don’t even know sent us something.
The waiting is nerve-wracking, but also frustrating is the break in normal routine. I don’t know how many times I’ve checked my office email today. I know Boreal Access is working frantically to fix the problem and the emails will eventually start rolling in. I know I shouldn’t waste my time clicking on the Boreal email tab. But I do it anyway—like walking into a room during a power outage and flipping the light switch. I guess I keep hoping that the emails trapped in limbo—like Alice in Wonderland—will magically appear.
Computers are like Old
Testament gods—lots of
rules and no mercy
Joseph Campbell
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