Hello again and thanks to everyone whom replied to my last email, the first I’ve sent from Ghost, my new platform.
Your responses revealed a few glitches, which I’ve fixed, but at least I didn’t cause millions of PCs to blue-screen, which is good.
Unfortunately, the sudden surge in emails kicked off Gmail’s spam filters and they shut me down.
Temporarily, thankfully.
Which reminds me …
In 1995, I worked in an IT department at a large bank.
My friend Josephine, a colleague, sent an important email to over 300 people, setting a read receipt to track who opened it.
Unfortunately, her PC was set to say “DOH!”—like Homer Simpson—every time a new email arrived.
Which wasn’t normally a problem … but …
For the next 2 hours the office was filled with “DOH! DOH! DOH!”
Her PC froze, and even after restarting, the dohs kept doh-ing.
“DOH! DOH! DOH!”
Josephine lost about an hour and a half of work, which was of no real consequence, but she gave us a story that still makes me smile 30 years later.
Is there a lesson here?
- Perhaps it’s that small details can create unexpected bottlenecks?
Perhaps it’s that sudden unexpected surges in demand create bottlenecks?
Perhaps - with a little more thought - it’s the realisation that overwhelmed PCs shutdown … and so do humans?
That last one resonates … big time.
So many of us are overwhelmed by overflowing inboxes, and yet no one is laughing about it. Perhaps we’ve stopped noticing?
Before I go, let me tell you about Ken, who I worked with in Dublin, in 1999.
One day, Ken, a mild-mannered accountant, the picture of respectability, opened an innocent-looking email.
The volume on his PC suddenly turned up to 100%, and it shouted, “I’m watching porn over here’.
Which provided endless entertainment to everyone except Ken, who, I imagine, probably still blushes to this day.
Talk soon… about snakes.
Clarke - “The Bottleneck Guy”