My Thoughts On Email Forwards, And A Few Other Random Thoughts

Welcome once again, all three of my faithful readers. This time I have decided to address an issue very near and dear to many computer users' hearts-The new national pastime of email forwarding.

I have come to largely despise email forwards. There! I've said it! Got it all out in the open! Now you can look at this post with expressions of shock and horror at the fact that there is still one person in this great country that does NOT pass on email forwards. If you can curb being repulsed by this fact long enough to read on, by all means, please do so.

As I previously mentioned, the new national pastime in this country, at least among computer users, seems to have become forwarding every kind of "junk" email that you can imagine. Scams, hoaxes, jokes, cute little messages, games, links to who knows what, alleged petitions, video clips, viruses, and many, many other things make the rounds of cyberspace, polluting email inboxes every second. Some are funny, others lame. Some are interesting, others boring. Some are entertaining, others infuriating. And others make you wonder just why the (insert a random, imaginary colorful exclamation here) anyone thought that it was worth passing on to you.

Some forwards are simply pranks designed to perpetuate their own existence. For example, let me dispell a few myths that are proclaimed by some forwards. 1.NOTHING, that's right, NOTHING cool, funny, interesting, cute (or whatever) is going to pop up on your screen if you forward this message to at least 10 people in less that 5 seconds! 2. Bill Gates, or Applebee's, or some other corporate giant will NOT send you $5 for every person you forward this to. 3. The person that forwarded this to you will NOT consider you not to be his/her true friend because you didn't forward it back.

Then, there are the "Christian" email forwards. They range from a simple passage of scripture with some cute or pretty background to some inspirational story, to some kind of petition against immoral behaviour, or even occaisionally something kind of interesting or thought-provoking. Then, they always end with something like this: Are you ashamed of Jesus? The Bible says that if we are ashamed of Jesus here on earth, He will be ashamed of us when we stand before his throne. If this were some other, normal, lame email forward, you would imediately send it to everyone you know. But, since it is a "Christian" forward, you will think very carefully about who you send it to.

I don't know about you, but that drives me NUTS! I rarely pass on email forwards. In fact, I can probably count on one hand the number of forwards I have passed on in the last couple of years. Basically, I figure that, since everyone sends these things to everyone (and their brother and second cousin, twice removed), anyone I would send it to has probably received it several times. And, these things usually make the rounds about every few months, after everyone has forgotten that they sent it the first time. So, they don't need to get it again from me. I also am one of the poor, underpriveleged people to still be on dial-up, and, since most of these forwards are rather large, they take awhile to send or receive. (you try waiting half an hour or more to finish receiving three or four video clips or photo collections that someone has sent you at the same time) Plus, go ahead, admit it, most forwards are pretty lame, especially if you've had them sent to you several times.

So, it really annoys me to have someone try to lay a guilt trip on me for allegedly being ashamed of Jesus, simply because I didn't perpetuate their annoying forward. Plus, I have received many of these "I'm not ashamed of Jesus" forwards from people that I know couldn't care less about God or what His word says about how they should live their lives. But, they seem to think that Jesus will welcome them into Heaven, because they were proud enough of Him to pass on this forward.

And, horror of horrors, I got my first text-message forward on my cell phone the other day. Of course it was a cute, you-are-my-good-friend-and-I-just-wanted-to-let-you-know kind of thing, chich is fine, but it just seems kind of lame to have to send someone a forward to let them know it. (no offense intended to the person who sent it to me, by the way, just in case you're reading this; I'll still be your good friend) However, I will DEFINATELY NOT pass on text-message forwards, because I'm too cheap to get a text-message plan, and it costs me money every time I send one. so, if you send me something like that, I will NOT send it back to you.

Well, did you last this far? If you did, I will tell you that I don't absolutely HATE all email (or text-message) forwards. In fact I've seen some pretty good ones. If you get a good one, send it to me. I don't care. But, please don't send me every single boring, lame forward you get, simply because you can.

Anyway, on to other stuff.....

In video game news (since I know you all skip all of the rest of my posts just to read the video game stuff), I have finished Quantum Redshift. I mostly enjoyed it, though I just about threw my controller across the room in frustration more than a few times. It's very basically a high-speed, futuristic racing game in which the racres carry weapons that can be used to eliminate the other racers from the race. There are 18 tracks, and 16 different characters that you can race as, in 5 different speed classes. (speeds can be over 900 mph) I basically played it for 4 months, and, as I figured up after I finished it (I won all 5 speed classes with all 16 racers), I won 418 races. As you may expect, I was ready to move on to something else.

I have now begun playing Army Men RTS, a real-time strategy game featuring little toy plastic soldiers. (you know, like you can buy in a plastic bucket at Wal-mart) So far it's pretty fun, but I'm only about 1/4 of the way through it, so I guess the jury's still out on it. If you want to know more, look it up on gamespot.com, ign.com, or gamespy.com.

Also, Karissa is still growing like a weed! She is walking a little, is working on three more teeth (for a total of six), and has learned to climb onto low objects, which never ceases to worry her mother to death! :-)

Anyway, my next post will probably be about why I am (apparently) so much smarter than the rest of the world. Unless, of course, I come up with something else to post about before I finish thinking up what to put in that one.

Stay tuned......