Some people really want to see fancy HTML mail. They want italics and inline images and all sorts of nonsense that makes my teeth itch. I used to ignore any such mail that I got, because it was mostly from people from whom I didn’t expect good mail. Then I started getting more mail like that from my family, and I groaned and set up a mailcap entry to make Mutt dump the HTML messages to text with w3m or lynx and it was bearable again.

Just a note to myself, since I always forget: this is the order of the Fletch books by Gregory McDonald:

Dear Speakeasy Members,

Today is an historic and exciting day for Speakeasy.

I am pleased to announce that Speakeasy has been acquired by Best Buy, an innovative and growing Fortune 100 company and the top consumer electronics retailer in North America.

About two weeks ago, I was singing the praises of mutt, patting myself on the back for improving my mail toolchain configuration, and complaining that GUI mail apps always make me feel stifled. I was asked to elaborate, so here goes.

We’ve had a lot of people tell us that they really like Martha’s name. I’m not sure whether this is usual and meaningless, but I like to think it’s because Martha Josephine is a good name. It’s not weird, it’s not boring, and it’s classical without being archaic. Quite a few of my friends asked me how we chose it, so I’m giving a little explanation.

I got an instant message yesterday at 16:59, about when I was getting ready to leave work: “I think my water just broke.” I headed off to the bus while Gloria called the midwife for advice. The next time I heard from her it was almost six. Her breathing sounded pretty labored (no pun intended), and she said that she was going to try to finish preparing food for the pigs while for while we’d be at the hospital. My mom and dad were on their way over.

Martha Josephine Signes was born at 21:21, 21 inches long, 8 1/16 pounds.

For as long as we’ve lived together (and before that) Gloria and I have had to leave home to do our laundry. At BU, I’d take my laundry to my brother’s place or my sister’s place. In Somerville, we’d walk about a block to what is now called the Showcase Laundramat. When we moved into our old apartment in Bethlehem, there was a washer in our apartment, but it wasn’t hooked up. We hoped it would be put in the basement and turned on, but it was eventually removed and sent to who-knows-where. For as long as we’ve lived in Bethlehem, Gloria has taken the laundry to the Linden Tree Laundramat or to my parents’ place.

It seems like everyone I know is using Thunderbird or Apple Mail, these days. Sometimes, I feel a little left behind. I still run mutt. Then again, every time I try to use a GUI mail application, I feel stifled. It just isn’t smart enough.

Lately, I am getting a lot of incredibly annoying email from Amazon. Worse, it’s email that requires that I repeatedly go log in and click buttons, just to get what I ordered.