Hello, Jason --
On Friday, 1/21/2004, I received two malformed e-mails
purporting to
come from you, with the above Subject line.
There was no proper salutation; rather, each started
with two paragraphs
of boldfaced junk about "urn:schemas" and "microsoft-com" etc., and I
cannot make any sense of them.
Those were followed by a large three-part black
rectangle.
These e-mails also tried to load some sort of unknown
outside content
and hung at 24% with a JavaScript error. While I am invited to "Type
'javascript' into Location for details", there is no "Location" field in
an e-mail client.
I have posted a PrtScn screen capture on the Internet
-- you can see it
at:
http://www.millcityrecords.com/mndensa/emails/venable03_ps.htm
As you might expect, when I saw all of this stuff, I
immediately clicked
out of that folder rather than scrolling down to see what other horrors
might await me.
So I don't have the slightest idea of what you may
have been trying to
communicate to me.
Each of these e-mails came with a substantial
attachment of over 115
KiloBytes.
To briefly quote from one of thousands of similar
pages on the Web:
"...follow this rule: Never open an attachment unless you know the
person who sent the file and know what the file is – and, most
importantly, never open it unless you asked the person to send it."
(http://aroundcny.com/technofile/texts/bit080101.html)
I, like most experienced Internet users, follow this
rule absolutely;
given the malformed nature of the containing e-mails, there is no way
I'll ever open those attachments.
So, if you have something to communicate to me, I
would appreciate your
sending it in a plain-text, properly formed e-mail without any boldfaced
mystery material, black rectangles, attempted Internet access, or
JavaScript errors.
On a possibly related subject:
I recently received a letter from Pam Donahoo,
Executive Director of
American Mensa, Ltd., asking me to modify the owner field of Minnesota
Mensa's website domain registration, to bring it more in line with the
standard usage for local group domain registrations.
When I went to our registrar website to deal with this
request, I found
that I was unable to do so. Some preliminary investigation informed me
that I could temporarily not access our domain maintenance page due to
something called a "WIPO dispute".
I don't know anything about that, but I did notice
that "WIPO" also
appears in the subject line of these malformed e-mails you sent me, so I
am postulating that there may be a connection.
If you have done anything that is delaying my
responding to Ms.
Donahoo's request, I would appreciate your undoing whatever it is, so
that I may proceed with her request.
I will anticipate your prompt attention to these matters.
Sincerely,
Al Heigl
Webmaster,
Minnesota Mensa
--
Alan Heigl
Mill City Records
P.O. Box 177
Northfield Minnesota 55057-0177
507-663-6090
(Professional Proofreading,
Web Site Work using FrontPage 2003)
http://www.millcityrecords.com/webwork/