Jim's Brain Online

I woke up yesterday morning to discover that my main email account had 100 MB of space. Meanwhile, the Yahoo account used to manage my SBC internet now has 2 Gig of storage. Ironically, that's the one I never use. Assuming that I might have to switch providers someday, I tend to regard my original yahoo email as my main address and the other as something that could disappear at any time.

Now though, the space alone tempts me to find some way to use it.

It's rather strange to find how pervasive email has become in the general culture. I remember finishing college in 1991 and realizing to my dismay that I would probably no longer have access to any email account at all.

Western Theological Seminary (the next step after college) did not have email. It barely had computers. Ironically, I managed to continue having an email account through a local BBS, but that was it.

Since then, email's ballooned into the public consciousness. I actually recieve email from my parents these days. Back when I was at Hope College, my Dad would have the departmental secretary print out his email and give it to him. In fact, back when I was at Hope, you had to get special permission to have an account that was allowed to email people off of Hope's campus. This was because some students had once irritated some people off campus with their emails and the IT department decided that shutting that service down was an effective way of solving the problem.

After all, it's not like it would have affected people much. Who did they need to email off campus anyway?

Well, in my case Ed and a bunch of people at Calvin for my Amber and Avalon campaigns (that's right, fantasy role-playing). I managed to get an account through my Dad (with a little hesitation on his part) and all was right with the world.

If I remember correctly, that allowed me 5 blocks of space on Hope's VAX, an amount that could be easily filled by the mailing list a number of my friends had created. Walking up to a terminal to find that I couldn't do much of anything until I deleted my email was always an amusing experience.

Now though, it appears that I have more space than I could possibly need. I wonder how long it would take to fill 2 gigs with spam?