Loving the Blackberry the last few days – don’t know how I would have kept in touch or made it through Evac I* without it.  At the same time though, I’m flashing back to the old State Department days of telegrams.  You’ve seen them in old movies.  They’re like e-mail, but much more pretentious.  Instant communication anywhere in the world, back before Nobel Laureate Gore invented the internet, and its evil bastard child, spam e-mail. 

With telegrams we had a concept called ‘minimize.’  When your Embassy was under siege, a post could be put on the minimize list.  They’d still get the messages sent directly too them, but not the bulk nonsense.  In the e-mail equivalent, notes from friends, family and potential refugee hosts, but not the alumni updates, news summaries and URGENT MESSAGES for IMPORTANT LEGISLATIVE ACTION.  You non-profits know who you are.  Note I’m not even including spam.  I’m given up on ever eliminating that until we can reinstate the torture-before-death penality in this state.  But it would be nice if I could tell HowlingBerry to minimize *poof*, and some wizened gatekeeper would only send me the good stuff.  Everyone else needs to send a separate message to Ms. Berry justifying why Chuck needs to be bothered with this message now, and not by snail mail at a more convenient time.

*Roman numerals being used in anticipation of possible future events.  The neighborhood is currently on voluntary evacuation, and roadblocks are letting people out but not back in.