Yesterday I told my addressbook to update itself. It sent a handy dandy email to every person in my book with a little note from me and a direct link to their contact information in my book. Tonight I checked in and saw this message:
Your address book is 39% up-to-date.
I figured end of the academic year was a good time to do some addressbook housekeeping. So I added the graduating seniors and 3rd years, and added to that whatever addresses I had from a year of conferences and correspondence and then punched the update button.
My friend Brian from undergrad was the son of an Air Force officer. At the time there was this real cool station at NORAD he told me about where a guy could press a button and a bank of lights would go out. At the same moment lights would go out in missile silos all over the country and then within seconds operators in those silos would press a button and the light at NORAD would come on again. They used it as a readiness drill.
The update contacts function on this program reminds me of that. I send out a message and then everyone in the book responds to the message in real time. Certainly the fate of every citizen in North America is not at stake, but it is nice to see the messages come in anyway.
Actually the first thing that happens is several dead addresses bounce. But right on the heels of that, someone sitting at their desk looking for something to do to waste a moment answers, the management page posts a message and updates the percent complete overall.
In a really geeky, homebound way it is kind of exciting.
The last time around I never got higher than 84% complete. People don't answer, or the message is filtered out as spam, or they are some kind of Plaxophobes, or it turns out to be incompatible with their software - last time there was a lot of difficulty with people who were on a Mac platform. Still, I sit eagerly anticipating 100% complete. That would be so cool.
I guess it is the little things.
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