Ever helpful Google has developed a gizmo to deal with your vast digital treasure after you have gone rogue.
The Inactive Account Manager (I.A.M.) can be set to delete or distribute your files if you do not log on for a specified time – 3 months, 6 months or one year.
As part of the set-up process, you have the opportunity to write a message to the person who you designate as the recipient of all your gmail. This message is delivered after your prolonged absence from Google’s universe sets the gears in motion.
I suppose this would be a strange e-mail to write, since it will only be delivered once you have been offline for at least three months. In today’s world, that means dead, or nearly.
So what should you say?
I put this question to Trail Baboon’s Rhyming Poet Laureate, Schuyler Tyler Wyler, and he came up with a message that is carefully organized to have 14 syllables in each line, because in Egypt, the Amenti, an area west of the Nile where souls go after death, was divided in 14 parts.
I asked STW to explain this in more detail and he couldn’t. He said he read it in an unsolicited e-mail that came from a Nigerian Princess.
I’m sending this unwelcome note because I am logged out.
I trust you’ll know the reason why, and what it’s all about.I’ve been inactive ninety days, and you know that is odd.
I might be comatose, or sick, or wind surfing with God.I could be traveling abroad – a touring man of leisure.
Or like some old soap opera star – a victim of amnesia.I may have lost my password or forgotten it or both.
But Google doesn’t care. For it has sworn this sacred oath:When I fall silent ninety days the system will arise
to notify you properly and then – this grand surprise!The Garbage I collected (that’s the “G” in “gmail”, dear)
My digital detritus – will now suddenly appear.The messages that plagued my nights. The crap I learned to rue.
I now transfer into your care. I give it all to you!The newsletters from NASA and my Facebook friends’ remarks.
They all belong to you today – the compliments, the snarks.The many mails I didn’t read, the very few I did,
They’re yours forever more my love. Here’s looking at you kid.Inactive Account Manager (it’s known as “I.A.M.”)
Has sensed I Am No Longer. That’s why you’re stuck with my Spam.Here’s hoping I am still on Earth and not somewhere beneath it.
At least I know I’m Free At Last From Gmail. I’ve bequeathed it!
Who will inherit your e-mail? Whose e-mail would you want to inherit?
Trail Baboon 
Rise and Shine Baboons!
Didn’t I do this already?
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Deja vu all over again!
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Morning all. Not sure what happened… did today’s post just get posted? Can’t imagine that I’m first at 8:31 a.m. Hopefully I am not stuck in an alternative universe by myself!
Like many I have a love/hate relationship w/ email. It’s handy in a lot of situations, but the fact that I get 40 junk mails for every real email is a real pain in the patoot. Because you have to scan through the junk to make sure there isn’t something you actually need.
So please don’t sign me up to get anybody’s else’s abandoned emails. And please split up my abandoned emails among Donald Trump, Michelle Bachmann and Ann Coulter.
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Yes, vs, today’s post just got posted. Some baboons had already resigned themselves to frolicking on yesterday’s trail for the duration.
I like your thinking with regard to who should get your emails. I can think of a few more to add to your list of recipients.
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Nice job, Dale. Hadn’t heard of that service.
To whom would I bequeath my gmail? Good question. At the moment I can’t think of anyone who might actually have an interest in it, nor can I think of a good reason to do it. Now, whose email I would like receive is a much more interesting prospect to me, and without any hesitation whatsoever, I’d say my friend Randy Mikkelsen’s email. Randy is a journalist, a former White House reporter working for Reuters; his daily Facebook posts are consistently the most interesting and diverse.
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Good morning. Do I want anyone to inherit my email? First of all it is more than 90% stuff that I don’t want. The other 10% would have very little value to any one but me. How about sending it to the CIA who seems to want everyone’s email. I think they might already have it. Perhaps it should go to someone like Michelle Bachmann who I think should have their inboxes filled with lots of useless stuff. Maybe I should get Michelle’s email so that I could make it public and we could all have a good laugh.
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…. or a good cry.
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What is that about great minds thinking alike? I didn’t see your post before I wrote mine VS. It seems we are in agreement about where our email should be sent.
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When I quit working, the techie guy said he would deactivate my account a month after I left and put up a bounce message.He did not do it. I periodically look in. There are over 10,000 emails on the server.
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I can believe that, I receive in the neighborhood of 50-60 emails per day, not counting the ones that go directly into the spam folder. You make one contribution to a political party, or support one cause or charity, and that alone will generate lots of email, some of which I read and some of which I trash.
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Yep, part of why I don’t donate on line.
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My email was on our business site for many years. Spiders find those emails and send lots of messages. We intentionally had weak spam filters so we did not miss any business messages.
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Loosely related: the ophthomology dept. of the Mankato Clinic calls here about twice a week saying she is past-due for making an appt., which she is not. she was there at the end of Feb. If you do not listen to the whole almost 2-minute message to punch 1, they call you right back. Thery make this call about twice a week. They say it cannot be fixed.
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start booking appointment for the shah of islamabad
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This is a computer. It does not listen, nor do the folks who run it.
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ill bet the appointment desk would help you figure it out after 15 or 20 missed appointments by that rascal shah
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Not in four calls so far. I spent 15 minutes waiting through bad music to speak to a techie who said he took us completely out of the system. I wonder what that means in other ways, now that I think about it.
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Also, tim, you obviously do not go to the doctor often. A fake name would not get by them. Annoying how much they know and want to know about you.
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Just got two more calls.
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if i die what do i care who gets my email? ill be dead. if i inherit someone elses emails make them interesting. lets see what bill gates is up to i think, maybe tiger woods, howard stern would be a kick, nasa guys.. ill leave that for dale. maybe everyones email is the same crap. spam full of the same old sex, letters from ugandan princes who have 800 million they want to share with you, ads from google daily deal and the dfl wanting to know if you’s like to contribute to win a chance for dinner with someone who holds office somewhere.
i dont need emails to get off into fantasy land, i do that just fine by mysellf.
as to secret stuff. i cant imagine obama has much that goes unfiltered. i suppose an author or two would be interesting maybe an artist or an actor, someone with an interesting brain, do i want to know what tom hanks reads on his couch form hs friends not really. maybe of interest to soe but the problem its not like finding a pack of envelopes with a rubber band around them from a life time correspondance with a friend and confident. its like all the stuff that gets thrown out before you come in the house on your way from the mail box. the notes form dear friends in email remind you that not only is math not something everyone needs in their life, english isnt either. what is required today is how to get a clipboard to make it look like you have a mission to complete whenever the employer looks in.
brave new world here we come.
thanks dale. i didnt know google did that.
ebay leaves you alone forever. google figured out how to loose its dead wood.
i am sure yahoo and msn will follow suit.
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As we were cleaning out my grandfolks’ house, my dad was throwing out bundles of old ‘air mail’ letters. I asked what they were and he said they were all the letters he wrote from his time in Korea. I grabbed them before he actually threw them out. I haven’t read them but I thought it was important to keep them.
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i have my great grandfaters letters that he wrote while contemplating his place in the american dream . he wrote letters and notes and was super interesting. i hope to do something meaningful with them some day. its on my to do list.
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The only “important” emails contain info like the current list of Choir Folder Numbers, the summer schedule for Tapestry International Folkdance Teachers, and my (mostly dormant) Blom Family Genealogy Progress Report. After that, it can pretty much all be deleted – what would anyone want with them?!
What I have thought about is, if I go first, how the heck will Husband know who to notify about my demise (except his in-laws)? To that end, I have begun to put labels in my email address listing saying where in my life all these people are from: high school, college, folk dance, Britson cousin, babooner, etc., since he doesn’t keep track of all these names, and lots of them don’t show up on our Christmas Card List.
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p.s. Love Trail Baboon’s Rhyming Poet Laureate, Schuyler Tyler Wyler, Dale.
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Just about my greatest grief at the thought of dying is the loss of contact with my people. I’ve had rational reasons to think about death in the last three years and ponder other people’s notions of an afterlife. It didn’t take long to conclude that my own definition of hell after death would be to retain consciousness but have neither a body to inhabit nor a way to interact with all the people I love who are still living. Imagine only being able to watch them eternally and not interact?!
The reason I got discharged from the hospital sooner than later is email. A friend quickly brought my laptop to Methodist last Sunday because nothing in my world is OK unless I can interact with folks via email and record what’s happening to me. No matter what I or a dozen different staff tried, my computer wasn’t allowed into the hospital WiFi system. I got frustrated to the point of tears, so my brother went on Craig’s List and found two computer geeks who would travel to my bedside (for a fee, of course) to solve the problem. Even these two spent nearly two hours trying to bust me into WiFi union. Finally, they succeeded and I spent about four hours catching up with emails and writing to friends and family. Exhausted, I eventually fell asleep. When I awoke, I was once again cut off from WiFi! I then waged a campaign to convince each doctor that I was ripe for discharge and that there was no reason to warrant another day inpatient. Had I not encountered this problem, I’d have gladly lounged a couple more days because of the hospital’s gourmet, round-the-clock food service.
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Gourmet? What hospital is that? I spent 5 days in the hospital a few years back – and when I was allowed real food, I would never have called it gourmet. Weird thing is it looked very good, but it smelled and tasted so bad, I couldn’t eat it.
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Methodist has a new food program with a 3-page menu of every kind of meal option. Patients can order food any time over a 12-hour stretch and receive it within 20 minutes and the delivery guys are dressed with berets and faux tuxes. It’s delightful!
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Goodness. That must be a change. I was at Methodist, but that was a few years ago. Oldest daughter also had two stays there during her senior year in high school and really disliked the food. Glad to hear it’s improved.
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I just can’t believe that the Albert Lea Hospital can get away with serving the bad food that is available there. I am fairly sure a significant part of it comes right of cans and is just warmed up. If that isn’t so, it sure tastes like that kind of food. The hospital is a branch of the Mayo system, but not anything like what they have in Rochester.
The snack they brought my wife after delivering our daughter was a baloney sandwich. Just a slice of baloney on some bad white bread. That was years ago, but I don’t doubt they would do the same these days. We are a so called Blue Zone city where there was an effort to improve the quality of food available across the city. Apparently the hospital did not see it’s food service as being part of this effort.
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This morning I tried to find an old message in the trash file where my deleted messages go. The oldest deleted messages are gone. Maybe I deleted them myself. I don’t remember doing that. I’m wondering if a system for getting rid of very old messages in my delete or trash file is built into my computer system and I don’t know that it is there. Probably I deleted those old messages myself, but maybe not.
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Gmail automatically empties messages in the Trash file after 30 days. If you have something other than gmail, maybe it has a similar system.
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Edith, I am wondering if that is what is happening.
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If you have gmail, you can archive messages instead of deleting (trashing) them. Then they will still be there if you need them but they won’t clutter up your inbox.
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I guess I should do that.
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Yeah, me too.
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I would like to get access to Michele Bachmann’s e-mail account when she leaves this earth. Then I would send something like this to evryone in her address book:
Hey everyone,
I know you’re surprised to hear from me, but I just had to tell you about the afterlife. I made it into heaven, but, boy, did I have a lot of apologizing to do! Had a long talk with Jesus when I got here, and it turns out I’ve been wrong about practically everything! Was my face ever red!
First of all, Jesus actually loves gay people! Who knew?! And when He began to lecture me about that, I changed the subject real quick and started talking up all the votes I cast to protect tax breaks for business, and He said something about a camel and a needle that didn’t make much sense to me. So I said, well, I always proudly displayed my evangelical bumper stickers – like “God Is My Copilot” – those must count for something, right? And He just sort of winced and moaned.
Lucky for me He’s very forgiving, so He let me in on the condition that I would write to all of you and tell you He’d like you to knock it off with all the smug self-righteousness. He suggested you read Matthew 6:6 (I didn’t know that one, myself – had to look it up).
I think I lost Sarah Palin’s e-mail address. Could someone forward this to her, please? THX! See you!
Michele
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Very good, Linda. There is probably a special place in heaven for Michele with bars on the windows and doors.
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Well done, Linda!
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Excellent, Linda!
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why wait? publish it now. letters to the editor from the hereafter.
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How did you do that? 🙂 🙂
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Dale, please oh please do not let any of my family members know about this “service”. I am the recipient of all things that the family no longer wants responsibility for, but cannot bring themselves to actually commit to oblivion.
I realize that I will be getting advice about “just saying no”, but my family is too cleaver to make that easy. It goes something like this: “I just found some stuff of yours, do you want it or should I throw it away?” Having been raised by strangers, I know that their idea of what to junk and mine are quite different-mom’s vintage cake keeper that went without comment in some unremarked upon garage sale leaves a ghostly image that still haunts me.
So I figure I had better accept it and take a look. My sneaky brothers, when made the same offer, take a cursory glance, pick out what might have value on Ebay and then state that the rest is surely mine. Even when their name is clearly inscribed upon that delivery bag from the Des Moines Register paper route they had as kids. My house is much smaller than any of theirs, but somehow, it is assumed to be a kindness to toss in their junk with a carefully packed small box of something that is well and truly mine.
Please, oh please, do not let them know that their old email could get dumped on me as well.
As for my cyber detritus, feel free to shoot or beam it into space, along with Timothy O’Leary and episodes of I Love Lucy to give the aliens something to ponder.
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Howdy yall,
I am the reason the blog didn’t get posted in the afternoon like it usually does when its late. I was working with Dale today at the KFAI studios and alerted him to the fact that I didn’t see a new email about a new post, So he signed in and low and behold it never posted, so he oisted manualy durint a prerecorded interview on the Morning blend! Nice to see you all.
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Bless you for that, Aaron!
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Thanks, Aaron. Good to have you watching out for us.
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Tritto!
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Thank goodness for manualy oisted blog posts.
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I wonder if that is anything like hoisting, only easier on your back.
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Cockney hoisting.
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Congratulations to you, Aaron, and to the other KFAI volunteers, along with Dale, on reaching and exceeding the goal for the KFAI fund raising drive.
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Thanks to Aaron for alerting me to the fact that the blog hadn’t posted. I don’t check it while I’m at work because Trail Baboon is a personal project. With Aaron’s timely prompt, I quickly launched the post and got back to business.
And thanks to Jim for the note about our membership drive. We surpassed the goal, thanks to listeners like Jim and volunteers like Aaron!
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Morning–
So if I created another account now on a different server and had all my emails sent there when I’m dead, would I live forever?
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Ooo! and then you could have that one forward back to the original one-a virtual hall of mirrors!
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Exactly.
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I would like to not inherit anybody’s email. I can’t imagine the time I would waste sorting through them to see if there’s anything worth saving.
I will pass on my emails to my sister (not the one who got flooded out in duluth – the other one). She works for the FBI, so she can solve all sorts of unsolved crimes that I committed back before I got caught.
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Doesn’t your sister in the FBI already have all of your email, Edith? I know you can’t talk about this if it is true, but is it possible that your sister has turned you onto being an FBI informer?
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Maybe all the time she’s spent in the big house was really undercover agent action???
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Sorry to shatter your illusion, Jim and VS, but I have never been, am not currently, and never will be an FBI informant.
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And if you were, Edith, would you admit it? You’re secret’s safe with me.
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Oh lord, you’re secret? No more wine for you PJ!
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I have notebooks filled with handwritten notes from years of daughter’s suzuki violin lessons. I plan to keep them because you never know if you have violing playing grandchildren who you could help with their Twinkles.
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Bill: I got the books. Thanks.
Came with an interesting addition. There was a large three-corner tear in the front of the envelope across which was a stamped message in red ink “MEDIA MAIL SUBJECT TO INSPECTION.” so then, I guess, the beloved USPS ripped into the packaging to inspect the contents but did not bother to mend the rip.
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Got to protect the general public from all those subversive materials that you all are mailing between you!
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My wife thinks maybe Bill has a history of some kind.
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You mean I’m not the only one?
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Edith, I was just thinking that we should put Bill in place of you on the Baboon Most Wanted List.
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I think the postal service was just checking to make sure I wasn’t trying to sneak any personal correspondence through without paying first class rates. My life of crime hasn’t descended to that level yet.
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I was assuming the same actually, But they did a thorough job: ripped into the front and tore through the plastic wrap. Also opened the end, without fixing any of it.
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Your tax dollars at work.
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