Pressing business at the dry cleaners

Friday, January 12, 2007

See below for English version.

Jag satt och skrev ett mail till en engelsk mailinglista om böcker som jag är med på. Mailet handlade om den senaste boken jag läste ut, Animal Dreams av Barbara Kingsolver (som för övrigt varmt rekommenderas!) Jag kunde ha svurit på att jag som rubrik skrev Animal Dreams/Sharon. Men så innan jag ska skicka iväg mailet så tittar jag som hastigast över mailet och ser istället denna rubrik: Pressing business at the dry cleaners. Whooa!! Var sjutton kom detta ifrån? Jag kan inte minnas att jag skulle ha råkat kopiera någonting och klistra in det av misstag. Skulle det kunna vara en märklig form av virus?? Man kan ju bli paranoid för mindre.

Hmmm.... Googlade lite och hittade lösningen. Det var ganska enkelt, en sökning på min fras gav nämligen bara en träff. Jag kör Yahoo Mail Beta:s email-klient och den har en funktion som jag hittills varit helt omedveten om. Subject-rubriken är inte bara en rubrik utan en knapp, och om man klickar på den får man ett slumpmässigt ämne! Här är några exempel på slumpvisa ämnen som den producerar:
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I get quite a few hits for this post, most of them international. So I thought it would be a good idea to write an English version of this post as well:

I was writing an e-mail to a book mailing list. The mail was about the latest book I'd read, Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver (which can be warmly recommend, by the way!)
I could have sworn that I put the subject of the e-mail to be Animal Dreams/Sharon. But when I quickly scan the e-mail before getting ready to send it off, I see this heading: Pressing business at the dry cleaners. Whooa!! Where the h*ll did that come from? I don't remember copying this text and and then pasting it. (And I sure didn't write it myself.) Could this be a mysterious form of virus? Skulle det kunna vara en märklig form av virus?? You could get paranoid for less...

Hmmm.... After some googling, I found the answer. It was actually quite simple, a search for my phrase only returned one hit. I have the Yahoo Mail Beta email client which has a function I had previously been totally unaware of. The Subject heading is not just a heading but also a button, and if you click the button you get a random subject! Here are some examples of random subjects it produces:
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It turns out Harold's not a Jedi.
Up ahead! It's a DONUT HUT!!
Quote me as saying I was misquoted.
i've arranged a list of exciting things we can do for the next thirty years
GOOD MEETING!
CONCERN BROWN BAG TIX STILL AVAILABLE!
a little pod out of Spiral called Moonbase
Dropping science like Galileo dropped the orange
My dog eats nuts
As a youth I used to weep in butcher shops.
Eating pasta with chopsticks

Yahoo Mail at your service, making your everyday a little more weird! :)