Who Am I?

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A nobody; a nitwit; a pilot; a motorcyclist; a raconteur; a lover...of life - who loves to laugh, who tries to not take myself (or anything) too seriously...just a normal guy who knows his place in the universe by being in touch with my spiritual side. What more is there?

06 September 2007

Dueling News Services

I know I shouldn't find this amusing...

I use two email client servers: Yahoo and Juno. Yahoo is much faster and more dependable than Juno, and I now use rbarbanes@yahoo.com for all "serious" emails. But I've had my BH206B3@juno.com email address for so long that I hang onto it for sentimental reasons. It's also the address I use when I register for websites and/or sign up for online services from which I expect a lot of junk mail. Every morning, I log onto Yahoo and check my real mail. Then I switch over and check Juno.

This morning, Yahoo's log-in/homepage greeted me with the sad news that opera singer Luciano Pavarotti died of cancer. Hmm, I didn't even know he was sick. No need to click on the story - I just noted the event in passing as I moved on to the Important Business of the internet day. After a while I finally got around to checking my Juno account. Their log-in page is pretty similar to all the others: World headline news, business headlines, current weather and some ads, to which Juno includes some annoying animiated pop-ups.

Opening Juno, in "Headline News" window was the blurb, "Pavarotti's Condition Deteriorates."

And I laughed out loud. Huh? He's dead - how could it get any worse than that? I would think that once you're dead your condition is pretty stable. There's a sitcom or movie gag in there somewhere, I know it.

Okay, we've all figured out by now that Juno's homepage does not get updated quite as frequently as does Yahoo's. In fact, most of the time Juno trails everyone else by a large margin. I think I read just last week on Juno that the search for Amelia Earhart will be called off soon if no further radio transmissions are heard. I've sent some emails over Juno that have gotten lost and, like Ms. Earhart will probably never be found.

At least I'm not holding my breath.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ah yes, many's the time that I anxiously awaited Saturday Night Live's updates on Generalissimo Franco's condition to learn that he was [still] "stable."
-----------------Miguel de Manicotti

Hal Johnson said...

Funny how we can get attached to things we can't even touch. Juno was my introduction to the cyber world. A coworker created an account for me back in '94, and that was my introduction to email. In those comparitively primitive times, Juno was text only: you couldn't send along photos or attach other files. Later came "Juno Gold" which allowed files. Heck, I was emailing folks for a solid year before I was even introduced to the "real" internet.

Like you, I've held on to my Juno account, although I seldom use it. It just would seem a shame to give up my first email address: haljohn@juno.com. Since it's been about six months since I've checked my Juno account, I guess I'll do it today.

Bob Barbanes: said...

Thanks, Mike! ...Err, I mean ¡GrĂ¡cias, Miguel! I knew I'd heard that joke before - just didn't know where. Never a big fan of SNL.

And Hal, yeah, if I had kept my *first* email address, it would've ended with @aol.com so there's no way. But it's funny, come to think of it. I first logged-on to AOL in 1995 when there were still so few members that you could do a search and see who was actually online at any given time.

How far we've come!