“The Fine Print”, by M.H. Schrader

A Matter of Character(s)

(Published 26 March 1997 in the Neighborhood Journal. Posted in toto with Preface 7 October 2002.)

PREFACE -- Another in the series of good columns that had absolutely nothing to do with politics. This column was a follow up to the missing ending of the previous one.

Did it seem that there was something missing in last week’s column? Like a conclusion, perhaps?

When I first opened the paper, I was dismayed--the last paragraph was missing from my column. Unlike the other paper I had written for, I knew that it had not been deleted by the editors; in the Journal, what you see is what I wrote. Only once have the editors had to edit, and that was because I went too long and they just didn’t have enough space. But, I learned my lesson about brevity, and so the editors have not been forced to lop off whole paragraphs of my ramblings ever since.

Since I knew that what was printed must have been what the editors had, I figured that somehow the final paragraph must have been lost in the transmission from my computer to the Journal’s computer. Technology is great; I’ve only been in the Journal’s office three times since last July. I write my column on my home computer, and then transfer it via electronic mail and fax to the Journal.

It seems that lately, however, my e-mail keeps coming back to me “Return to Sender--Invalid Address.” I have been told by the computer gurus that e-mail will end undelivered mail forever. Apparently, those computer gurus are wrong. The message I received with my returned, undelivered e-mail sounds eerily similar to what the USPS stamps in big bold letters across the envelope of my returned, undelivered mail. The only real difference between the two “undeliverable mail” messages is that the e-mail message doesn’t have a neat index finger pointing to the invalid address.

Knowing that I have been having problems with e-mail, and knowing that Netscape has brutally tortured some text files I have sent (it single-handedly decided that the first few paragraphs were unnecessary and therefore expunged them from the document), I was quite sure that my column had been molested somehow during transmission. Well...I shouldn’t be quite so sure of myself next time, because, wouldn’t you know it, I was dead wrong.

As it turns out, the last paragraph was missing because, well, this is really embarrassing, I accidentally deleted it. Unfortunately, I was not aware that I had deleted it until I saw that it was missing in the paper and had the wherewithal to check the original file. Surprise! Gone. Does not exist. What it was, I do not know, because I forgot to make an automatic back-up file. Of course, I’ll never do that again, but it’s too late. I know it had to do with something about April being here, but I can’t remember what it was exactly, and I, and you, will never know. And now, for all eternity, my column of March 19, 1997, will be incomplete and lacking. If someone passing through picked up a copy of the Journal and read the column they would probably think, “This Schrader guy is a real nimrod. He can’t write worth a hoot! This thing is incomplete!”

This, of course, would make me very sad. Because I don’t want to be known as a nimrod. And, I’m sure it would make the editors sad, too. After all, would you want to be known as “the newspaper that publishes the ramblings of that nimrod Schrader?”

All of this potential suffering because of technology. With a typewriter, that paragraph would still be in existence; after all, you can’t really delete typewritten text. You can cross it out, white it out--but it still exists. Same with handwritten text; once it goes from the brain to the paper, it’s there for all time. However, with computers, when text is deleted, it never existed. (Kind of like what happened to Sandra Bullock’s character in The Net.)

That e-mail problem? Let’s just say that that, too, is a result of technology. A computer, unlike your local postmaster or postmistress, does not have a brain and cannot think for itself. A computer can only do what it is told to do. And therein lies the problem.

You see, I left the “r” out of journal. So, instead of trying to send mail to the Neighborhood Journal, I was trying to send it to the Neighborhood Jounal. For the post office, this would be no problem. I, for example, get mailed address to Schraeder, Schroeder, Shrader, Schredder, and a host of other “names”. The postman, having a brain and being able to use that brain to reason, correctly deduces that these “persons” are actually one in the same, and proceeds to deliver this misspelled mail to my house.

Of course, sometimes these deductions are wrong. When I lived in Farmington, for example, another Michael Schrader moved into town and the postmistress thought that he was me. But, for the most part, these instances are few and far between.

Computers, however, are not so kind, or smart. The computer could not deduce that Jounal was supposed to be Journal. So, when I spelled the Journal’s e-mail address njounal@futura.net instead of njournal@futura.net, all the computer knew was that there was no such address and proceeded to tell me so.

Weeks of being told by a computer that, basically, you are an idiot because you are sending mail to someone who doesn’t exist has a tendency to become, well, rather frustrating. When I sent in last week’s column, I asked the editors what was wrong with the Journal’s e-mail, because I kept getting these “invalid address” messages.

Later that afternoon, I received the following message:

TO: mhschrader@aristotle.net

“You forgot the ‘r’”

My father always told me that character matters. So do characters.

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All contents & “The Fine Print” © 2002 by Michael H. Schrader.