So sometime back around 2004, AOL first came out with the ability to forward instant messages to your cellphone when you were signed off of your computer or marked as away.  This seemed pretty cool, at first, because the cellphone I had just gotten at the time could receive unlimited incoming text messages, as long as I was in my home calling area.  Unfortunately, it got annoying quickly when my friends who didn’t understand the difference between “away” and “forwarding to phone” would send me a series of questions too long for text messages…

I decided on April 17, 2004, (yes, the date is correct, and no, I did not memorize it) to do away with such nonsense and just create a new account (similar to my current screen name, but ending in “phone” instead of “geek”) that would be set to forward to my cellphone, and never be signed on.  I doubt I’ve logged in to it more than twice in the years since, and I’d frankly forgotten about it until browsing through my buddy list tonight.  It’s been in my list so long that my eyes just gloss over it as another “Me” account…

At any rate, the point of this was not to ramble about an unused account that I’ve had for years and nobody besides Jared and Scott have probably ever used.  The point was to give a shout out to whoever maintains the databases at AOL, because man… 4 years without more than an extremely rare login, and they still kept forwarding messages for me, carrying my account information along from (what I would imagine is) database to database to database, and are still forwarding messages on my behalf to this day.

Kudos.

P.S. if you need to send me a message anytime and don’t want to burn your own sms/minute quota to do it, feel free to use AIM, or text.vzw.com.  My phone’s screenname should be clear from above, or just ask 🙂

Dear { Relationship },

{ Emotion } on the recent { victory | loss } for { Addressee’s Political Party } in the 2008 American general election.  I hope the long road to this { extreme adjective } night has been a fulfilling experience for you, as you told off those { derogatory adjective } { other political party members } with your cunning words, clever rhetoric, and inescapable logic time and time again.  The next four years are certain to be a validation of all your { hopes | fears } as the next administration { saves the world | sells our childrens’ souls }.

Between now and the next election, I have just a few small favors to ask:

Grow up.  Be responsible.  Admit your mistakes and work through them constructively.  Work with your fellow citizens, in spite of your political differences, to address the critical issues plaguing our society.

America needs, in some sense, to be reset, and it’s going to take serious hard work at every level to do it.

Please help.