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And so forth, etcetera, and so on, through whole lot.
By time I'd finished, I felt great. Sherry pats me on back, "Goooood job, now you *only* have 385 ezines to figure out what to do with!" She smiles sweetly, pityingly, at me. "You have such a wide range of ezine categories, dear, why don't you just concentrate on ones that are truly, really, absolutely important to US?" Sherry said that last word with a lotta emphasis, so I figured I should take a long hard look at remainder.
So, once again, I did!
OK, OK, so maybe I don't really need "The Daily Life of The Madagascar Swamp Beetle", "Secrets of Alien Life Under Your Fingernails", or "One Million and One Things To Do With Toothpicks". Click, click, click - all gone! I just hoped that I wouldn't wake up one night, screaming, wondering where my box of toothpicks was! ;()
Hours later - many hours later - fingers and brain throbbing from strain, I turned to Sherry, "OK, that's it, we're down to good oil, pot o'gold, top of heap - you name it!" Sherry looks at me *real* hard now, eyes narrowing, but still she has a smile on her face. Why do I suddenly feel worried, with a sinking feeling in my stomach?
"Well, dear, when you've finished reading each ezine, you *are* going to *delete it*...aren't you...from now on, right?" That...that...word cut to bone. I looked at her, frantically, my eyes widening in horror. Delete? DELETE? I gulped for air as she went on, "And, there'll be no more *printing* also - we do have to use bathroom sometime, right?" Again, cutting like a razor blade. No printing? NO PRINTING? The sweat began to pop from my forehead, my eyes began to glaze, I felt myself going dizzy...
"But...", she continues, almost hypnotically, "why don't you *extract* from each ezine gems of knowledge, those pearls of wisdom, that we must have...before I let you DELETE?" I thought about that, trying to calm down...hmmm, yes, why not open up a text editor, and copy/paste *really* good stuff to a new file. And, one for each day maybe, properly labeled with a headline, and in a special folder...or even on a diskette? Why not, indeed?
So, I did...
A few too many hours later, I beamed at Sherry, "There we are, all extracts nicely filed, *almost* all ezines deleted (hey, I'm not perfect, OK, Rome wasn't built in a day and all that, alright?), and all *categorically* useful information can now be printed on one or maybe two pages, each day or so!" Pause... "Well, no more than three pages, tops." I smiled happily, but probably looked like an idiot. She smiled benignly and patted my hand, making soothing sounds.
"What more can I do?" I ask.
"Take out all this garbage, would you dear?"
Some things never change! :-((
Roger Burke has been involved with computers since 1967, and has managed to break quite a few, over the years. He, and his wife Sherry, are now actively engaged in online self-publishing and promoting specific affiliate programs at http://online-wealth.com . If you have any comments or questions about this article, please send emails to mailto:webmaster@online-wealth.com . Copyright 2001, Online-Wealth. All rights reserved.