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August 18, 2006
Your life, in syndication
The worst part about starting over from a harddrive failure is having to recreate all the little systems you're used to working with. It's as if you moved your arms from their perfect posture during a midday nap and no matter how hard you try, nothing will feel as comfortable. Gmail could ease this misery, I suppose, if I didn't have to redownload all the archives on their server into Thunderbird so that I have all my correspondences on my laptop - I like to think of myself as a digital packrat.
Gmail's behavior through all this has been admirable, if somewhat odd. It started by downloading some 200 messages twice each, terminating somewhere around August 2004. Since then, it's just been pulling a few messages at a time off the server, in chronological order, so that the past two years of my life have been trickling into my inbox for the past hour. It's a bit disconcerting to see this digital representation of myself on display, all the professors I wrote to, or movies I rented through Netflix. A few minutes ago, I applied to grad school all over again, only to be rejected a few minutes later. I'll be graduating shortly, after which it's off to Chicago all over again, until I move everything into it's proper folder and forget about it once more.
Posted by tony at August 18, 2006 1:01 PM
Comments
Hah. Been there. The best is when you search for a message you received last month, and it is accompanied in the results by a message you sent three years ago which now embarasses you immensely.
Also, I am currently digging through boxes and boxes of papers from college, trying to decide what is worth shipping to California. Creepy shit, some of it.
Posted by: todd. at August 20, 2006 12:59 PM