Tortured by emails

Was my request that difficult?

A reader sent me "Viewpoint" for use in a future issue of Numismatic News. I knew it was coming, because he previously had asked if I was interested.

It arrived yesterday as an attachment.

Most of the time this is the perfect method of sending me Viewpoints, press releases, letters to the editor – you name it.

Not this time. There was a problem.

I could not open it.

I emailed the writer to send it to me as regular email. Copy the contents of the attachment and paste it into an email. Send it to me.

That should do it, I thought.

But it didn’t.

I got another email with the same attachment.

Try this, he wrote.

Same attachment. Same problem.

I replied asking that he copy/paste the contents in an email and send it to me.

Third, email. Same attachment.

Fourth email, same attachment.

Fifth email, same attachment.

I am not a computer trouble-shooter. This is especially true after having gone a week without a computer at work after a problem erased my identity. I am grateful for being able to draw on the resources of the company IT department to finally get back up and running.

My replies to the email sender got shorter and shorter.

“It doesn’t work,” was my last reply yesterday before I went home. I didn’t even request copy/paste in that email.

Lo and behold, as I fired up my email this morning, I see there were five more emails from him. The last one being a copy/pasted version of his text.

I will never know why my request for a copy/pasted version of my email turned into such a marathon.

Buzz blogger Dave Harper is editor of the weekly newspaper "Numismatic News."