make-believe.org

First one to send me an invite gets spammed

Being a nerd is a mantle I like to think I wear with considerable aplomb. Since I am neither friendless, nor devoid of basic dress sense, nor incapable of experiencing emotion, nor particularly prone to speak in that sing-song drama-school lilt, it seems self-evident that I don't exactly fit the nerd stereotype. This I think permits me great freedoms. I enjoy and wax eloquent about comic books, for instance. I will, with conscious absurdity, draw parallels between high-falutin abstractions and the earthy art of computer programming. I have been known to quote Monty Python, though I always keep it within the bounds of respectability. I can write in a notebook at the pub with only the faintest register of self-consciousness. I'm doing so now, actually.

All of which may, incidentally, qualify me as a geek. This word I take to have two senses: a female nerd (ipso facto cool, but I am wholly ineligible); or a nerd who thinks he is cool. Just so you know, I respond to nerd and greatly resent geek.

However. Over the last—shall we say—financial quarter, I have increasingly come to question the indisputability of my nerd status. The reason for this is quite simple. Gmail was announced on April 1. I, being a nerd, instantly became aware of it, and registered my interest. For the last ninety days, I have steadily been scaling back my anticipated username. In those first heady hours, I actually let myself imagine joseph@gmail.com. Then it was jpearson@gmail.com. Within about a fortnight it was jbpearson@gmail.com. Then jbpearson_77@gmail.com. As late as a week ago, I had surrendered ground as far as freakazoid_gonzales@gmail.com.

Now, I just don't care. I don't even want a gmail account. I mean, what do you think I am? Are you calling me a nerd? You wanna come here and say that? Yeah, you—come on, I'll take ya.

Ya frickin' nerd.

Joseph | | Comments(9)

Comments

Ruben

Sorry, I don’t have one yet :-)

Hans

I’d give you an invite if I had one, since I’m actually _trying_ to get spam nowadays. I’m recieving at most one spam email a day. Does anyone know how long you have to wait to get the invites? I’ve had a Gmsil account for more than a week and still no invites.

Kay

well, I tried to send you one… but got:

This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

joseph@make-believe.org

Technical details of failure:

PERM_FAILURE: SMTP Error (state 9): 550 5.7.1 … Relaying denied

Sorry dude.

Nakijo

Hans,

You have to use the account to get invites. Spam it from a few addresses and an invite will turn up a few days later. The more emails you get (and send, I guess) the more invites you get

Joseph,

It isn’t really that interesting. Mine doesn’t push my buttons at all, although I was curious to see what it was like. Still, if you want one, spam me a bit at nakijo@gmail.com and if I get some invites, I’ll give you one

Hans

Nakijo, I’ve had the account for 12 days, and so far I’ve recieved 29 emails, plus about 6 spam emails, and sent 4 emails. And I still don’t have any invites.

P.S. I’ve switched over to Gmail as my main inbox. Meaning that it’s the only account I’m using right now.

mes ongles

Hm. I think I attribute quite different connotations to the words ‘nerd’ and ‘geek’.

I’ll send you a gmail invite, unless someone else has already (and assuming I won’t have the same problem as Kay). It might take a day or two.

Joseph

You guys are total nerds.

Er, that is to say, thank you for your sympathy and best intentions. :)

Hans

Aha! I feel so stupid. I finally discovered the “Invite a friend to join Gmail!” link cleverly hidden from site underneath the search button. It’s probably been sitting there for a week. My bad!

Oh, and don’t call me a nerd, you geek. I’m a geek.

See, geek= person who knows about computers, loves computers, and talks in binary. Reads slashdot.

Nerd= snob, know-it-all, thinks he’s elite, short kid with 2 inch thick glasses.

Hans

Aaaah! What have I done?! I wrote ‘site’ instead of ‘sight’! Noooooo!

I’ll go sob in sham ein the corner now…