escape to insanity

Oooh this is good.

Today I was checking my e-mail, as I'm wont to do, and decided to check my “junk” folder to see if there was anything of interest that was mistakenly flagged as spam. Bear in mind this is an e-mail account on the tigerblade.net server, so the spam filter isn't quite as good or efficient as GMail's.

I see an e-mail with a subject line that intrigues me, so I move it to the inbox to read it.

Your e-mail has been received by the City of Janesville.

Hmm. What e-mail is that? OHH! I remember now.

About a year ago, I had moved into a townhouse back in Whitewater, and was temporarily out of work. While I was diligently looking for a real-person job, I was also trying to find some sort of work on the side just to keep some sort of cash flow going. I was occasionally pounding the pavement writing down names and addresses of small businesses around town that I thought might benefit from some sort of web work, then sending out e-mails or snail-mail letters asking if they were at all interested in having a website built (or updated if they already had one). Along with small businesses (mostly mom-and-pop places) I had contacted a few of the surrounding cities to ask the same thing. Some just had “webmaster@ci.blahblah.gov” whatever addresses, some had contact forms, some had nothing at all.

In any case, I sent e-mails or filled out contact forms inquiring about web work. Eventually I got a real job and stopped worrying about freelance stuff since none of it panned out. Fast forward a few months… I finished my four-month contract at that job and picked up a new job (which I love), which I've now been working at for about seven months. Today I get an e-mail back from the City of Janesville stating that… that what? That they'd like me to do some work for them? No. This e-mail is to inform me that they've received my submission, and that I can “expect a response shortly.”

Sweet! They've received my submission. Just to be sure, I checked the timestamp on the original form entry (which they conveniently have available to review), and it was submitted September 16th, 2006. Today is November 30th, 2007.

It took them 14 months to receive my note and send an “auto-reply.”

I'd send them a note back to tell them they're a year and some months late, and that I've had two long-term jobs in the meantime, but alas… it was sent from an address that doesn't accept incoming e-mail. Figures.