Recycle Bin

        Unless you have been living under a rock, you will concede that global warming and ecosystem decline urgently mandate a reduction of waste production. One notable exception: Your email ‘Recycle Bin” seems to keep growing exponentially, at least my wife does.

        Recently, she asked me to help her with an email problem. She was unable to save an email. I checked the program, and she was right. This problem allowed me to check her email files. She had over fifty saved file folders, with probably a thousand saved emails, some going back five years. She had no desire to eliminate any, and I learned not to argue with her after many years of marriage. On a whim, I checked her Recycle Bin. She had never emptied it. Close to eight thousand emails were in this folder, an ever-growing toxic pile of expired coupon codes, hibernating computer viruses, odd, unsolicited announcements, and spam.

        When I asked her if I should delete the files, she replied, “It’s a recycle bin, not a trash bin.” There might be something in there that I might recycle to my Inbox..” When she turned her back, I emptied it. That solved the problem.

        There’s some mystique surrounding Recycle. – when you hit “delete” or its digital equivalent, “empty” on your keyboard, where does it go? Well, we know that all human organic waste, including the occasional body, eventually ends up in a landfill in New Jersey. However, where do we send the columns of Ones and Zeroes representing our discarded online footprints?

        Northern California, it turns out. After some research, I am now convinced there is a gigantic black hole in Redmon, right behind the Microsoft cafeteria, that sucks up all the crap that we deem unworthy. It seems ironic that the hole’s intense gravity helps remove stuff. But, I wonder, when we blow all this into someone else’s galaxy, wouldn’t this cause some level of embarrassment if read by extraterrestrials? And so, the goal here has to be to stop producing more trash in the first place and get to the source. Here is some advice on maintaining email hygiene to assist you in this worthwhile quest.

     Don’t EVER hit “unsubscribe” — it only signals to the very able spam coder in Moscow that he (or she) has found a “live one,” and therefore, you just picked up speed on the doomsday countdown which will surely end in total obliteration of your operating system. 

      Don’t be fooled by emoticons in the subject lines — yes, they are super cute and look engaging. No – you idiot – you didn’t win anything, and confirming an incoming deposit doesn’t make the promised 100+ million-dollar transaction more real (sent curiously from your long-lost family member in England) – other than the one that’s undoubtedly outgoing from your bank account as soon as you reveal details to the under-aged crook on the other side of the World (or in your next-door neighbor’s basement). 

     Thirdly, when you do a lot of online shopping, use your glasses (the ones you bought from Amazon when you returned for more dog food). Somewhere next to your order is a tiny box you must un-check to ensure you disagree with being inundated with online offers, alerts, and updates.

     Afterward, make sure you clear your recent ‘History’ and then wash your hands thoroughly.