Back from the ether
I got a bounced email back from a mailserver today. This is not too much of a surprise except for the fact that the email was originally sent from my account on Thu, 6 May 2004 16:47:15. I had been emailing the intended recipient around that time and it was a valid email address.
I know that in this day and age we expect immediate results and instant gratification, but I still think that 3 years is a bit excessive to find out that an email did not arrive. To make matters worse, the mail system in question must think this is a normal occurrence since the only response I got was:
This is the mail system at host mail.invertedcube.net.
I’m sorry to have to inform you that your message could not
be delivered to one or more recipients. It’s attached below.For further assistance, please send mail to postmaster.
If you do so, please include this problem report. You can
delete your own text from the attached returned message.The mail system
At the very least it should have been something like:
I really screwed up and lost your email under /dev/refrigerator and only discovered it after running the house.cleaning process that we do every decade or so. Sorry about that. The guy you emailed is dead now, or probably dead, or at least not here and he didn’t leave a forward. I really do feel sorry about this. – Mail server