Stupid is as stupid does.

Boy, do I feel like a doofus.

One of the things that I like about my ISP – and I recognize that this isn’t a terribly unique trait for ISPs – is that you can access your email account from a web interface, so you can read and respond to your email from anywhere. Thus, I’ve been able to read email while at work.

(Brief aside: Work. Bah. There’s only one internet-capable computer for 25 people, so access to the web during the work day is mighty limited. And getting to read email coming to my main email account is the primary thing that makes the job almost tolerable. Almost.)

Yesterday, I was expecting reasonably urgent email communications from three people during the day. (Up from the average of about half of an urgent conversation per day.) Weekend plans, a possible reasonable job lead, and the like. So I was surprised to get onto my mail site an hour after getting to the office, and there were no emails waiting for me: none of the ones I expected, none of the far-too-many wine-related newsletters, and not even any spam. The next time I got on to check, an hour later, there still weren’t any emails.

Hmm. Did I forget to pay my ISP bill and they’ve shut down access to my account? Well, no, since I can get to it and send email. Is there something wrong with the server, and it’s bouncing in-bound emails? Well, one way to check: I went to one of my free web email accounts, and sent myself something. Yes, it showed up just fine. Good, it’s not broken, so I’ll just wait for something to show up.

A half hour goes by, and I log back in – and now the email that I sent myself has disappeared. Hmm. Did I delete it? No, it’s not in the trash bin – but the ones I deleted yesterday are. Did I imagine sending myself an email? Anything’s possible at this point, so I send myself another one. It arrives. I stare at it long enough to make sure that it’s real, and I log out. And immediately log back in, to see if logging out and in has any odd effect. Nope; the email is still there. Okay, I’ll log out and hope that I begin receiving emails that I haven’t sent to myself.

An hour later, I check in again: and once more, the email I sent to myself has disappeared. Now I’m getting frustrated: it seems as though there‘s Someone Out There who is logging into my account, and sweeping the server clean of newly-arrived emails.

And *ping* that little 15-watt refrigerator light bulb goes on over my head. There is someone out there doing precisely that, and it’s me. It dawns on me that I left my computer on when I left the house this morning, and the email program was running, and it automagically checks the mail server every 10 or 15 minutes to see if there’s any mail, and downloads it if there is. So all of those emails I wanted to see and respond to during the day will have to wait until I get home after work. (And unless I can get the cat to answer the phone and then follow my instructions to turn off the mail program and the computer, there’s nothing I can do to intercept the rest of the afternoon’s emails, either.)

In retrospect, I’m not sure which should cause me more concern: that I was forgetful enough to leave the house with the computer and email on, thereby denying myself access to my email during the day, or that I am geeky enough to have figured out what happened without having it happen to me before and without getting home to see the day’s pile of emails waiting for me.