09/26/2002 Entry: "I Need A Lock of Bill Gates' Hair."

Voodoo. That's all there is to it, Voodoo. I've spent probably 10 hours of work time going back and forth between Windows 2000 machines and Windows XP machines and my little Mac, trying to get a superscript bullet (^•, Option-8 on a Mac or Alt-0149 on yer Windows Keypad) to show up in the signature file for (primarily) Outlook Express. So far I have seen it appear as an asterisk, a period, a lower-case l; I have seen it change in text, Rich Text and HTML formats. And after all this work, I still am no closer to understanding what it will look like when it is sent. I am ready to give up and just make it an asterisk after all. Or possibly switch to longhand correspondence only.

But this isn't the part that makes me cry. It's that I know I will see this sig file appear, reinterpreted and twisted, in any number of "fun" and "interesting" ways. In a serif font, because they read somewhere that it's easier to read that way. In blue, because they like blue. On a jungle- or ivy-print background, which will come to my little text email program as an attachment—as lemon juice to pour onto my wounded heart as a designer.

Today I also learned that "Control-Return" sends the email you're working in right away. Right away. That is to say, I learned about "Control-Return" the hard way.

If I didn't know better, I'd say there was something to this Mercury Retrograde shit.