40 years later, look how far we’ve co… DOH!

Stan Dubinsky shared this item about the first message to travel over the ARPANET, which would become the Internet — 40 years ago yesterday.

It was two letters: “lo.” It was supposed to “login,” but the system crashed after two letters. Oh, what a familiar feeling.

Do y’all realize that two weeks after this massive foul-up with Outlook, I still can’t send e-mail through that application? In fact, I can’t even call up my calendar or contacts on my laptop without being driven nuts by a dialogue box that pops up every few seconds asking me to log in to the server again.

This is very bad, because I depend on Outlook — particularly the interactivity between the e-mail and my contacts — to help me keep in contact with prospective employers and other nice people. I can send via Webmail, but by comparison that’s like trying to type from across the room with a 10-foot pole.

My usual technical adviser tried to help me but finally threw up his hands. I’ve tried uninstalling and reinstalling Outlook several times. No dice; the bug is still there. And has been, ever since that ill-fated mass mailing I attempted.

So while we’ve come a long way in 40 years (and thank you, Al Gore, for inventing it), in some ways it feels like we’re right back where we sta….