Please, Mr. Postman by Sam M. '07
A fair and balanced look at the inbox of a typical MIT student.
Don't sue me, Fox News. Has Al Franken taught you nothing?
Do you want to see exactly what an MIT student does over the summer? There's no better way to do that than to look at my webmail inbox–to see what major issues are really pressing down on me and requiring my immediate attention.
Yes, there was a point in my life where 75% of the e-mail I was receiving came from Mitra. The remaining 5 were actually all about MIT blogs also.
This is my general e-mail folder, not my special "blogging" folder, which I haven't had time to set up yet becuase I don't understand quite how IMAP works on Eudora 6.2.
No, really. Really.
How many e-mails does Mitra send me in a typical day? Let's go through the past week or so:
Monday, 7/11/05: 4
Tuesday, 7/12/05: 4
Wednesday, 7/13/05: 2
Thursday, 7/14/05: 12
Friday, 7/15/05: 1 (wow!)
Saturday, 7/16/05: 0 (she was at a wedding, okay?)
Sunday, 7/17/05: 1
Monday, 7/18/05: 4
Tuesday, 7/19/05: 22
Wednesday, 7/20/05: 8
The average length of the e-mails seems to vary based on how busy Mitra is at work and how excited she gets. The standard deviation, however, stays constant, so this data would be homoskedastic, right?
What can Mitra and I talk about to the tune of 5.8 e-mails on an average day? Well, looking through my archives, I can see that we were in fact having 5 simultaneous conversations about:
–how we should take a trip to Germany next summer and go hang gliding
—Rachael Ray making delicious (and healthy!) meals in 30 minutes despite sounding like "a sensual goose who smokes too much" in the words of a popular website
–delicious chicken barley soup in the cafeteria at her place of employment
–Sam's Mom buying us tickets to a Clay Aiken concert on 8/28/05
–how I should take a screenshot of my inbox and blog it (each of us thought this up independently)
She also sent 2 e-mails to Sam's Mom, who she's met like twice. Did Mitra e-mail you on 7/19/05? Let me know. I think she seriously might be breaking some sort of record here, both in sheer volume of e-mail and in fingertip velocity.
"Your fingers have ADD." —Mike Short '05, regarding Mitra's typing
Speaking of velocity, yesterday Mitra arbitrarily decided that we're going to run the Boston Marathon on 4/17/06–be sure to check out Mitra's Blog for an entry on that, since I've promised to chronicle only "one boy's summer @ MIT . edu." I feel really honored that she asked me, by far her least athletic friend, rather than Spencer '07, who ran 14 miles last weekend just to get a Starbucks Green Tea Frappuccino.
Well, I have been trying to make this a year of personal improvement.
Just to see what's it's like, I'm trying to be a vegetarian for exactly one month. So, for 10 days running, I've been subsisting mostly on tofu, gnocchi, and leftovers of Rachael Ray's salsa stoup.
God, I can't believe I just typed "stoup." Thicker than a soup, thinner than a stew! Shut up, Rachael!
I miss meat pretty much once every hour.
Uh, look for a blog entry on it!
…
This was actually a great concept for an entry, just a poorly-selected sample, huh?
Then it spun out of control, into the sun.
"Nothing bears out in practice what it promises incipiently." –Thomas Hardy
Okay. Click.
You and Mitra need a zephyr class! Or if you don’t log in to Athena, you could use AIM.
For what it’s worth, in my outbox I counted only 18 emails addressed to you on 7/19. If I email enough to make the mean 20, I guess it won’t matter then, will it?
P.S. the Clay concert is on 8/28. Psh, and you call yourself a citizen of PROC…
Hey I recognize some of those emails from Ben! Haha.
Hmmm, Mitra is apparently quite prolific….
One of those is mine, and it’s not about your blog, I think…
According to the BBC, the inventor of the TV dinner died today. He came up with it when his boss gave him 270 tons of unused poultry. Just think – had he turned those turkeys into oil, we wouldn’t be in Iraq, and we’d all be svelter.
I was in your blog! indirectly of course…lol.
Sam, good job with the econometrics! You seem to know what you’re talking about. I think the number of e-mails from her in a given day could be modeled well with a Poisson distribution. Though I’m not sure–I don’t remember much from that class. What do you think?
I thought 1 or 2 emails a week from Mitra was pretty awesome; you definitely blow me out of the water.
And courtesy news update, they’re upgrading webmail soon; any guesses on the new color? (i think blue would be nice, easy on the eyes esp. with how often i check email)
WHAT?! Spencer not only comments on *your* blog and not mine, but makes econometrics references?!?! Spencer, who woke you up when you fell asleep in class? I’m not gonna do the same in 14.33 if you keep up this inequality of commenting.
Planning hanggliding trips without me. I knew I should’ve pushed you over the cliff when I had the chance…