From the Emailbag
Email has become a part of everyday life for many of us, but the more well-known you become, the more email you may receive. Some people complain about receiving too much email with only 40 or 50 messages a day.
"There was a time when I received several hundred messages a day," Michael says. "That did not include email from dozens of mailing lists I had subscribed to. Some of it was spam, but most was email coming from people who wanted to ask me questions, or who wanted to propose business arrangements."
Not all email was friendly. When the SOBIG.F virus infected hundreds of thousands of computers around the world, Michael's computer was one of the first victims -- twice. After patching and disinfecting his computer, Michael was deluged with email from thousands of infected computers. More than 3,000 infected emails a day were being directed at the email address Michael had used since creating Xenite.Org in March 1997.
"It was so bad I couldn't send messages and legitimate emails were no longer getting through," Michael recalls. "Dixie and I finally decided the time had come to do away with our old email addresses. So, dixie@xenite.org and michael@xenite.org no longer work."
The upside to the attack has been a drastic reduction in Michael's email. "Now I'm back to getting only dozens of emails a day," he says. "It's hard to decide what to do with all my free time. Maybe I'll take up writing...."
What about all those business offers?
"One year, a few months before the dot-com meltdown, we accepted one," Michael says with a heavy sigh. "We signed a contract to join a large network. It was one of the top twenty Web properties in the world. We would run off their servers. They would provide us 24/7 support. It was going to be great. Tons of money. Tons of traffic. Right."
The network servers could not handle Xenite.Org's traffic. Eventually, Xenite was given a dedicated server, but we were told not to expect to keep it. Our forums were so slow people abandoned us by the dozens on a daily basis. And the checks? They dwindled faster than the ink dried on the paper. After about eight months, the network cut loose all of its affiliate sites.
"After that experience, Dixie and I agreed we would accept only a cashiers check up front," Michael proclaims. "We implemented an advertising rates policy which tells marketers to go away, leave us alone, get lost, and don't bother us. They still write us all the time."
Some of the most poignant emails come from children. "It was pretty tough, sometimes, when Xena was still popular," Michael says. "Dixie and I received all sorts of messages from kids wanting to write to Lucy (Lawless) and Renee (O'Connor). I once asked Steve Sears (a producer for the show) if there was any place we could forward the email. He said there was nothing anyone could do. He, too, received a lot of email from kids. Sometimes he would pass it on, but usually we just had to tell them to write to the official fan club. Some of these kids were sick, or extremely lonely, or hurting from a traumatic experience like parental divorce. It could be heart-breaking. And sometimes, they just wanted to say, 'Lucy, I really, really love you.'"
