The Sh*t L*st

My email program, Outlook Express (ver. 5.5.) started acting up today. When displaying messages in the preview window, bitch-face doesn't show the text of the message. Rather it indicates an attachment. When I double click the message, it shows the messages as a .txt file attachment, which I can then open.

Someone on the OE 5.5 newsgroup pointed me to the solution (newsgroups, along with the open source community, sometimes restore my faith in humanity) :

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=312351

Following the instructions, I opened up the Temp folder in the my Windows folder and found over 20,000 objects (almost 400 mb!) I'm some kind of goddamned freak-ass cyber-shut-in! I tried to delete all 20,000+ files at once -- seized up my machine. Just deleted 4,000 files -- between deleting them in the explorer and cleaning them out of my recycle bin, took me almost a half-hour! Hold my calls. This is going to be a major, on-going operation -- I think the troops may get out of Bhagdad before I'm done here. It did, however, solve my OE problem.