"I Can Break Rules, Too"

"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that

It's just the strangest thing.

Just now, I was replying to an e-mail that had been sent to me, and I got an error message saying that the e-mail was not sent. I scanned the error message (an old habit that goes back to the days when you had to do a lot more troubleshooting when working with computers). I didn't think to write the error message down before I closed the window. I'm conditioned like a NASA monkey to click on a button around the word "OK" whenever I see one. But I'm quite sure -- a certainty that dissolves in me as I write this -- that the error message was cheeky. It read something like this:

...SMTP error -109: See, I can break rules, too. Outgoing connection refused by server. Contact your administrator if... [emphasis added]

I was promptly returned back to my message. I clicked on the send button again, but this time it went through without a problem.

It's hard to suppress creativity when it wants to come out of us. Someone, somewhere had a task writing little explanations for those times machines miss a connection. Maybe this person tired of writing human-friendly translations of routine computer mishaps and wanted to inject a little humor, or maybe just a little of themselves, into this dumb process.

I think it's wonderful. I hope it made their day to write that.

photo credit: litmuse