Suffer the children

One of the wonders of the modern age is the personal computer, and close behind is the spread of information on the internet, some of it actually useful.

I can easily confess to being ignorant as to how to write programming code and being able to solve the many riddles that come up while doing so. I am certain the techies all have their quirks, and I also believe these quirks are often expressed in the programs they write for the Great Unwashed to use.

One example I encounter on a daily basis, whether on my home pc or the one I used back in the day when I was gainfully employed, was the ever-popular Delete box for e-mails. We have all seen it, and have dumped untold thousands of e-mails into the Delete box regularly. I am certain you have seen the quirk as well: next to the Delete box is quite often a number in bold parenthesis, purporting at first glance to show the number of e-mails you have in said Delete box. Here is where the quirk comes in; that bold number actually shows the number of unread e-mails in the Delete box, not the total number of e-mails residing therein. I cannot fathom why it matters to someone, whether me or a programmer, how many unread e-mails are presently in that file. I know they are unread, because they are 99.999% spam or junk e-mails that I put in there myself, precisely because they were unwanted. I also am unsure why it would matter how many I have in there, read or unread.

I can only think a computer nerd did it simply because he is a computer nerd, and needs to get out more into the real world.