Email on the wane according to a new ComScore report, as relayed by Alan Mutter:

The use of email has plunged by more than 30% in the last year among consumers under the age of 24, owing to the increased use of texting and Facebook to stay in touch.

[…]

A primary activity among wired individuals since the arrival of the Internet, email use in the last 12 months fell by more than 30% for those under the age of 24 and stayed absolutely flat among those aged 24-44, according to the audience measuring service. As illustrated below, only those aged 45-54 are pecking out more emails today than they were a year ago.

Twenty-two percent of the remainder is in my inbox. Six percent spam, eight percent meant for someone else.

I’m presently inundated with emails from seemingly every agency east of the Rockies that ships cars. Someone is intent on shipping their Volkswagen Jetta from Philadelphia to Chattanooga. The going rate, I can confidently say, ranges between $400 and $550. And the car transport people? They are big on correspondence.

Shipped off the headlight lamp that was supposed to fit my car, but did not fit my car. I clicked the buttons on Amazon, printed the return file, put everything back in the original boxes and carried it to the UPS store. That’s where you can buy UPSes.

The door just about pinched my finger off going in. The two guys working there feigned a mild concern. They were helping a young lady on crutches. She had all of their sympathy. Even the pre-existing injury on my finger didn’t win the day. I didn’t mind. The thing I printed meant I didn’t have to pay for shipping.

Amazon gives you several reasons to return your purchase. Some of them are very nuanced reasons, but some of them mean the difference between you paying a restocking fee, a shipping fee or nothing at all. Fortunately my reason to return the thing meant the seller was footing the bill. And that’s the first thing in the car drama that has worked in my favor.

Snuck in a few quick miles on the bike this evening. It is February, but it is finally turning cold. I could tell on my ride. Still nice and mild when I left home, but about two-thirds of the way through the ride I found myself in the shivers.

Tomorrow we’ll have big winds and maybe the 40s. I’ll just have to wait that out and pile it on Sunday afternoon.

Watched The Undefeated:

If they edited trailers like they do today Rock Hudson would have been a total scene stealer, John Wayne would have punched someone and the love interest would have been slipped in at the end. And then Rock Hudson would say something like “Finding ourselves outnumbered is a fact of life we’ve gotten used to!”

That’s just before the conversation between Hudson’s fleeing rebels and the soon-to-be assaulting Mexican bandits. Their detente doesn’t go well. The bad guys attack. They are turned back by the confederates and then ambushed twice, first by Wayne’s calvary and then by Wayne’s adopted son’s friends.

Later a Juarista general double-crosses Hudson. After a speech, an execution, dilemma and then a running gunfight that takes place in a barely controlled horse stampede we reach the conclusion. And there it is hard to picture a colonel and family man, in the next-to-last scene, having a toast with the man who’d previously held them all hostage.

There had to be at least 100 people shot and killed in the movie, which held a G rating.

Which is better than three percent of the email currently sitting in my spam folder.