Very strange...

I signed up with Stikkit yesterday, to try the service out. As is customary, I was sent a confirmation email, but by the time I clicked on the link, the service was down for maintenance.

A few minutes ago, I went looking for the email, so I could try again, but it is nowhere to be found in my webmail (or, at least, not in the three places - one of them being the Trash folder - that it might possibly have ended up in).

The good news is that my attempt to access the service was remembered by Firefox, so I was able to successfully activate the account.

But I am left wondering: What happened to the mail item?

One possible explanation is that when I did a mass deletion of stuff from my BlackBerry (where I typically specify "from the handheld and the server" but have never before noticed anything missing from my webmail inbox), the message was deleted "the hard way," i.e., directly, and not into the Trash folder.

(For some time, I've suspected there is some kind of link between my phone and my webmail account because sometimes, newly arrived mail is displayed as "read" when I first see it on my webmail screen, but after having read the message on my BlackBerry.)

The only other idea I can come up with on short notice is that I somehow selected "Delete permanently" from the webmail interface and then clicked the button to do it, but I employ that method of deletion so rarely, I'd have remembered it.

The mass deletion came about as a result of accumulating over 40 new email notifications on my phone during the sim yesterday. (Mostly junk, indicating something might be broken in the spam filter at FastMail, because I got several messages where almost no effort was made to camouflage the content.)

* * *I've got leg of lamb in the slow cooker right now. I've stuffed it with garlic and wrapped it with mint leaves that Galina and I picked up at the Hong Kong Market on the way back from our fitness center. I decided not to put potatoes in with the meat because last time, they really didn't cook very evenly (the cooker is small). In any event, I can detect a delicious aroma in the air all the way across the house in my office!

* * *I do not mean to show a lack of respect for the dead, but I don't think very much of the media circus being played out over the unfortunate death of Anna Nicole Smith. As it was, I never quite could understand why she attracted such a disproportionate amount of attention from, in particular, the entertainment media. (Of course, the fact that such coverage would routinely generate revenue was reason enough, I suppose.) I feel particularly bad for her kid, who will likely be the focus of quite a bit of ugliness in years to come; I hope I'm wrong.

* * *I took my first baby steps with Stikkit today. It's an interesting site, but I don't know how useful it can be, ultimately. I still prefer Backpack.

Cheers...