Self Impossed Crash

The message was ominous, Immediate Attention Required! Approaching Storage Quota Limit! said my e-mail service.

At first I thought it was a Spam attack. I've been hit before as hundreds of messages streamed into my In Box and were then filtered to my Spam Folder. When this happens, I find it fun to watch the number count grow in dark black as dozen after dozen of notes pour in offering me the latest cure for baldness, obesity, lack of energy, too much energy and/or male enhancement. Then, after the attack is done I'll finally receive the similar ominous message warning me that I've received too much e-mail and I need to do some cleaning.

This time was different, the warning didn't come from illicit pranksters in some far off country fishing for my credit card number or an alleged "hottie who thinks I'm cute and wants to meet."

Instead, the overflow of data came from fellow REALTORS who had been instructed to e-mail offers to my address for an aggressively priced home our company has for sale.

The problem wasn't the number of offers being received but with the size of the files. In some cases, I received e-mail attachment of 14 Megabytes (MB) or higher. It almost seemed as if agents had scanned contracts page by page (our average offer is 20 pages) in high resolution and sent them to me.

This, compounded by the myriad of offers received and my usual busy e-mail traffic caused the flashing lights, the dire warnings and a frustrated agent.

Now, without getting too technical let me explain the file size problem. A 20 page document (if scanned correctly) should average about 2 MB. This, I've found, is the optimum file size that most computers and e-mail systems can handle. Some will argue that modern e-mail systems can digest much larger file sizes without a care. But seeing as I deal with countless documents streaming to through the internet, I have found that nimble file sizes tend to work best in our industry.

Warning: Science and Data Content (For the Geek in You)

Wikipedia describes a byte as: A byte (pronounced) is a unit of information storage representing the smallest addressable element for a given computer architecture

A Megabye in turn is defined as: a SI-multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage or transmission and is equal to 106 (1000000) bytes.

10 to the 6th power? That's a lot of 1 and 0s!

I'm sure the technophiles will challenge my rudimentary descriptions here.

My point is that when agents send offers via e-mail please be mindful of the file size that you're sending. If you're sending anything over 2.5 MB you may want to forewarn the recipient that you're trying to squeeze a watermelon through a keyhole.

Now about that "hottie"......