If you sent me a COV entry between 11:03 AM today and 10:05 PM, please resend it. To be even simpler, if you sent me a submission and did not receive a personal reply from me, resend your submission.



I have heard horror stories about Microsoft Outlook Express, but I have never had a problem with it. Not until tonight. Every time I checked my email, I highlighted all of the COV emails and used the mouse to drag them to a COV folder.



When I got home from work tonight not long ago, I followed this protocol. However, this time something went wrong. One of the bloggers had requested a read request. And apparently if you highlight and drag many emails at once while someone has requested a read request, you can crash Microsoft Outlook Express. While all of the emails were highlighted, I was asked if I wanted to send a read request. Everything else froze. I clicked yes – nothing happened. I then clicked no and nothing happened. I am running Win XP Professional, so I hit ctrl-alt-del to call up the task manager. Nothing. Not even a blue screen of death, just a hard freeze.



I finally had to turn the system off and back on. Windows XP took a long time to load (about a full minute, I was worrying that my system had crashed). But it finally loaded. When I went to the my email program, all of the new emails were gone. They were not in the deleted folder, they were not in the in box, they were not in the COV folder, they were just missing.



I must admit I stared at the screen for a while in disbelief. I’ve been using email since the 1980s and I have never had a problem before… And the timing is horrific with the COV submission deadline being virtually now. So I am extending the COV deadline until 7:00 AM Eastern Time September 10. And my deepest regrets for this inconvenience.