PINE, R.I.P.

Saying goodbye to the PINE email service tonight. For you youngsters out there, PINE was how you accessed email way back in the day, when email was still a novelty and the internet was new and scary and downright small. This bit of nostalgia is coming from someone who used to loathe technology and who still favors post (as in the post office--you know, the company who takes your messages written on paper and folded neatly in envelopes and affixed with those quaint squares of paper called postage stamps, and actually hand-carries those envelopes to their destinations anywhere in the world) as her favorite form of communication. PINE is (was) quick and, although considered archaic, a wonderful program. You have to use strange commands to access folders and send and compose messages, but it's fast and to the point. Viewing images and web links and attachments and those dumb e-vite invitations are out of the realm of good old PINE, but who cares. PINE is an old friend. My first user name was thrynnie. Sigh.

I just wrote my last email message (to myself) using PINE. RIP old friend.