I was coming home from a customer site yesterday, sitting in Chicago’s Midway airport, reading Wired.

They didn’t have Wi-Fi, and while I can surf the ‘net through my phone (it’s a bit slow), after checking e-mail I put the laptop away.

I read Bruce Sterling’s column, and noticed at the bottom his email address: bruces@well.com. Now The Well was pretty much the first online home for much of the early Internet intelligentsia, so it’s been around a long, long time. So if you had an e-mail address that long, you must get a lot of spam, right?

So I wrote to him, and here’s his reply:

Subject: Re: “The Dream Factory” Wired Article
From: “Bruce Sterling” bruces@well.com
Date: Fri, December 3, 2004 1:57 pm
To: tarus@opennms.org

On Dec 3, 2004, at 5:07 PM, Tarus Balog wrote:

Howdy.

Forgive the title. I am sitting at Chicago’s Midway airport reading Wired
and it brought up a question I would like to ask you.

I enjoy your work, and as I read that article I noticed your e-mail
address, one you’ve have for, what, a decade now? Back in the days before
spam? I have an e-mail address that’s been around since 1998, and it is
nothing but spam, and so I wanted to know how you handle it?

SpamAssassin and a Mac, just like you. And I get a plain old
tremendous amount of spam. The WELL helps some.
I don’t get a lot of virus traffic that they remove for me.

Bruce Sterling
http://blog.wired.com/sterling/

Not exactly “Hey, c’mon over to my place. Let’s be great friends”, but I’ll take it.

(grin)