Invitation Fiasco

I suppose, the idea of a perfect wedding never works that well with the men.

So I spent like one or two weeks deciding how to send an engagement invitation to my friends - BCC them on an email or send them a prepared invitation from an external site. There was a need to know the numbers, so the best way was to get people to reply on a page that was available from a site. I started searching on the internet. Narrowed down a few sites, created login ids on all those sites and also got a few templates shortlisted.

As this needs suggestions and validations from you know who, I spent considerable amount of time on chat, discussing what needs to be done. My initial research was well appreciated. Then, she rejected two top priority sites of mine and came up with another site that she had seen. Later, she told me that all the templates that were available on the sites I suggested were hopeless. So she spent some time creating a new template. It came out really well. We spent a few days making some final changes. It was good to go.

She had decided how she wanted to send the invitation. She did that. In fact, she sent me a test invitation as well to see whether everything worked fine. Field Engineer's mind works with precision. Like everything you do on the rig is important as the operating cost is extremely high, same principles worked with the invitations. Extra care and attention was given.

I took extra time and finally realized that it was high time to send the email out. Last minute pressures. I created an account in a site that I liked (actually it was the one she had used. you know how easy it is to copy-paste) and started preparing the invite. While adding email ids to the address list, I did an overconfident import from my gmail account and 1500 plus email ids were added to the address list. Until then it was okay.

Something funny happened. I was on some screen on that website and then I saw a button which said "PREVIEW and SEND". I clicked that and then it started showing me an hour glass button on the screen. For about 10 seconds I didnt know what was happening. Suddenly it struck me. I knew something was going wrong and then I pressed the "CANCEL" button on the page.

By that time, the deed was almost done. The system had already started sending emails to my friends. Worst, it sent emails to some yahoo and google groups that I had subscribed to, as well.

Sometimes its typical IT Industry mentality. Do something called development and send it. When it bombs, we will do maintenance and support. And thats exactly what I have been doing. I have no clue as to how many people have got this invitation email. Every reply is like a support call now. I am answering back with thanks and letting them know about the incomplete invitation. I hope I dont spend the whole of tomorrow doing this.

What a fiasco !!!!
Enna Kodumai Saravanan Ithu