Mystery of the Email J Finally Solved

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2006/05/23/60474... where i originally heard about it

Also where I heard about it, and Chen's page is exactly 10 billion times more entertaining than the original link for this thread.

This was only a brief mystery to me - my Outlook Reading Pane rendered it as a J, while opening the email showed the smiley face.

I only hope the people who send smileys in corporate emails one day learn that they're usually not received at the other end. Then they might STOP DOING IT!

Funnier still are the people who assume they can "recall" their email once it's sent (a feature that does work on Exchange, but obviously not in SMTP). At one previous employer, HR accidentally CC'd me on a mail suggesting my salary was out of the official comp bands. Recall! Recall! Recall!

A bit of trivia about recall:

Recall is actually not even a feature of Exchange, only Outlook. Exchange sees the messages as normal emails.

Thus, if the receiving party doesn't have Outlook open, the message won't get recalled.

> my salary was out of the official comp bands

Higher or lower?

Intense.