Tuesday 25 January 2011

Zedtective work

I've spent the last couple of hours searching emails for the Sage.  He is a friendly sort, you see, and likes to keep in touch.  Sometime last year, he called on someone (who lives in the same village as Ziggi, as it happens) and he wanted this chap's phone number.  They had got in touch with each other via eBay, said the Sage.

The Sage said he'd called on him during the autumn, but I knew that couldn't be right - I'd visited Ziggi in August, after the Sage had called on his friend.  By a great feat of memory, the Sage remembered his name, *John Smith*, but that wouldn't be given in the title of an eBay email.  I spent some time looking, without success.  I finally tore the Sage away from his computer and he went to look for last year's diary.  That gave a date, and finally he remembered the item he'd gone to look at.  I searched every damn email for six months and finally had to say I couldn't find it.  I looked on BT.com for the chap's phone number, but he's ex-directory.

"What do you want to speak to him about?" I asked.  "Oh, you know, just for a chat."

The Sage dozed off.  I thought about it a bit further.  And thought, maybe he contacted us direct, it was nothing to do with eBay.

Two minutes later, I was waking the Sage up with the news that I had the full correspondence, including address, email and phone number.

He couldn't cope without me.  No one else would do it for him.  Lucky he's worth it.

9 comments:

Christopher said...

Did The Sage find you in a treasure hunt?

Unknown said...

Oooh, you star!

Roses said...

I think that merits a cup of tea in bed tomorrow morning.

Eddie 2-Sox said...

Game on.

Z said...

The final sentence was, of course, ironic. Dave would say sarcastic, but Dave is a cynic.

I received the cup of tea in bed this morning, actually. Tomorrow, I'll be up first - got an early meeting half an hour away and someone to pick up first,in the wrong direction.

I can play darts, Simon. I'm very good at multiplying by three and subtracting from 501. Rubbish at throwing, sadly, but then I'm a girl.

Blue Witch said...

Couldn't you have done a search on the email message text, rather than just on the email title? I always download/keep all my mail locally... this sort of thing might explain why!

Z said...

Well, to start with I didn't know what the subject was, so I went through all eBay communications with vendors. Then I did try the subject, but I wasn't given the option of searching the text for that, just the subject if named in the heading. However, the point was, he had got in touch through our business email so I was looking in the wrong place.

Blue Witch said...

Ya, but... you should be able to search your whole computer (and any connected drives) for any text in any file in 10 seconds.

Oh, I forgot. You have a Mac ;)

Z said...

Of course I could, but I didn't have anything to go on in the first place. Someone whom the Sage visited last year (he said in autumn, it turned out to be June), to pick up a vesta (to look at a piece of china) in Wiltshire (he got that bit right, but it wasn't in the email anyway) and he couldn't, to start with, remember the name. All I had to go on was emails relating to eBay, but that wasn't correct either. And although I quickly picked up that he lived in Ziggi's village, that wasn't in the email, they had exchanged addresses on the phone. Any text I might have entered would have been incorrect.