I’m mostly a wanna-be geek, but in some ways, I’m a authentic geek.

One of the ways that I am a geek is that I manage my own email, and also my Mom’s, through several domains that I own. I would also do Jill’s if she let me, but she’s attached to the bells and whistles of her ISP.

Since I own the domains, I have an infinite supply of potential email addresses. When I sign up for a mailing list, or purchase something from a new Internet site, I create a unique email address for that list or store. (I got the idea from the wonderful geek world of Slashdot.)

That way, I can both filter the mail from them to an appropriate folder, and I can tell if they are a source of spam. For example, if I bought something from store123, and give them my email address as store123@mydomain, then I get email from store456 that is addressed to store123@mydomain, I know that store123 is giving away my email address.

At big mainstream web sites, this is no big deal. No human being ever even sees my email address.

But at obscure expensive (and typo-filled) Mom & Pop web sites that sell sun-protective gear, this is worrisome and confusing. So they called the house yesterday, and reached my lovely wife. Fortunately, she knows I do this, so they didn’t manage to get her worried. She assured them that I wasn’t doing anything illegal (!!!), it was just so that I could filter my email.

BTW, I own some cool domain names, and the odds of my using my full allotment of email bandwidth and storage are extremely low. So if you want a vanity email address or 2, leave a comment and I’ll follow up with you by email. (These aren’t the ones I actually use for these email projects; these are others that I own. Believe it or not, I own 22 domains.)

Basically what happens is that I have a cool idea for a web site, I register a domain (or several) with the idea of actually doing my idea, and then life gets in the way and I don’t do anything with the domain after all. But I don’t want to give them up! I don’t know why — they’re just cool.