Mmkay, get this. Last week at work, I was working on some code that, among other things, had to send an e-mail notification to some people in the company. A trivial thing to do in PHP, of course. So, I banged out the message, tossed down a function that was written specifically for this application’s mail-sending purposes, and tested it.

Then the real fun began.

Now, this notification was sent to my address twice, once because I was on the list of people it had to be sent to, and once because I was the one pressing the send button to test it. Outlook 2003, taking the initiative, merged the two fucking messages together, and - GET THIS - didn’t bother telling me.

John was out at a meeting, so I sat there for half of a fucking hour - yes, that’s right, thirty fucking minutes banging on it, wondering what the hell was wrong with my code.

So John comes back and asks how shit is going. I piss and moan about e-mail sucking ass, and then he reveals to me that my code is, as always, perfect, and Outlook is the element in The System that is fucking things up.

Alright, I pull my address off of the notify list. I test, and I get one message. I put myself back on the notify list and disable to copy-to sender stuff. Lo and behold, I get a message. Good times.

Now, one would think that one bug in Outlook is enough for a week. But oh no, not for OwlManAtt, oh no, no, no! Outlook also has another great bug that the developers added. Outlook strips (what it thinks to be) extra newlines. Randomly. All the fucking time. You get a message, and two or three things would be on one line because Outlook decided to douche your message up.

So, you know, I think we’ve got this problem taken care of and it’s put into production over the weekend. Today, someone actually uses it. The notification is sent.

And, you guessed it, Outlook futzed it up. So I finally get pissed off and throw in a ton of newlines so Outlook can’t break it. And I test it. And it works. So it’s put into production, and John sends an e-mail off telling everyone that it’s fixed.

Then guess what happens. Really, try to guess.

Give up? Ok, I’ll tell you.

I open the message sent announceing the bug fix for the notifications. Outlook says ‘Extra break lines were removed from this message. Click here to restore them!’

FUCK. YOU.