I once sent an e-mail message that was delayed by something like eight months. Upon tracing, we found it sat in a server in Sweden for two of them, then in Finland for another, and so on. It just happened to go through a series of home computers which were running mail server software, but which weren't on all the time. I suspect that I lost several other e-mails in that way.

As far as phone messages go, I witnessed a hilarious incident last week. My brother and I were sitting in his garage, finishing a cabinet, and we were joking about how his girlfriend was obsessed with Top Gun (I think that was the movie). Anyway, he got this idea to send her a text message saying "I don't think we should see each other any more. After last night's movie, I'm beginning to see men in a new light." But he had to divide the message into two parts to send it.

So you can guess what happened. The first part went through immediately. She called, and he started laughing and told her to wait for part two. She had no idea what was going on. She came over, worried. Then (this is about twenty minutes after the messages were sent) her phone beeped and she read the second part. It could not have been timed any better.

__________________
"It's turtles all the way down."