'It took us a while to figure out what happened,' fish says. 'Meanwhile, the e-mails were piling ever deeper while I desperately tried to phone the e-mail administrator. Finally, the admin deleted the group and removed all the unsent messages he could.

'Since then, I've had to endure several remarks concerning my homegrown spam virus. That's the last e-mail I'll ever send to 'test'! '

Submit your own true tales of IT life to sharky@computerworld.com. If Sharky uses it, you'll snag a snazzy Shark Tank shirt!