As Labor Day approaches, we all know what happens...Summer comes to an end. Back to the daily grind of life with nothing but fond memories of good times had from the past ten weeks. Of course, that's what I was going to tell you about...All the memories of a great summer come and gone...

I was going to tell you about enjoying Randy Travis in concert at the Watertown Arena. And also Roy Clark and Glen Campbell at the same venue a couple of weeks later. Then there was the Baha Men at the Can-Am Speedway in LaFargeville in between those two concerts. There was the Supremes and the Temptations at the NYS Fair on opening day.

That's what I was going to tell you about. Unfortunately, after getting back from a great summer of fun and music, I made the mistake of checking my e-mail.

I am not one of those individuals who has to check their mail every day. Let's be honest...Vacations and summers are for getting away from the daily grind. Forgetting about everything. No work, cell phones, computers, pagers. Nothing...You want me that bad, come and find me...If you can't find me, I guess it wasn't important.

So after taking four weeks off, it was time to get back into the grind again. First thing I did was check my mail. This was a a mistake. Over a thousand e-mails in just a short time. Considering that I receive, on the average, about fifty e-mails a week, the other 80% was, you guessed it, garbage.

Every piece of spam imaginable to man was there. From 'cheap meds' to 'lower rates' to 'larger member'. It was all there. and if you unsubscribe from the list you get five new ones the next day. So, basically it's a lose/lose scenario.

Then there's the killer e-mail that people will open all the time because it has such a friendly message. 'Hi'. 'Hello'. Look at it this way. The average e-mail is anywhere from one to ten kilobytes in size. Some companies send out HTML formatted e-mails only, so they may ne a little larger. But if you receive an e-mail that is 52 Kb in size and is from 'joeschmo@IDontCare.com, why in the hell would you open it? Viruses are basically created by outcasts from society who think that this will get them the attention they deserve. Of course they get the attention they deserve. Everybody who owns a computer gets pissed off at them.

So here's what you can do to help alleviate some of the problems with your over-abundant inbox.

The first and most important thing to do is make sure your anti-virus is up to date. If your anti-virus software is out of date or you're looking for a freebie then check out AVG software's web site. It's free and the crew at Twin-Music use it religiously.

Secondly, if you don't want to download all that mail to your e-mail software, try an e-mail manager. It allows you to view the mail subject and gives you the option of deleting it or downloading it to your e-mail software. As a suggestion you can check out Christian Hübner's PopMan.

If you don't want to try these suggestions, go to Google and search for 'free anti-virus software' and 'free e-mail managers'. But to cut down on the spam and virus e-mail, I suggest you fight back with some reliable software. I would also suggest you check out Joe Wein's website for some great tips on fighting spam and controlling virus e-mails.

I knock a lot of things in this world, but protection for your computer is not one of them. You've made an investment and you should try to keep it safe from outside attacks.

* Richard Blaine's views and opinions do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the staff at Twin-Music.