The computer won’t let me in to see my e-mail but the blue squares just keep moving along. However, if I press on Straight Dope anyway (the list of my old e-mails do come on the screen) I can get into my new e-mail from Straight Dope even though the NEW e-mail isn’t even on the screen. For instance, to clarify, I merely disappeared the inset screen that was working away with blue squares to get me in and then pressed on any Straight Dope thing and got through to new answers that weren’t listed. How is this possible?
I…
Can you rephrase your OP?
Huh?
Which program are you using? Which OS are you using? What is this “email from the straight dope” of which you speak. What is this “NEW email?”
…
A decade of working in tech support, and I think that post would take more interpretation than the Dead Sea Scrolls. O_o
Don,
Your mail server blue squares of connection have nothing to do with the Straight Dope message board green circles of new posts.
What blue squares? My squares are all green. It’s the triangles that are blue and that’s why I get my email although I have been told pink circles prevent spam but I have not tried it.
In related news, a federal court in California has ruled that Microsoft include a label warning users not to use LSD while using Windows, citing numerous deaths from pink circles and red triangles in Microsoft’s popular Outlook e-mail program.
OK I’ll take a stab.
The blue squares are the Netscape or Outlook (not sure if it does it also), progress meter. You can get to your old email, and any downloaded new ones, while it works in the background. I assume the straight dope you are talking about are the “reply to thread foo - someone has replied to thread foo you have subscribed to entitled foo” type emails. If thats the case, just let it go, apparently you have subscribed to a lot of threads, and therefore have a lot of mail to download. It will finish eventually.
Or I could be totally wrong, in which case I’m stumped without more info.
And while your download may end, my sentences and redundancy may not end. And the redundancy may not end also.
Clever. 
Forty-Two.