Why are you doing this? What's the catch?

No catch, I'm just a nice guy. Anyway, it's not like I'm doing this for those jerks, the Stevens. Just Birges. If your last name is Birge, there's a decent chance we're related at some level; there aren't too many of us! I thought it would be nice to do. Finally, I must admit I'd hate to see the people that own birge.com and birge.net make any money off their domain squatting.

Are you offering a free e-mail account? Doesn't that cost you money?

I'm just offering the address. You have to already have an e-mail account for this to work. Nothing is ever stored on my servers, so it doesn't cost me anything. E-mail that gets sent to your birge.us address will get immediately bounced over to your actual address.

If I already have an e-mail account, how does this help me?

For one, having a permanent e-mail address is incredibly useful. You give people your birge.us address, and when you change jobs or switch ISPs, you just e-mail me with your new temporary address, and I can switch over your mail for you. I can even have your mail sent to both addresses for a while to ensure you don't miss anything during the transition. The other advantage is superficial: john@birge.us is a lot cleaner and easy to remember than john342@hotmail.com.

How do I know you won't stop doing this in ten year and all my e-mail will stop being forwarded?

You don't, except that my e-mail would stop working too, if I dropped the domain, so I have no interest in losing it.