sending short emails

[Eben King <eben@gmx.us>]

I wrote a script around "ssmtp" which allowed me to fire off emails to 
myself from cron.  Short things, like "empty the litterbox" or whatever, 
just a few words.  Well, ssmtp is unmaintained and I can't get it to 
work reliably with my email server (which is not gmail).  What can I use 
to replace it, or should I just find a way to get a real MUA to send a 
message for me?