duuuuhhhh...

It never ceases to amaze me, the types of questions people ask me via email. I guess it's not enough to create web pages which explain things- some people need to either start USING the web pages, or maybe they need to have the web pages re-read to them, or they just need to pull their heads out of whatever orifice it may currently lodged into.

As a way to relieve stress, I've decided to start adding the "worst of the worst" to this web page. Think of it as a "hall of shame".

For questions which are "just plain stupid", I will at least remove any personally identifiable information... however, if somebody starts resorting to legal threats, or basically makes an ass of themselves, I have no problem leaving the original names, email addresses, and IP addresses in here.

So if you're thinking about emailing me, think very carefully about what your message says and how you're saying it, BEFORE you hit the SEND button. Because under MY terms of service, any email sent to me becomes MY property- and if I choose to exhibit them on a web page like this, that's MY business. If you don't agree to these terms, DON'T SEND ME EMAIL.

As near as I can tell, this guy already FOUND the answer to his question, but he feels the need to ask me whether or not the web page is correct.

The truth, ********, is that I wrote the web pages wrong on purpose, in order to make people fill my mailbox with dumb questions. The real solution to your problem isn't on the web site- it's on the floor, next to your chair. You need to bang your forehead against it, over and over again. Within a few minutes you will either understand the concept of "try it and see what happens", or you will pass out from blood loss. Either way, it's preferable to waiting two days for me to explain what any other intelligent person would understand: the whole reason I wrote the page to begin with, was because the information was correct, and I don't want to have to explain it five million times.

Where to begin...

First of all, he's calling me "bro" as if he's my brother, or a close friend, or some kind of surfer dude. That irritates me. If you don't know somebody, keep things professional when you talk to them. That's not too complicated an idea, is it?

Second, he's apparently asking how to make his SMTP server, not speak SMTP. Which tells me that he knows absolutly nothing about how his server works, and that if I do try to explain it to him, I can see having to try and teach this joker how a mail server works, plus work around his obvious trouble with the english language, just to make him understand why his question makes no sense. Just thinking about it makes my head hurt.

Then, when he replies, he totally misses the point of "do i know you?", and calls me "bro" two more times. He also puts his reply ABOVE the original message, which is a BIG NO-NO in my book. Plus he wants me to help him for free (of course), and to top it all off, he somehow thinks it's going to help the entire open source community if I do so.

Riiiiiight.

Turns out that calling me "bro" was a cultural thing- apparently, wherever it is he lives (Myanmar? Malaysia? Milwaukee?) they call each other "bro" all the time. To me it feels somewhere betwen "overly familiar" and "kinda stupid", but I guess his heart was in the right place, so I can't really hold that against him.

But trying to claim that it would help the entire open source community if I save him from having to do his own homework... That's what earned his message a place on this web page.

This one started out painful, because I had to translate it from HTML to text before I could even read it.

THIS, my friends, is what qmailrocks does to your brain.

Going point-by-point...

• He sent me HTML email.

• He spells his surname in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. I don't know if that's a cultural thing where he lives (Turkiye, according to his IP address) but it irritates me for some reason.

• He hasn't read the qmail documentation, otherwise he might have at least SOME idea of how to configure qmail to do what he wants. The information he needs is all there.

• Even though the error message plainly tells him that "(qmail-remote)_was_invoked_improperly", he isn't checking into how his script is calling qmail-remote. (Never mind the fact that he doesn't need a script to begin with...)

• He somehow found me, but didn't take the time to read my web site before emailing me- especially the page which explains exactly how to what he's trying to do.

• He figures it's okay to email somebody personally, rather than using any of the public mailing lists which exist for this exact purpose.

• There are probably other reasons, but you get the idea.

It sounds like he's trying to take a single server which does everything, and build a second machine to do anti-spam and anti-virus scanning for the messages coming in from the internet (which I call a "mailhub") and ran into an issue where the mailhub machine is storing peoples' messages locally, rather than passing them back to the real mailbox server.

And rather than just configure qmail correctly, he's trying to use scripts to force the machine to do what he wants, after it's already done what he's configured it to do (which is deliver the mail locally.)

I had considered replying with my consulting rates, but the fact that he's writing his own scripts tells me that the first few hours would be spent reading the documentation to him, and then when it's all done, arguing with him because he doesn't think he should pay for the time I spent reading and explaining the documentation to him...

Seriously... if you're not going to even READ the documentation, you have no business running a mail server in the first place.

Copyright 1995-2024 John M. Simpson KG4ZOW (email) (PGP key)
Last updated 2009-03-06 22:08:41 +0000