From: jwgh at earthlink.net (Jacob Haller) Subject: Email idiots Date: Wed 11 Nov 1998 21:05:16 Message-ID: <1dicrf3.1qgv17t1az48nuN@1cust98.tnt31.nyc3.da.uu.net> Newsgroups: alt.sysadmin.recovery
Tough to make this one entertaining, but we'll see...
The company I work for has a bunch of announcement mailing lists, many of which were created recently. I run the mailing list server, so the end result was that I had a bunch of novice listowners on my hands.
So fine. A couple of weeks ago I had a little training session, including handouts, explaining how to interact with the big scary mailing list software, what the different addresses were for, etc. Since for the most part the people sending out the announcements don't want their own return addresses appearing as the "From:" line, I explained that each mailing list had a special 'editor' address which was the only address it would accept email from, and I demonstrated how one could use Eudora to set up different 'personalities' from which one could send mail. One of the key concepts was: You send the mailing from the editor 'personality', the mailing list software gets it, mails that 'personality' back to confirm that the mailing should go out, you send mail from the 'personality' OKing the mailing, and the mailing goes out.
In general the class seemed to be well-received; I didn't notice anyone nodding off and most of the questions were reasonable. I told people that if they had any questions to let me know and if they wanted me to be around for their first mailing to just tell me when it was going to be so I could help them through it if there were any problems.
Fast forward to today at 7:30 pm. One of the neophyte listowners calls me and tells me that he thinks that the mailing he just tried to send didn't go out; could I check in to it? I look at the logs and, at first glance, I don't see anything that looks like a mailing going out over that particular mailing list. I ask him what email address he's sending from and he tells me. I look through the log files and see that the software sent mail to the address he gave me saying that the confirmation code didn't match any outstanding requests for that address.
At this point, a little warning bell starts to go off in my mind. The mailing address he gave me doesn't sound familiar, which is surprising since I both set up the mailing list with the editor address and created the aliases to make the editor addresses go to the right place. Does this email address even exist? A quick look through aliases leads me to think that it probably doesn't.
I go over to the guy and ask him if he's sure that the address he's using works. He looks confused and says, "No, it's just a personality."
At this point I draw my gun and shoot him. Except I don't have a gun, so instead I briefly discourse on the importance of sending mail with a valid return address. Then I ask him if it can wait until tomorrow. He says that it's really important, but he doesn't want to keep me. I take this to mean, "Yes, it can wait until tomorrow." I ask him if 9 am is OK. He says that he supposes he could try to come in early to do it. I draw my gun and shoot him again, but run into the same problem as before, so instead I just leave, go to a barbeque place, and eat far too much. Mmmm...key lime pie.
It's tempting to call in sick tomorrow, but I suppose I should go in on time just to see what both of us will do. If anything entertaining happens I will report back.
-jwgh