A step backwards - not taken

[Kevin O'Gorman]

On Wed, 11 Sep 2002, David A. Bandel wrote:

> On Wed, 11 Sep 2002 14:50:32 -0700 (PDT)
> begin  "Kevin O'Gorman" <kevin at kosmanor.com> spewed forth:
> 
> > First the good news:  with all the success stories being told about all
> > sorts of variations, and even the below testimonail using the same ISP,
> > I looked a little further.  To make it short, the worst problems were 
> > data-dependent. Somehow, 118 consecutive null bytes had crept into the 
> > mail spool.  When I got rid of them all the important problems went
> > away, and I think this is all gonna work, staying with COL 311 and
> > Netscape 7.
> > 
> > I have no idea how the null bytes got in there, and if anyone had
> > mentioned it to me, I might actually have opined that it couldn't happen
> > at all.
> 
> Glad you got it resolved.
> Hope you've installed OpenOffice for her, too.
> 
> > 
> > As for the rest, most of the criticisms of me were accurate: I have
> > been upset about this, short of temper and patience.  In other words a
> > typical customer service user's attitude aimed at a bunch of volunteers.
> > That was unreasonable of me.
> 
> Now about your penance ... _you_ and you alone get to answer/deal with the
> next totally unreasonable, irrational luser that poses a question.  You'll
> see him/her coming because (s)he'll:

Point well taken, David.  Actually, I've dealt with my share; even got
paid as CS for a bit (as a consutltant filling in for someone on medical
leave).

> 1.  not provide sufficient info to properly diagnose the problem (kinda
> like your first post)

Heh.  If I had known what information was going to be sufficient, I 
wouldn't have needed so much help.  Bug finding is almost always a
dialog between the problem and the fixer.  So I wouldn't go blamong folks
for starting with inadequate info.

> 2.  blame Linux for his/her failure (umm ... yeah)

I still do, sort of.  Maybe not Linux (not the kernel, anyway) but some
piece here is more sensitive to data than it should be, or the pieces 
don't fit reliably.  My guess it's either imapd or the Moz engine.  I'll
try using pine on that spool file and see what it does.  I run pine on
my main machine, and use the imapd it provides.  This could isolate the
culprit.

> 3.  threaten to go back to Windoze (repeatedly -- need I say more?)

It was my only sure-fire option that would buy me a month or so's peace.
It wasn't a threat, it was a plan, and a complaint.  I really really
really really didn't want to do it.  Thus the subject line.

I had every confidence that if it could be made to work, it would keep
working, which I would not have felt about the switch back to windoze.

> 4.  talk like it's the list's problem to get fixed

I didn't think I was doing that.  If I was I'm sorry.  I was definitely
bemoaning the apparent state of affairs, and I did get annoyed at advice 
to switch distros in the absense of evidence that the distro was at fault.
If I had not received any help, I would not have blamed anyone, but I'm
awfully glad I did.

Come to think of it, the frequency of switch advice may be betraying a 
general lack of confidence even here in the quality of even fairly current
distros.  I had thought Caldera had a pretty good rep for quality, in
spite of annoyance at their business practices.

> 
> [snip]
> 
> Ciao,
> 
> David A. Bandel
> 

-- 
Kevin O'Gorman, PhD  (805) 650-6274  mailto:kevin at kosmanor.com
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