Friday, July 30, 2010

Real Work Conversations: The Mailing List

This one happened a couple of months ago, on a Monday morning...

Public Information Officer: "Did the city-wide e-mail go out on Friday? I know I sent it, but I never saw it in my inbox."

Me: "Well..." (checks mail) "I don't see it in mine, either."

Web Manager: (checks mailing list) "It looks like it sent about two hundred, then quit." (checks the e-mail itself) "...Probably because you tried to include a 2 MB image with the text."

Me: "Well, that would explain why our mail server crashed on Friday afternoon, when we were in the middle of setting up for the music festival."

I wish I was making this up. We had to send someone from the festival site back to the server room to do a physical reboot on the server. It was so thoroughly locked that remote control couldn't touch it.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Feel free to leave comments; it lets me know that people are actually reading my blog. Interesting tangents and topic drift just add flavor. Linking to your own stuff is fine, as long as it's at least loosely relevant. Be civil, and have fun!