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Bound e-mail is probably one of the most stressful types of issues for a SysAdmin to deal with.
”Hello, I.T.”
First of all, there are a lot of people who want to know what’s going on, and there’s only one way to communicate with them: telephone. If you are a SysAdmin, having to use the telephone is similar to being forced, at gunpoint, to pound a nail into the wall with your forehead. Actually, this is not entirely fair to say, as the nail-pounding is definitely more exciting, and will result in a smaller headache.
Secondly, everyone seems to have their own idea of what is or isn’t happening with their e-mail, and when, so you can’t really trust any reports you receive.
Investigations begin
I received the first impulses that there was birdbrained-ness at hand when I saw that the server connection was timing out on one particular mailbox. I braced myself as I looked at the size of the mailbox… It was 44MB, which is about 43MB larger than anyone’s mailbox really ought to be at any one time. This, coupled with the relatively slow internet connection this client happens to have, was definitely the issue.
Into the inbox
For a variety of reasons, I don’t usually make it a practice to open people’s mail. I certainly respect people’s privacy, but the greater reason is that I am not mentally prepared to deal with the level of “TMI” I will be subjected to. However, in order to prune whatever was clogging the connection, this is one of those times I had to. Again I assumed my braced position as I opened the mailbox to see:
In the interest of reducing your risk of a brain hemmorage, I won’t list the rest of the classic material that was shoehorned in this person’s inbox. After getting my brains off the floor and back into my nose where they came from, I observed a few things about these messages:
1. We still live in a world where people feel they need to e-mail videos as an attachment? Hasn’t everyone heard of YouTube?
2. How does a 10MB e-mail message get forwarded that many times without SOMEONE doing SOMETHING to stop the madness?
3. How many photos do you have to stick in an e-mail message to take up 10MB? Or did some genius take these with a 23 Megapixel camera and drop them directly in?
4. This story’s birdbrain, Bob, apparently felt it necessary to send the “photos” e-mail twice, in case the first message was not received… And, with 10 MB of attachments, I have to say I can’t blame him for having doubts. Is this like sending a print job a second time when the first one doesn’t print right away?
The rampant stupidity of our society
Eventually my curiosity got the best of me, and I had to find out. I opened the “photos” message, and once again had my mind blown by the rampant stupidity of our society.
A photographer had taken a series of photos of (I’m not kidding here) two bald eagles getting into a fight, which subsequently led to one of the bald eagles almost drowning. Then the photographer had the good sense to package them all up into an e-mail message, and send it out with the subject of “Patriotic Photos.” There was, of course, some contrived sappy metaphor that involved the eagle representing America, as it deals with the current economic crisis.
I don’t know where to begin with the irony in this analogy. Have we totally missed the fact that the eagle #1 almost drowned because it was attacked by another eagle?
With that, I happily closed the mailbox. I’d seen enough for the day. As for the sand art video, I exercised my better judgment and didn’t go there.
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