MostlyGeek

When I often stumbleupon things that I like. When that happens, I give it a little thumbs up. Sometimes, I stumbleupon things that I *really* like and the thumb is not enough. So blogging about it is in order. Go read The case of the 500-mile email, nerdy and awesome.

Here’s a problem that *sounded* impossible… I almost regret posting the
story to a wide audience, because it makes a great tale over drinks at a
conference. :-) The story is slightly altered in order to protect the
guilty, elide over irrelevant and boring details, and generally make the
whole thing more entertaining.

I was working in a job running the campus email system some years ago when
I got a call from the chairman of the statistics department.

“We’re having a problem sending email out of the department.”

“What’s the problem?” I asked.

“We can’t send mail more than 500 miles,” the chairman explained.

I choked on my latte. “Come again?”

“We can’t send mail farther than 500 miles from here,” he repeated. “A
little bit more, actually. Call it 520 miles. But no farther.”

Read the rest at: http://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html