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Analogies

October 21, 2009 by dave

So, a message queue on a mail server, is like a straw in a boba (“bubble”) tea.

If someone puts an attachment on their e-mail, the rest of the office isn’t going to be able to get much tea when a piece of boba comes sucking through that straw.

So imagine my chagrin, when a user tries to suck up a watermelon (10Mb pdf catalogue) instead of a piece of boba.

Then imagine upon further examination, while I am clearing the catalogues out of the message queue and lecturing the offending user, that I see yet another different person is trying to suck a Buick up through the straw (32Mb video file).

Some days the IT department tools should include a hammer.

Posted in David Watters Daily Post | 10 Comments

10 Responses

on October 22, 2009 at 2:37 pm | Reply Andy

When did you start working here
Sounds like someone here they sent a 4Gig video file to everyone here 275 – 300 Machines talk about choke our IT dept went NUTS……………. Not once but twice
on October 22, 2009 at 6:39 pm | Reply dave

@Andy

4Gb, ok you win…
on October 25, 2009 at 10:53 pm | Reply dmarks

Just another reason to hate PDF.
on October 26, 2009 at 4:12 pm | Reply dave

@dmarks

I love PDF. Properly made pdf’s are amazingly wonderful. Unfortunately there are too many people out there that make really shitty PDF files.

Now I do wish there was a better open source alternative, but right now there is not.
on October 27, 2009 at 2:26 am | Reply Todd

I think I may send you a 15MB photo later tonight…..
on October 27, 2009 at 8:32 am | Reply dave

@todd

1) I know where you live fucker.

2) It was outbound at issue. I use a different server for inbound
on October 27, 2009 at 6:42 pm | Reply Todd

Ha! I’ll send multiple RAW files then just on the off chance it pisses you off!
on October 29, 2009 at 1:29 am | Reply Paul

Dave forget the hammer. the lead pipe works better. Or the taser.
on November 10, 2009 at 1:10 am | Reply Brian

Imagine a worldwide ban of attachments on email altogether (across the internet as a whole) so IT professionals will stop their whining! Then the money spent on those IT professionals can instead go to “you send it” style services.

Ok seriously, I think the problem is email software doesn’t give the user any idea how large an attachment is acceptable so of course users just try it out. Who didn’t push the needle over a 100 in the first car they owned?
on November 10, 2009 at 5:13 pm | Reply dave

@Brian

The size of the attachment in the e-mail software we use is shown in a little bracket beside its name

eg. BigDamnFile.zip(45Mb)

I let users know quite regularly that they can’t send a file bigger than 2Mb unless it’s an extreme emergency and never over 10Mb

I always let users know that files over that size I can place on an FTP site and give them a link that they can send to users that will initiate a download.

I truly do educate my users and offer them alternatives for things that they need.

I try my best to only bitch and moan when people just don’t listen.