As a number of folks on some of the lists have seen, I have not been a very
cheerful sort of person this past week. It has been getting more and more
frustrating for me lately. The basic problem, as I outlined in my initial
funding plea back in October, is that the one machine sitting on my desk at
work has the horsepower to easily run all the lists, or it can easily run
the daily tasks of my job. Trying to do both at once causes problems.
To give yourselves some idea of why I am getting frustrated, try this
experiment. One of my phone numbers is 355-5438. On your next post to the
list of your choice, do this. Type in the first character. Yes, just one
character. Wait 3 seconds. Type in the second character. Wait 5 seconds.
Type in the third, wait 5 seconds, and so on. Yes, that's right, it will
take you over a minute to type in, say, "autox@autox.team.net" just to
address your mail. Don't cheat, and type in your *entire* message using
that scheme. Think about what it would be like if that wait between the
characters was not voluntary.
My machine is not always like that. It used to be that would never happen,
then maybe on rare occasions. Lately, it is happening quite often. For
instance, I just had to wait about 15 seconds for the word "often" in the
previous sentence to be echoed back, and that was the sixth such delay so
far in this message. Real pleasant working environment, wouldn't you say?
Those delays did not happen at all the week everyone was getting the once a
day digest. Those delays are directly the result of mail going out to all
the various list members, and tasks associated with that mail. Believe me,
I, more than any of you, want to see a new server online as soon as possible!
I will admit that shopping around for hardware is a bit of fun.
The point of this is that my grumbles about list content are not really about
the actual content of the messages. I don't read any of the lists anymore,
other than some clean up of the digests when they get over 30 or 35K in
length. What I am grumbling about is just the number and volume of messages.
So what I am really asking is that until there is a dedicated machine, try
to show some consideration before posting. Ask yourselves if the message
you are sending out is really worth it. These lists aren't you and a buddy
sitting on the sofa chatting, think more like you at a podium in front of a
few hundred people, maybe a thousand or so. If you do want to chat with a
buddy, then use private email.
One thing to look forward, to, though, is that I should have something in
place by the end of the month. That alone should cut down on the whining
at this end of the wire!
mjb.
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