[sf-lug] Jim Stockford (and/or others?): Do you have old list emails?

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Michael Paoli (Michael.Paoli at cal.berkeley.edu):

> As for SF-LUG ... Rick may more easily be able to provide some of those
> details (or at least starting points thereof).  I don't recall in detail,
> but I seem to be aware of a few gaps or semi-gaps.

During that single period, ~four consecutive months of server downtime, 
people continued to have offlist SF-LUG-related discussion, mostly
facilitated by Bobbie using a long CC list and person-to-person mail.
After you and I finally kicked the server back online, I offered to
merge into the Mailman archive any of that offlist side-discussion
people wished to retroactively consider would-have-been-mailing-list 
traffic.  ISTR that two or three people provided saved mail in some form
that didn't require _too_ much work to hammer with awk/sed into usable
form, and I duly added those thing in.

Strictly speaking, at the time I said (closely paraphrased) 'Hey, if you
can provide that traffic in mbox format, I be glad to merge it' and what
Bobbie (and others? can't recall) was in _nothing at all like mbox_ 
format!  Sheesh.  But, oh bother, I thought, I'll just do a bunch more
scripting work and hammer into shape the sludge that I was handed.
I _could_ have said 'Um, what part of mbox format was unclear?', but 
instead I didn't grumble but just did yet more work that I hadn't 
volunteered to do.

For the record, colour me unimpressed.  (Great job of valuing my time
and effort, folks.  But there's been a goddamned long history of that,
frankly.)


In a strict sense, there never was 'missing' traffic -- then or
otherwise.  There just was a few months the mailing list wasn't around.
It makes no sense to complain that the mailing list archive is 'missing' 
mail never delivered to it because it was switched off and people were
doing private offlist mail instead.  But hey, people wanted to merge in
their not-really-list discussions, so I was game for doing the work
(even though I ended up needing to do work I hadn't expected to do
because of people utterly ignoring the 'mbox' qualifier).[1]

The notion of sf-lug at linuxmafia.com traffic being 'missing' at any other
time since Dec. 26, 2005 (when I created the list) is puzzling to me.  I
don't even know what that means, so perhaps someone can explain that.
What does 'missing' mean, when the mailing list has been in continuous
operation, and, even when PG&E has blacked out electrical service to my
house during winter thunderstorms, inbound SMTP traffic got through
because of the norm of smarthosts re-trying for about four days before
giving up?  I don't get it.  But hey, I'm only a senior sysadmin, so
maybe I completely misunderstand Internet operations.</sarcasm>


FWIW, although I greatly appreciated your (Michael's) help in kludging
my server back online following the spectacular bad luck of my having a
sudden motherboard blowout during a major apt-get update && apt-get
dist-upgrade operation, the reason I didn't bother fixing my server
online for several months is that, frankly, I was enjoying the vacation
from 24x7 Internet presence.

I'd just been laid off from my (exhausting) job, which was quite
stressful.  I'd tried to do backup of my crucially important PDA since
I'd just lost access to my PDA backups at my workstation at work, and
made the unwise move to do major software updates to my server (while
stressed and tired) so that PDA backup software on it would work right
away, and the damned motherboard blew up in the middle of attempting
that.  And at that point, demoralised, I went to sleep and decided to
get back to the problem later after a long rest.  But, you know who
wouldn't leave me alone and let me rest?  SF-LUG.  You guys.  

You guys kept bothering me.  'How long before you have the server back?'
(I don't know.  Whatever.)  'Can we make this faster by donating you an
old workstation as a replacement server.  (Long explanation where I say
I have plenty of spare hardware, that not being the problem at all, and 
another long explanation about why, anyway, it's a something of a
bonehead error in many cases to try to use workstation-class hardware as
a server.)  'We're unhappy.  Can you make a backup copy in some format
convenient to us and drive it to San Francisco?'  (Well, aren't _you_
special?  Especially since, for many long years since 2005, I had pleaded 
with you-plural, but especially Jim, to please work with me to 
secure offsite automated backups of the mailing list traffic and roster
data, and was completely ignored.  I have a better idea, Jim.  Why don't
you bring storage media and your lazy ass down to _my_ house, and I'll
let _you_ make a belated copy of relevant files.  Which, when I said the
polite version of that, I couldn't help noticing that Jim responded by 
neither bothering to visit nor even acknowledging my response.  Typical.)

And it just went _on and on and on_.  'When are you going to have the
server back up?'  (Oh, bugger off, already.)  'Would it help if I gave
you my spare PATA drive?  (Oh, _hell_ no.  Doesn't _anybody_ frelling
listen?)

Lather, rinse, repeat.  Pester, pester, pester -- as if I were an
unpaid butler for you-all, and you were entitled to complain because I'd
been too generous and you found my sudden disinclination to work my ass
off for you inconvenient.

In short, the biggest reason why I _deliberately_ kept putting off even
trying to resurrect my server?  You guys.  Because dealing with you 
was a hassle, and being on vacation from running a 24x7 Internet server
had, in the short term, some pleasant advantages.

Put that in your pipes and smoke it.



[1] I can guess what I'm about to hear, which amounts to 'Don't blame me
for sending you nearly useless stuff requiring a great deal more work. 
We had not idea what you meant when you said "mbox file".  If so,
people, wouldn't the reasonable action be to _ask_?  But I guess
competence is for other people, right?  Just do stuff and, when the
halfassedness causes problems for other people, disclaim responsibility.
That seems to be the prevailing ethos.