{"id":8995,"date":"2020-07-10T12:02:32","date_gmt":"2020-07-10T16:02:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=8995"},"modified":"2020-07-10T12:02:32","modified_gmt":"2020-07-10T16:02:32","slug":"the-500-mile-email","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=8995","title":{"rendered":"The 500 Mile Email"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I vaguely remember writing about this before but I just saw a reference to it and it\u2019s such a great story that it should be repeated every few years. Trey Harris tells a <a href=\"http:\/\/web.mit.edu\/jemorris\/humor\/500-miles\">funny and instructive tale<\/a> about how even the seemingly impossible can happen in our industry.<\/p>\n<p>Harris was a system administrator at an unnamed university who took care of the campus email system. One day the Statistics Department called up and said that their email was broken. They couldn\u2019t send an email further than 500 miles. Well, actually, a little bit further but effectively 500 miles. Harris\u2019 reaction was the same as yours or mine would have been: Cripes! Another luser with no understanding of tech or email.<\/p>\n<p>Except that when Harris went to the department and checked things out, it turned out to be true. An email to a site less than 500 miles, no problem; greater than 500 miles, the send failed. If you know anything at all but how email works, you know this should be impossible. It couldn\u2019t possibly be true and yet it was.<\/p>\n<p>I won\u2019t ruin the story by telling you the answer; you\u2019ll have to read Harris\u2019 story for that but, believe me, it\u2019s definitely worthwhile. It\u2019s also a good lesson. Sometimes the seemingly impossible can be true and when you figure out why, it\u2019s a great lesson and a great source of barroom tales. You might even get someone to buy you a round.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I vaguely remember writing about this before but I just saw a reference to it and it\u2019s such a great story that it should be repeated every few years. Trey Harris tells a funny and instructive tale about how even &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=8995\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[37,36],"class_list":["post-8995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-tech","tag-unix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8995"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8996,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8995\/revisions\/8996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}