I’ve started a new category called “error heads”. I experience a lot of dumb things on the internet. It reminds me of that scene in Goldmember where Austin is introducing the internet to Foxy played by Beyonce Knowles. He calls it a critical infrastructure for mass communication or something like that. Anyways, he makes it sound all important while showing her a video of a monkey scratching its ass and then sniffing it’s fingers.
My first example comes from a conversation I had with a person trying to figure out what was wrong with their mail server. I pointed out an inconsequential error among serious errors that two of his MX records pointed to the same IP and were there fore duplicate records that may interfere with mail delivery. He informed me that he had two different MX records i.e. mail1.domain.tld and mail2.domain.tld both pointing to 11.22.33.44 for redundancy. Someone correct me if I am wrong, but if that IP is down, it doesn’t matter what you call your MX record.
My second example comes from a forum discussion with a user that was looking for someone to host his Web 2.0 project for free or in return for some advertising. I host several sites for designers for free because I believe in the open source community and helping each other out. One of his requirements was that he had unlimited bandwidth. I told him that I could very well put him on a dedicated 10MB line which at maximum throughput can dispatch 6000GB per month. He proceeded to let me know that there are people out there with unlimited bandwidth, that will help him for free, and he is “just going to have to find someone else”. Alrighty then prick, couple lessons for you:
- Nothing is unlimited. Ask Comcast.
- If you think you can bend the rules of physics, limitations of CAT5e cable, and NICs, be my guest.
- Beggars can’t be choosers.
- Someone has already done your Web 2.0 idea, you may have heard of it. Flickr anyone?
I’d post links to these discussions, but I think I’ll attempt to protect the guilty from themselves. Thanks for reading my first installment of “error heads”. Anyone you’d like to nominate?
–Picture courtesy of bivingsreport.com