[Techtalk] Pathetic Mini How-To on CUPS & MacOSX Clients

[Jenn Vesperman]

On Fri, 2003-02-07 at 01:40, Beth Johnson wrote:
> On Wed, 2003-02-05 at 18:19, Jenn Vesperman wrote:
> > I see nothing pathetic about this - this is exactly how the HOWTOs
> > start.
> 
> Well, I put that there to hopefully put off anyone looking at the
> archives and thinking I'm some sort of an expert!  I had someone write
> me last month after apparently finding my blurb on the Palm and he sent
> me his kernel messages and everything. 

Quite a few of us have had that experience. (I get it a lot, and blame
it on my articles on O'Reilly.)

It's perfectly acceptable to send back an email saying 'I am not your
personal free tech support. Send mail to the appropriate list if you
want help.' If you happen to know what the appropriate list is, you can
be nice to them and post the URL for signing up for that list.

Mine isn't that blunt, partly because I don't want to put people off
reading my articles. But I also don't have the time, knowledge or
patience to handle a massive slew of 'do this for me' email.
My free-tech-support time is devoted to techtalk, newchix, and the IRC
channel. I'm also going to be giving time to cvs at oreilly (I forget the
list name they've picked), once the book is out.
I do also subscribe to the general tech-help mailing lists for things I
know I'm competent at. (cvs-info, pam-list, squid-users).

Beyond those places? I have my hand out asking for cash. I have to earn
a living too. Quite honestly, I think six mailing lists and one IRC
channel is quite enough free tech support for any one person to give.

> It ("pathetic") wasn't meant in any self-denigrating way, I just wanted
> to acknowledge that it wasn't perfect by any means.  But I did feel it
> was important to get it out there, because who knows how many other
> people have gotten it working but kept it to themselves!

Oh, absolutely.



Jenn V.
-- 
    "Do you ever wonder if there's a whole section of geek culture 
        	you miss out on by being a geek?" - Dancer.
 My book 'Essential CVS' will be published by O'Reilly in 2003.
jenn at anthill.echidna.id.au     http://anthill.echidna.id.au/~jenn/