David Brodbeck said:
IMHO, "ignorant" is emailing enormous images straight off a digital
camera when it would only take a few moments to resize them to a smaller
file. But a lot of people are ignorant of how to properly handle
digital photos, so I try not to hold it against them.
OK folks, here's the bottom line. His response caught me on a bad day. If
you are a regular on this group, you will know that I often go out of my way
to help anyone that has a query that I have a definite answer to, or in some
cases, what I consider to be a useful suggestion. When this person posted
his original question, it was clear that most of the American respondents,
were not quite understanding what it was that he was looking for, suggesting
various methods for strain relieving power cables, and locking them into the
unit, rather than just tidying existingly fitted cables so that nobody would
trip over them. Being from the same country and service background as this
poster, and I suspect of a similar age, I knew *exactly* the knot he was
referring to, so I posted a reply to him, attempting to describe, as best I
could, how it was done. This is not easy so, helpful little soul that I am,
I thought that I would take some pictures for him.
I then went to the trouble to post again, to tell him that I had taken some
pictures for him. Looking at the e-mail address that he had posted from,
although it did not appear to be via a UK based ISP, it never-the-less
appeared to be valid, with no obvious spam trap. However, just in case, I
made that additional post so that he knew to go and look.
Yes, you are right, I could have posted to a web based pictures site, so
that all could look, but I felt that this was a specific enough question
from the OP, that doing so would not be of any particular value to the group
as a whole.
Yes, you are right that I could also have taken the additional time to load
the pictures off the camera into some other program, and cropped them and
reduced their size, although individually, they are not actually
particularly large. However, the OP claims to be a professional repairer, so
it did not occur to me for one moment, that in this day and age, given that
almost all service information is only available for download off the 'net,
and given that many service manuals are at least several megs, and sometimes
several 10s of megs, he would not have a broadband connection for doing
this. I'm pretty sure that a town the size of Southampton does not lack for
a broadband service, unless he is located in some tiny village rural area,
some of which, I agree, still do not have a bb 'net connection service. I
took his subsequent reply - perhaps wrongly - of "no broadband here", to
mean that it was because he didn't *want* such a service, rather than that
it wasn't available.
My problem came after he replied to my efforts by asking why I was
"squandering bandwidth" - as if that actually matters in the grand scheme of
things - and sending " unsolicited mail to an un-notified e-mail account "
as though it was just unwanted spam.
Now if you think that my response to that was out of order, then that's your
opinion, and of course, you are very welcome to it. Maybe it *would* have
only taken a few more moments to resize them, but I resent you calling me
'ignorant' for not doing so. I also resent your suggestion that I do not
know how to "properly handle digital photos". Yes, I could have resized
them, but I have a busy life, and unlike many on here, a life outside of
newsgroups. As it happened, I was in a hurry when I responded to the
original query, as I had an appointment to keep, so did not have those few
moments available at that time.
All it was necessary for the OP to do, was to post a civil reply, or even
come back to me off-group, thanking me for my efforts, and stating that for
whatever reason, he did not have a broadband connection, and asking politely
if I would take the trouble to resend them, or post them elsewhere, or send
them to a different more valid e-mail address, in a smaller format. Instead,
his first reply was a very terse one, stating that if it was me that had
posted the files to him, then they were just going to stay there, and making
more references to spam.
I actually replied quite civily to that one, telling him that it was a pity
that he was not able to access them, as I was pretty sure that they showed
just what he wanted to know. I went on to ask him how he got by as a service
professional, without a bb connection. I asked this as an honest and genuine
question. The reference to "walking with dinosaurs" and the BBC, was an
in-UK tongue in cheek reference to a TV programme, and not intended to be
offensive in any way, as indicated by the winking face I put after it, and
I'm pretty sure would not have been taken as such by anyone in the UK.
So to Jim Menning, and you Mr Brodbeck, if all that makes me "not a good
guy", and one of "the jerks", then sobeit. All I did, as I always do, is
try to help the guy. All I wanted was a civil response. It was only after
the less than polite ( in my opinion ) responses that I received from the
OP, that I got annoyed.
But hey-ho. Bad day now over. Tomorrow's another day ...
Arfa
