{"id":126,"date":"2008-02-11T21:32:59","date_gmt":"2008-02-12T04:32:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.basilweb.net\/blog\/?p=126"},"modified":"2008-12-25T21:50:23","modified_gmt":"2008-12-26T04:50:23","slug":"it-strikes-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.basilweb.net\/blog\/2008\/02\/11\/it-strikes-again\/","title":{"rendered":"IT strikes again"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019ve read this blog from the beginning (circa 2005) then you know my disdain for government IT skills, or rather, lack of. Read this for a good example<\/a>. At the time I wrote that article there were 3 people in our IT department. There are still 3 people in that department, but they are all different from that original skillful crew. I use that term loosely. Though the following story is intended for those in the know, it\u2019s only funny if you understand why. So I\u2019ll explain it a bit as I go along. First, you might be wondering what IT is. Information Technology. These guys are the ones paid to set up an agencies computers. Keep them in top running condition. Set up the employees\u2019 email accounts. Etc. In sum, these guys are paid to know how email works, among other skills.<\/p>\n

My favorite IT department gave me some new material last week. Anyone who works in IT, or has the least bit of knowledge how mail servers work, knows that you can\u2019t have spaces in an email address. For example, the following would not be an email address that you would use:<\/p>\n

my email address@whatever.com<\/p>\n

Sorry folks, no spaces in your literal email address. Now you can set up your mail client to display your name that is associated with your email address, but you simply can\u2019t have spaces in your email address. You can see this at work when you reply to someone\u2019s email sent to you. You click on the reply button, and if your client is set up to quote the original email, it will look a little something like this:<\/p>\n

On Feb 5, 2008, at 9:00 AM, \u201cMy Email Address\u201d < my.email.address@whatever.net> wrote:
\nJust what does that mean? Well, \u201cMy Email Address\u201d is the associated (or display) name with the email account of my.email.address@whatever.net. When you copy email information to someone to create an account, you give them the display name (can include spaces) and the actual email account (no spaces).<\/p>\n

Can you guess what our IT guys did? Let\u2019s say the display name is Houston HUD and the email address is supposed to be houstonHUD@email.com. This guy was trying to set up the email account as Houston <insert big honkin\u2019 space right here> HUD@email.com. Now, I\u2019ll wince when I see things like this, and then try to give them a nudge in the right direction. Sometimes they\u2019ll take the hint and try it. Other times, like this time, if it\u2019s not written out for them on a piece of paper, they\u2019ll just give up. I tried to explain to him that the email address can\u2019t have a space in it. He said \u201cNo, that\u2019s how they have it written here.\u201d Then he showed me the paper. Whoever gave it to him, assumed that he would know what \u201cHouston HUD\u201d <HoustonHUD@email.com> meant and know what to do with that information. But not our guys.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019ve read this blog from the beginning (circa 2005) then you know my disdain for government IT skills, or rather, lack of. Read this for a good example. At the time I wrote that article there were 3 people in our IT department. There are still 3 people in that department, but they are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[94],"tags":[93,92,179],"class_list":["post-126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-it","tag-government","tag-it","tag-wtf"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.basilweb.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.basilweb.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.basilweb.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.basilweb.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.basilweb.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.basilweb.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":127,"href":"https:\/\/www.basilweb.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126\/revisions\/127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.basilweb.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.basilweb.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.basilweb.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}