At 06:25 PM 8/13/98 -0400, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:

Bravo, Patrick. _This_ is how a _man_ dies, to paraphrase Bob Heinlein.

This is a perfect counter-example to what I was bitching about with the BBN fracas. Serve the customers, _then_ worry about the money.

Thank you. Thank you very much. (And my favorite author, too. ;) I honestly expected to get flamed for that post (a bunch of "I told you so's"), but instead I got an overwhelming number of responses offering to help. I can't tell you how much I appreciate it. (Even if all of you wouldn't let me get any sleep. :) I am absolutely positive some of the help was offered because the vultures were circling, but some of them were honest offers of help. I think this shows that there is hope for the Internet community yet. In response to the money issue, it is easy for me, as a geek/engineer/operations guy to service the customer and ignore the cost, but I have learned the hard way that money _has_ to be made. I honestly believed (and still do) that if you service the customer right, and charge a fair price, the money will come. The problem is, there's a huge hump you have to get over in a startup, and servicing the customer well makes that hump bigger. Priori just couldn't make it over that hump. Thanx again for helping my customers. They really didn't deserve this. The efforts of people on this list and others probably kept some of them going "down with the ship". If any of you ever need any help with your routes, you got some free engineering coming. :)

Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com

TTFN, patrick ************************************************************** Patrick W. Gilmore voice: +1-650-482-2840 Director of Operations, CCIE #2983 fax: +1-650-482-2844 PRIORI NETWORKS, INC. http://www.priori.net "Tomorrow's Performance.... Today" **************************************************************