On Fri, 18 Apr 1997, Jamie Rishaw wrote:

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Uhm, since when is this outages@merit.edu?

While many on this list have almost assuredly seen the posting below, it demonstrates well that NANOG is not much different in nature than most other mailing lists. ;) -Paul Q: How many NANOG list subscribers does it take to change a light bulb? A: 1,331: 1 to change the light bulb and to post to the mail list that the light bulb has been changed 14 to share similar experiences of changing light bulbs and how the light bulb could have been changed differently. 7 to caution about the dangers of changing light bulbs. 27 to point out spelling/grammar errors in posts about changing light bulbs. 53 to flame the spell checkers 156 to write to the list administrator complaining about the light bulb discussion and its inappropriateness to this mail list. 41 to correct spelling in the spelling/grammar flames.

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109 to post that this list is not about light bulbs and to please take this email exchange to alt.light.bulb 203 to demand that cross posting to alt.grammar, alt.spelling and alt.punctuation about changing light bulbs be stopped. 111 to defend the posting to this list saying that we all use light bulbs and therefore the posts **are** relevant to this mail list. 306 to debate which method of changing light bulbs is superior, where to buy the best light bulbs, what brand of light bulbs work best for this technique, and what brands are faulty. 27 to post URLs where one can see examples of different light bulbs 14 to post that the URLs were posted incorrectly, and to post corrected URLs. 3 to post about links they found from the URLs that are relevant to this list which makes light bulbs relevant to this list. 33 to concatenate all posts to date, then quote them including all headers and footers, and then add "Me Too." 12 to post to the list that they are unsubscribing because they cannot handle the light bulb controversey. 19 to quote the "Me Too's" to say, "Me Three." 4 to suggest that posters request the light bulb FAQ. 1 to propose new alt.change.light.bulb newsgroup. 47 to say this is just what alt.physic.cold_fusion was meant for, leave it here. 143 votes for alt.lite.bulb.

-- Paul R.D. Lantinga #planting@vfi.com# Systems Administrator, Verifone IC "...'proactive' and 'paradigm', aren't these just buzzwords that dumb people use to sound important?"-The Simpsons