Things Better Left Unsaid

Here's a sampling I've collected over the years of emails, memos, and letters that perhaps would have been best left unwritten. Names have been obscured to protect the unwitting.

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From: Jay
Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2001 3:57 PM
Subject: Thursday Night Network Outage 4/12

During the maintenance window this Thursday 4/12, J.S. and I will be moving a core circuit of the company network. I am coordinating a hot swap with Sprint of the Atlanta DS3 and the multiple PVC's that run to each office.

The outage will affect network connectivity from the different company offices to corporate applications in Atlanta. Network connectivity will be intermittent between Thursday 11pm and Friday 2am.

Maintenance window information and Network SLA's can be found at http://infrastructure.ixl.com If you have any questions or concerns then please send me an email.

Thanks.

[SEAN COMMENT: The bottom line is, if you are working on an IDS at COB for a GPC on the ATL TLA, then your connection will be MIA.]

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From the Earth Day web site a few years back:

April 22nd is Earth Day - each year marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970.

Welcome to Planet Earth, the third planet from a star named the Sun. The Earth is shaped like a sphere and composed mostly of rock. Over 70 percent of the Earth's surface is water. The planet has a relatively thin atmosphere composed mostly of nitrogen and oxygen. Earth has a single large Moon that is about 1/4 of its diameter and, from the planet's surface, is seen to have almost exactly the same angular size as the Sun. With its abundance of liquid water, Earth supports a large variety of life forms, including potentially intelligent species such as dolphins and humans. Please enjoy your stay on Planet Earth.

[SEAN COMMENT: So now humans are potentially intelligent? My, we really have evolved, haven't we?]

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[SEAN COMMENT: This one is from my tech writer buddy Richard, who came across this when he was re-writing his company's online help system.]

Password

Your password and employee number identify you as a valid ETSS user. Your password must be 5 to 8 characters.

When typing, your password displays as asterisks (*) so your backstabbing coworker can't read your password, log in as you, wreak havoc on the system and frame you for it.

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[SEAN COMMENT: I was doing some admin-screen development on one of my projects when I received the helpful feedback message below acknowledging that one of my changes to the portal was correctly implemented.]

Sent: Tuesday, May 03, 2005 1:04 PM
To: Sean

The portlet named unknown has been added to page unknown in community unknown by unknown.

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[SEAN COMMENT: A co-worker from my IBM days sent me this note from his wife, who worked as an editor in the environmental industry. I'm told the author was especially proud of this one.]

The critical key to a successful optimization project is the integration of all factors into a contemporaneous decision matrix. This integration allows the purpose of the optimization process to be achieved; namely, the application of a holistic, business-based decision process.