From trey@sage.org Fri Nov 29 18:00:49 2002

Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2002 21:03:02 -0500 (EST)

From: Trey Harris

To: sage-members@sage.org

Subject: The case of the 500-mile email (was RE: [SAGE] Favorite impossible task?)

Here’s a problem that *sounded* impossible… I almost regret posting the story to a wide audience, because it makes a great tale over drinks at a conference. 🙂 The story is slightly altered in order to protect the guilty, elide over irrelevant and boring details, and generally make the whole thing more entertaining. I was working in a job running the campus email system some years ago when I got a call from the chairman of the statistics department.

“We’re having a problem sending email out of the department.”

“What’s the problem?” I asked.

“We can’t send mail more than 500 miles,” the chairman explained.

I choked on my latte. “Come again?”

“We can’t send mail farther than 500 miles from here,” he repeated. “A little bit more, actually. Call it 520 miles. But no farther.”

Must-read denouement at The case of the 500-mile email.