Recent Illiteracy Winner: Superior Design Enterprises

Many thanks to Shawn Hill at Superior Design Enterprises (www.sdeonline.us) for participating in our illiteracy contest. They glossed over our threat to any service providers that contacted us in reference to our recent job posting. They also ignored the corresponding Craig's List flag.

So thanks for playing. I hope some of your potential clients get to read this, and you seek an education.

Another Winner

Yes folks, we have another winner in the "I can't read challenge." As I mentioned in the previous post, our recent job description posted here and on Craig's List has a brief disclaimer:

"I will personally gut whoever contacts us with staffing or outsourcing solutions."

I'd like to personally congratulate Cosmos Creative Services found at www.cosmoscreatives.com. So naturally the person or bot ignored my warning and decided, "hey I'll e-mail them anyway." The message even starts out with this audacious opener:

After browsing through you craigslist ad, I believe our services match the criteria of your requirement. Please give us 2 minutes to brief you a little about us...

If you'd like to send them your thoughts please e-mail salescosmos@cosmoslearnings.com or call 828-338-2122. I'm sure they'd be happy to hear from you, just like I was happy to hear about them and their amazing services. If you do happen to speak to someone over there please be sure to let them know how you found out about them and their laser like precision.

If you would like to know more about Cosmos Creative Services please address your concerns to:


Gaurav Aidasani
60 Mass Ave
Boston, MA 02115
gauravdo@yahoo.co.in
857-919-6900

- Source: Whois


Thank you again Cosmos Creative Services, without people like you we wouldn't have awards like this and bans on lead paint.

Our First Winner

We have our first winner:

"http:// lmdesigning.com" (redirects from: www.CheapDesignsOnLine.com)

They decided to gloss over the part of the job posting that says, "I will personally gut whoever contacts us with staffing or outsourcing solutions."

While I don't think I should reply to aman26@lmdesigning.com I encourage anyone else with the time and motivation to drop them a message, or perhaps call them at 310-312-9597.

They wrote:

I wanted to introduce our services to you, perhaps you may find us
financially relieving.
We are running a website, printing production and graphic design
company with very little overhead so our prices are very competitive.
Our designs are fantastic so I invite you to take a look at our
portfolio by clicking the link provided.
Any questions you have please email or call anytime.

One of the real gems of the message was this attached picture:



With that fantastic quality, how could anyone go wrong. I almost regret forbidding commercial interests from contacting me.

If you'd like to know more about LM Design, and how they can ignore basic fundamentals and use shady marketing methods please address your concerns to:


LM Designing
lisa@lmdesigning.com
1410 barrington #3
los angeles, CA 90025
US
Phone: 310.444.9509

- Source whois

Thanks LM Designing for making my hopes and dreams come true. This was the perfect way to start my morning.

Yes.

There is nothing worse when this nonsense crosses over into our primary area of competency...

On Jan 16, 2008, at 10:36 AM, [redacted] wrote:

Scott,

As I know you use PHP4. And by default memory_limit=8M.
But it's not enough because for correct work [redacted] it's necessary
more.
And I propose increase memory_limit to 16M.

Best Regards,
[redacted]


On Jan 16 2008, at 10:59 AM, Scott wrote:

What could possibly consume 8 MB of execution memory?


On Jan 16, 2008, at 10:59 AM, [redacted] wrote:

Yes.
Because on different pages such as users/pages amount of data which we
get from database is much more than 8M.

Best Regards,
[redacted]


On Jan 16, 2008 at 11:27 AM, Scott wrote:

Those calculations are supposed to be done in mySQL, not in PHP. Dragging large data sets out of mySQL and into PHP drastically slows execution time. The default 8MB limit PHP imposes is specifically so people don't try to this: "This helps prevent poorly written scripts for eating up all available memory on a server." - http://us3.php.net/manual/en/ini.core.php

Every single Apache daemon (1 per user) would go and consume >8MB.


The same group of people also wanted us to ask an end user what a control character looked like. (sighs) Oh, it's a system bell!

This Pains Me


From: [redacted]
Subject: RE: lime Rebuild and FTP services
Date: December 11, 2007 6:05:33 AM EST
To: scott[redacted]
Cc: [redacted]

Hi Scott, Julius.

A the any changes in VPN settings?
Pls let us know about it.

[signature redacted]

-----Original Message-----
From: Scott [redacted]
Sent: Saturday, December 01, 2007 12:24 AM
To: [redacted]
Cc: [redacted]
Subject: Re: lime Rebuild and FTP services

I've made some changes to the VPN settings that might improve the
performance you were experiencing.[truncated]


(more info)

An Explanation Through Grey's Law

After seeing the application of Grey's Law on Daring Fireball I felt it perfectly describes the essence of the posts that have been tagged with wtf. The law states:

"Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice."

Expendable Storage


From: [deleted]
Subject: another hard drive to [deleted]server
Date: July 25, 2007 3:52:01 PM EDT
To: scott[deleted]

Hi Scott,
We need to expend the available space of [deleted] server.

Can you purchase an additional drive and install it?

(more info)

WTF

Frequently we are the recipient of e-mails that are so poorly constructed they are nothing less then offensive. Dan remarked recently that it must have taken more effort to write it incorrectly then to just use real words and write in full sentences. Not only do we suffer the barrage of willful negligence, but sometimes we encounter remarks so bazar that we can only hope it was a joke. Deep down we know that it's not really a joke, and people treat e-mail like time-delayed IM.

With that said, I'd like to introduce a new series of posts that will highlight some of these shining examples. Each of them will be tagged with wtf and sufficiently conceal the identity of the offending party.

Here we go:

From: [deleted]
Subject: Re: Embedded Font Temporary Location
Date: July 17, 2007 10:35:48 AM EDT
To: scott[deleted]

That's on the computer?