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I've found that when managers are ignorant about technology they often pretend that they understand.

I'm giving up mod points to voice my agreement with you. Anyone else remember Tuttle, Oklahoma? I don't expect managers, even IT managers, to know everything, but it would be nice if they admitted they made mistakes rather than acting like jerks.

all of the city office staff enjoyed the contest and the votes cast for all the decorated pumpkins was very close.

all of the city office staff enjoyed the contest and the votes cast for all the decorated pumpkins was very close.

Yeah, I saw that this morning. I was wondering how the town felt about their new-found popularity and what had become of our person of the year. It's a sad state affairs to be a citizen of Tuttle, OK when their only news-source seems to tow the party line regardless of the embarrassment their city manager caused them.

I also noted that Johnny Hughes wrote a letter to the editor discussing his viewpoint, "Mr." Taylor's viewpoint and the paper's skewed slant. http://www.tuttletimes.com/letters/local_story_096 101552.html I had to search Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuttle%2C_OK, no less, for the Letter to the Editor to be even noted.

Of course, there's no response to the letter on the paper's forums. I had thought about posting the letter to /. in an attempt to make this letter more visible. However, Tuttle city officials "have more important things to worry about" than the disparaging, inflammatory comments created by their community-embarrassing city manager and I'm not sure if the un-mentioned letter is powerful enough to motivate people or if I missed its posting earlier.

It appears that the town folks got a whole lot different angle then what really happened. I do feel sorry for the town of tuttle.

http://www.tuttletimes.com/siteSearch/apstorysecti on/local_story_088201244.html

Clearly, no measures are too extreme to protect the vulnerable citizens of Oklahoma from what evils lie within.

It's posted in serious CYA fashion, but it's finally there. Taylor is still admitting no wrongdoing for being a clueless asshole.

http://www.tuttletimes.com/local/local_story_08820 1244.html

This is the Tuttle Times' write up of the incedent... it's pretty funny in its own right, though it makes me damn sad any city has an administration as dense as that one.

In other news, Town (Mis)Manager Jerry Taylor has threatened Apple with a FBI complaint - because their Tiger software has apparently mauled some townfolk... http://www.tuttletimes.com/viewarticle.php?id=949

Of course, one could always make this an open letter by sending it to The Tuttle Times.

I feel sorry for your city.

CentOS is an operating system. It is probably installed on the computer that runs your website.

We hope you are happy with it, since we produced it for free and you are able to use it without paying us ... and are even threatening to have us arrested for providing to you free of charge.

Please contact someone who does IT for you and show them the page so that they can configure your apache webserver correctly.

Yeah, nice attitude. Don't explain anything, lots of digs (we hope you are happy with it, I feel sorry for your city), and a unworkable suggestion to contact "someone who does IT for you". It's clear from Jerry's first email that he has no idea about this stuff, otherwise he wouldn't be firing off threats to CentOS. It would have been better to look up the dudes ISP like he did in the final email. But even that has a smarter than thou tone about it

Mr. Taylor,

Even though I have repeatedly asked you to contact your service provider or your network administrator, you have persisted to instead harass me. I have repeatedly offered to help you fix your issue, if you would just provide me with information. You have chosen neither provide me with information or contact your hosting provider ... so I decided to see if I could find some of the information myself.

harass me? WTF. And as I said, it's clear from very early on that Jerry has no clue what he's doing. Complaining he hasn't provided technical information is pointless if he can't understand the questions.

I found the website that you are having problems with by looking at http://www.tuttle-ok.gov/ and I saw an e-mail address of cityoftuttle.org ... so I went to www.cityoftuttle.org and I see the problem.

As I tried to explain to you before, that page is displayed when the webserver in question is not properly configured.

The IP address that is returned from a name lookup of www.cityoftuttle.org is 65.77.67.7. That is the IP address of your server.

Doing more research, I have found that the site in question is hosted by Vidia Communications. If you look at this page

http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=www.vidi acom.com

you will plainly see that Vidia Communications uses CentOS as the operating system for their server.

Well I know how to find out who hosts a website too, but someone like Jerry doesn't. Nice use of plainly though.

So, though I have told you again and again that you need to contact your service provider and tell them of your problem, you obviously would rather threaten me and my group.

Welcome to the world of work. Customers, particularly clueless ones, do tend to threaten you when stuff doesn't work if you reply sarcastically when they send you angry emails.

Now, for the last time ... contact your web server provider, Vidia Communications, and tell them that they have a misconfiguration on the server that they are hosting your website on.

While you are at it, why don't you ask Vidia Communications why it is that they choose CentOS to host your webserver on.

Sigh.

So you see Mr. Taylor, you ARE using my free operating system to run your website, you are doing so by choice, it is a configuration error by the person who choose to install the software and if you would have done what I asked you to your website would have been up by now.

Let me conclude by saying that it is very hard for me NOT to send this e-mail and all the other correspondence between you and I to

http://www.tuttletimes.com/

I will not do so

The Tuttle Times, with its hacked, misconfigured server, is too stupid, but try telling it to The Oklahoman of Oklaholma City. Tuttle is just a suburb of OK City.

After reading that Tuttle times article I start to feel some sympathy for the guy. Maybe he was just having a bad day or a bad week.

http://www.tuttletimes.com/viewarticle.php?id=744 Is that a real PC in the background?

Considering they're only published weekly (Wednesday), that's not really suprising . . .

the Tuttle Times isn't running the story at all.

Here's an article with a better picture.

Sent to the 'Tuttle Times' (http://www.tuttletimes.com/):

You are missing out on the INTERNATIONAL news going on in your community. Your city manager, Jerry Taylor, is so misinformed and clueless that he threatened a software company with an FBI investigation because he was too stupid to understand. It has now been picked up by many news web sites around the world and he has become a laughingstock. This guy needs to be removed from your local government before he further embarrasses your town. Here's an example of the news on your town from a huge web site in England. (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/03/24/tuttle_ce ntos/) Better get something posted on your site or your newspaper will be a laughingstock as well. It's too late to worry about local politics. Your integrity as a news source is at stake. The whole world is watching!

A better picture ;-)

Of no surprise to anyone, he's an MBA.

The mayor probably hired him. Considering that concil members pages are down and e-mails erased from them, go to the local rag instead and let them know.

Don't bother. He has already removed homself and all the concil members. Since only the mayor has Instead, try the mayor and the Tuttle Ok Newspaper.