| Russ Allbery > Personal Information |
There are two types of people -- those who come into a room and say, "Well, here I am!" and those who come in and say, "Ah, there you are."
— Frederick L. Collins
Like most people in my business, I operate on the ragged edge of having too much information to process. Please expect long delays when trying to get in touch with me; you may be pleasantly surprised, but it's not uncommon for e-mail to go unanswered for months. This doesn't mean that I don't like you or that I'm upset at you, only that I'm busy. I'm trying to get better about giving people at least a response, but I often process e-mail in batch and answer several hundred old messages at once.
If you're able to read this page, you have Internet access. Please use it rather than the telephone. I read e-mail very regularly, even when I'm on vacation, and I read it much more frequently than I listen to my voice mail. I have a voice-over-IP phone at work that regularly logs me out, and for some strange reason I routinely forget to log back in again. The only time I notice I have a voice message at home is when it confuses my TiVo.
I participate in a large number of technical mailing lists and newsgroups, and try to help people who ask questions on them. If you're asking me a technical question and there is a mailing list or newsgroup on the topic, please consider asking your question in public instead. You will likely get better advice, and you won't directly add to my usually large e-mail backlog.
I welcome e-mail discussion, including long, extended discussion, of anything I'm interested in, and if it's mentioned in these web pages I'm probably interested in it. You don't need to feel hesitant about sending me e-mail. Just please be aware that I receive a lot of it and it may take me a few weeks (sometimes months) to get to your message.
General contact address for replies to most newsgroup postings, comments on most of these web pages, newsgroup administration (but see below), comments or bug reports for software packages I've written, comments on FAQs I've written, and so forth.
Anything related to the Debian GNU/Linux distribution, the packages I maintain for it, Lintian, Debian Policy, or the use of the software I maintain in Debian. I try to use this address only for things that are directly related to Debian.
Anything related to rec.arts.comics.creative, Superguy, or on-line fiction in general, including comments on my own writing. Also, anything related to eyrie's web pages or other services as a whole should go here.
Work-related traffic (anything related to my job at Stanford University) shouldn't go to either of these locations. If you are reporting a problem or asking a question related to my job, please do not send me mail directly. Instead, please submit a HelpSU ticket so that anyone in the appropriate group can help you, even if I'm on vacation, and there's some record of the problem and the solution. Otherwise, you can find my work address in whois.
If you're sending something that you really feel requires encryption, feel free to use PGP. I'm not particularly interested in using PGP for everyday mail, though. Here is my PGP public key. (I also have an RSA public key if you're stuck with an ancient version of PGP.)
If you're writing about some more general issue or concerning some project I'm involved in, you probably don't want to send me personal e-mail. Instead, use one of the addresses below. Note that these addresses are slightly munged, in the hope that this will slightly discourage spam crawlers and make people think before using them.
For questions about or submissions for the isc.org control.ctl file, the similar file included in INN, the control message archive, or the active and newsgroup files maintained on ftp.isc.org. Please read the config and archive README files before sending mail.
For questions related to rec.arts.comics.creative. This address will reach all of the group moderators.
For questions related to rec.games.roguelike.announce. Should there ever be moderators of that group other than myself, this address will reach all of us.
For questions related to news.lists.misc. This address will reach all the moderators for the group (I'm not the primary moderator).
For questions or comments about INN, please use one of the INN mailing lists or post your message to news.software.nntp. That way, you'll reach other interested people as well as myself and possibly spark further discussion.
| Russ Allbery > Personal Information |