dav@genisco.uucp (David L. Markowitz) (10/27/89)
A friend of mine (with a previous employer) mailed me a question. After fielding the umpty-thousandth question of my long career, I replied to this comment: > Just curious. And gleefully interested in asking you insidious little > questions... ;^) Insidious little questions have a way of leaving insidious residues which build up over time... these residues can eventually block the thought pathways of the Unix guru, leaving him/her unable (or unwilling) to answer questions any more. They may even cause him to change jobs. We call these "bad questions" (tm). On the other hand, interesting, well thought out questions can cause thoughts to flow at such a high speed and volume that it can clean out those passages. These are called "good questions" (tm). You will know when you have asked one of these, because the answer will start with "That's a good question". You will know when you have asked a bad question when the answer starts with "Well, that depends...". -- David L. Markowitz Genisco Technology Corporation dav@genisco
dm@odin.think.com (Dave Mankins) (10/30/89)
I once had a co-worker who would pop into my office several times a day with utterly inane questions about the system. Finally, after having had my train of thought derailed one too many times one afternoon, when he walked into my office again, I said, ``Let me warn you: if I think your question is one you could have answered with a few minutes thought, or a few moments spent poking around in the manual, I'm going to charge you a quarter, but if it's a GOOD question, I'll answer it for free.'' It worked. david mankins (dm@think.com)