Re: Strange message

[Graham Toal <gtoal () UTPA EDU>]

> Looking at the punctuation and spelling errors makes me hope
> that this is not the individual whom earned the Master's Degree.:-)

Oh, the temptation, the temptation.

No, I'll sit on my fingers this time, this group is too
well behaved for a spelling and grammar war :-)

We see letters like that all the time.  Typical disgruntled
(and illiterate) student.  Interesting if the point of his
letter were true; I didn't realise US Universities had lower
limits on graduation age.  I remember (back some years now)
that in Britain you couldn't start University in England until
you were, I think, 18.  We didn't have that problem in Scotland -
every year a few students who were the youngest in their class
at high school (simply due to the cut-off date each year) would
matriculate at 16, and if they weren't good enough to take an
Honors course (4 years), they'd graduate with a general science
degree (i.e. no major) instead, in three years at 18 or 19.

Of course there was also the occassional child prodigy who would
turn up at classes with their parents in tow, who had to be home
by 5 every night.  They were the exception. But the 18 or 19yr old
graduate was quite common.

Digression aside, I do actually have something relevant to add...

We received an equally illiterate letter once, posted anonymously,
from a student who appeared to be very disgruntled at being kicked
out of our University.  Unfortunately for him his diatribe included
some vague threats about how America had not seen the last of 9/11
type activity.  If you ever get anything of that nature, you'll find
the FBI take it very seriously, and I recommend that you (assuming
you're the ISO of your organisation) get to know your local FBI field
agent.  Very helpful folks.  You might ask them if they have a chapter
of "InfraGard" (www.infragard.net) in your area.  By the way, I did
identify the anonymous poster, although it was more of an intellectual
exercise than anything else as he's unlikely to be returning to this
country to work given his lack of degree :-)  I located him by sending
a 'cease and desist' message to his anonymous account that contained
an HTML image, and he made the mistake of reading it on a windows
system that didn't have HTML turned off ;-)


G