As a web developer for my company, I have the pleasure of occasionally dealing with members of the public. Most times the things I deal with from the public are pretty mundane (broken links, data refresh problems, error messages when submitting forms, etc.), but every once in a while we get an email from a real character.

Well, this next guy is not just a character -- he takes the character cake.

This past weekend we received an email from a person who had some valid concerns with the site (our Print This Page link needed to be adjusted for printing in IE8 and we didn't "notify" people that they were missing the Flash Shockwave plug-in that is required to view our videos on the site). Like I said, these are valid issues; however, according to Microsoft Word's count feature, it took him 668 words (3,649 characters) to try and convey this point. Besides rambling on about Charles Schwab, the Austin-American Statesman, spyware/adware and also using the word "screw" in some form or fashion no less than three times, he proceeded to tell us that not only has he been working with computers since 1965, but that he has a bachelor's degree in physics and a master's degree in electrical engineering and that we needed to stop putting things like hyperlinks on our pages because it screws sites up.

After having a good chuckle about how the internet would basically not exist if it weren't for hyperlinks, I proceeded to fix the problems. I modified the printing stylesheet first and sent him an email thanking him for pointing out these problems, letting him know that the printing functionality should be fixed and asked him for more information regarding what I later found out on my own was the Flash Shockwave plug-in issue. The reason I say that is because he didn't respond to my initial request for more information.

Anyway, I fixed the Flash Shockwave thing and sent him a follow up email yesterday letting him know that he should now see a message letting him know that the plug-in is required and is either disabled or not installed. I didn't exactly expect him to respond, but lo an behold there was an email waiting for me this morning.

Things started off well - he thanked me for replying to his requests -- and then they proceeded to go south. He starts telling me that he has to work outside all day without breaks for eating or drinking (isn't that illegal?) and that he's single and has to take care of everything himself. He then talks about all the security risks associated with the Flash player, ActiveX components and internet scripts in general...and then goes all schizophrenic on me saying that he backs up all his important documents daily, deletes all cookies, deletes all history, deletes all temporary internet files, has an airtight firewall, disabled Microsoft's Automatic Updates, shuts down his computer when not in use and even unscrews the coaxial cable from this modem to "prevent unsolicited intrusions" because he doesn't trust websites (especially Google). If that wasn't bad enough, he says that he knows that sites are constantly getting his IP address, name and email address just by him browsing them and then they use that information to spy on him and send him spam. He trusts us, but doesn't "know if that trust is justified".

Wow.

Needless to say, I didn't respond to his latest email.