DLand - Barking Dogs

The little listserv we have for our software product has become a war zone this morning. I suppose a list populated by techie folks and librarians is a volatile mix. The current rant doesn't even have anything to do with libraries or our software but is this holy war over Unix versus Microsoft (save your breath; I don't want to hear anything about which is better).This one guy (one I've complained about months ago) has started personally attacking a systems librarian on the list. It's just insane. He said that the guy was obviously an idiot and knew nothing about servers and spent most of his job hours working on his personal business. The list moderator (my old boss and excellent guy) sent a note reminding folks to chill the hell out and then a private email to Butthead telling him that he probably shouldn't be flaming folks on the list and that it was pretty lame. Jerkwad writes back to the list to complain about the emails. The man has the maturity and intelligence of a squirrel (no offense to any squirrel readers I may have). It's like he's posting the equivalent of “I know you are but what am I” on our listserv. I'm getting very huffy with this dude. Gary was telling me about this neighbor he had that owned a dog that barked constantly. Dog Boy apparently left him outside all the time and the dog barked at any animal, human, vehicle or leaf in his path 24 hours a day. Gary decided to go talk to the guy about the dog (hehe, going to talk to a man about a dog ... giggle). Anyways, Dog Boy not only didn't understand why Gary came over to talk to him, he became enraged and nearly violent. He started talking badly about Gary's wife and they almost came to blows in the street. It was not pretty. Gary eventually called the cops a few weeks later about the dog and Dog Boy did move out. Of course, the man who moved in also owns an obnoxious barking dog. Gary says, however, he doesn't dare go over there and talk to him but just calls animal control. The point is that if Dog Boy didn't have the sense and concern to worry about not only his dog in the yard 24/7 but his poor neighbors who had to listen to this, then he wasn't going to “see the light” just because Gary went over to talk to him. You can't talk rationally with an irrationale person. You'll just sprain your brain. So I'm studiously avoiding sending anything to our listserv Unix zealot and hope that the poor guy he unjustifiably flamed will be able to control himself as well.