The Missouri Dept of Labor shows they are Technical Idiots

Yesterday the Missouri Department of Labor sent me a 9 page long form I had to fill out, just to make sure the company I earned a whopping $850 from in 2010 does not need to pay unemployment tax. I started filling it out when I noticed it said I could e-mail the form to them instead. Great, that sounds easier! So I went to the site and found the PDF form that I then downloaded, filled-in and saved as a PDF file on my hard drive. They also needed any 1099 forms I may have from the company, and since I received one from 2010 I scanned that to a PDF along with the front page of their form that I had signed. So I thought I was done and could send off the form and go on with more exciting things on a Saturday morning. Wrong! The message bounced since the Missouri MODES-4389 PDF at 300K and my scanned PDF at 4.1MB together were too large for their mail server. Fine, I thought I would rescan my 1099 and my signature in black and white and at 300 dpi instead of 600 dpi and then send it off. So I did and found my PDF shrink down to a lovely, smaller 560K. Both files together were now under 1MB combined. So I sent off this message and what do you think happened? That's right my message with 1MB in attachments bounced as being "too large". 

Okay, if The Missouri Department of Labor tells you that one of the options of sending this useless form to them is by using e-mail, they should have an e-mail server that will accept an attachment that is 1MB in size!! I know I get upset when people in my department in the university send 40MB attachments to 50 people within our own building, but 1MB attachments are fine by me. When we upgraded to our latest Ubuntu Linux mail server, I bumped up the maximum message size from the default 10MB (in Postfix) to 64MB as we had set on the previous sendmail server. I would think the IT folk at the State of Missouri would be smart enough to realize that if they expect anyone to e-mail in these forms they also must increase the maximum message size of their stupid Exchange server.

Comments

James C said…
Hugh, Always enjoy your site tools and your completely worthless blog! I wonder how we do, as well as we do, collectively as a nation--there are a lot of boneheads in business and all sectors. Regards, James C
12:46 AM
Mo Department of Labor said…
Please contact us so that we may figure out how the error occurred. Our limit is 20MB, not 1 MB. You can reach us at amy.susan@labor.mo.gov. Thank you.
4:43 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Trying out the L'Ecole Culinaire Presentation Room restaurant

Image
We had been seeing the ads for the restaurant at L'Ecole Culinaire and since we live so close by we thought we would try it out. We had always enjoyed dining out at cooking or hotel schools like the CHIC in Chicago and the Statler at Cornell where we went to college. Since we still love to go out and eat here in St. Louis , we ventured over to their restaurant on the first day they were open for lunch. The first thing we noticed is that they do not have much parking! They really need to let patrons know where they are supposed to park. The restaurant itself is small but very well attended. There was one fellow who kept straightening all the centerpieces and place settings on the tables, and we always saw one or two student workers milling about. The lunch menu was small and the choices did not appear overly "gourmet". The special of the day was a bison burger stuffed with cheese, and other choices picked by my group included a club sandwich, a "margherita" pi
Read more

BMI & BMR Calculator (Body Mass Index and Basal Metabolic Rate)

Image
My wife has been researching type 2 diabetes and recently checked a book out of the library which included a body mass index (BMI) chart much like the one pictured here. Whereas it is fairly easy to follow, I, of course, think it must be converted to an online calculator! However, when I checked the Internet, there were already a billion of them so I had to make one that was different. So my lovely BMI BMR calculator accepts either inches or centimeters for your height and pounds or kilograms for your weight and calculates not only your BMI, but also your BMR (basal metabolic rate) which determines how many calories you should consume! So I made a spiffy "all in one" healthy body indicator calculator which not only determines how underweight or overweight you are, but also tells you how many calories you should consume to maintain or improve your ideal weight. 
Read more

Not all Frosted Window Films are the same!

Image
We live in an older home with a lot of issues and one of them concerns our back door to our patio from our sunroom. The door has double paned glass on it, but unfortunately the seal has broken so you can see moisture collect inside of it. We decided the easiest way to "remedy" the problem was to cover the window with some "frosted" film so we did not have to see the moisture condensing between the panes. But the question was, what film? There are a bunch of them available so we had to select something to try on the door. The first place we tried was our nearby Lowe's store which had a bunch of Gila brand film. We selected what seemed like the typical adhesive based door sized  film that cost about $25 after tax. We thought it could not be that hard to put up and look nice on our door. So one day my wife ran out and purchased it at Lowe's and we commenced to install it on our door window. We made our own soapy water solution and followed the directions
Read more