Pregnancy Advisor, CPAN expertize

jonasbn on 2007-07-29T20:53:02

I received a mail the other day from a guy who had made his girlfriend pregnant.

The guy contacted me via my CPAN address and probably because I wrote Date::Pregnancy.

I found it quite amusing to begin with, but the mail concerned me. So I wrote the guy a proper answer.

I stated that I was no authority on the matter, I knew the calculus, but I did not have any medical expertise.

Anyway it seemed like the guy had misunderstood one of the counting methods and asked for advice, since he was unsure if he was the father. I explained the method and his possible misunderstanding, but did not get more into it than this.

It is the second time I get a mail from somebody who thinks you are a sort of expert due to a CPAN module, the first was a bingo question.

I wonder if other CPAN authors get the same sort of support cases.


support

rjbs on 2007-07-29T22:01:19

I certainly get a lot of email-related questions, but I've sort of set myself up for that.

The only unwelcome support story I can think of (beyond people who file rude bugs or don't accept "you're using the wrong tool" as an answer) is that once some guy called me at home for support on Rubric. I politely told him to use email, and not phone me. Later I found a blog post by him in which he called me a jerk (or something to that effect).