"You waited a few DAYS?" I interrupted, a tremor tinging my voice.  "And
    you couldn't send email this whole time?"

    "We could send email.  Just not more than--"

    "--500 miles, yes," I finished for him, "I got that.  But why didn't
    you call earlier?"

    "Well, we hadn't collected enough data to be sure of what was going on
    until just now."  Right.  This is the chairman of *statistics*. "Anyway,
    I asked one of the geostatisticians to look into it--"

    "Geostatisticians..."

    "--yes, and she's produced a map showing the radius within which we can
    send email to be slightly more than 500 miles. 

Pure gold. I love that the stats department put in such rigorous testing before submitting the ticket.