I do remember spending a long time making my .plan file just right, in about 1995. Nice recall.
Yeah, finger only works locally.
No, if you ask it: finger jethro_tell it will work locally, if you ask it: finger jethro_tell@example.com, it will check to see if example.com is running a finger server on tcp/79 and will return the reply if example.com answers. Otherwise it will just time out.