STARTTLS, Sendmail, and maillog entries

["James A. Peltier" <james_(_at_)_site-fx_(_dot_)_net>]

I have started using TLS with sendmail recently and noticed that I am
now getting entries such as

Jul  7 06:54:45 pistol sm-mta[6947]: STARTTLS=server,
relay=openbsd.cs.colorado.edu [128.138.192.83], version=TLSv1/SSLv3,
verify=FAIL, cipher=DHE-DSS-AES256-SHA, bits=256/256

I've done some reading up on this and found that this could be an issue
with sendmail not knowing about the certificate authority that generated
the certificate for the client (which in this case I'm assuming is me)
since I used a self signed certificate.  Am I correct in this assumption
and I can safely ignore the error until I purchase a certificate from a
valid (a la Thawte/Verisign) certificate? Is the message encrypted
anyway?

-- 
James A. Peltier <james_(_at_)_site-fx_(_dot_)_net>
Site-FX Open Network Solutions Inc.