Classic WTF: A True Ninja Hacker Is Like The Wind (5)
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It's a particularly busy week for me: on top of a few looming deadlines, I'll be at Business of Software 2008 in Boston. So, I figured it'd be the perfect opportunity to revisit some classics. A True Ninja Hacker Is Like The Wind was originally published on July 20th, 2006. This article also marked a turning point for TDWTF: prior to this, nearly all articles were focused around bad code; starting here, I changed the ...
Classic WTF: Laboring Holiday (7)
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It's a particularly busy week for me: on top of a few looming deadlines, I'll be at Business of Software 2008 in Boston. So, I figured it'd be the perfect opportunity to revisit some classics. While digging through the archives, I came across this fun email (from I.Y.) that was originally published on September 4th, 2006. From: Melinda Blevins Sent: Tuesday, August 29, 2006 2:06 PM To: All Employees Subject: Labor Day Just a remind ...
A Bit More Dire (2)
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As a junior-level sysadmin at his university, Alcari had gotten used to frantic, middle-of-the-night support calls. Whether it was a mail proxy server freezing up, a replication process getting out of sync, or some application deadlocking, Alcari's solution was almost always the same: reboot the problem server. On a recent 4:00AM emergency call, however, the situation was a bit more dire. "Ummm," the student working the graveyard shift at the helpdesk started, "I think the ...
We Burned the Poop (9)
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Erik was in his robe, brushing his teeth and getting ready for bed when the doorbell rang. As he walked downstairs to see who it was, he was thinking that it was odd to have a late-night guest, especially on such a rainy night. Standing at the door was his boss, holding a large cardboard box. Both he and the box were soaked, his eyes sad and his lip quivering. He stood there, motionless for ...
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James Johnson said:
Jason, this sounds really familiar :) shitski!
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Peter said:
No matter how much you want to, never use expletive laden error messages in the heat of the moment.
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Stephen said:
Something _very_ similar happened to me some years ago. Doctor's practices all around the country ended up with some very interesting ICD10 entries...
When In Doubt, Choose "C" (32)
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“Wait a sec,” the Edutron Systems rep interrupted, cutting off the principal of River City High, “your students still use pencils and paper to take exams!?” The rep insincerely chuckled, adding “don’t tell me you’re still using slide rules to teach arithmetic!” As shifty as the sales rep was, he did have a good point. It was 1993, after all, and the information superhighway was on the verge of explosive growth. If the principal knew ...
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Bryn said:
Step one in training a dog: be smarter than the dog. This applies to humans as well.
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Eebs said:
Are you kidding me?!
What Makes a Fan? | Solar Flare: Science Fiction News (3)
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The other day I posted the claim that There Is No Such Thing As Science Fiction Fandom. It was as I acknowledged in the article, an over-reaching claim. But I basically stand by the point I was making that fandom has splintered into many specialized form and there really isn’t an overall fandom at this point. Over at dashPunk, C. E. Dorsett posted a rebuttal of sorts suggesting that it’s not that fandom is splintering ...
Unix? With QuikBill?! (13)
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“I’ve got an interesting little project for you,” Simon’s boss said as he stopped by Simon’s cubicle. He dropped a several-page document on desk and continued, “take a look at this letter we just got from EBS. We’d better jump on this soon.” Dear Vendor, As I’m sure you’re aware, our primary focus at Enterprise Business Systems is to enable our clients to formulate key objectives through strategic initiatives to develop a comprehensive strategy that ...
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Lerch said:
Oh my goodness, one of the most amazing stories I've read from Daily WTF. The goodness just kept coming.
Not in the Mood (3)
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Updates to the decades-old internally-developed bank management application had gone as smoothly as they could. No major issues moving from text screens on dumb terminals to text screens on Windows 3.1 to a GUI frontend in Windows 95. And now it was time for another major update; to give it the best GUI ever to appear in a decades-old internally-developed bank management application! And thanks to some good planning, respect for standard software development procedures, ...
There’s No Such Thing as Science Fiction Fandom (3)
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Okay that’s a sweeping simplification. It would be more accurate to claim that there’s no such thing as a single unifying science fiction fandom. I think there’s a strong case to be made that historically there used to be one. The one that formed around the pulp magazines, that essentially created WorldCon and the Hugos. Members of that fandom were at one time a pretty good example of the average science fiction fan. But just ...
Doing the Heavy Lifting (21)
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After six years, Todd D. couldn't take the tedium anymore — his company refused to change with the times, and Todd wanted something more engaging. Seeing an opening at a publishing company, it sounded like the ideal change. He'd be going from a big software company to a more progressive publishing company with a software department; a good place for him to show his chops and actually make a difference. He aced his interview, as ...
A Barely Accessible System (6)
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Calculating the true cost of downtime is almost impossible. There's not only the obvious loss of labor to consider, but all sorts of indirect losses like missed opportunity, repair expenses, customer frustration and so on. Fortunately for Eric M.'s company, the management knows exactly how many real dollars it will cost them when their system -- "MCL," as I'll call it -- goes down. Eric's employer is a logistics service provider with a sole customer: ...
A Software Problem, A Marketing Solution (11)
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For Jason R., it was an exciting time. His company was trying to break into the telecom market with a new product that they'd get to build almost entirely from scratch. The only part that he wasn't excited about was that the major customers had very specific requirements that his team would have to meticulously follow. In this case, some bigtime POTS operators demanded that all servers must come from Sun, and any databases must ...
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Chad said:
This happens ALL THE TIME when U.S. automotive companies are involved.
What Do You Want on your Tombstone? (1)
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In an effort to gain marketshare, Initrode quietly built a new product — a network management appliance that out-featured and out-performed the competition's nearest equivalents. The R&D, testing, production, infrastructure, trade shows, demos, trials, last-minute feature additions, sales, and late nights had taken their toll on Chris W. and his colleagues, but they had built something they were genuinely proud of in the end. The launch went smoothly from a technical perspective, though initial sales ...
The Dream Customer (44)
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"It's the strangest thing — I can't connect to the wireless anymore. I can still use the Microsoft but not the email." The Microsoft was a key phrase that let Jay L. know that the woman on the line wasn't exactly what you'd call a power user. "I'll be happy to help. First, can you tell me what router you're connecting to? "..." "Miss?" "I'm not having a problem with anything other than the wireless." ...
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Ingo said:
LOL
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AJ said:
If you've ever lived in a crowded apartment building you've seen your share of default SSIDs: linksys, wireless, wlan, 2wire... Or, if you've ever lived near Alex, "alexsprivatenetworkbiotch."
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CJ said:
Ahh, more tech support flashbacks.
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Michael Jervis said:
This one is an absolute classic!
Sampo Uh-Oh - The Daily WTF (15)
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Over the course of 100-plus years, Sampo Bank had grown into one of the largest banks in Finland. Since its founding in 1887, Sampo stayed ahead of the technology curve, introducing the first modern payment system -- the postal giro -- in 1939, becoming Finland's first adopter of IBM's "electronic brain" in 1958, and amassing nearly one million users of its online banking service by 2006. But alas, in today's acquire-or-be-acquired world, Sampo was swallowed ...
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Benjamin Kohler said:
:-)
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vladie said:
все едно чета за ПИБ от пролетта, дори времето на случване е подобно ... явно банките се мислят за вездесъщи и непогрешими
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chusemann said:
Mythical man month problem in action...
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James said:
Date-driven development at its finest.
Follow-up: Redirection with Smoke And ... Smoking (8)
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Back in August of 2006, I published Redirection with Smoke And ... Smoking. Among other things, the article described what the experience was like for visitors to Marlboro.com: If you were using something other than Internet Explorer, you likely experienced a familiar sight: a blank page as a result of the site being coded for IE only. In and of it self, that's not too big of a deal, even for #20 on the Fortune ...
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imma said:
wowespecially this bit :"it's almost accessible to users without JavaScript. 'Almost' because it unhides the div that tells non-JavaScript users what to do... via JavaScript"
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Glenn Batuyong said:
Where the heck do they find their web developers? This is one amazing JavaScript WTF example! Talk about overengineering a clusterfark!
That's Not Part of Our Testing (8)
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It wasn't often that Marcus saw his boss Harry scrambling to reach the mute button on his phone, simultaneously erupting into convulsing laughter. Between gasps for breath, he heard Harry say "bestiality" only to start laughing even harder. Marcus, Harry, and company had recently gotten a contract to do security analysis for a mid-sized document management firm that we'll call Initrode. Their primary contact was Brad — a well-intentioned but scatterbrained (read: borderline incompetent) employee. ...
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CJ said:
"I am the network admin"... rofl, anyone who's ever worked tech support knows that classic phrase. :-)
WTF-U's Typing Test (6)
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How fast can you type? Probably pretty fast, if you're reading this site. If you're like me, 294 words per minute*. Honest! I just timed myself! *294WPM is based on repeatedly typing the word "a" for a minute straight. I had 100% accuracy with the "a"s, but sometimes hit the spacebar twice by accident. Not only can I type pretty fast, but most of the time I'm not even looking at the keybiurd or the ...
Sophisticated Cooling Apparatus (43)
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If you've ever wondered what's behind those "Technical Difficulties... Please Stand By" messages that TV stations run all too often, an anonymous reader shares with us one reason: someone moved the fan. "In fairness," the reader added, "this set-up was purely 'temporary'. After a few years of running like this, UKTV finally fixed things by building a brand new facility. Brought to you by the Non-WTF Job Board:
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dbingham said:
I gotta get me one of these...
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Julian Rodriguez said:
Alternatives to water cooling scale up to datacenters
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ydant said:
For Nick... :)
Nepotism Trumps Interview - The Daily WTF (12)
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Simon had a great job. Every day he was playing with cool hardware and software, he liked his colleagues, and the pay... well... OK, he was underpaid. Vastly underpaid. While his company made good on their promise to give him a raise once he got a C certification, it was an insulting two figures. Simon would've felt less insulted if they'd literally slapped him in the face (instead of figuratively). It didn't take him long ...
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Chad said:
@Eingy - Thanks for reminding me about this site.
