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The chemistry department is always one of the coolest places on any college campus. It's a place where students show up to class, and rather than getting boring instruction or lectures, their mad scientist professors mix chemicals together and cackle over a boiling beaker of awesome radness in front of the class. The rooms are adorned with exposed metal prongs with arcing electricity, torches, and fog machines. I should note that I didn't take chemistry in college, but this is what I'm pretty sure chemistry classrooms look like.

Well over a decade ago, James Kirk started his career at as a lowly Programmer at a large company. In a short six months, through lots of hard work and dedication, his title and pay was upgraded to Programmer Analyst. At that point, he was happy with his career. Then came the hiring freeze. And the wage freeze. And the extension to the wage freeze. As the moths turned into quarters and the quarters into years, James saw less and less of an opportunity for any sort of advancement.

Nothing screams “easy money” like headhunting. Twenty-five to thirty percent of your recruit’s first annual salary? Twenty dollars off the top of each hour worked by your contractor? With that kind of bling, who wouldn’tsign up as a headhunter?

Donovan should have been named John or Steve if he really wanted Lasik surgery:

Jan Krüger shares with us the unique EnterFlag Technology that he came across recently ...

You know those action movies that start with the main character's father saying "Biff... Biff... listen to me. Before I die, I have one last thing to say. You absolutely must... *cough* *cough* (pause) *dies*" Yeah, Kenneth hates those, and by extension he also hated this error message.

While looking for a mortgage company to refinance his loan, Evgeny Potashnik came across Australian Mortgage Options. They seemed decent enough; they even had an online loan management site. Curious to see what it offered, Evgeny took a peek…

The military trains you to be a machine. You will carry out your orders and you will love it, and you will not complain, private! Even if it's something you wouldn't do in a million years otherwise!

If you've worked as a C++ programmer for long enough, I'm sure you have plenty of stories about operator overloading abuse. Today, Jake Wyland shares the worst abuse he's seen to date ...

Not too long ago, a job posting at Steve D’s university called for “a student familiar with C++ programming” that could help “develop software to interface with radio receiver cards using an existing API.” The ad also mentioned, using big, bolded letters, that the candidate “MUST BE AVAILABLE IMMEDIATELY” and that the project had a “TIGHT, THREE WEEK DEADLINE.” While that would have been a warning sign to most, to a cash-strapped student, it was a great opportunity to make some extra cash. Steve emailed his resume right away.

As much as I hate the stereotype of the antisocial basement-dwelling computer nerd, I can't deny that I'm an antisocial basement-dwelling computer nerd. While I'm not a fan of being outside, where I could encounter (ugh) people, I'm also missing a bunch of real-world error'ds! David R. witnessed firsthand a "Staten Island Ferry Boot Disaster." (His words.)

When Eve was tempted by the serpent and ate from the tree of knowledge, God was furious. In spite of his omniscience, God didn't find out that Eve had screwed up until he found Adam and Eve holding leaves and squirrels in front of their swimsuit areas in shame. Still, it was a failure of security on God's part — the tree was just sitting there, waiting for its fruit to be eaten.

If you’ve ever noticed how completely unreliable computers are – you know, performing completely random and unpredictable actions when given a simple, explicit instruction – then you’ll appreciate today’s snippet from John P.

It was Ted’s first week on the job. He was brought in to replace another manager that had disappeared on “medical leave.” Although Ted suspected his predecessor had left or had been asked to leave for different reasons, he ignored it along with his initial instinct to flee.

Writing article introductions is hard, but shopping at Amazon is easy!

Every once in a while, we have no choice but to write “dangerous” code. The type of code that, when used improperly, can wreak all sorts of havoc on the system. Purging audit trail records, fast-swapping statuses, or, like in today’s example, code that toggles an object’s "IsUpdated" property regardless of whether that object has been updated.

Don't you hate when your debugging code accidentally makes its way into production? Like that CurrentUser.IsAdministrator() that always returns "true" because you forgot to take that line of code out? Well, here's your opportunity to laugh at others that forgot to fix things before deployment.

It was not the ideal way to start a Monday morning. Matt arrived at work to find his boss frantically pacing around the office. “Oh thank God you’re here,” he said as they locked eyes, “the CMB system is down. And Net Ops can’t get bring it back online.”

Working for the US government can be a beautiful thing, especially if you manage to land a good position, like Sr. Developer or President. Even if you're a contractor, government jobs tend to pay well and are good for the resume. Like any organization, though, there are a lot of policies and procedures that need to be followed.

As a video game nerd, I'm always upset when new computer games come out that I can't play. As much as I'm looking forward to BioShock and Alan Wake, my computer just doesn't cut it. Not meeting the minimum requirements sucks, and through the magic of the internet, I've found others that share my pain:

As a freelance web developer, Erik finds himself doing all sorts of odd jobs. Fixing up an Access application here, installing a firewall there – he’ll gladly help his clients out with whatever they need, so long as they’re paying and he’s comfortable doing it.

Ben Brandt is a bit underwhelmed at his grocery store's fuel savings plan. The one cents savings per gallon (up to $0.12) just doesn't make a meaningful dent in today's high gas prices ...

Like many industries, IT has its share of charlatans. These people think they know what they're talking about, or don't know what they're talking about and fake it. This is because the business isn't aware of what it takes to make software; like a hospital's reception clerk isn't aware of how surgery works. But if a surgeon emerged from the operation room, soaked in blood, cursing the failure of Mr. Fairfax's operation to reconnect his hoozlevalve to the beppobone, some eyebrows would be raised.

Chris M. was requesting a quote for motorcycle insurance when he noticed something strange about the site's birthdate selector.

Chris M is part of team that’s responsible for maintaining a giant mess that was once a fairly simple C++ application. Like so many organically grown behemoths, this application has its share of bad and rotting code.

One of the few things in life more satisfying than saying “I Told You So” is being told not to say it. As a freelance software developer, Jeff finds himself in that position rather frequently. Most of the time, it’s with his friend and colleague, Frank, who is a part-owner of a small marketing firm.

It's hard to develop software that's easy to use. No matter how simply you lay out your controls or put big, giant buttons labelled "Print," users will still complain that they can't figure out how to print stuff. Well, here's to you, users — enjoy a few confusing dialogs.

It was about frickin’ time -- Rob had finally landed himself a promotion. Technically, it was more an “absorption of responsibilities” than anything else, but the important thing was that his new role as “Global Editor” offered an excellent ROR (Return On Résumé). Really, how hard could it be to administer a handful of internal users writing a handful of blogs?

Broken English sure is funny.

Back in the 90's, Andreas was working on various SmartCard projects. Most of it involved programming 8051 microcontrollers. One particular project required him to replace magnetic stripe card readers with SmartCard readers while emulating the exact behaviour of the previous hardware.

As the “IT guy” guy at a small company, J.F.L. is tasked with all sorts of miscellaneous projects, from hacking together simple programs to setting up workstations for new hires. His latest assignment involved installing some rather expensive (as in, six-figure expensive) safety training software that would allow the company to keep track of which employees needed to complete which safety training modules.

You may want to bring a jacket if you live anywhere near Steve K...

Not too long ago, there was a small furor in the local media about a major disaster at The State's Technology Services Division. The details were a bit sketchy – mostly because The State was “unable to comment on an ongoing investigation” – but what was reported was that, for two full days, employees of The State were unable to logon to their computers or access email, and that this caused business within The State to grind to a halt.

Keith W.'s high school mascot, Benny the Beaver, would not be pleased with the Bank of America's zero-tolerance-for-profanity policy.

For the most part, the Message Queue Processor at Andy's company is not a terrible application to work with. Most changes – such as setting up a new queue, changing trigger times, and so forth – can be done by changing configuration files. At least, that was Andy's opinion before having to make a change to its code…

Hudson Valley Federal Credit Union's online banking enrollment asks the typical security questions. Mother's maiden name, what school did you go to, what hood you grew up in, the why, the who what when, where, and the how, 'til you're grabbin' your hair and you're tearin' it out. Eventually, you have to choose text that would be displayed in a security image, which would be presented to you whenever you log in. That way, if you don't see the image with your phrase, you know something is wrong and don't enter your login information. Jay G.'s security phrase had a problem, though:

"Crap, this address is wrong," Brenda sighed, cursing herself for screwing up another address label. Jason S. happened to be within earshot of the aggravated Accounts Receivable clerk, and having worked on the customer management application and label printing mechanism, he asked Brenda what she meant.

Today's error'd speaks for itsefl.

It may not have been named RUPP, but you’ve likely had to use – or worse, maintain – an application just like it. You know the type: a critical, internally-developed system designed by a “clever” architect to be as “extensible” as possible and hacked together over the course of several years. At Jude’s company, this application was RUPP.

As an employer, it can be a pretty big challenge to figure out what sites are work-appropriate and what ones aren’t. Game sites, news sites, shopping sites: obviously inappropriate and most certainly frowned upon. The company intranet and the company’s public website: appropriate, so long as it’s on your lunch break. It’s those “grey area” sites – such as the reference and education ones – that one could go either way on. Fortunately, Chad Moore’s company knew exactly where to draw the line …

Happy Independence Day, U.S. readers! And for you non-U.S. readers, Happy .. errr ... Regular Day of the Week! The Forbidden Parameter was originally published way back on June 16th, 2006 ...

When most people think of insurance companies, they picture boring, stuffy old buildings filled with bland leather chairs and humorless, pencil-necked guys in suits. And, in general, that tends not to be far from the truth.

Cousin, you best be uncheckin' that checkbox labeled "frontin'" and enterin' yo street name if you know what's good for ya. Cuz the web server, he crazy and you don't wanna know what happens if front end validation don't work.

I am very excited to announce the launch of Worse Than Failure: German Edition at de.WorseThanFailure.com.

Internships are a rite of passage in virtually every profession. Unlike other industries, Information Technology interns aren’t required to do terribly degrading tasks, such as grabbing coffee for the boss, or acting as his human ottoman. Well, unless you intern at my company. Speaking of which… Intern Eric: you’re off ottoman duty; go grab me a triple venti mocha backflip latte!

Balancing security and usability can be an awfully challenging task. On one hand, users want to be able to do things without being bothered by the system: yes, dammit! I’m sure! Yes, I’m sure I want to open this macro-laden Excel spreadsheet from my email. On the other hand, they want the system to warn them about dangerous things: well how was I supposed to know that a “money making proogram” from my “long-lost hig schol freind” that neglected to mention her name was a virus?

How often do you look within the bowels of your age-old "helper" classes? For most, including Sean, the answer is almost never. Why bother when it works just fine? Well, one reason might be to see what interesting techniques your predecessors employed in solving the simplest of problems... such as a case-insensitive search...