Comment On The Last of the Computers

Alex Papadimoulis:

When Brandon started a new company, he was surprised to see how their reporting system worked. While most companies use some sort of reporting application to allow for the easy creation and retrieval of reports, Brandon's company used the receptionist.

Is that missing an "at" between "started" and "a new company"? I mean, it doesn't bode well for the company if the founder is surprised at how it works...

Note from Alex: Typo, fixed

nevermind.

I am assuming he started at a job AT some company, since if he'd started the company, he'd already know how stuff worked and wouldn't be offering to change stuff.

It's nice he was allowed to make it better,even if incrementally

How dare he have the audacity to question "The Report".

Brandon just deprived the receptionist of an hour of "me" time.

I wonder, when developers come across such situations, how do they resist bursting out in laughter? Or do they even bother to resist? Personally, I have almost gotten into trouble a couple of times after some pretty bone-headed procedures were described to me.

Alex Papadimoulis:

 The instructions were developed jointly by a (highly paid) business consultant and an access programmer.

 

What's the WTF here.  Oh I see! Not only did you use "access" and "programmer" in the same sentance you implied that their is such a thing as an access programmer.   Isn't that like calling access a high performance relational database ?

 

------------------------------------
So what if I'm just a developer . . .
I know what the markets like!

WTF?  How dare he fix a process!!  He should keep the infernal machine alive!!  Alive I tell you!!!

Alex Papadimoulis:

Though it only eliminated one of the forty steps, she was thrilled. In the sixty seconds it took to write the Macro, Brandon managed to save her sixty whole minutes of nothing but "double-click, wait, double-click-wait". And to end on a bit of good news, Brandon was able to get the report retired and replaced by a script with less-than a single printed page of code.

But what we really want to know is - did he get a date with her? Now that would be a programmer WTF!

This isn't really a WTF. You just don't understand the process. Senator Ted Stevens explained to me why Brandon's company did things this way. You see, their system is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck.



It's a series of tubes.



And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you double click your query, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by any other queries that put into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

Ford351-4V:

This isn't really a WTF. You just don't understand the process. Senator Ted Stevens explained to me why Brandon's company did things this way. You see, their system is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck.

It's a series of tubes.

And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you double click your query, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by any other queries that put into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

 

 

LOL good one

Well, the "Report Abuse" link certainly applies to this one.

Is there a National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Receptionists?

Alex Papadimoulis:

Public Sub RunAllQueries()

  Dim i As Integer

  Dim Query As QueryDef

  

  For i = 0 To CurrentDb().QueryDefs.Count - 1

    Set Query = CurrentDb().QueryDefs(i)

    If Left$(Query.Name, 3) = "Run" Then Query.Execute

  Next

End Sub

[sarcasm] Yeah but if one of the queries doesn't work, how would you know which one? And wheres the ON ERROR RESUME NEXT???[/sarcasm]

 Should read:

Public Sub RunAllQueries()

  Dim i As Integer

  Dim Query As QueryDef

  

  For i = 0 To CurrentDb().QueryDefs.Count - 1

    Set Query = CurrentDb().QueryDefs(i)

    If Left$(Query.Name, 3) = "Run" Then 

      Query.Execute

      msgbox "Query successfully run.  Please thank your Access programmer Brandon with a nice home cooked dinner."

   End If

  Next

End Sub

Ford351-4V:

This isn't really a WTF. You just don't understand the process. Senator Ted Stevens explained to me why Brandon's company did things this way. You see, their system is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck.



It's a series of tubes.



And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you double click your query, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by any other queries that put into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

Someone want to fill in the rest of us on the reference? I've never heard of Ted Stevens.

Kodi:

Alex Papadimoulis:

 The instructions were developed jointly by a (highly paid) business consultant and an access programmer.

What's the WTF here.  Oh I see! Not only did you use "access" and "programmer" in the same sentance you implied that their is such a thing as an access programmer. 

It's not as unfathomable as putting 'business' and 'highly paid consultant' next to each other.

Anonymous:

Alex Papadimoulis:

Though it only eliminated one of the forty steps, she was thrilled. In the sixty seconds it took to write the Macro, Brandon managed to save her sixty whole minutes of nothing but "double-click, wait, double-click-wait". And to end on a bit of good news, Brandon was able to get the report retired and replaced by a script with less-than a single printed page of code.

But what we really want to know is - did he get a date with her? Now that would be a programmer WTF!

I really doubt it. Now that she has been replaced by a 15 lines script that runs in one minute, she has probably been fired and have been planning her revenge against Brandon since then.

Wouldn't it have been easier (I mean this is VB and all), to declare a function with parameters for all of the queries?

Public Sub RunAllQueries( String q1, String q2, String q3,... String q87)
  ...
End Sub

Isn't that the "Enterprise" way?

Surely Excel could be used here somewhere too... and an XML file, and... ;-)

Coincoin:

Anonymous:

Alex Papadimoulis:

Though it only eliminated one of the forty steps, she was thrilled. In the sixty seconds it took to write the Macro, Brandon managed to save her sixty whole minutes of nothing but "double-click, wait, double-click-wait". And to end on a bit of good news, Brandon was able to get the report retired and replaced by a script with less-than a single printed page of code.

But what we really want to know is - did he get a date with her? Now that would be a programmer WTF!

I really doubt it. Now that she has been replaced by a 15 lines script that runs in one minute, she has probably been fired and have been planning her revenge against Brandon since then.

To get her revenge, she switched careers and became an IT professional.

Her name: Paula Bean

Coincoin:

Anonymous:

Alex Papadimoulis:

Though it only eliminated one of the forty steps, she was thrilled. In the sixty seconds it took to write the Macro, Brandon managed to save her sixty whole minutes of nothing but "double-click, wait, double-click-wait". And to end on a bit of good news, Brandon was able to get the report retired and replaced by a script with less-than a single printed page of code.

But what we really want to know is - did he get a date with her? Now that would be a programmer WTF!

I really doubt it. Now that she has been replaced by a 15 lines script that runs in one minute, she has probably been fired and have been planning her revenge against Brandon since then.

Is her name Lorena B ???

weird,... if this does what I expect (noticed a weird glitch in the rich editor in Firefox, when I tried to drag a toolbar)

mmm graphics...

end of mmm graphics

feel free to delete this message...

mmm captcha with pizza, gosh darnit... now i'm hungry

The real WTF is expecting anyone to know how managers operated in the 1940s.

Anonymous:

Well, the "Report Abuse" link certainly applies to this one.

Is there a National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Receptionists?

Yeah.  But unfortunately they don't have anybody to answer the phone... or generate reports.

Anonymous:

Wouldn't it have been easier (I mean this is VB and all), to declare a function with parameters for all of the queries?

Public Sub RunAllQueries( String q1, String q2, String q3,... String q87)
  ...
End Sub

Isn't that the "Enterprise" way?

Surely Excel could be used here somewhere too... and an XML file, and... ;-)

Can't we see some of the Access 'Programmer's' code?  Or did he use the 'wizards' to generate all of the code, and still proceeded to call himself a 'programmer'?

Surely if he was a programmer he would have known to put 87 buttons on a form and code behind to execute each of the 87 RUN queries.

Anonymous:

Ford351-4V:

This isn't really a WTF. You just don't understand the process. Senator Ted Stevens explained to me why Brandon's company did things this way. You see, their system is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck.



It's a series of tubes.



And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you double click your query, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by any other queries that put into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

Someone want to fill in the rest of us on the reference? I've never heard of Ted Stevens.

Google is your friend.

Senator Ted Stevens gave a similar explanation of how the Internet works as an argument against net
neutrality. It's funny because he (Sen. Stevens) doesn't really seem to know what he is talking about.

Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) gives his view on net neutrality.

Article here.
It's better if you hear it for yourself though.
MP3 here.

Bus Raker:

[sarcasm] Yeah but if one of the queries doesn't work, how would you know which one? And wheres the ON ERROR RESUME NEXT???[/sarcasm]

 Should read:

Public Sub RunAllQueries()
  Dim i As Integer

  Dim Query As QueryDef
  
  For i = 0 To CurrentDb().QueryDefs.Count - 1
    Set Query = CurrentDb().QueryDefs(i)
    If Left$(Query.Name, 3) = "Run" Then 

      Query.Execute

      msgbox "Query successfully run.  Please thank your Access programmer Brandon with a nice home cooked dinner."
   End If

  Next

End Sub

...but then you need Brandon to program some sort of ClickOK or EnterpriseClickOK application!

Ironically in the case of a "home cooked dinner"... CAPTCHA: pizza

Anonymous:

The real WTF is expecting anyone to know how managers operated in the 1940s.

You mean you don't know how folks operated before instant messages, almost instant e-mail, and even fax machines?

They called each other on the phone, talked, and then waited a week (while going home at 5 every day) for the rush-job to be sent over via priority mail. If there was a mistake, it had to be done over, in another couple of weeks.

Today, we have light-speed processors that can generate bad code at light-speed, so that when something goes wrong, it goes wrong a whole bunch of times in an instant, thus necessitating frequent late night debugging sessions, ...

So you see, we are much better off.... um, wait a minute....?

 

Here's a google video of his comments on how the internets work.  Apparently an internet is a thing you send around, and it can take time. 

http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-5682372236203209658&q=ted+stevens

captcha= clueless, like the poor guy in the video

I'm surprised there is no comment involving a "wooden table" and a "camera" yet.

Coincoin:

I'm surprised there is no comment involving a "wooden table" and a "camera" yet.

Put the secretary on a wooden table, have her pose (preferably on the ashes of a printout of the replaced system), take your camera, ...

Anonymous:

Here's a google video of his comments on how the internets work.  Apparently an internet is a thing you send around, and it can take time. 

http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-5682372236203209658&q=ted+stevens

captcha= clueless, like the poor guy in the video

The daily show version is better: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DClkE64nFDY

AgentConundrum:

Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) gives his view on net neutrality.

Article here.
It's better if you hear it for yourself though.
MP3 here.

The best one is Jon Stewart's The Daily Show. Search You Tube for 'Net Neutrality' and you'll have an afternoons worth of laughs. They even have a video of a Ninja explaining Net Neutrality.

Oops, Me slow. Sorry about that.

AgentConundrum:

Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) gives his view on net neutrality.

Article here.
It's better if you hear it for yourself though.
MP3 here.

That's funny stuff.  From the article, the quote "...an internet was sent by my staff.." is, I'm assuming, him talking about an email.  That reminds me of some family friends, who aren't technical people (or IT managers :)) referring to Microsoft Word as "Microsoft."  They were trying to describe to me a problem in which they could not save a file (because they were trying to put a "/" in the file name).  The conversation went something like..."I hate Microsoft because it won't save our files.  F'ing Bill Gates."  And then me unable to speak because I'm stifling laughter as best as possible.

Aside from the lack of fedoras, businesses run much more efficiently than they did back then.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Red Hat or Fedora Core yet.

 

Coincoin:

Anonymous:

But what we really want to know is - did he get a date with her? Now that would be a programmer WTF!

I really doubt it. Now that she has been replaced by a 15 lines script that runs in one minute, she has probably been fired and have been planning her revenge against Brandon since then.

You are correct and she had her revenge. She got married with Brandon.

Alex Papadimoulis:

...Brandon's company used the receptionist.

Woah!  She sounds hot!  Did the B-man tap that?

Wait.  The B-dizzle was a coder.  Hey!  He didn't talk to the receptionist.  Everyone knows we don't do that kind of thing.


Ha ha!  Charade you are, Alex.  And to think I was almost taken in by your little ruse of a story!


captcha:  zork.  Excellent!

Alex Papadimoulis:

Some of the steps involved copy-pasting, others involved creating several Access databases to import data from the data warehouse, and one involved double-clicking on 87 different queries (named Run001, Run 002, Run087). The instructions were developed jointly by a (highly paid) business consultant and an access programmer.

A business consultant worth every penny. Note how the query naming allows for scalability up to 999 queries! You have to pay big bucks for that kind of expertise.

No point in going beyond 999. A that point the receptionist is a full-time query-runner. Like painting the Golden Gate Bridge, once she's done, it's back to 001 to start over.

--Rank.

slurpy:

anonymous:

The real WTF is expecting anyone to know how managers operated in the 1940s.

You mean you don't know how folks operated before instant messages, almost instant e-mail, and even fax machines?

They called each other on the phone, talked, and then waited a week (while going home at 5 every day) for the rush-job to be sent over via priority mail. If there was a mistake, it had to be done over, in another couple of weeks.

Today, we have light-speed processors that can generate bad code at light-speed, so that when something goes wrong, it goes wrong a whole bunch of times in an instant, thus necessitating frequent late night debugging sessions, ...

So you see, we are much better off.... um, wait a minute....?

"With our advanced technology, we expend far less effort making far bigger mistakes." 
     --Zuschlag's variation on Horowitz's Rule

--Rank

slurpy:

Coincoin:

I'm surprised there is no comment involving a "wooden table" and a "camera" yet.

Put the secretary on a wooden table, have her pose (preferably on the ashes of a printout of the replaced system), take your camera, ...

Much more efficient with digital cameras nowadays than having to send it out to the photo store.

TankerJoe:

Senator Ted Stevens gave a similar explanation of how the Internet works as an argument against net
neutrality. It's funny because he (Sen. Stevens) doesn't really seem to know what he is talking about.

Ted Stevens is also infamous for being the Senator from Alaska that wanted to build a $50M bridge to a small island with a handful of inhabitants who, ultimately, didn't need or want the bridge.

Coincoin:

Anonymous:

But what we really want to know is - did he get a date with her? Now that would be a programmer WTF!

I really doubt it. Now that she has been replaced by a 15 lines script that runs in one minute, she has probably been fired and have been planning her revenge against Brandon since then.

Nonsense.  If she really wanted revenge she would've married him!

Anonymous:

Coincoin:

Anonymous:

But what we really want to know is - did he get a date with her? Now that would be a programmer WTF!

I really doubt it. Now that she has been replaced by a 15 lines script that runs in one minute, she has probably been fired and have been planning her revenge against Brandon since then.

Nonsense.  If she really wanted revenge she would've married him!

Damn, I guess great minds think alike...

Or one fool makes a crowd.  I really haven't decided yet... :)

So this macro iterates through all defined queries, and executes the ones staring with "Run". I don't see how it enforces that they are run in the correct order, unless CurrentDb().QueryDefs() is somehow guaranteed to be sorted.

He better have gotten laid for the work that he did....otherwise he is a moron.

He should have used The Tool to generate The Report.  When will people ever learn and stop reinventing the wheel!

Come on now.  We all know that Brandon got nowhere with the receptionist.  You can hear all about it in this song.

Edit - Damn forum software is eating my link

Anonymous:

TankerJoe:

Senator Ted Stevens gave a similar explanation of how the Internet works as an argument against net
neutrality. It's funny because he (Sen. Stevens) doesn't really seem to know what he is talking about.

Ted Stevens is also infamous for being the Senator from Alaska that wanted to build a $50M bridge to a small island with a handful of inhabitants who, ultimately, didn't need or want the bridge.

Try $231 M.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravina_Island_Bridge

Anonymous:

He should have used The Tool to generate The Report.  When will people ever learn and stop reinventing the wheel!

Heh - If he'd used "The Tool" correctly, he'd have something to do during the receptionist's now free extra hour!

Another WTF is that we're assuming the receptionist was female, or, well...

hmm, she does now have an hour a day free... I don't know what she'd do with the other 59:51 though