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It’s Christmas Eve, and that means we’re taking a little break from writing new articles. Starting next week, we’ll re-run all of the best articles of this year.
For today, though, while I was working on The Glitch Who Stole Christmas, I got a bit inspired, and maybe a bit carried away.
Instead of our usual fare, here’s something a little… different.
Every Who down in Whoville like Christmas a lot…
But the Bug, who lived just North of Whoville, did not!
Peter L sat on his recliner, wireless keyboard and mouse balanced on his lap, and watched Jebediah Kerman burn up on re-entry. It was “Cyber Monday”, also known as “look, the consumer didn’t buy enough stuff on ‘Black Friday’, so please buy more stuff!”
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I shouldn't have taken that call, I thought, looking down the dark, endless staircase.
Ishai bore the unenviable, oft-cursed title of Microsoft Support Engineer. Just about every user who ended up in his call queue was peeved from the start, having navigated half a dozen phone menu options and being stuck on hold for interminable wait times. It didn’t make for a productive support experience.
Emma W. was hired on by BerkTech’s QA department in preparation for a major code rewrite. A Russian company had purchased a thousand copies of BerkTech’s emponymous software package, but as it only supported English, it would require a substantial localization project to support Russian.
After Emma started, it didn’t take long for her to notice some common patterns in her unit tests.
Connor was a Highly-Paid Consultant who dealt with data security and audits, making sure companies’ secrets were irretrievable by enemies, competitors, and unauthorized employees alike.
He got an assignment to work with GrocerSoft, a mid-sized company which developed software mostly used by small, independent grocery stores across the nation. They’d just picked up a new client, a chain of medium-sized grocery stores with a paranoid board of directors who imagined all sorts of competitors trying to steal their Top Secret grocery inventory suppliers. As part of the new agreement, GrocerSoft’s sales team had promised annual security audits of GrocerSoft’s data.
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New Year's Eve is a wonderful day. Not only a time of rejoicing—meeting and partying with friends and strangers alike to celebrate making it through yet another year—but also a time of change. Between new resolutions and yesteryear's memoirs, it's the best moment to move our lives in a different, exciting, and surprising direction.
Nov 15