• (cs) in reply to Pffft!!!
    Pffft!!!:
    Way back in school I had a software engineering prof who loved his documents... groups had to complete and hand-in Software Requirements Doc, Architectural Design doc, Detailed Design doc, Testing and Implementation doc, and User Manual for a library system we had to build. By the time the class finished the Architectural Design and received our grades, we were all convinced that he simply put the docs on a laboratory scale to give out grades. 1 lb = C, 2 lbs = B, 3 lbs+ = A. So we padded our Testing and Implementation doc with recipes for making pizzas as part of our testing methodology... find a bug, fix it, make a pizza - pizza making instructions - continue. Some 8 different 'make a pizza' recipes were present in our Testing and Implementation doc at different points, along with the spec's for a beer bash following a successful implementation on the CS department Prime system. The TA read all this in the doc, and called us on it, but was willing to let it slide if we invited her to the bash. We did, she did, and nary a word from the professor.

    When's the next bash ? Find out and invite us all :)

  • adblock plus (unregistered) in reply to Anon

    wait, there are ads on this site?

  • (cs) in reply to A Nonny Mouse
    A Nonny Mouse:
    why is everyone so tetchy today?
    Effects of the full moon are wearing off.
  • woot (unregistered) in reply to Drew
    Drew:
    You are all welcome to create a competing service and prove your assertions through competition. :D

    I, on the other hand, enjoy reading these Classic ones. No way I'm ever going to spend the time to go back and read the whole archive.

    i did go back and read them all read them all, apparently if finished on march 23 around 5pm http://thedailywtf.com/Comments/tblDataTypes.aspx?pg=1#251077

  • A Gould (unregistered) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    I can understand sending the instructions in wingdings one time just to prove they aren't reading them, but doing it 12 times before bothering to prove your point is TRWTF. Do it once, deployment fails, they claim to have followed the instructions, you call them out on it because your instructions were unreadable. Problem solved (or else you get fired). What was the point of doing it another 11 times with another 11 failed deployments? Seems rather passive aggressive.

    You do it once, and it's an "oversight" or "isolated incident".

    You gotta do it a few times, so that you can prove the pattern. Even better if you can get them to self-incriminate (since now it's established that in addition to not following instructions, they weren't reading instructions at all, and the manager wasn't looking into the problem until the last minute).

    The loss of credibility makes the rest of the discussion much easier - it's called "departmental warfare" for a reason: the terms of surrender are all important.

  • (cs) in reply to [email protected]
    It's short-hand for "pointless idiot throwing an anonymous brain-dead comment out at random." It's applicable to a fair slice of slashdot comments these days.

    As a long-time slashdotter, I fail to understand the meaning of "these days" in this sentence.

  • Franz Kafka (unregistered) in reply to Fortytruth
    Fortytruth:
    Anon:
    I can understand sending the instructions in wingdings one time just to prove they aren't reading them, but doing it 12 times before bothering to prove your point is TRWTF. Do it once, deployment fails, they claim to have followed the instructions, you call them out on it because your instructions were unreadable. Problem solved (or else you get fired). What was the point of doing it another 11 times with another 11 failed deployments? Seems rather passive aggressive.
    Calling on it immediately after first would be risky. In fact, calling them at all on it would be very risky. From the article, I understand that only the font was changed to wingdings, but the text was still real. A mere font change could have solved the issue, if the instructions were distributed in digital form. (or someone could have just learned to read the wingdings)

    If the development department had approached the issue, the network department could have simply said that they changed the font and read the text. There would have been no proof that the network department had not actually looked at the document and not understood it.

    However, since it's the network department that brought it up by saying it's complete gibberish, it eliminates the possibility, that they had understood to change the font or that they had been able to read it in any way. After all, a key point in their argument was that they had been following the instructions and the development department had simply failed to provide the correct instructions.

    What's more important, and why more than single set of instructions was needed, was the statement "amidst all the deployment problems", which clearly indicates that the network department was not even aware that the previous instructions were in wingdings. In other words, this proves that they had never even looked at them. This is not something that you can accomplish with just one set of gibberish instructions.

    To prove their point, the development department had to keep sending the instructions in windings until they were called for it.

    The way this happened the first time I heard it was that the dev brought the wingdings printout, but didn't take it out until the deploy guy swore up and down that theyd been reading the instructions. Then he deadpanned "we've been doing this for 6 weeks".

  • Franz Kafka (unregistered) in reply to jmucchiello
    jmucchiello:
    It's short-hand for "pointless idiot throwing an anonymous brain-dead comment out at random." It's applicable to a fair slice of slashdot comments these days.

    As a long-time slashdotter, I fail to understand the meaning of "these days" in this sentence.

    As a long time slashdotter, I usually just say '/tard' or, in extreme cases, '/b/tard', but that's a whole new level of stupid.

  • (cs) in reply to vdy

    My favorite use of Wingdings... attempting to pass it off as "arcane symbols", even by a major gaming company. [image] (Knowing Sierra, it could have been sarcasm. This is QFG5, though, so the majority of talent had already jumped ship.)

  • Sponjk (unregistered)
    the Infrastructure Group always reads and follows every single word of the installation guide
    They can read Wingdings? Cool !!!
  • Rob (unregistered)

    Can someone explain this to me.

    So some guy on the programmers team took the instructions that were being sent electronically to the server guys and changed the font.

    This is not exactly ground breaking encryption.

    You don't need to be a computer expert to change the font in an e-mail or a word document. And you can even set your e-mail reader to only display plain text.

    Setting the font to WingDings is a pretty passive-aggressive dick move; but it doesn't say anything as to whether or not the server people were able to read what was written. If you mail me wing-ding instructions, I'd be able to read them just fine.

  • Franz Kafka (unregistered) in reply to Rob
    Rob:
    Can someone explain this to me.

    So some guy on the programmers team took the instructions that were being sent electronically to the server guys and changed the font.

    This is not exactly ground breaking encryption.

    You don't need to be a computer expert to change the font in an e-mail or a word document. And you can even set your e-mail reader to only display plain text.

    Setting the font to WingDings is a pretty passive-aggressive dick move; but it doesn't say anything as to whether or not the server people were able to read what was written. If you mail me wing-ding instructions, I'd be able to read them just fine.

    This isn't passive aggressive, and it isn't encryption. Someone upthread said it right - it's organizational warfare. You set the font to wingdings because it's something that will be noticed if anybody looks, but leave the data as is. This way, if the server guys ever look, they'll set the font and make a sarcastic comment.

    The server guys didn't read the docs ever and then lied about it in front of a VP, so they're screwed. The devs should be fine, since they've provided the required info for deploys.

  • (cs) in reply to Rob
    Rob:
    Can someone explain this to me.

    So some guy on the programmers team took the instructions that were being sent electronically to the server guys and changed the font.

    This is not exactly ground breaking encryption.

    You don't need to be a computer expert to change the font in an e-mail or a word document. And you can even set your e-mail reader to only display plain text.

    Setting the font to WingDings is a pretty passive-aggressive dick move; but it doesn't say anything as to whether or not the server people were able to read what was written. If you mail me wing-ding instructions, I'd be able to read them just fine.

    The manager's complaint was "We can't read this shit!" rather than "Quit sending this shit in wingdings so we don't have to change the font".

  • nzt (unregistered) in reply to jmucchiello
    jmucchiello:
    As a long-time slashdotter, I fail to understand [...] this [..]
    • 5 Insightful
  • Gruntled Postal Worker (unregistered)

    This is a great Classic WTF, but there may be another side to the story.

    When we complained to our IT department about them not reading deployment documents to the letter, their answer was roughly as follows:

    On a good morning, on top of our normal duties, we have a dozen or so deployments and requests for changes to carry out, each of which comes with a 20 to 2000(!!) page deployment manual. We are not going to read every letter of every single one of these. If you want your weekly deployment to go right, make sure the procedure is the same as last week. If the procedure changes, highlight the changes in a cover letter. If your instructions don't fit on one or two pages, write a script.

  • Franz Kafka (unregistered) in reply to Gruntled Postal Worker
    Gruntled Postal Worker:
    This is a great Classic WTF, but there may be another side to the story.

    When we complained to our IT department about them not reading deployment documents to the letter, their answer was roughly as follows:

    On a good morning, on top of our normal duties, we have a dozen or so deployments and requests for changes to carry out, each of which comes with a 20 to 2000(!!) page deployment manual. We are not going to read every letter of every single one of these. If you want your weekly deployment to go right, make sure the procedure is the same as last week. If the procedure changes, highlight the changes in a cover letter. If your instructions don't fit on one or two pages, write a script.

    Our OPs department (IT does desktop support and corporate network) does everything by hand - we have no insight into how things are deployed and getting logfiles back is a pain. We'd love to automate that shit but it really belongs to the OPs guys because they have all the access and info.

  • JHolland (unregistered) in reply to Iie
    Iie:
    Basseq:
    This WTF Explained:

    1. Silo'd organizational structure and ham-fisted IT management techniques lead to frustration.

    2. Infrastructure group has problems installing code despite detailed instructions.

    3. Development manager, smelling a rat, starts sending gibberish instead of real installation instructions.

    4. No one in the Infrastructure group notices, proving that they don't read the instructions (as claimed).

    5. Months later, problems stemming from #1 compound multiple times, leading to finger-pointing.

    6. Dev. Manager proves a point with haughty nerd superiority. Organizational problems remain.

  • Infrastructure manager is canned for failing to enforce the "follow the damn instructions" rule.

  • New manager is hired, underlings are scared shitless because he's going to clean up. 9 - 12. ???

  • Infrastructure has 50% layoffs and 75% of the remaining positions are being sunsetted so they can be outsourced

  • Company saves a bunch of money.

  • Development doesn't see a dime of it.

    • . . .

    1. PROFIT!!!
  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to Gruntled Postal Worker
    Gruntled Postal Worker:
    This is a great Classic WTF, but there may be another side to the story.

    When we complained to our IT department about them not reading deployment documents to the letter, their answer was roughly as follows:

    On a good morning, on top of our normal duties, we have a dozen or so deployments and requests for changes to carry out, each of which comes with a 20 to 2000(!!) page deployment manual. We are not going to read every letter of every single one of these. If you want your weekly deployment to go right, make sure the procedure is the same as last week. If the procedure changes, highlight the changes in a cover letter. If your instructions don't fit on one or two pages, write a script.

    Their job is to deploy your software. I could use the same general excuse for not bothering with all the requirements, I have several projects going on, they all have a lengthy requirements doc, I'm not going to read all of them, but that wouldn't fly. In your position, I would make sure to just document everytime something goes wrong due to them not following the doc and then at least you will be covered if anything ever comes of it.

  • Greetch (unregistered)

    I remember my boss asking me to produce a set of instructions including a FAQ section over to him, which he was going to check before forwarding on. In the FAQs I included a question about how the Karate Kid Crane Kick is so successful. He didn't bother to read my manual, so I had to tell him about it before it got sent onto the business...

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to Tom Woolf
    Tom Woolf:
    Many years ago when I worked for Giant Entity we had an IT guy ask about a report that our system generated. "We are thinking of turning off the FARxyz Report. Does anybody use it?" One of the users, who was known as the Queen of 62 (IT code for time wasted on wild goose chases), said it could not be turned off - she used it every month. The IT guy responded "that's funny, because we actually stopped printing it 3 months ago..."
    We do this all the time where I work. It's much more effective to just stop running a report and see who complains than ask if people still need a report. Manager types love their report wallpaper, and never want to let it go.
  • (cs) in reply to Iie
    Iie:
    Basseq:
    This WTF Explained:

    1. Silo'd organizational structure and ham-fisted IT management techniques lead to frustration.

    2. Infrastructure group has problems installing code despite detailed instructions.

    3. Development manager, smelling a rat, starts sending gibberish instead of real installation instructions.

    4. No one in the Infrastructure group notices, proving that they don't read the instructions (as claimed).

    5. Months later, problems stemming from #1 compound multiple times, leading to finger-pointing.

    6. Dev. Manager proves a point with haughty nerd superiority. Organizational problems remain.

  • Infrastructure manager is canned for failing to enforce the "follow the damn instructions" rule.

  • New manager is hired, underlings are scared shitless because he's going to clean up. 9 - 12. ???

  • Infrastructure has 50% layoffs and 75% of the remaining positions are being sunsetted so they can be outsourced

  • Company saves a bunch of money.

  • Development doesn't see a dime of it.

    • Development teams picks up IT duties

    • Begin sleeping at the office because there's no more time to commute or be at home

    • Allergy to sunlight sets in

    • Developers get overworked and get disgruntled

    • Developers leave the company for other jobs which haven't turned to crap yet

  • (cs)

    Paul Harvey....and now you know the REST of the story!

  • Wally (unregistered) in reply to rfsmit
    rfsmit:
    Ding ding ding! We have a winner!

    Yes, a classic case of passive-aggressive communication.

    But it goes further than that. Why was the meeting between the two teams not set up after the first failed deployment?

    Indeed, why was it not set up before the first attempt; to ensure a smooth deployment?

    Kinda silly, whichever way you look at it.

    Typical corporate environment in other words.

  • Dingbat (unregistered)

    The real WTF here is the people leaving sane remarks in the comments. I would fire anybody like that working for me, and shoot their dog. An example has to be made.

  • bec (unregistered) in reply to rfsmit

    [quote user="rfsmit"][quote user="A Nonny Mouse"]why is everyone so tetchy today? [/quote]

    because programmers have a right to bitch instead of concentrating on their work. which actually explains quite a lot, when you think about it.

  • Anon #137b4 (unregistered)

    TRWTF is the people who felt a Classic WTF is a waste of their time, then wasted their time reading it and endlessly posting about it.

    Cheer up, a Classic WTF means no IT problems happened today. God's in His heaven, All's right with the world!

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Anon
    Anon:

    Nonsense! The reason why we have a classic WTF today is because Alex just took delivery of his new gold plated Ferrari.

    My first thought was that was an off the wall comical jab at having too much money, but then I realized such cars actually exist. That rule of the internet is true, if you can think of something, it exists.

  • (cs) in reply to Zapp Brannigan
    I thought he rented an entire floor of some big hotel in Las Vegas and was hot tubbing with $5000 a night hookers.
    As long as he posts pictures ...
  • the beholder (unregistered) in reply to !?
    !?:
    Basseq:
    This WTF Explained:
    1. Silo'd organizational structure and ham-fisted IT management techniques lead to frustration.
    2. Infrastructure group has problems installing code despite detailed instructions.
    3. Development manager, smelling a rat, starts sending gibberish instead of real installation instructions.
    4. No one in the Infrastructure group notices, proving that they don't read the instructions (as claimed).
    5. Months later, problems stemming from #1 compound multiple times, leading to finger-pointing.
    6. Dev. Manager proves a point with haughty nerd superiority. Organizational problems remain.
    6# is only expected. As it seem, they have had problems with management for a long time. I doubt IT team could do anything to change.

    Most management WTFs don't lead to change, unless the problems they create become unbearable.

    Sure they do, it just happen like this:

    • We've been receiving some complaints from development guys and server guys. Seems to be an issue between both departments.
    • Ok, let's fire the whiners, outsource development and hire some cheaper guys to work on our servers. This way we'll get rid of all the trouble and we'll still save enough for a nice bonus by the end of semester.
  • Mr.'; Drop Database -- (unregistered) in reply to Gruntled Postal Worker
    Gruntled Postal Worker:
    When we complained to our IT department about them not reading deployment documents to the letter, their answer was roughly as follows:

    On a good morning, on top of our normal duties, we have a dozen or so deployments and requests for changes to carry out, each of which comes with a 20 to 2000(!!) page deployment manual. We are not going to read every letter of every single one of these. ...

    But that's just the thing, your IT department told the truth. The operations manager in the article repeatedly lied, which lead to a lot more failed deployments and wasted time and effort.

  • eric76 (unregistered)

    A few years ago, one lawyer was wondering if a local judge in his area actually read the legal papers before making a decision.

    So he create a small paper bridge between two adjacent pages in a document he was submitting. Someone reading it would tear the small paper bridge and never suspect anything was wrong.

    After the judge's decision, he went to the courthouse and looked at the judge's copy. Sure enough, the little paper bridge was still there untorn.

    I think he got in a bit of trouble over doing that.

  • Edward Royce (unregistered) in reply to Zapp Brannigan
    Zapp Brannigan:
    Anon:
    shadowman:
    Anon:
    He's making money from the site isn't he? That's why we have ads everywhere, sponsor appreciation updates, etc.

    Besides, how hard is it to buffer up a few short and simple WTFs for days like this?

    I doubt the ad money covers a whole lot more than keeping the site running.

    Nonsense! The reason why we have a classic WTF today is because Alex just took delivery of his new gold plated Ferrari.

    I thought he rented an entire floor of some big hotel in Las Vegas and was hot tubbing with $5000 a night hookers.

    Whoa! I'm contributing to $5,000 a night hookers? Considering my contribution as a % of the overall total users I wild-ass-guess that it probably comes out to about $1.33. Now dividing 12 hours by $5,000 comes out to 8.64 seconds per dollar.

    Which means my personal contribution ends up being about 11.49 seconds of combined boredom, drudgery and orgasm.

    ...

    Yeah that's about right.

  • (cs)

    Should have just sent 50 pages of Lorem Ipsum.

  • (cs) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    Just to point out, I'm posting under Anon and I'm not this Anon. I have no problem with this classic WTF since I seem to have missed it first time around. On the other hand, I don't particularly give a shit if you can't keep straight which Anon is which.
    Juth call yourthelf "Igor" then. You know, to avoid the confuthion.
  • Falcon (unregistered)

    "Pencil telephone hourglass! Diamonds candle candle flag!"

    Ok, let's try it without links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3k5oY9AHHM

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to Zapp Brannigan

    Third?

  • Edward Royce (unregistered) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    Third?

    Yep. (pats on shoulder)

    You are most definitely "third". And quite possibly "fourth" as well.

    Good show!

  • AC (unregistered) in reply to [email protected]
    Get a life:
    Anyone who thinks "/.tard" is clever or remotely cool is TRWTF.
    Hey, you have your cultural values; I have mine.

    It's short-hand for "pointless idiot throwing an anonymous brain-dead comment out at random." It's applicable to a fair slice of slashdot comments these days.

    You think being abusive is a "cultural value"? I'd call it a cultural lack of value.

  • C (unregistered) in reply to ♓&&●❍
    ♓&&●❍:
    ✏✂✁☎✆✉

    ⌛⌨✇✍✌☜ ☞☝☟ ☺☹☠⚐ ✈☼ ❄✞✠✡☪☯ॐ☸♈♉ ♊♋♌♍♎ ♏♐♑♒♓&&●❍■□❑❒⬧ ⧫◆❖⬥ ⌧⍓⌘ ❀✿❝❞▯⓪①② ③④⑤❾❿·• ▪○◉ ◎ ▪◻✦★✶✴✹✵✪✰

    Umm... that doesn't compute. Changing the font didn't help me, what else needs to be done? :-|

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Anon:

    Nonsense! The reason why we have a classic WTF today is because Alex just took delivery of his new gold plated Ferrari.

    My first thought was that was an off the wall comical jab at having too much money, but then I realized such cars actually exist. That rule of the internet is true, if you can think of something, it exists.

    Indeed:

    http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2009/08/over-top-gold-plated-ferrari-599-gtb.html

  • Bosshog (unregistered) in reply to PatrickBeebe
    PatrickBeebe:
    Iie:
    Basseq:
    This WTF Explained:

    1. Silo'd organizational structure and ham-fisted IT management techniques lead to frustration.

    2. Infrastructure group has problems installing code despite detailed instructions.

    3. Development manager, smelling a rat, starts sending gibberish instead of real installation instructions.

    4. No one in the Infrastructure group notices, proving that they don't read the instructions (as claimed).

    5. Months later, problems stemming from #1 compound multiple times, leading to finger-pointing.

    6. Dev. Manager proves a point with haughty nerd superiority. Organizational problems remain.

  • Infrastructure manager is canned for failing to enforce the "follow the damn instructions" rule.

  • New manager is hired, underlings are scared shitless because he's going to clean up. 9 - 12. ???

  • Infrastructure has 50% layoffs and 75% of the remaining positions are being sunsetted so they can be outsourced

  • Company saves a bunch of money.

  • Development doesn't see a dime of it.

  • Development teams picks up IT duties

  • Begin sleeping at the office because there's no more time to commute or be at home

  • Allergy to sunlight sets in

  • Developers get overworked and get disgruntled

  • Developers leave the company for other jobs which haven't turned to crap yet

    • bet

    • lose

    • borrow

    • steal

    • lose

    • take the drugs

    • lose

    • prison

    • ... death.

  • bex (unregistered)

    I usually create detailed instructions on how to deploy my code... but every once in a while I get back error reports that just frankly make no sense. The simplest explanation is that the QA engineer or installer did not follow the instructions. So, the next debugging step is to run a "sanity check" on your humans.

    My technique is to send them back install instructions or patches that are explicitly designed to halt the system. After following my instructions they wouldn't be able to restart their server, let alone reproduce their bizarre bug.

    When I get back reports that the server failed to start, then I take their bizarre bug seriously.

    When I get back reports that the same error occurred, then I spring the trap.

  • adzhijayf (unregistered) in reply to North Bus
    North Bus:
    My favorite use of Wingdings... attempting to pass it off as "arcane symbols", even by a major gaming company. [image] (Knowing Sierra, it could have been sarcasm. This is QFG5, though, so the majority of talent had already jumped ship.)
    I wish it spelled something more useful than "adzhijayf".
  • DrummerGeek (unregistered) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    I can understand sending the instructions in wingdings one time just to prove they aren't reading them, but doing it 12 times before bothering to prove your point is TRWTF. Do it once, deployment fails, they claim to have followed the instructions, you call them out on it because your instructions were unreadable. Problem solved (or else you get fired). What was the point of doing it another 11 times with another 11 failed deployments? Seems rather passive aggressive.

    He's the most aggressive passive aggressive I have ever seen.

  • (cs) in reply to C

    Usually, english texts have repeated letters...

  • (cs) in reply to C
    C:
    ♓&&●❍:
    ✏✂✁☎✆✉

    ⌛⌨✇✍✌☜ ☞☝☟ ☺☹☠⚐ ✈☼ ❄✞✠✡☪☯ॐ☸♈♉ ♊♋♌♍♎ ♏♐♑♒♓&&●❍■□❑❒⬧ ⧫◆❖⬥ ⌧⍓⌘ ❀✿❝❞▯⓪①② ③④⑤❾❿·• ▪○◉ ◎ ▪◻✦★✶✴✹✵✪✰

    Umm... that doesn't compute. Changing the font didn't help me, what else needs to be done? :-|

    Usually, english texts have repeated letters...

  • PinkFloyd43 (unregistered)

    Been there done exactly what they say, but had to add the part of WHAT ORDER the changes were to applied, the deployment team was seperating the instructions and giving to multiple folks!

  • C (unregistered) in reply to dapaua
    dapaua:
    C:
    ♓&&●❍:
    ✏✂✁☎✆✉

    ⌛⌨✇✍✌☜ ☞☝☟ ☺☹☠⚐ ✈☼ ❄✞✠✡☪☯ॐ☸♈♉ ♊♋♌♍♎ ♏♐♑♒♓&&●❍■□❑❒⬧ ⧫◆❖⬥ ⌧⍓⌘ ❀✿❝❞▯⓪①② ③④⑤❾❿·• ▪○◉ ◎ ▪◻✦★✶✴✹✵✪✰

    Umm... that doesn't compute. Changing the font didn't help me, what else needs to be done? :-|
    Usually, english texts have repeated letters...
    Still... i'd have liked to know how could i get back the "?AEFGHJLNQRTVXYZ[]^_`abcdefghijklmnoqr" used to create "✍✌☜☞☝☟☺☹☠✈☼❄✞✠✡☪☯ॐ☸♈♉♊♋♌♍♎♏♐♑♒♓&&●❍■□❑❒"? @-) [i decrypted this by hand, looking at the wingdings table of glyphs, that'd've been a PITA for a longer or natural-language text...]

  • (cs) in reply to C
    C:
    dapaua:
    C:
    ♓&&●❍:
    ✏✂✁☎✆✉

    ⌛⌨✇✍✌☜ ☞☝☟ ☺☹☠⚐ ✈☼ ❄✞✠✡☪☯ॐ☸♈♉ ♊♋♌♍♎ ♏♐♑♒♓&&●❍■□❑❒⬧ ⧫◆❖⬥ ⌧⍓⌘ ❀✿❝❞▯⓪①② ③④⑤❾❿·• ▪○◉ ◎ ▪◻✦★✶✴✹✵✪✰

    Umm... that doesn't compute. Changing the font didn't help me, what else needs to be done? :-|
    Usually, english texts have repeated letters...
    Still... i'd have liked to know how could i get back the "?AEFGHJLNQRTVXYZ[]^_`abcdefghijklmnoqr" used to create "✍✌☜☞☝☟☺☹☠✈☼❄✞✠✡☪☯ॐ☸♈♉♊♋♌♍♎♏♐♑♒♓&&●❍■□❑❒"? @-) [i decrypted this by hand, looking at the wingdings table of glyphs, that'd've been a PITA for a longer or natural-language text...]

    That's not Wingdings. You might want to look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_symbols#Unicode_Dingbats.

  • Matt (unregistered) in reply to Tom Woolf
    Tom Woolf:
    Many years ago when I worked for Giant Entity we had an IT guy ask about a report that our system generated. "We are thinking of turning off the FARxyz Report. Does anybody use it?" One of the users, who was known as the Queen of 62 (IT code for time wasted on wild goose chases), said it could not be turned off - she used it every month. The IT guy responded "that's funny, because we actually stopped printing it 3 months ago..."

    Be VERY careful with pulling that. I almost did that a few times. Some people might not run a monthly report for a few months, then when they need to, they'll run it for the past X months that they've missed. Not all daily/weekly/monthly reports are in fact needed right at the end of that period. For example, a monthly report might not be needed until the end of the quarter (3 months).

    A better solution is one mentioned on this site a while back in the comments. This one guy was printing out thousands of pages of reports. He suspected no one was reading them. So he put a note into the middle of the pile that said "if you find this, email [email protected] and I'll buy your lunch". To this day he hasn't had any takers.

    That's a much more low-risk way to test if the report is being used because it isn't offensive and doesn't withhold the report from anyone. Those are the 2 key criteria for testing if reports are still used: non-offensive, report is still available. Of course, I prefer logging access to reports if they're online. Store the username and date of it anytime it's accessed. Then query all reports against a list of requests. Whatever reports haven't been requested, put that list together and send it to management for review. Or get fired by turning them off or replacing them with goatse. Take your pic.

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