• dba gone sysadmin (unregistered) in reply to Howi

    holy cow! that reminded me of a few senior DBAs i had to work with... constantly asking me to show them how to script and automate some db tasks! one day and from that  day on, i just refused to show them coz they never gave credit in front of the boss... and that got me sent exiled to another group!

  • mjp (unregistered) in reply to dba gone sysadmin

    You risk to lost the friendship of those "few senior DBAs".

  • ed (unregistered)

    Sometimes when I read an amazing wtf the fun is taken out of it by to the sucpision that the whole thing is made up for entertainment purposes.

     This is one of those.

    "Would you ship me the server".

    wtf...
     

  • (cs)
    Anonymous:

    Google for "small, agile consultancy", and you get these guys. 

     CAPTCHA = 1337. Brilliant!
     

    I browsed their website, and, well... it's a spoof, surely?

    For example: what is the area of expertise of these people? In what country are they based? These ultra-basic questions cannot be answered by a quick look through their website.

    Trickyb

    PS As for the original wtf... well, I earn my wage working on Oracle databases, and what is described is not a wtf, it's my daily work environment :-)

  • ohwell (unregistered) in reply to ed
    Anonymous:

    Sometimes when I read an amazing wtf the fun is taken out of it by to the sucpision that the whole thing is made up for entertainment purposes.

     This is one of those.

    "Would you ship me the server".

    wtf...
     



    savar:
    Edward Oracle Expert:

    Dustin,

    That'd be great! Could you ship your QA server to us:
      [mailing address]

    Thanks,
    Edward

    This has to be a joke or else an artifact of anonymization. Nobody seriously asks somebody to ship a physical server, do they? What good would that do them, I wonder?

    [Editors Note: Per the <font color="#4c7a9e">Editorial Guidelines</font>, this is not an artifact of anonymization. The gurus did in fact expect the physical server.]


  • The Big D (unregistered) in reply to trickyb

    Falling Blossom are based in the UK. You can tell from the international dialling code of +44 on their contact page.

    Another absolutely show-stopping quote:

    "accordingly, we guarantee that any time we bill you, we expect you should only pay as much as you feel represents fair value to you. We won't argue, quibble, or feel resentful. On the contrary, we should thank you.

    of course, we'd like to think you'll value our partnership enough that you might opt to pay even more than the nominal amount on those occasasions when you've seen super value from something we've done. "

     I love the way they/he/it chooses not to capitalize at the start of paragraphs.

  • (cs) in reply to jessica
    Anonymous:

     I think the code depends on WHO you're asking. I doubt FedEx is a reliable source on this, as they can't even get my postal code to town right, and they deliver packages there.


    Reminds me of one logistics provider over here, claiming to be <paraphrased> the best and the fastest in providing logistics even to remote areas </paraphrased>...

    A friend of mine worked for a company that provides reward items for credit cards and they wanted to hire this logistics provider to send hundreds of packages (ranging from small objects like pens to large appliances like washing machines) to different locations everyday. Well, that logistics provider turned down the offer.

    Surprisingly, the small logistics providers they chose instead could meet their business needs... There goes <paraphrased> the best and the fastest in providing logistics even to remote areas </paraphrased>...



  • Redshirt Coder (unregistered) in reply to ed
    Anonymous:

    Sometimes when I read an amazing wtf the fun is taken out of it by to the sucpision that the whole thing is made up for entertainment purposes.

     This is one of those.

    What takes out the fun of WTFs like this is, simply, that they are not made up. I would like to know who else here can telltales which rival this one on the BS-scale. One moment, i do NOT want to know! Things like this are boring. With the right customers, you see them any day.

     Oh, but now to something completely different: Using wikipedia as a reference and calling it proof, now THAT is a WTF.

    captcha: billgates - i knew his name would come up.Coincidence? Or more likely the result of a universal law of resonance which tries to group things together?

  • (cs)
    Judah:

    Google for "small, agile consultancy", and you get these guys. 

     

    To be fair, reading their site, it appears that implementing reporting solutions is not their business. Instead they seem to be marketing themselves as the Dr. Phil for the relationship between IT and the rest of the organization. Like geeks are from Venus, suits are from Jupiter, or somewhere. Maybe they do the catch-the-falling-person exercise.

    On the other hand, they don't seem to be relating terribly well with Dustin.

    --RA

  • (cs) in reply to The Big D
    Anonymous:

    Falling Blossom are based in the UK. You can tell from the international dialling code of +44 on their contact page.

    Maybe, but then again maybe not... my girlfriend used to work for a French manufacturer who were proud to point out that all of their products were made in Europe in their own factories. There were a couple of phone lines in her office that had to be treated with care, as they corresponded to one of the "factories", and she was not to let slip that she was in fact at the head office.

    The factory never existed, but was a handy trick to cover up the fact that many of the goods came from China :-(

    Trickyb

    PS yes my girlfriend left that job.

     

  • anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Dustin
    Anonymous:

    Anonymous:
    When some people work at a place for ten years they get ten years of experience, other people work at a place for ten years and get one year of experience ten times.

     Classic.

     Trust me, this was just the tip of the iceberg with these guys.  Now they want their own performance testing environment so they don't have to share with other projects.  And of course, they want it on the same scale as production.   Let me see if I have another 32 processor unix box laying around.

     I would ask for the same thing.  I might not get it, but, if I could, it would be good.   

    So, how's the "reporting solution" doing?  If I hired someone specifically to write a "reporting solution", I wouldn't be too worried about a jealous tech bitching because he has more DBA-janitor type knowledge than my gurus, who I'm paying more, and who have better looking girlfriends, and who drive nicer cars.  I would be worried about the "reporting solution".

  • (cs)

    The biggest wtf indeed is requesting to FedEx the server to them, but a close runner-up is:

    Amazingly, he hasn't been able to convince anyone to boot them out door yet.


    Damn - if I tell my boss the business-partner/consultant/... is an idiot, he believes me. Too bad that still leaves us with the clients... :(

  • woohoo (unregistered)
    Anonymous:

    Google for "small, agile consultancy", and you get these guys. 

     CAPTCHA = 1337. Brilliant!
     

    Oh man, this is rich.... A WTF in itself... I *love* it when people produce layout like this. When opening the said page, I was surprised, that *everything* was underlined, and some subheadings in the text (" suits you, sir?") looked exactly like some links ("expect more - get more"), so sometimes you get a different cursor when hovering over the exactly same style of text - and it's the only way to figure out where the links are. WTF. Talk about usability. A quick look in the css-file revealed this line: 

    * { text-align: left; } /* workaround for Opera8 underlining bug */
    Well, I was using Opera 8 in that moment. So I fired up FF and loaded the page and ... voila! All the underlining was gone. Quite obviously, the clever workaround for Opera is not working a lot...

    But even better: The links still look exactly like the headings, only this time *nothing* is underlined.... A well, at least *visited* links have a different colour, but I somehow doubt that I'll visit that page a lot again...

    captcha: bedtime (it's 3 PM here ;o)

  • Badger (unregistered) in reply to Nathan

    Ok, I'll step up...

    The real WTF here is they are using Oracle!

    Captch: hacker. sweet!
     

  • (cs) in reply to anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    Anonymous:
    When some people work at a place for ten years they get ten years of experience, other people work at a place for ten years and get one year of experience ten times.

     Classic.

     Trust me, this was just the tip of the iceberg with these guys.  Now they want their own performance testing environment so they don't have to share with other projects.  And of course, they want it on the same scale as production.   Let me see if I have another 32 processor unix box laying around.

     I would ask for the same thing.  I might not get it, but, if I could, it would be good.

    Yep.  If you're doing performance testing and tuning, then you need _at least_ production-sized datasets, and the best option is generally an anonymised clone of a production server as that gives you not only the volume, but the relative distribution of relations that can be expected.

    It's nice to have an identical machine too, but that's less important.

     
    Simon
     

  • (cs) in reply to bob the dingo

    Anonymous:
    "combined experience" is a great term... so basically they had one guy with 25 years, and 4 guys with none! that or they were all janitors there...

     

    Either that, or it's five guys with five years of expereince each. In food services.

  • Richard Head (unregistered) in reply to biziclop
    biziclop:

    Advertising youself as a guru is a warning itself.

    Hiring feng shui experts would've yielded a nice user interface at least.

     

    Bingo!  Self-advertisement like that is never a good thing.  Guru is not something I'd go around saying about myself no matter how good I was.  In fact it sounds like you are trying hard to prove that to someone.  Just let your skills do the talking.     

  • Bob Marshall (unregistered)

    Thanks for the exposure, folks!

     

    And the Haiku idea is brilliant.

     

    Love you all.

     

    Kissesssssss xxxxx :-x

     

    Bob

     

  • Michael Borchert (unregistered) in reply to Chad Martin

    Hey Chad.  Good to see you're working hard, too.

  • Michael Borchert (unregistered) in reply to Chad Martin
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    Somehow I'm not surprised. No other shipping company has as bad a service as them.. Once I was trying to have some stuff sent to me (San Diego) it ended up in Yemen (San'a). According to FedEx, they have the same airport code. I think about that every time I check in my bags at the airport and they put that little tag that says SAN on them. Then I think about it again when they don't show up at the baggage claim. The point is, no matter how many times they lose my bags no one ever tries to tell me they are in Yemen because the two cities have the same airport code. I believe that is mainly because San'a's airport code in SAH.

     

    Also, the actual airport code for San Diego would be KSAN, since every North American airport's identifier starts with a K.  This is often dropped since most air traffic occurs within the U.S.  Even if the airport in Yemen was SAN, it wouldn't be KSAN.  Any international shipper should know this and have software that uses the full four-character identifier.  That person you talked to was full of shit on a few different levels.
     

    effin' forum.  Trying to reply to this...

  • Michael Borchert (unregistered) in reply to Chad Martin
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    Somehow I'm not surprised. No other shipping company has as bad a service as them.. Once I was trying to have some stuff sent to me (San Diego) it ended up in Yemen (San'a). According to FedEx, they have the same airport code. I think about that every time I check in my bags at the airport and they put that little tag that says SAN on them. Then I think about it again when they don't show up at the baggage claim. The point is, no matter how many times they lose my bags no one ever tries to tell me they are in Yemen because the two cities have the same airport code. I believe that is mainly because San'a's airport code in SAH.

     

    Also, the actual airport code for San Diego would be KSAN, since every North American airport's identifier starts with a K.  This is often dropped since most air traffic occurs within the U.S.  Even if the airport in Yemen was SAN, it wouldn't be KSAN.  Any international shipper should know this and have software that uses the full four-character identifier.  That person you talked to was full of shit on a few different levels.
     

    effin' forum.  Trying to reply to this...

  • 2Cynical (unregistered)

    Let me guess....

     Dustin got a bad annual review because of his "inability" to create a working relationship with this vendor....
     

  • Dazed (unregistered) in reply to 2Cynical
    Anonymous:

    Let me guess....  Dustin got a bad annual review because of his "inability" to create a working relationship with this vendor....

    I always thought that people who founded companies called Nemesys (there seem to be several) were incapable of reading an encyclopedia. Perhaps, on the other hand, they could read an encyclopedia perfectly well ... and they'd just been through an experience like this.
  • (cs)
    Anonymous:
    Howi:

    EDIT: Speaking of FedEx, did you know that the creator of that company designed it as a business model for a university assignment in a business degree or some such. He failed. Now THAT'S ironic :) 

     

    Sounds cool. Except that it just isn't true.  A simple query to Wikipedia returns the truth... Nowadays, you have to watch what you say, because it's so easy to fact-check it!

     

    CAPTCHA=quality

     

    Isn't false either, as per the very link you gave us...

    A common story is that Fred Smith got a C at Yale University on the paper where he came up with the idea that became FedEx. In an article he wrote for the October 2002 issue of Fortune Small Business he said that he doesn't actually know what grade he got. He said he probably didn't get a very good grade because the paper was not well thought out. In a similar case, a C on a paper by Gregory Watson led to the passage of the Twenty-seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution.

  • Who wants to know (unregistered) in reply to David
    Anonymous:

    Oracle is f*cking complicated. Everyone knows that.

     captcha: wtf
     

     

    Only when an IDIOT or an OCP touches it.  The basic SQL is VERY simple!

     It is OBVIOUS that these people knew NOTHING about it, and had almost NO knowledge of the internet.  They were trying to get their "customer"(read SUCKER) to do ALL the work, right down to getting them the hardware!

     Steve

  • Reinder (unregistered) 
    "That'd be great! Could you ship your QA server to us: [mailing address]"
    This makes it clear: these gurus are from Nigeria. Quite a clever variation on their usual stuff, I must say.
    
            
    
        
    • 
        
  • 
    (cs)                                     
            
    
                
    

    Hi Dustin,
Help! We can't find the Any key!

    Thanks,
Edward
    

    
            
    
        
    • 
        
  • 
 Kal Joseph   (unregistered)                                         in reply to Anonymous
            
            
    
                
    They probably worked as janitors at the Oracle offices in Hyderabad, most "gurus" are from India.
    you are a racist prick!
    
            
    
        
    • 
        
  • 
 David   (unregistered)                                         in reply to Olddog
            
            
    
                
     Anonymous:
    there are people, when given a task and a sheet of blank graph paper, will flip it over expecting to find the instructions on the back side. Finding none, they'll flip it back and ask for another sheet.
     Expect to be quoted millions of times over the next century.
     
    
            
    
        
    • 
        
  • 
 Adam   (unregistered)                                         in reply to Jojosh_the_Pi
            
            
    
                
     Jojosh_the_Pi:
    Small and agile?  Apparently they're just small and agile enough to slip under the BS detector of the suits who'd want to hire them.  Although, in some companies, they wouldn't have to be all that small...
    Your suits have bs detectors? Where can I get them and how much do they cost? Ours would be trying to cool the server racks with ketchup popsicles if there was a good enough powerpoint behind it. 
    
            
    
        
    • 
        
  • 
 ststrat   (unregistered)                                         in reply to Dustin
            
            
    
                
    So which board member's has the brother-in-law who was recently fired from Oracle?
    
            
    
        
    • 
        
  • 
 Olddog   (unregistered)                                         in reply to David
            
            
    
                
     Anonymous:
     
     Anonymous:
    there are people, when given a task and a sheet of blank graph paper, will flip it over expecting to find the instructions on the back side. Finding none, they'll flip it back and ask for another sheet.
     Expect to be quoted millions of times over the next century.
     
    I suspect you've seen this too. People really do this. It stems from the term cardboard-stupid, which I first heard from a no-nonsense director that I still admire. I first witnessed the graph paper phenomena in one his team exercises. Sometime later the term graph-paper stupid was coined by someone in the office. This was later corrected politically to graph-paper challenged, but the phenomena remains. Try it out. Assemble a team of suspects and pass out the graph paper. Watch what happens.
    
            
    
        
    • 
        
  • 
 Dustin   (unregistered)                                         in reply to anonymous
            
            
    
                
     Anonymous:
     Anonymous:
     
     Anonymous:
    When some people work at a place for ten years they get ten years of experience, other people work at a place for ten years and get one year of experience ten times.
     Classic.
     Trust me, this was just the tip of the iceberg with these guys.  Now they want their own performance testing environment so they don't have to share with other projects.  And of course, they want it on the same scale as production.   Let me see if I have another 32 processor unix box laying around.
     I would ask for the same thing.  I might not get it, but, if I could, it would be good.  
    So, how's the "reporting solution" doing?  If I hired someone specifically to write a "reporting solution", I wouldn't be too worried about a jealous tech bitching because he has more DBA-janitor type knowledge than my gurus, who I'm paying more, and who have better looking girlfriends, and who drive nicer cars.  I would be worried about the "reporting solution".
    The point is, we already have a performance environment that we spent a couple million bucks on.   They want us to spend a couple million more to make sure their "proof of concept" is successful.
    That's one thing that wasn't made clear in the article.   This vendor has not yet been hired to implement a solution.  They are doing a proof of concept.   That's what makes it all the more ridiculous when you look at what they were asking for.   They are supposed to be inspiring confidence in them and their product.
     
    
            
    
        
    • 
        
  • 
 Dustin   (unregistered)                                         in reply to Dustin
            
            
    
                
    oops, that last comment was from me, the one who sent in the post (if that wasn't clear)
    
            
    
        
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  • 
 Anonymous   (unregistered)                                         in reply to Kal Joseph
            
            
    
                
     Anonymous:
    They probably worked as janitors at the Oracle offices in Hyderabad, most "gurus" are from India.
    you are a racist prick!
    Sparky, a "guru" is religious leader, spiritual guide, or otherwise holy individual in Hinduism and Sikhism. From where do those religions originate? Yes, India.  I believe the the joke about most gurus being from India was based on the origin of the word rather than an attack on Indian technologists.

    Take it down a notch before you blow a blood vessel. 
    
            
    
        
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  • 
 ChiefCrazyTalk   (unregistered)                                         in reply to Howi
            
            
    
                
     Howi:
    haha yeah I was thinking along those lines... probably not janitors (I'd hope), but I doubt they held any overly technical positions. Now, I haven't worked with Oracle since Uni (sql server and pg here), but I'm pretty certain I'd have no trouble importing a database, even if it cost me a massive 5 minutes on google. Heck, wikipedia probably has a walkthrough for it... Every Joe and his dog thinks they're an IT expert.  EDIT: Speaking of FedEx, did you know that the creator of that company designed it as a business model for a university assignment in a business degree or some such. He failed. Now THAT'S ironic :) 
    Actually, he (Fred Smith) got a "C".  His prof told him the business plan was well written, but the idea was just too impractrical.
            
    
        
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  • 
 PK   (unregistered)                                         in reply to ChiefCrazyTalk
            
            
    
                
    I kinda feel that this is not a rare story. My experience of most DBAs and Oracle consultants is somewhat similar to these guys. You can't imagine how expensive and difficult things can become with this database. I don't blame the technology but something sucks there  big time. If we pay 200 grand for the  bare database and always get crappy service what's the deal there? Another 'additional' feature is usually another 200 grand more plus the 'con-sulting' work. And if we have ten DB servers, we pay N * motherload of bucks. 

    I have personal issues with this DB, sorry. Maybe it's just me but I think I'm smart enough to stay away from Oracle. 
    
            
    
        
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  • 
    (cs)                                     
            
    
                
    25 years experience, but never used Google before?  
     
    I just want to know what the heroin-induced coma looked like that was required to get management to sign checks to those consultants. 
    
            
    
        
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  • 
 Steve Urkel   (unregistered)                                     
            
    
                
    Guru 1: Janitor, 10 years
Guru 2: Secretary, 6 years
Guru 3: Salesman, 9 years
Guru 4: Plumber, hired once to fix a backed up toilet (now primary developer, due to having more programming experience than anyone else)
    
            
    
        
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