• Franz Kafka (unregistered) in reply to PG
    PG:
    Franz Kafka:

    It's still awful. How about "lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit aenean et orci massa."

    He's speaking in tongues, Lois! Our son is possessed! Meg, start at Psalm 41 and don't start reading until I tell you! The power of Christ compels you!

    Nah, alex is just monkeying with my post.

  • (cs) in reply to SGML
    SGML:
    FFuser:
    TRWTF is that Firefox renders that paragraph plainly visible as if it weren't commented out. So much for "hidden in the source".

    Or is TRWTF that IE doesn't display the paragraph?

    http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/intro/sgmltut.html#h-3.2.4

    Iron doesn't display it, so I presume (?) that Chrome and Chromium don't display it either.
  • Gary Olson (unregistered) in reply to somedude

    Not just the XML is missing, the $PROPRIETARY XML database is missing. And the document management system which files and serves the documents generated hourly from this database. The vendor is slacking.

  • Steve (unregistered) in reply to Nikki
    Nikki:
    AdultFiendfinder? Is that a service to help you find a zombie hooker?

    No, that's "UndeadFriendFinder". AdultFiendFinder is for finding succubi.

  • Cheong (unregistered) in reply to DaveE
    DaveE:
    Richard T. Roll:
    And why didn't browsing the internet normally crash this thing?

    From the sounds of it, normal browsing probably would occasionally crash it, but only if you happened to be making a web request in the little 10-minute window once-per-hour. Constantly calling every few minutes would guarantee that you'd hit the 10-minute window EVERY time, so it would be "more guilty than most". That'd be my guess, anyway.

    More like continual browsing of non-video information.

    Video streaming, which is a common cause of networking problem for places with slow internet connection, on the other hand, would be fine because I don't think the proxy will convert video streams into PDFs...

  • (cs) in reply to Mark Bowytz
    Mark Bowytz:
    me_again:
    Holy spelling mistake Batman, but a really funny one '... where any employee could easily read up on the owner's obsession with AdultFiendFinder'.

    Thanks! Actually put that one in on purpose - really. I swear. Honest.

    I believe you, it's funny. But why did you omit the link? http://www.wingedmonkeypress.co.uk/aff/

    2nd try: f'ing stoopid akismet. plaintext it is then.

  • Frank (unregistered) in reply to Cad Delworth
    Cad Delworth:
    SGML:
    FFuser:
    TRWTF is that Firefox renders that paragraph plainly visible as if it weren't commented out. So much for "hidden in the source".

    Or is TRWTF that IE doesn't display the paragraph?

    http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/intro/sgmltut.html#h-3.2.4

    Iron doesn't display it, so I presume (?) that Chrome and Chromium don't display it either.

    All browsers display the comments, IE, Chrome, Firefox etc. If you look at the source the paragraph has gone but other comments are still visible. Go figure.

  • (cs)

    A couple years ago I took my laptop to the IT folks for an upgrade (installing a bluetooth module, if I recall correctly) and when they returned it to me, they had also installed Google Desktop... It was gone again in 5 minutes.

  • access (unregistered) in reply to Guardian Bob
    Guardian Bob:
    Crappy sales job if you ask me.

    I mean, where's the MS SQL Server for tracking the PDFs?

    You sure you didn't mean "Access database" instead of MSSQL server?

  • (cs)

    Hey! That last image of a typical "User" looks just like me!!

  • Daniel (unregistered)

    As the author of this particular wtf, I thought I'd clear up some confusion:

    From the sounds of it, normal browsing probably would occasionally crash it, but only if you happened to be making a web request in the little 10-minute window once-per-hour. Constantly calling every few minutes would guarantee that you'd hit the 10-minute window EVERY time, so it would be "more guilty than most". That'd be my guess, anyway.
    ALMOST right. The PDF reports were generated once a day, from midnight to 1am. The only machines making web requests were the development machines, since they were left on and had google desktop running. If you made a web request while your log was being parsed, it crashed.
    From the sysadmin point of view: regardless of the WTF involved, if you're running something that brings down the works, you turn it off first and ask questions later.
    While I agree with that wholeheartedly, a 16 year old kid with a clipboard (whom I'd never seen before) barged into my office without knocking and demanded I uninstall software. Technically, given our security measures and the color of his access badge, instead of calling Dave I should have called security. If someone I KNEW had demanded I turn it off, I would have done so, and then asked questions.
    So Daniel was the only developer and Dave was the only network technician. In that case, who the hell was Jim and how come he had his own band of IT goons? How can the lead developer not know about these people and what do they even do if they're not developers or techs? It feels like there was a paragraph missing from this article but hey, we all know that's just how Bowitz rolls.
    Sadly, there were nearly 2 dozen developers at this place, plus 4 network guys, and a horde of generic "IT" guys for actual computer fixing for the non-technical staff. I simply left them out of the story because they weren't relevant. I was one of multiple developers working contract roles, plus a dozen or more full-time developers.
    TRWTF is why you'd want to use Google Desktop in the first place. Was his computer too fast and his data too secure?
    Searching our outlook mailbox would take 15+ minutes. Google desktop was used almost exclusively for email indexing and to-do lists.
    I have found the real WTF!
    All sadly true, and quoted from my email conversation with Alex.
    How come "business types" are so incapable of reading reports in plain and simple ASCII text files
    And the answer is...
    Because you can't make ASCII text red?
    DING DING

    So yeah, the place was pretty terrible, from a tech standpoint. I'd like to voice my appreciation for all the NON-stupid tech people at the company though, the only reason it's running at all is because of all the brave soldiers who kept their heads down and worked around all the nonsense to keep things running.

  • tragomaskhalos (unregistered) in reply to dtobias
    dtobias:
    How come "business types" are so incapable of reading reports in plain and simple ASCII text files that they insist on having bloatware processes to convert them unnecessarily to stuff like PDF, M$Word, M$Excel, etc.?
    This is the real wtf for me - why PDFs? A simple text log or, at the outside, an html file is surely sufficient. What are they going to do with this info that requires it to be in PDF format ?!
  • fool (unregistered) in reply to tragomaskhalos

    Print it out and put it on a clipboard.

  • Mike (unregistered) in reply to MrEricSir
    MrEricSir:
    Because you can't make ASCII text red?

    Use ANSI

    (ESC)[31,40m

  • Mike (unregistered) in reply to Steve
    Steve:
    Nikki:
    AdultFiendfinder? Is that a service to help you find a zombie hooker?

    No, that's "UndeadFriendFinder". AdultFiendFinder is for finding succubi.

    Oh, so it's like Match.com

  • EatenByAGrue (unregistered) in reply to Steve
    Steve:
    Nikki:
    AdultFiendfinder? Is that a service to help you find a zombie hooker?

    No, that's "UndeadFriendFinder". AdultFiendFinder is for finding succubi.

    But if you want to find succubi, all you really need to do is kick a kitchen sink a few times.

  • BBT (unregistered) in reply to tragomaskhalos
    tragomaskhalos:
    dtobias:
    How come "business types" are so incapable of reading reports in plain and simple ASCII text files that they insist on having bloatware processes to convert them unnecessarily to stuff like PDF, M$Word, M$Excel, etc.?
    This is the real wtf for me - why PDFs? A simple text log or, at the outside, an html file is surely sufficient. What are they going to do with this info that requires it to be in PDF format ?!

    You've never worked with business people, have you?

  • (cs) in reply to EatenByAGrue
    EatenByAGrue:
    Steve:
    Nikki:
    AdultFiendfinder? Is that a service to help you find a zombie hooker?

    No, that's "UndeadFriendFinder". AdultFiendFinder is for finding succubi.

    But if you want to find succubi, all you really need to do is kick a kitchen sink a few times.

    No, those are plumbers. If you want to find the undead, all you really need to do is kick the bucket.
  • Anon E Mouse (unregistered) in reply to oheso
    oheso:
    From the sysadmin point of view: regardless of the WTF involved, if you're running something that brings down the works, you turn it off first and ask questions later.

    Seems it was the IT guy running the monitoring/reporting program that was bringing down the works, not the Google Desktop.

  • xplayerhaterx (unregistered)

    Well that was an amusing story.

    Anyone else getting more and more annoyed with the whole "You should always follow business protocol and do as your told no matter what!" comments?

    I think the point of the website is not how poorly employees follow orders of their superiors. you guys are taking the humor right out of the equation.

  • Quirkafleeg (unregistered) in reply to Mark Bowytz
    Mark Bowytz:
    ½ cup warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C) ½ cup warm milk
    What's that in fl.oz. or ml? (More to the point, what size cup? Large coffee mug? Ordinary tea cup?
    1 egg
    What size?
    ⅓ cup butter, softened
    Measuring butter in a cup could be tricky. Especially if it's a butter cup.
    ⅓ cup white sugar 1 teaspoon salt 3¾ cups all-purpose flour
    Plain, I presume…

    (BTW, fixed the fractions. You might want to make use of your Compose key.)

  • Quirkafleeg (unregistered) in reply to Mike
    Mike:
    MrEricSir:
    Because you can't make ASCII text red?
    Use ANSI

    (ESC)[31,40m

    Well, yes, but that also adds a black background; a waste of ink (well, much more of one) if that gets printed out.

    Anyway, ASCII silly question… ☺

  • Quirkafleeg (unregistered) in reply to xplayerhaterx
    xplayerhaterx:
    Anyone else getting more and more annoyed with the whole "You should always follow business protocol and do as you're told no matter what!" comments?
    Business protocol? What RFC no. is that?

    As for doing as you're told: by all means; to the letter, if not the intent.

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