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Admin
“I DON’T CARE ABOUT TECHNOBABBLE. FIX IT NOW, YOU PIPSQUEAK!”
Can everyone feel the creative writing just oozing off this? Can you? FEEL THE CREATIVE WRITING.
Admin
Well, Mr. "PBX Engineer", in "The Real World" IT often gets saddled with anything that plugs in or uses batteries. And because traditional PBXs are often so ...interestingly coded, and expensive, it's usually left up to some bright IT admin to use whatever methods he/she can to get the data the customer needs from the system ( as apposed to paying through the nose for the PBX manufacture to deliver software that kinda, almost, but not really meets the need ).
Admin
My favourite bit is the kitten.
Admin
embellishing stories with things like 'PIPSQUEAK' in all caps does make for a less believable story. Good story though.
Admin
I call bs on your calling of bs. I too am a PBX Engineer since I installed Asterisk* once? Considerable integration, lol.
Here is a true story: My first job in IT was at a manufacturing plant, on the first day, the first thing I was shown was a closet that housed our PBX system. This system had at least 2 inches of dust on it. The poor soul I was replacing sighed as he said 'yes you have to support this too'.
Admin
Admin
It should be required that the sarcastic part of comments here be in green. It would definitely improve the quality of this site.
Admin
Admin
Admin
There were 3rd party "shells" using the IE engine for rendering as far back as 2001. Most of those had tabs.
Maxthon and AvantBrowser are two names I remember off the top of my head.
Admin
"... a gigantic mess of HTML and VBScript. ..." How can it not be inefficient?
Admin
I remember even in the German Democratic Republic you were supposed to disassemble your machine after your shift is over, clean it, grease it, and reassemble it. After each shift.
Now the question is, how come all the idiots called managers think it's okay to keep the things as is until they break? Do they do the same to their cars? Don't replace oil until the car breaks? The cause of the problem is obvious to me; is it to you?
Admin
Let's just say that companies which deal in BMW and Mercedes Benz leasing and repairs are surprisingly profitable.
It's easy to be careless with money when someone else ends up paying the bill.
Admin
Experimentation proves otherwise.
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Admin
Admin
Yes, because it's TOTALLY IMPOSSIBLE to upgrade your browser after an application is developed. This is how the internet works, if you want to look at an old webpage you have to run an old browser. That's why I use Netscape Communicator 4.5!
Admin
I think I still have a box of them around here somewhere.....
Admin
i do believe the story.
if they are poorly funded, they dont use PBX, the use a PC as a PBX, store data in a free sql database in that PC.
and they only need the list of tables and list of fields inside tables. ans use sql query to obtain the data....
Note: NEVER UNDERESTIMATE WHAT PEOPLE WILL IMPLEMENT WHEN ARE POORLY FUNDED
Admin
For me, I'm disappointed that the writer didn't resolve to jokes of prejudism as he has in so many of his previous posts. That's the real WTF!
Admin
Noone cares, bro, you're not even registered (nor am I).
We're not here to cater to your personal whims. Screw off if you don't like it.
ullamcorper - something like a helicopter constructed from yam peels.
Admin
This is not true at all.
You can get Asterix and PBX compatible line cards for PCs and write your own custom routing software.
Source: Worked at a company implementing custom IVR systems and call monitoring.
duis - uno++
Admin
This story is so typical of every organization that doesn't have the funding to make something work 'right', but just make something work. Every time they see IT coming, they see another drain on their budget, and some excuse as to why they can't get their project working quickly and cheaply. So, they get some 'tech savvy' intern to make something 'work'. The intern leaves, and five years later, something eventually breaks down. This story happened to have a happier ending, but many result in much scarier outcomes.
Admin
Nice to see a real WTF. Spelling is pretty poor but at least the story itself is miles more entertaining and less poorly falsified than the last few.
TRWTF is that a program whose only job is to send an F5 keypress to a window every few minutes can crash.
Admin
Why does that last line make me think of the ITAPPMONROBOT?
Just a minute - is this the same Erik? In which case: respect.
I found myself sitting in a hotel bar once with an entire tableful of IT / computing personnel who had never heard that tale. Storytelling paradise.
Admin
The happy ending (with no massage in sight) IS the WTF.
Admin
One of the cords of KD1232 when connected to LPT1, will produce realtime information printout for calls happening there. All the listening side of my application to do is to emulate a printer accepting the input, parse the plaintext output and feed it to the database (which I think is what the "Feeder" here is doing) and the client part will conveniently perform analysis to the captured data.
How hard is that?
Admin
Yes, yes (and/or stupid), money, yes.
Any more questions?
Admin
Admin
Now that's a satisfactory WTF for once!
(I'd wish Lorne Kates would write more, though not really WTFy, his stories were the best writing around here. Bus this "Hanzo" nonsense... argh!)
Admin
If a coworker came into my office and yelled "FIX IT NOW YOU PIPSQUEAK." They are more likely to receive my fist in their face as a reply.
My guess is this is the usual embellishment bullshit that adds nothing to the story.
Admin
Uh, asterisk server? Not everyone gets a PBX from a vendor.
Admin
...and the new app Erik built included a function to manage the routing of service calls to agents automatically, thus making Dan and his big board pointless. Dan was fired, given the ancient laptop as severance, and the big board was re-purposed to stream from someone's Netflix/Hulu etc. A company weekly multimedia R&R party was established thanks to the money Erik saved them, and at one such R&R party he met a beautiful female engineer who would become his wife, and the two completed each other perfectly.
On Dan's last day, as the poor pathetic unskilled idiotic clod who dared to insult a 1337 individual strode out into the rain and bitter cold that were to be his only companions for the short remainder of his worthless life after his beauty-queen wife leaves him, Erik bid him farewell: 'fare thee well, pea-brain!'
fin.
Admin
While on call at my company, early this year, I saw a COBOL program, still in use, from 1993. It created a user report, but died and caused a MSGW on the AS400.
Admin
"Managers? Hmph. It's "only" the helpdesk, so it's considered perfectly sufficient to hire based on a generic MBA or lesser degree only, rather than search for someone who's done helpdesk themselves and can understand the needs of the staff."
As long as they've suffered through ITIL training, right? Hahahahaha
Admin
You have stumbled on the secret WTF. It is as you say. However because the company was too cheap back in the day to purchase said software from the PBX company, or the software was broken, someone wrote a script to extract the information from the PBX's maintenance interface.
Admin
I didn't see any happy ending in the story. Is the happy ending in the HTML comments? I want the version of the story, which includes the happy ending, as well as a more detailed exposition of events leading to it.
Admin
CCC from Avaya uses a SQL database.
I know this because I used it to rewrite a load of reports in SSRS because the stock ones are overwhelmingly shit.
Admin
[quote user="Dave"]CCC from Avaya uses a SQL database.
I know this because I used it to rewrite a load of reports in SSRS because the stock ones are overwhelmingly shit.[/quote]
In response to this btw.. FFS never realised how bad to navigate this site was...
[quote user="the legendary gibbon"][quote user="ip-guru"]I call BS
Software to monitor call volumes requires considerable integration with the customers PBX (I am a PBX Engineer) and is usually only available from the manufacturers of the PBX. although the quality of this software can sometimes be poor resolving the issue would be the responsibility of the PBX maintainer & not the in House IT team. [/quote]
Admin
sigh, I give up
Admin
I really like the cat picture and text; especially as we did actually order "Om nom nom" cat food. Quite expensive; as it comes with super duper all natural ingredients. We gave up on that; our feed receivers did not at all like this input.
( Om nom nom seems to be a German product; no idea if it is available in other countries )
Admin
TRWTF is the last sentence, where Erik decides to rewrite an app that only breaks once in several years, and the break has an easy fix.
Or, alternatively, Erik will improve some unmaintainable tangle of code, which is even worse.
Admin
And the rest of us should care... why exactly?
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nice proof reading.
Admin