• (cs) in reply to rawsteak
    rawsteak:
    this is why i've been trying to convince my job to get me an optimus keyboard

    http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/optimus/

    anyone can pirate ms office software, but this keyboard? I, um, uh, .... drool

    i will also accept this keyboard as a runner up

    http://www.daskeyboard.com/

    Addendum (2008-01-30 10:02): I might justify a $1500 keyboard, but $80 for das keyboard with blank keys???

    here's a cheap DIY solution: http://www.saneasylum.com/articles/590

    and here is a cheaper and lazier solution: http://hooleon.com/miva/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=KBH&Product_Code=OV-0645

    A regular keyboard with the labels scrubbed off is not a decent substitute for DasKeyboard.

    Aside from the complete lack of labelling, it's also designed as a successor to IBM's Model M keyboard, which has been much loved for its feel and comfort.

    The tactile response of the keys is also carefully designed. IIRC, the keyboard is divided into several regions within which the keys provide differing levels of resistance to compensate for the differing strengths of the typist's fingers.

    A shitty keyboard with no labels is still a shitty keyboard. In fact, the optimus keyboard is apparently awful to type on. Shiny bits are completely irrelevant on a piece of hardware you'll spend most of your time covering with your hands anyway (actually, you're not a manager, are you? that way I could understand your lack of interest in the actual quality of the keyboard).

  • (cs) in reply to Watch Thine Fingers
    Watch Thine Fingers:
    How did the original dev type the close bracket if he couldn't type a zero?

    I'm pretty sure it's just a joke.

  • Dr. Furter (unregistered)

    While I was working for a major national bank, subcontracting for a major national IT services/software/hardware provider to the tune of about $300 an hour I was tasked with installing and configuring a web analytics package to analyze the traffic to their main website which ran on about $5 million dollars worth of servers. The computer they provide me for this task? They gave me a desktop PC which had been decommissioned because it was deemed to slow to run Microsoft Office. But wait, it gets better!

    They had no cube for me to sit in so they decide I can sit in the data center, the 50 degree with wind blowing up your leg from the raised floor data center. But wait it gets better!

    I don’t have a key to the data center so if I ever leave the data center I will then need to find someone to let me back in. There is nothing like hanging out around the data center door without your PC, waiting for some kindly sole who knows me to let me in so my fingers can stiffen in the whirling cold air.

    I pointed out that the machine they wanted to analyze the website traffic for their site getting millions of hits a day actually costs around as much as they pay for me to do 45 minutes of work and likely was not up to the task. I tried to explain that maybe if they need an enterprise class web analytics system a desktop too slow to run Microsoft Office might not be sufficient but we persevered with the attempt anyway.

    After about 2 weeks of trying, the budget was dried up and product was not selected for doing web analytics.

    There, that explains about 12,000 of those $2 ATM fees people have to pay.

  • (cs) in reply to mallard
    mallard:
    Watch Thine Fingers:
    How did the original dev type the close bracket if he couldn't type a zero?

    The real WTF(tm) is that he managed to type "if", yet has to type "ov" instead of "of".

    maybe the f just broke after that last f in of WTV

  • Steve H. (unregistered) in reply to AdT
    AdT:
    John Doe:
    Here is a handy code "template" for all of you who are working on a small budget: 
    !"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{|}~

    Thanks a lot, wiserak, now would you please tell me how I an opy and paste the haraters?

    CTRL+INSERT and SHIFT+INSERT.

    or in Internet Explorer:

    ALT+E, Down, Down, Enter ALT+E, Down, Down, Down, Enter

  • Rourke (unregistered)

    Worst work environment: coding at a F1 Grand Prix and following racecars around the country for minor events only of interest to hardcore revheads and the broadcasters who serve them ads. 5:30am setup, grab dinner at the hotel if you can when you return around 9:30pm.

    Every time it's a new portable hut, the massive graphics engines sit next to us, so we need the air-con at 14 degrees all day. They pump out 75dB along with the heat, but that's OK because the cars go past every minute or two and completely drown them out.

    The tables and "chairs" are constructed from whatever is handy. One F1GP the table was apparently made of treated wood which gave me spectacular hives on both forearms. The solution was to cover it with all the useless starting-grid printouts to avoid contact.

    Ahh, the good old days. Been out of it for a couple of years now.

  • (cs)

    I don't see how this person could have been been smart enough to figure out workarounds such as these for his code, but couldn't be bothered to run %SystemRoot%\system32\osk.exe (on screen keyboard application)

  • JohnFx (unregistered)

    Hasn't this guy heard of the character map utility built into Windows? My wife used the thing for a whole day to send me e-mail reminding me to stop by Fry's and pick up a new keyboard to replace the one filled with coffee.

  • (cs) in reply to rawsteak
    rawsteak:
    this is why i've been trying to convince my job to get me an optimus keyboard

    http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/optimus/

    anyone can pirate ms office software, but this keyboard? I, um, uh, .... drool

    i will also accept this keyboard as a runner up

    http://www.daskeyboard.com/

    Yeah, but can you clean it in the dishwasher?

  • Persimmon (unregistered) in reply to Chandler

    My girlfriend has a laptop with a 'p' key that hasn't worked in 6 years. She's gotten pretty adept at hitting Ctrl+V every time she needs to type a 'p'.

    The worst part is, I got her a new laptop for Christmas, but she still has to copy a 'p' every time she starts it up.

  • (cs)

    Dammit, Baughn, you're telling funny stories to random strangers before us? I feel betrayed. It is like a knife in my back.

    A KNIFE IN MY BACK

  • Skoop (unregistered) in reply to Grovesy

    Now in the days when I was young, we could only afford two keys on our single computer (on/off key and 0/1 key). And the office was a rain-sodden old matchbox in the middle of the street in the middle of the wilderness, four hundred miles from the nearest bus stop, uphill both ways. We had to carry electricity to the office in glass jars strapped to our backs.

  • Erik (unregistered) in reply to Baughn

    If you were on a Norwegian keybord, how on earth did you manage to type a '=', and not a '0', since they are on the same key on a Norwegian keyboard? I call this a hoax!!!!

    (grin)...

    ;)

  • wtf (unregistered)

    if(!exitStatus)

  • Cloak (unregistered) in reply to Grovesy
    Grovesy:
    lizardfoot:
    Grovesy:
    Having left MS a year ago, where I was somewhat spoilt. We had purpose build team rooms with white board walls, 50" HDTV, 24" wide screens on each desk and brand spanking new decent laptops and an xbox (we could play against people in the other team rooms).

    Next contract, ended up on a customer’s site which had no room for the dev team so we ended up in the canteen and a couple of desks that were stored in the warehouse. Next contract ended up in a corridor next to the kettle and microwave... I ended up bringing in my own equipment.

    This contract, I am perched on the of a desk, yesterday I ended up in the canteen for the day and Monday I actually at one point sat on the floor with the laptop on my knees. A mere three das in I have yet to meet the project manager or the team I’m leading... I believe they are around somewhere.

    At this rate I think I'm for the fore mentioned office next

    Addendum (2008-01-30 08:46): evidently, reading that back with all those types I have lost the ability to type.

    You were LUCKY! In my last contract, we sat in a cardboard box in the middle of a freeway, we were forced to work 23 hours a day, given nothing but mud to eat for lunch and beaten with sticks every time a bug was found in the code.

    pshh 23hours days!, we had to invent a time slowing machine so we could work 28hours. We were beaten with sticks if we stopped typing, nutrients were fed to us via a drip with a rusty needle and we had to wear giant nappies.

    There are 24 hours in a day. If that is not enough you have to work the nights, too.

  • Cloak (unregistered) in reply to Daramarak
    Daramarak:
    I have been in the same situation, it is *possible* to code by using cut and paste. (Poor man)

    Yes, but who wants to do that?

  • Baughn (unregistered) in reply to Erik

    It may be a hoax, but it's not my hoax. I actually saw that line, and it actually looked like that. Given some of the other WTFs on this site, are you really that surprised?

  • Gareth (unregistered) in reply to Michael

    You ran? We were not allowed to run, we had to walk to comply with health and safety, while wearing heavy steel toe cap boots and dragging a sled behind us with a huge array of solar panels to power our 8086 machines!

  • (cs)

    The ,erriest thing qbout the azerty keyboqrd is thisM In Belgiu, the lqyout is slightly different fro, the french one: It hqs brqces qnd exclq,qtion points so,ezhere else; qnd frqnkly; I hqve no ideq zhy:

  • DevWF (unregistered) in reply to tonecoke
    tonecoke:
    When my IT programming job was outsourced to India, I just upped and opened an Indian restuarant.

    That is hilarious! Good food, smart thinking : )

  • (cs) in reply to Rourke
    Rourke:
    Worst work environment: coding at a F1 Grand Prix and following racecars around the country for minor events only of interest to hardcore revheads and the broadcasters who serve them ads. 5:30am setup, grab dinner at the hotel if you can when you return around 9:30pm.

    Every time it's a new portable hut, the massive graphics engines sit next to us, so we need the air-con at 14 degrees all day. They pump out 75dB along with the heat, but that's OK because the cars go past every minute or two and completely drown them out.

    The tables and "chairs" are constructed from whatever is handy. One F1GP the table was apparently made of treated wood which gave me spectacular hives on both forearms. The solution was to cover it with all the useless starting-grid printouts to avoid contact.

    Ahh, the good old days. Been out of it for a couple of years now.

    I would give your firstborn child to work near F1. Maybe that's just me, though.

  • Nubs (unregistered) in reply to Grovesy

    ROFLMAO

  • Mr Fudge (unregistered) in reply to jgayhart
    jgayhart:
    Watch Thine Fingers:
    How did the original dev type the close bracket if he couldn't type a zero?

    Maybe the Shift key(s) was sticking? Of course he would have to type most everything with the Caps Lock on. And, he would have problems with the equals sign.

    Maybe he was could type Alt+041? Of course, that would assume he had a working numeric key pad.

    Sometimes when my keyboard dies, I have to use my mouse to copy and paste characters to save my documents before restarting.

    Not all keyboards have the same layout... my closed bracket on my danish layout keyboard is on the same key as 9 and sqaure bracket ")9]".. But it does seem odd that both the numeric and the "normal" zero was broken...

    darnit.. I cannot write the captcha.. some ov my keys are broke

  • Nathan (unregistered) in reply to mallard

    Probably used cut-n-paste.

    He could find another 'if', and another ')', but there wasn't a '0' to be found.

  • - (unregistered) in reply to kasn
    kasn:
    @Watch Thine Fingers && JaeRae:

    not on every keyboard layout the closing brace is on shift+0. On german for example ist shift + 9

    Norwegian and Danish keyborads juse Alt Gr + 7. Did I mention that my favorite language is Python? ;-)

  • - (unregistered) in reply to akatherder
    akatherder:
    I think this is obvious, but I just learned some lessons on murdering your employees' morale. All of my co-workers and I had P3's with 512-768MB of RAM and 15" CRTs running Windows 2000. Me and one of the other developers (a contractor no less) ended up with dual flat screens, Windows XP, dual core processors and a couple GB of RAM. We assumed it was a phased approach to upgrade everyone. The other two developers never got an upgrade. No one else has heard anything about them getting upgrades.

    That's a management WTF. Even if your manager doesn't have the influence to get them new computers, he should have given two monitors to them.

  • - (unregistered) in reply to -
    -:
    akatherder:
    I think this is obvious, but I just learned some lessons on murdering your employees' morale. All of my co-workers and I had P3's with 512-768MB of RAM and 15" CRTs running Windows 2000. Me and one of the other developers (a contractor no less) ended up with dual flat screens, Windows XP, dual core processors and a couple GB of RAM. We assumed it was a phased approach to upgrade everyone. The other two developers never got an upgrade. No one else has heard anything about them getting upgrades.

    That's a management WTF. Even if your manager doesn't have the influence to get them new computers, he should have given two monitors to them.

    I meant, he should have given two of the new monitors to them. Two people can't have two flat screen monitors each while the other two have to settle with a 15" CRT...

  • (cs)

    On top of all the other problems they faced, they had to be on a constant lookout for the dreaded "division by (3-3)" error.

  • Annekat (unregistered)

    At my company, they kept the IT office door open so the workers could come in if they needed anything. It was 10 feet by 20 feet, with 3 occupants.

    Right outside the door was the warehouse, where the dock doors were kept open through the summer.

    I sat in the heat and worried about my PC's suffering as FLIES landed on me. Whenever I tried to close the office door, I would get dirty looks from the girl who had been there longest, and she would get up and open it again.

  • Martin (unregistered) in reply to Michael
    Michael:
    Grovesy:
    pshh 23hours days!, we had to invent a time slowing machine so we could work 28hours. We were beaten with sticks if we stopped typing, nutrients were fed to us via a drip with a rusty needle and we had to wear giant nappies.
    You had a time slowing machine? We were forced to run west-ward to different time-zones to work 28 hours!
    In a similar situation, our team decided to move the pole. Imagine, in a single step you could surpass three time zones! However, the north pole was already occupied by an outsourced developer team and finally we got fired in transit to the south pole, because the source control system collapsed when we inadvertedly crossed the international date line.
  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to Gareth

    You had a sled to pull behind you? We had to carry the panels on our back.

  • arkal (unregistered) in reply to Skoop
    Skoop:
    Now in the days when I was young, we could only afford two keys on our single computer (on/off key and 0/1 key).
    We often ran out of '0's and were stuck with '1's!
  • ZephyrProcess (unregistered) in reply to Skoop
    Skoop:
    Now in the days when I was young, we could only afford two keys on our single computer (on/off key and 0/1 key). And the office was a rain-sodden old matchbox in the middle of the street in the middle of the wilderness, four hundred miles from the nearest bus stop, uphill both ways. We had to carry electricity to the office in glass jars strapped to our backs.
    You had 1s?
  • stan (unregistered)

    Does no one remember the on screen keyboard app?

  • (cs) in reply to stan
    stan:
    Does no one remember the on screen keyboard app?
    Other than the several others who have quoted the on-screen keyboard app in this thread, no. And probably, by extension, the tens of thousands of other geeks who have heard of the on-screen keyboard app.

    But probably not the frustrated Norwegian in question, no.

    And, if I can put myself in his shoes, I think I'd rather type 3-3 than fire up an otherwise worthless application, anyway.

    Goddamn these GUI monomaniacs.

    012f!

  • belialNZ (unregistered) in reply to Annekat

    This reminds me of my workplace. Arrived at work a few months ago and discovered that my HD had developed large numbers of errors and was making that wonderful "head touching platter" sound.

    After enquiring with the IT guys about spare HD's, and being told that we had none, I went and saw my manager, explained the problem, and asked if I could order, or better yet just go and get, a replacement HD so I could get back to work.

    The answer was "No". Which left me staring blankly for several seconds. Fortunately the conversation ended there as one of the IT guys had salvaged a HD out of a unused box and interrupted.

  • Alcari (unregistered) in reply to Gareth
    Gareth:
    You ran? We were not allowed to run, we had to walk to comply with health and safety, while wearing heavy steel toe cap boots and dragging a sled behind us with a huge array of solar panels to power our 8086 machines!

    You had solar panels and 8086 machines? You had boots? We had to used a magnetised needle and a spool of magnetic tape, while crawling barefoot through snow, uphill.

  • Slayd (unregistered) in reply to Grovesy

    When did you work for NASA?

  • JimBean (unregistered) in reply to Gareth

    pshh..8086 machines ? We had to re-design the abacus after first learning how to be farmers so we could grow the bamboo for the abacus. THEN, we invented the decimal system, added "memory sticks" to our abacuses while researching the new binary number system. All this time washing and cooking for a family of ten.

  • A S (unregistered) 
    if (! exitStatus)  // Sorry, some ov my keys are broken
  • vector (unregistered) in reply to mallard

    You can use IDE autocompletion feature for that :)

  • Dmitry-Sh (unregistered)

    real_programmers_dont_need_space_chars

    As for "if" and brackets - perhaps, this part of code has been added before.

    Personally, I would use "if (!exitStatus) // I don't need a zero"

  • Jack Hanson (unregistered)

    That's the saddest programming story I've ever read.

  • sauce (unregistered) in reply to jgayhart

    He could have had intellisense automatically fill the close brace ')' when typing the '('.

    As for the if and ov situation, intellisense could possibly explain this.

    If I was somehow stuck in the same environment, I'd have been using cut and paste to get the characters I needed ( which is another he could have gotten the if, but doesn't explain why there's no zero ).

  • Chris H (unregistered)

    If I have faulty equipment, and the company is unwilling to update, upgrade or replace it, I will take my own in. Would rather enjoy what I'm doing on my own equipment, then hate every second of it on theirs.

    My last job, I took a whole desk in because they had me using broken door across a few boxes stacked on either end.

  • On the Cheap (unregistered) in reply to jgayhart

    I got a job at a place that was similar. The keyboard worked but it was so dirty I couldn't even read the letters. I asked for another one.

    The 15" monitor was 45 degrees to the left on top of a stack of phone books 30" above the table. I got a sore neck in half an hour. Right behind it was a glaring hot window I couldn't open which made the crappy screen almost impossible to read.

    They wanted me to copy their database app and produce a new version for a different customer in one week. The pressure they applied was ridiculous. It was already a week late, and they wanted it ASAP.

    I quit after 2 days and they they told me I wasn't behaving professionally.

  • (cs) in reply to John Doe
    John Doe:
    Here is a handy code "template" for all of you who are working on a small budget: 
    !"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{|}~

    You're missing some important keys if you're working on a multilanguage application:

    áéíóúàèìòùâêîôûäëïöüÑñ
  • ad (unregistered) in reply to jgayhart

    Well, if he could type Alt + 041, he could type "0", right?

  • zoki (unregistered) in reply to Izzy

    Who said that his 1's worked either?

  • eagle275 (unregistered)

    Somehow my previous employer was also on a slim budget.

    All staff except the 3 office-ladies ( 1x company secretary , 1x assistance to the bosses 1x reception and programmer) were not given a computer - if you needed one - and as software developer and teacher (for software developing and databases and other technologies "in that direction" like XML+XSLT and so on) you could buy one - with your own money.

    The company (rather the 2 bosses) suggested ASUS notebooks - but its not easy to purchase one that cost a whole month's pay, when you started work after several months of looking for a job fresh from college.

    Somehow typical for the company was their high staff fluctuation. The lead developer and somehow also marketing man presenting the company as they invited to show what they did - and what people they wanted, was gone when we arrived about half a year later - after going through intensive training felt necessary to work for them - and less than a year later I and some co-workers hired during that time were let go , coz funding was cut down by the unemployment agency ...

    Another small wtf in the afterthought - one of the bosses once told me the "president" of our local unemployment agency "hated" the company... Quite a surprise - the unemployment agency paid the company money for each prospective worker they trained - while the company secretly bought the training company - then the agency supports the company during the first year of each new employee - only to see them let go as soon as the funding ran out ....

    And to add insult to injury - we were paid salaries that - after deducting taxes and social insurance costs - gave us a mere 100$ over our counties poverty line - and my last 2 paychecks "surprisingly" didnt arrive ..

    I find dozens of people who suffered by this companies practises ...

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