The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

mott555 · 2013-11-14 Reply Admin

The Hanzo stories aren't that great but they aren't horrible either. Keep them coming, it seems to upset the other readers and my inner troll enjoys that!

no laughing matter · 2013-11-14 Reply Admin

So the term Service Level Agreement seems to never have come up in this fictional university.

From the story: "Since the coin-op company didn’t have tech support, they had to rely on the printer manufacturer, RadGaBa, for assistance."

How would tech support of the coin-op company have helped if the task required was a reset of the printer OS (disguised as a "reset of the printer ROM" by the always technically incompetent author of the Hanzo stories)?

"The go-to man in the IT department"

Go-to considered harmful! Hanzo stories considered the opposite of suspenseful!

2013-11-14 Reply Admin

Today is the first day I have ever not clicked Read More on a TDWTF. All I needed to see was Hanzo.

2013-11-14 Reply Admin

TRWTF is that I expected a Hanzo story to be interesting. You know what, if you don't have anything worth posting for the day - just skip a day. I'd rather 1 good article a week than this tripe.

Go back to your obsession with that stupid book and portraying this person as a "Ninja". The Nick Burns skits on SNL were entertaining....this is like listening to a 5 year old try to play the flute. It's cute at first, then it's funny and then it's just plain sad.

And that's what this site has become. Sad.

operagost · 2013-11-14 Reply Admin

Please throw Hanzo in the fires of Mountain Doom. Thank you.

Mmm... Mountain Dewm. *glug glug glug*

2013-11-14 Reply Admin

henke37:
Let me introduce you to the print job queue. Each computer can send a print job to the printer without any payment happening.
The printer has a queue of print jobs. Jobs need to be paid and authorized (good for printing secret stuff) before the printer will start processing it. The printer provides a menu to select the job to pay for, next to all the usual settings like contrast. It then communicates with the payment system to charge people for the job.

Stop quoting backwards! Also, NO NO NO DO NOT EVER PRINT 'SECRET STUFF' TO A COPIER. They're not likely to have storage wiped when they go back to the factory, as has recently been outed publicly; all that "secret stuff" is free for the next owner or malicious tech to grab.

CAPTCHA: dolor - You've already started saying it, I don't need to put it here.

2013-11-14 Reply Admin

Tom:
In English, "Hessen" really is "Hesse", so that's actually right. Though that doesn't explain away the impossibility of a university having a campus in another state...

Rubbish! Several UK universities now have campuses (campi?) in China!

2013-11-14 Reply Admin

The header image perfectly captures the feelings of someone reading the phrase "Hanz M., AKA Hanzo"

2013-11-14 Reply Admin

no laughing matter:
So the term Service Level Agreement seems to never have come up in this fictional university.
From the story: "Since the coin-op company didn’t have tech support, they had to rely on the printer manufacturer, RadGaBa, for assistance."

How would tech support of the coin-op company have helped if the task required was a reset of the printer OS (disguised as a "reset of the printer ROM" by the always technically incompetent author of the Hanzo stories)?

"The go-to man in the IT department"

Go-to considered harmful! Hanzo stories considered the opposite of suspenseful!

Well the story did specify that management chose the one supplier without on site service. That was likely also the cheapest one, and I assume that they were cheap because they didn't offer a SLA (or charged extra for one, and management thought "well how often does my printer at home break?, once a year and that is fixed by bying a new toner cartridge, so we do not need that....")

Yours Yazeran

Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer

2013-11-14 Reply Admin

Rhywden:
I'm still waiting for the writer to notice that the state is called "Hessen" with an "n" at the end.

Dir ist schon bekannt, das es sowas wie "Sprachen" gibt, und auch geografische/administrative Namen unterschiedliche Schreibweisen in unterschiedlichen Sprachen haben?

München -> Munich Köln -> Cologne Hessen -> Hesse (guck halt in der Wikipedia nach)

Rhywden · 2013-11-14 Reply Admin

Sir Galahad the Pure:
Rhywden:
I'm still waiting for the writer to notice that the state is called "Hessen" with an "n" at the end.

Dir ist schon bekannt, das es sowas wie "Sprachen" gibt, und auch geografische/administrative Namen unterschiedliche Schreibweisen in unterschiedlichen Sprachen haben?

München -> Munich Köln -> Cologne Hessen -> Hesse (guck halt in der Wikipedia nach)

Okay. So, since when does Germany have something like the "University of Bavaria" or "University of Lower Saxony"?

The city states don't count. Hessen is not a city.

2013-11-14 Reply Admin

It's like they're trying to channel the Acts of Gord and they're just not up to the challenge. Kind of like Mandatory Fun Day trying to do the Dilbert TV show in printed form (different from the Dilbert comic) and never quite having anything fall into place.

2013-11-14 Reply Admin

Rhywden:
Okay. So, since when does Germany have something like the "University of Bavaria" or "University of Lower Saxony"?

OK, you win. We don't, I was just trolling...

Also, we do have it since approx. 2009: http://en.nth-online.org/aboutus/ , but they call it "Niedersachsen Institutes of Technology".

2013-11-14 Reply Admin

[quote user="Dogsworth"]The Hanzo stories have hit a new low point.[/quote] No they haven't... this one was godawful, but so were all the rest of them. I wouldn't say this was any worse than any of the others, just equally as bad.

[quote user="Dogsworth"]The Hanzo stories have hit a new low point.[/quote]Is Erik Gern just trolling?[/quote] <canttelliftrollingorjuststupid.gif>

2013-11-14 Reply Admin

YES! Another Hanzo story! Thank God. I've been waiting forever for this. yay!

JimM · 2013-11-14 Reply Admin

It's funny how, despite everyone so hating Hanzo stories and all, the commenting rate for this story has been much faster than any other story this week.

I guess we hate Hanzo so much that we feel we must spend extra time looking at all the advertising to cleanse him from our brains? ;) if I was getting paid per advertsing impression (or had a target impressions/month to hit) and I wanted to up my count, I think the first thing I'd do would be to write a Hanzo story, 'cause I'd be guaranteed to get twice as many page views from all the people who felt the need to tell me how bad the Hanzo stories are (repeatedlym, every time I Npost one, because they seem to think I can't read...).

Sadly, this story seems to lack a genuine tehcnical WTF (beyond the printer being so horribly unstable once you add the coin-meter, of course). The biggest obvious WTF is that they agreed a supply contract with a company and didn't ensure they had an 8hr service SLA. But then, being education, they probably didn't realise they needed an SLA (I had to tell my line manager what SLA stood for last week sigh)...

2013-11-14 Reply Admin

"During that week, IT office got hundreds of complaints, from students who needed term papers, professors who needed syllabi, and other departments who needed TPS reports."

While the third example is cute, I'm having trouble placing a week in the year that students are printing term papers the same time as professors are printing syllabi. Good stories can have embellishment, but it's this kind of just plain made up business that disinterests me.

2013-11-14 Reply Admin

JimM:
(I had to tell my line manager what SLA stood for last week)

Seven letter acryonym?

2013-11-14 Reply Admin

mott555:
The Hanzo stories aren't that great but they aren't horrible either. Keep them coming, it seems to upset the other readers and my inner troll enjoys that!

I, for one, am pleased to see the overwhelming support for Hanzo stories. All those nasty posts (all probably by the same guy) compared to the massive outcry for "more Hanzo".

As for the actual story, I'll add my support. That was a well-plotted piece of non-claptrap that never made me want to retch.

CAPTCHA: odio -- a reasonable descriptor of Hanzo stories

2013-11-14 Reply Admin

Stopped reading after: "Like a ninja in the night,"

chubertdev · 2013-11-14 Reply Admin

This is why we can’t have nice things

THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS

2013-11-14 Reply Admin

+1

2013-11-14 Reply Admin

You know, when a network television show jumps the shark in the first few episodes, they cancel it.

just sayin...

2013-11-14 Reply Admin

Dogsworth:
The Hanzo stories have hit a new low point. Is Erik Gern just trolling?

I believe Erik Gern is Hanzo. Or, Gertrude, who I'm predicting will reveal in a future episode that she's been having sex-dreams about Hanzo.

HardwareGeek · 2013-11-14 Reply Admin

Balu:
I'm still waiting for the WTF in this story...?

There are several. These are the ones that stand out in my mind: • The stupid anonymization fail, despite this failure having been ridiculed in every story posted to date. • Hanzo blathering about ninjas, monsters, etc. • Resetting the ROM. WTF does this even mean? • The fact that Erik continues to post these stories.

None of them relate to IT, or whatever the author presumably thought was a WTF. Bad tech support can be a WTF, but this doesn't even come close; this is just run-of-the-mill.

2013-11-14 Reply Admin

toon:
For those of you not familiar with German topography: Hamburg is way up in the north west of Germany, and Dresden is in the east. The two cities are about 450-500 kilometers apart.

For those of you not familiar with weird European units: that's about 280-310 miles. ;-)

2013-11-14 Reply Admin

Trixi:
At least the university of Dresden had a really WTF moment this week: they kicked out ALL their students via email.
See http://www.spiegel.de/unispiegel/studium/rechner-panne-an-der-tu-dresden-37-000-studenten-exmatrikuliert-a-932881.html (in german).

The story is nice, but the storytelling lacks. You know, there's the boring way, the engaging way, and the Hanzo way:

Where have all the students gone?

Like a ninja in the night, Hanz M., AKA Hanzo, stalks across Hesse University's Dresden campus. The go-to man in the IT department, he fixes the messes that others leave behind. This is none of his stories.

It was a dark and stormy day when Hanzo was sitting in his office, watching his posters when he started to hear students outside on the yard starting to shout, cry and curse loudly. Not that this would normally bother him, but something seemed unusual today. Maybe it was just that the number of students jumping out of their windows seemed higher than usual or it was just his imagination, but he did have an ominous feeling. This feeling was suddenly confirmed by the most painful and loudest of noises you could imagine. "Sorry, I should really get another ringtone," he apologized to Gertrude, "Yes, sir, I understand. -- The dean needs to see us."

The university's dean was default_character_description(rand(), GENDER_MALE). When Hanzo and Gertrude entered his office, he was obviously not amused about something. But he managed to keep his cool and explain to them the events that had led to his current predicament.

The story unfolds

"You know, I recently thought to myself, we must have a number of dead entries in our student database. Students who left without notice, data entry errors, whatever ..."

"Sure", Hanzo nodded. This is bound to happen in any large database, as a professional like him knows only too well.

"So I continued to think to myself, why not let's get rid of them. I really like a clean database. So that was the obvious thing to do and I decided to go ahead and do it."

Hanzo wondered: "I didn't notice any requirements for this cleanup work on our project pinboard ..."

"Oh no," the dean interrupted him, "I preferred to outsource it."

"You hired a contractor?"

"Not exactly ..."

"Or your nephew?", Getrude giggled.

"Gentlemen and, erm, gentlewomen, please keep serious! Contractors are too expensive, but my ..., uhm ..., well, my brother's son Andreaz," he continued while theatrically pushing aside a curtain, revealing to Hanzo's and Getrude's view the boy sitting behind the big screen in the corner, "is really a wiz with computers, right, Andro? So, in the first pass, I decided to purge all those entries who hadn't accessed their emails for more than a year. Certainly, these can't be active students, right? So I had Andro code this up for me and that's when things started to go crazy. For all we can tell, it's your mail server that's somehow gotten stuck, and it's clearly your failure of not administrating it properly. Do you confess guilty?"

"Just a minute of your precious time, your honor, if I may, perhaps we could be allowed to take a look at the mail server logs, please?", Hanzo begged.

"Well, if you think that helps you get your neck out of that noose ..."

Unbelievingly, Hanzo and Gertrude browsed though the abovementioned logs. At first, everything appeared normal:

Sending exmatriculation mail to [email protected] ...
Sending exmatriculation mail to ziegfried.zebaztian.erzbaron.von.gambolputty.zu.zachzen.und.zazzenztadt@hesse.edu.de ...
Sending exmatriculation mail to [email protected] ...

Those were all quite clearly the email addresses of former students who for one reason or another had left the university prematurely. After reading through a long list of such entries, suddenly Hanzo noticed something unusual:

Sending exmatriculation mail to [email protected] ...

"Funny, it's the last log entry. That might be because that's where it's stuck," Gertude observed mindfully.

More complications

"What about this address?", Hanzo asked the dean.

"It goes to all students, for general announcements and suchlike. Shouldn't this be obvious to you?", he replied condescendingly.

"Good news!", Getrude exclaimed. "The folks from central IT in Berlin are already on their way, kind of. And I'm now on the support line with, hold on -- Yes, I know it's not a printer problem, hold on. -- I think I can get their techs to, hold on -- Alright, do connect me. -- to visit us no later than next month, so ..."

"Why are you calling central IT and ... the printer support line?", the Dean wondered.

"That's what we usually do at this point in the story", she informed him nonchalantly.

Unirritated, Hanzo continued addressing the dean: "So how often do you think, [email protected] logs in to check their emails?"

"It's not a person, it's just a list, how would they be supposed to log in and ... ah, uhm, might this be somehow related to the fact that our ..."

"Your program sends the exmatriculation mail to all 37000 students and this just takes a while. And might have other consequences."

Suddenly the dean's face dropped, realizing the whole urgency of the situation. If immediate action was not to be taken, the university might run out of students by tomorrow. In a panicked voice he decreed, "this must be stopped. I'm looking at you", he continued while looking at Hanzo, "it's still your mail server and therefore your problem."

"The mail server is working fine. It's just doing what it's told to do," Hanzo said in an inconsiderate moment of defiance, immediately regretting his words.

"Working fine? Working fine? That's what you call working fine?" The dean continued berating Hanzo for two hours during which our poor hero could hardly get a word in between, let alone try to explain the situation. But he would not have been a real ninja if he had not had another trick up his sleeve. All of a sudden, he raised his cloak, revealing to the astonished dean his both hands covered in orthopedic casts as well as a medical certificate, cleverly attached to the inside of his cloak and now plainly visible, confirming Hanzo's inability to have been using his upper extremities for the last two weeks, following a tragic accident involving a wooden chair, coffee and some electricity, about which you, dear reader, can look forward to read in one of our upcoming installments.

"As you see," Hanzo pointed out victoriously, "I could not possibly have done anything bad, or in fact anything at all to our mail server."

An unexpected turn of events

While the dean continued Hanzo's berating, it slowly dawned on him that the guilty party had to be searched for in another direction. After less than another hour, he suddenly stopped and turned his rage to his brother's son, with twice the force: "Bad boy! No ice-cream for you tonight. And you'll be in bed at nine-o-clock!"

"That was close", he slighed of relief while the boy sneaked out of the room. Not sneaking like a ninja, rather sneaking in sadness, well deserved.

"Actually," Gertude interfered, "the mischievous mails are still being sent."

"Not to worry!", Hanzo exclaimed. This was an excellent opportunity to let his ninja-like abilities shine. "I know just what to do now."

The denouement

Hours later, we see Hanzo and Getrude back in their own office, sipping champaign. Champaign was their code word for the water from the tap in the bathroom upstairs, probably because it contained just as many bubbles.

"The end of a truly eventful day," Gertude philosophized. "Though I do wonder one thing ..."

"What?", Hanzo asked courteously.

"You mentioned that you knew just what to do."

"I did", he confirmed, knowing exactly where this conversation would lead.

"But you never told us."

"Nope!"

"Neither did you make any changes to the servers ..."

"With my hands?"

"... or had us do anything at all."

"That's right."

"So you didn't actually do anything to stop the server sending out mail upon mail forevermore? If it hadn't caught fire, I mean."

"I know", he smiled knowingly.

Gertrude, whose hearing impairment made her understand just "no", asked one last question: "Why, then, did you tell the dean that you knew just what to do?"

"Well, that's easy!", Hanzo now grinned widely, having awaited this question the whole evening. Quoting mismatched sentences from a book he had never read, he triumphantly finished: "That's why!"

2013-11-14 Reply Admin

I bet you watched House MD. even though there's not Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital?

There wasn't one but then they opened one after the show.

http://www.princetonhcs.org/phcs-home/what-we-do/university-medical-center-of-princeton-at-plainsboro.aspx

2013-11-14 Reply Admin

foo AKA fooo:
Trixi:
At least the university of Dresden had a really WTF moment this week: they kicked out ALL their students via email.
See http://www.spiegel.de/unispiegel/studium/rechner-panne-an-der-tu-dresden-37-000-studenten-exmatrikuliert-a-932881.html (in german).
The story is nice, but the storytelling lacks. You know, there's the boring way, the engaging way, and the Hanzo way:

Where have all the students gone?

Like a ninja in the night, Hanz M., AKA Hanzo, stalks across Hesse University's Dresden campus. The go-to man in the IT department, he fixes the messes that others leave behind. This is none of his stories.

It was a dark and stormy day when Hanzo was sitting in his office, watching his posters when he started to hear students outside on the yard starting to shout, cry and curse loudly. Not that this would normally bother him, but something seemed unusual today. Maybe it was just that the number of students jumping out of their windows seemed higher than usual or it was just his imagination, but he did have an ominous feeling. This feeling was suddenly confirmed by the most painful and loudest of noises you could imagine. "Sorry, I should really get another ringtone," he apologized to Gertrude, "Yes, sir, I understand. -- The dean needs to see us."

The university's dean was default_character_description(rand(), GENDER_MALE). When Hanzo and Gertrude entered his office, he was obviously not amused about something. But he managed to keep his cool and explain to them the events that had led to his current predicament.

The story unfolds

"You know, I recently thought to myself, we must have a number of dead entries in our student database. Students who left without notice, data entry errors, whatever ..."

"Sure", Hanzo nodded. This is bound to happen in any large database, as a professional like him knows only too well.

"So I continued to think to myself, why not let's get rid of them. I really like a clean database. So that was the obvious thing to do and I decided to go ahead and do it."

Hanzo wondered: "I didn't notice any requirements for this cleanup work on our project pinboard ..."

"Oh no," the dean interrupted him, "I preferred to outsource it."

"You hired a contractor?"

"Not exactly ..."

"Or your nephew?", Getrude giggled.

"Gentlemen and, erm, gentlewomen, please keep serious! Contractors are too expensive, but my ..., uhm ..., well, my brother's son Andreaz," he continued while theatrically pushing aside a curtain, revealing to Hanzo's and Getrude's view the boy sitting behind the big screen in the corner, "is really a wiz with computers, right, Andro? So, in the first pass, I decided to purge all those entries who hadn't accessed their emails for more than a year. Certainly, these can't be active students, right? So I had Andro code this up for me and that's when things started to go crazy. For all we can tell, it's your mail server that's somehow gotten stuck, and it's clearly your failure of not administrating it properly. Do you confess guilty?"

"Just a minute of your precious time, your honor, if I may, perhaps we could be allowed to take a look at the mail server logs, please?", Hanzo begged.

"Well, if you think that helps you get your neck out of that noose ..."

Unbelievingly, Hanzo and Gertrude browsed though the abovementioned logs. At first, everything appeared normal:
Sending exmatriculation mail to [email protected] ...
Sending exmatriculation mail to ziegfried.zebaztian.erzbaron.von.gambolputty.zu.zachzen.und.zazzenztadt@hesse.edu.de ...
Sending exmatriculation mail to [email protected] ...
Those were all quite clearly the email addresses of former students who for one reason or another had left the university prematurely. After reading through a long list of such entries, suddenly Hanzo noticed something unusual:
Sending exmatriculation mail to [email protected] ...
"Funny, it's the last log entry. That might be because that's where it's stuck," Gertude observed mindfully.

More complications

"What about this address?", Hanzo asked the dean.

"It goes to all students, for general announcements and suchlike. Shouldn't this be obvious to you?", he replied condescendingly.

"Good news!", Getrude exclaimed. "The folks from central IT in Berlin are already on their way, kind of. And I'm now on the support line with, hold on -- Yes, I know it's not a printer problem, hold on. -- I think I can get their techs to, hold on -- Alright, do connect me. -- to visit us no later than next month, so ..."

"Why are you calling central IT and ... the printer support line?", the Dean wondered.

"That's what we usually do at this point in the story", she informed him nonchalantly.

Unirritated, Hanzo continued addressing the dean: "So how often do you think, [email protected] logs in to check their emails?"

"It's not a person, it's just a list, how would they be supposed to log in and ... ah, uhm, might this be somehow related to the fact that our ..."

"Your program sends the exmatriculation mail to all 37000 students and this just takes a while. And might have other consequences."

Suddenly the dean's face dropped, realizing the whole urgency of the situation. If immediate action was not to be taken, the university might run out of students by tomorrow. In a panicked voice he decreed, "this must be stopped. I'm looking at you", he continued while looking at Hanzo, "it's still your mail server and therefore your problem."

"The mail server is working fine. It's just doing what it's told to do," Hanzo said in an inconsiderate moment of defiance, immediately regretting his words.

"Working fine? Working fine? That's what you call working fine?" The dean continued berating Hanzo for two hours during which our poor hero could hardly get a word in between, let alone try to explain the situation. But he would not have been a real ninja if he had not had another trick up his sleeve. All of a sudden, he raised his cloak, revealing to the astonished dean his both hands covered in orthopedic casts as well as a medical certificate, cleverly attached to the inside of his cloak and now plainly visible, confirming Hanzo's inability to have been using his upper extremities for the last two weeks, following a tragic accident involving a wooden chair, coffee and some electricity, about which you, dear reader, can look forward to read in one of our upcoming installments.

"As you see," Hanzo pointed out victoriously, "I could not possibly have done anything bad, or in fact anything at all to our mail server."

An unexpected turn of events

While the dean continued Hanzo's berating, it slowly dawned on him that the guilty party had to be searched for in another direction. After less than another hour, he suddenly stopped and turned his rage to his brother's son, with twice the force: "Bad boy! No ice-cream for you tonight. And you'll be in bed at nine-o-clock!"

"That was close", he slighed of relief while the boy sneaked out of the room. Not sneaking like a ninja, rather sneaking in sadness, well deserved.

"Actually," Gertude interfered, "the mischievous mails are still being sent."

"Not to worry!", Hanzo exclaimed. This was an excellent opportunity to let his ninja-like abilities shine. "I know just what to do now."

The denouement

Hours later, we see Hanzo and Getrude back in their own office, sipping champaign. Champaign was their code word for the water from the tap in the bathroom upstairs, probably because it contained just as many bubbles.

"The end of a truly eventful day," Gertude philosophized. "Though I do wonder one thing ..."

"What?", Hanzo asked courteously.

"You mentioned that you knew just what to do."

"I did", he confirmed, knowing exactly where this conversation would lead.

"But you never told us."

"Nope!"

"Neither did you make any changes to the servers ..."

"With my hands?"

"... or had us do anything at all."

"That's right."

"So you didn't actually do anything to stop the server sending out mail upon mail forevermore? If it hadn't caught fire, I mean."

"I know", he smiled knowingly.

Gertrude, whose hearing impairment made her understand just "no", asked one last question: "Why, then, did you tell the dean that you knew just what to do?"

"Well, that's easy!", Hanzo now grinned widely, having awaited this question the whole evening. Quoting mismatched sentences from a book he had never read, he triumphantly finished: "That's why!"

A+++ would read again. TDWTF should hire you.

2013-11-14 Reply Admin

The image that accompanies today's story is pretty much captures are reaction when we see the words

Like a ninja in the night, Hanz M., AKA Hanzo, stalks across Hesse University’s Dresden campus

"Well, that's easy!", Hanzo now grinned widely, having awaited this question the whole evening. Quoting mismatched sentences from a book he had never read, he triumphantly finished: "That's why!"

Lol maybe "Hanzo" isn't the real... though I'm not sure what the WTF was here and couldn't find any mention of the president's daughter.

Zylon · 2013-11-14 Reply Admin

My name indeed:
You know, when a network television show jumps the shark in the first few episodes, they cancel it.

Something that was never good in the first place cannot jump the shark.

2013-11-14 Reply Admin

Hanzo = smug twat. Hanzo stories = total waste of time and energy.

2013-11-14 Reply Admin

mott555:
The Hanzo stories aren't that great but they aren't horrible either. Keep them coming, it seems to upset the other readers and my inner troll enjoys that!

I think this guy almost gets it. I see these articles and I see something Meta going on. Not that Erik Bern keeps writing them, but that "Hanzo" Keeps submitting them. They are horrible. They show the WTF is the submitter in a lot of these. And they demonstrate that the WTF Finger sometimes needs to be pointed at the self.

In a lot of these stories Hanzo is almost always the WTF.

Presumably Hanzo is so far up his own ass that he can't see how trite his stories are. For all we know Erik Bern is just posting these because they generatre discussion about how shitty a submission could be. These could very well keep going up in an attempt to demonstrate what is and is not a good submission. It would seem that Hanzo has submitted so many failure submissions that TDWTF has finally had enough and is publishing them so maybe he will be scorned enough to stop sending them in.

Every story has two components the author and the submitter. The author can only do so much to polish a turd into something less shitty.

2013-11-14 Reply Admin

fa2k:
Krunt:
I must have missed something, the story just ended. Where was the WTF? I was at least expecting the ROM reset procedure to be something as ridiculous as switching off the printer and waiting 15s before switching it back on.
Yeah expected that too. Or something worse. It would explain why the company was embarrassed to tell their customers how to do it, if it was something like connecting jumper wires, or if it displayed swearwords on the LCD. Anyway I suppose it`s a WTF that the company wouldn't tell them when it's that easy. Difficult to frame that WTF in an interesting and entertaining story though.

There is one thing that is bugging me, if they had to wait a week for the IT guy to arrive, why did they just let him leave without verifying the fix? Just a quick, "Okay, lets make sure the next 10 prints are successful." Did the IT guy pull a Hanzo and vanish?

2013-11-14 Reply Admin

mott555:
The Hanzo stories aren't that great but they aren't horrible either. Keep them coming, it seems to upset the other readers and my inner troll enjoys that!

Shut up Hanzo! Your stories are bad and you should feel bad!

2013-11-14 Reply Admin

toon:
For those of you not familiar with German topography: Hamburg is way up in the north west of Germany, and Dresden is in the east. The two cities are about 450-500 kilometers apart.

Or, like Sacramento to Santa Barbara in California ?

2013-11-14 Reply Admin

Is this some kind of joke? Everyone (give or take a few people) has complained about Hanzo stories, so we pull out a nothing story where Hanzo needs to make someone cry to get some action....that's not a WTF, that's every day in most workplaces...

I'm starting to think Erik is the real Hanzo and rates himself as some sort of IT guru...

CAPTCHA: incassum you missed it, Hanzo is stupid. He doesn't seem very good at his job, and just gets angry at contractors to make up for it.

2013-11-14 Reply Admin

faoileag:
Balu:
Rhywden:
I'm still waiting for the writer to notice that the state is called "Hessen" with an "n" at the end.

Well, I think it's "Hesse University", as in Hermann Hesse. And the term "Hesse University’s Dresden campus" tells me that "Hesse University" has more than one campus, one of them being in Dresden.
It doesn't matter really - I suspect Eric just picked a few names at random for obfuscation. I don't even think there is in germany a decentralized university where a distinction like "Dresden Campus" would make sense.

What I'm wondering is why the Hanzo stories still keep appearing. It's not as if the comments would show that the audience eagerly awaited another installment... rather the opposite :-)

To be honest, I don't even think Germany exists

2013-11-14 Reply Admin

Not amused guy:
All Hanzo stories are the worst. They are neither insightful nor funny. Neither are they real WTFs
It looks to me like a collection of pseudo-wtfs that are used when there are no other/better materials available

Therefore - please NO Hanzo Stories anymore.

A guy reading tdwtf for years

see, I think Alex told Erik to make the stories "insightful" and Erik thought he said "inciteful"

I'd say he's succeeding

2013-11-14 Reply Admin

fa2k:
Krunt:
I must have missed something, the story just ended. Where was the WTF? I was at least expecting the ROM reset procedure to be something as ridiculous as switching off the printer and waiting 15s before switching it back on.
Yeah expected that too. Or something worse. It would explain why the company was embarrassed to tell their customers how to do it, if it was something like connecting jumper wires, or if it displayed swearwords on the LCD. Anyway I suppose it`s a WTF that the company wouldn't tell them when it's that easy. Difficult to frame that WTF in an interesting and entertaining story though.

I expected it to be as simple as switching the machine off and on again.

2013-11-14 Reply Admin

Anomaly:
Every story has two components the author and the submitter.

I'm not sure about that - I'm becoming increasingly convinced that these Hanzo stories only have one.

2013-11-14 Reply Admin

Rhywden:
Sir Galahad the Pure:
Rhywden:
I'm still waiting for the writer to notice that the state is called "Hessen" with an "n" at the end.

Dir ist schon bekannt, das es sowas wie "Sprachen" gibt, und auch geografische/administrative Namen unterschiedliche Schreibweisen in unterschiedlichen Sprachen haben?

München -> Munich Köln -> Cologne Hessen -> Hesse (guck halt in der Wikipedia nach)
Okay. So, since when does Germany have something like the "University of Bavaria" or "University of Lower Saxony"?

The city states don't count. Hessen is not a city.

Why wouldn't they? In australia, as well has having "university of <city>" we have: Australian National University University of Queensland (State) University of New South Wales (State) University of South Australia (State) Queensland University of Technology (State) University of Western Sydney (region rather than city) University of Western Australia (state) University of Tasmania (country...jk, state) Victoria University (state) Central Queensland University (region) University of Southern Queensland (region) University of New England (WTF?) Open Universities Australia University of the Sunshine Coast (region) and probably others....

we also have universities named after people (although I suppose some of them might be based in a city also named after the same person) Charles Sturt, Deakin, Macquarie, Griffith, Flinders, Monash, James Cook, Murdoch, Bond, Edith Cowan, Charles Darwin, La Trobe...

2013-11-14 Reply Admin

Doodpants:
toon:
For those of you not familiar with German topography: Hamburg is way up in the north west of Germany, and Dresden is in the east. The two cities are about 450-500 kilometers apart.
For those of you not familiar with weird European units: that's about 280-310 miles. ;-)

huh? What's a mile? do stupid Americans not measure the same as the rest of the world?

Ok, and the Brits too....

chubertdev · 2013-11-14 Reply Admin

I'm pretty sure that this took place at the University of California Boca Raton.

2013-11-14 Reply Admin

Anomaly:
mott555:
The Hanzo stories aren't that great but they aren't horrible either. Keep them coming, it seems to upset the other readers and my inner troll enjoys that!

I think this guy almost gets it. I see these articles and I see something Meta going on. Not that Erik Bern keeps writing them, but that "Hanzo" Keeps submitting them. They are horrible. They show the WTF is the submitter in a lot of these. And they demonstrate that the WTF Finger sometimes needs to be pointed at the self.

In a lot of these stories Hanzo is almost always the WTF.

Presumably Hanzo is so far up his own ass that he can't see how trite his stories are. For all we know Erik Bern is just posting these because they generatre discussion about how shitty a submission could be. These could very well keep going up in an attempt to demonstrate what is and is not a good submission. It would seem that Hanzo has submitted so many failure submissions that TDWTF has finally had enough and is publishing them so maybe he will be scorned enough to stop sending them in.

Every story has two components the author and the submitter. The author can only do so much to polish a turd into something less shitty.

If you weren't a troll, I'd point out that they don't need to publish every story they receive.

2013-11-14 Reply Admin

jour:
Anomaly:
mott555:
The Hanzo stories aren't that great but they aren't horrible either. Keep them coming, it seems to upset the other readers and my inner troll enjoys that!

I think this guy almost gets it. I see these articles and I see something Meta going on. Not that Erik Bern keeps writing them, but that "Hanzo" Keeps submitting them. They are horrible. They show the WTF is the submitter in a lot of these. And they demonstrate that the WTF Finger sometimes needs to be pointed at the self.

In a lot of these stories Hanzo is almost always the WTF.

Presumably Hanzo is so far up his own ass that he can't see how trite his stories are. For all we know Erik Bern is just posting these because they generatre discussion about how shitty a submission could be. These could very well keep going up in an attempt to demonstrate what is and is not a good submission. It would seem that Hanzo has submitted so many failure submissions that TDWTF has finally had enough and is publishing them so maybe he will be scorned enough to stop sending them in.

Every story has two components the author and the submitter. The author can only do so much to polish a turd into something less shitty.
If you weren't a troll, I'd point out that they don't need to publish every story they receive.

TRWTF is this comment.

2013-11-14 Reply Admin

Jim the Tool:
Plez moar Hanzo stories. They are fun and interesting. And I can just imagine Gertrude and Hanzo doing it in the back room after hours. Getting all hot and bothered they kiss each other passionately and quickly undress each other. As Hanzo reaches down Gertrude's panties he sighs with pleasure. He's just discovered Gerturde's strap-on. He turns and bends, and Gertrude pegs him like a pro. "Oh Gerty, insert your coin" he cries...
captcha: nisl: slang for a women wearing a strap-on using it to have anal sex with a man. Gertrude nisled Hanzo.

As well they might. One presumes they're adults, and Germany is a socially liberal nation. One would imagine such behaviour passes without much comment.

2013-11-14 Reply Admin

somebody:
"During that week, IT office got hundreds of complaints, from students who needed term papers, professors who needed syllabi, and other departments who needed TPS reports."
While the third example is cute, I'm having trouble placing a week in the year that students are printing term papers the same time as professors are printing syllabi. Good stories can have embellishment, but it's this kind of just plain made up business that disinterests me.

Isn't "syllabi" the plural of "syllabub"?

herby · 2013-11-14 Reply Admin

It was a dark and stormy night...

Look, these are just stories. Some are good, some are poor. They all relate to us in some way. Life goes on.

Lots of things are made up in the pursuit of anonymization. One such movie had "The University of Northern California" (there IS a University of Southern California). Yes, it was a really bad movie considerating the subject matter (I have first hand knowledge).

Grin and bear it.

Addendum (2013-11-14 19:04): I just looked it up, and there appears to be (an obscure) University of Northern California. Go figure. Since 1993.

2013-11-14 Reply Admin

I expected he'd hide a buncha webcams and surveill the tech as he carried out his 'top-secret' reset procedure.

But yelling at the rep turned out to be much more fun and informative.

Oh, wait, no it didn't.

Printer Futility

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