• blah (unregistered) in reply to Pista

    I agree. Somebody wants to pretend they're able to write BOFH stories and are failing miserably.

  • Norman Diamond (unregistered) in reply to chubertdev
    chubertdev:
    I'm pretty sure that this took place at the University of California Boca Raton.
    How about University of California Los Alamos?

    They even had some WTFs in the news a few years ago.

  • Norman Diamond (unregistered) in reply to anonymous
    anonymous:
    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.
    +++1 did read again. Speaking of the comics being better than the articles, this one really was.
  • oldtimer (unregistered)

    It wasn't the only printer on campus? Ah, that takes me back...

  • (cs) in reply to Rnd(
    Rnd(:
    And it was the only printer on whole campus? And the employees were expected to pay with coins too?
    Or you could read the article, where it says (emphasis added):
    It wasn’t the only printer on campus, Hanzo knew, but Martin didn’t.
  • Edward (unregistered)

    Absolutely hate these stories. What is the point of this one? You asked the guy to show you something? And you yelled at him? Wow, big man on campus.

  • Kyle Huff (unregistered)

    This story was beyond lame. That is all.

  • irate commenter (unregistered)

    How did Hanzo avoid being fired for acting irate on the job? An even better question is how did Hanzo avoid mandatory sensitivity training for possession of a penis?

  • (cs)

    Wow, these Hanzo stories are consistently even worse than the usual content. Please fire this writer already.

    Aside from that, TRWTF is that they have to send a tech out - and charge the customer - to have them enter some secret code to reset the machine. If support told me that I'd tell them 1) don't bother, I'll find the secret code on Google and 2) I won't be doing business with them anymore.

  • Your Name Indeed (unregistered) in reply to My name indeed
    My name indeed:
    You know, when a network television show jumps the shark in the first few episodes, they cancel it.

    just sayin...

    Unless it's FOX. Where they do the opposite.

  • Squiddy (unregistered) in reply to Jim the Tool
    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.

    Didn't Rammstein write a song about that?

  • (cs)

    It was good until the Book of Five Rings quote. Seriously? And lampshading how out of place the quote was didn't help. The "we fight our share of monsters" was so cliche.

    At first the quotes matched the story enough to be funny but now WTF??

    The only explanation I can think of is that the Hanzo really does spout off those quotes at work.

  • (cs)

    I would rather come here and not have a story than these retarded Hanzo stories.

    @author:

    If you are Hanzo: This is basically standard "stupid management stuff" you will find anywhere you work with more than a couple employees. Either escalate this more, get over it or search a new job but this is plain boring.

  • faoileag (unregistered) in reply to Yuri
    Yuri:
    To be honest, I don't even think Germany exists
    Well, it probably is an invention of whoever operates the matrix...
  • faoileag (unregistered) in reply to Sir Galahad the Pure
    Sir Galahad the Pure:
    München -> Munich
    Keep going:

    München -> Munich -> Monaco

    is way more fun, due to the ambiguity :-)

  • Hannes (unregistered) in reply to toon
    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.

    Must be one shitty car if the techs need one week to get to Dresden. :)

    I once had an apprenticeship in a company that provided IT-support in the northern part of Germany. When we got a call, we would usually be there during the next day.

  • No One (unregistered)

    Hanzo story? Nope, skipping.

    The Daily (except when we post Hanzo stories which are really just shit-fests that wish they were as interesting as snoofle) WTF.

  • Paul Neumann (unregistered) in reply to John
    John:
    ...Hanzo needs to make someone cry to get some action....that's not a WTF, that's every day in most workplaces...
    More fun when the dancer is crying?
  • Niner (unregistered)

    One problem though is that sometimes - yes, the procedure is documented - but no, it's a @#%@#$ to give out due to security policies.

    For instance, one vendor I know is a security software company. Their product has rigorous tamper protection controls, and to uninstall you have to put that machine via a management console into a "disabled" mode, or get a special uninstall key and instructions from support, which requires also being an authorized contact.

    But if that uninstall key doesn't, well, work, they have a "manual" uninstall process involving unloading a LOT of registry keys, drivers, services, etc. They can't just hand the instructions out. They have to do it themselves over a remote session AND they have to notify their Engineering folks that they need to do it AND get authorization from Engineering to go ahead and use that procedure.

    So yes, unloading some services, filter drivers, and registry keys can take some "behind the scenes" magic. Bonus: throw it in safe mode and their software doesn't work unless you follow a not-advised-by-support procedure to enable it in Safe Mode. So... broken either way.

  • (cs) in reply to Anomaly
    Anomaly:
    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.

    1. The author's name is Erik Gern, not Bern.
    2. The original submitter vaguely recognize this story. He writes "the editing that took place was a bit above the level I'd call creative".
    3. The author Erik Gern admits on his own blog that his "storytelling" is "akin to writing hard science fiction". So he sees it as his job to embellish the orginal submission beyond belief, manages on almost all his articles to disguise the original WTF beyond recognition (leaving the reader wondering what really happened) and still tells boring stories.

    His job should be anonymization, not trying to tell fictional (the F in SF) stories!

  • (cs)

    I had a really witty derogatory comment to make about Hanzo stories, but I accidentally filled it with unwarranted references to unrelated books, and then padded it out with a large amount of boring.

    So I posted this instead.

  • (cs) in reply to faoileag
    faoileag:
    Sir Galahad the Pure:
    München -> Munich
    Keep going:

    München -> Munich -> Monaco

    is way more fun, due to the ambiguity :-)

    Monaco -> Monaco Franze and straight back in München we are!

  • (cs)

    At one of the jobs that I volunteer for, they have a saying: "don't let the truth get in the way of a good story."

    For this site, it should be "don't let the creativity get in the way of a good story."

  • nobody (unregistered)

    Please go the way of snoofle. Your stories always end anticlimactically. They're boring. Take classes and learn how to write better.

  • SunTzuWarmaster (unregistered)

    Some Haikus:

    The Tales of Hanzo The disappointment must end Immediately

    Hanzo Samurai The Daily Site cannot keep Decreasing traffic

    Soon terminating The book of five rings stories Will gain readership

    Mandatory Fun Funny for the mockery Hanzo cannot be

    Look, I have two more Hanzo stories left in me. TWO. If I see two more Hanzo stories posted, I'm deleting this site. I've been reading for well over 5 years. I have a Daily WTF sticker from being part of a contest. I enjoy this site, but my readership has dropped 50% since Hanzo stories started. I hate clicking on a story and dreading it to be a Hanzo story. Two more Hanzo stories and I'm out.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to SunTzuWarmaster
    SunTzuWarmaster:
    If I see two more Hanzo stories posted, I'm deleting this site.
    You? YOU'RE going to delete this site? That's OUR job, bub, deleting sites that interfere with the free flow of information.

    You're not even going to learn how we delete a site. That's our trade secret and we're not telling you.

  • NSA (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    SunTzuWarmaster:
    If I see two more Hanzo stories posted, I'm deleting this site.
    You? YOU'RE going to delete this site? That's OUR job, bub, deleting sites that promote the free flow of information.

    You're not even going to learn how we delete a site. That's our trade secret and we're not telling you.

    FTFO.

  • Anonymous (unregistered)

    Bullying a vendor until they broke policy and told you something you weren't supposed to know? I was expecting the solution to involve something a bit more clever than yelling. Example: Surreptitiously recording the tech working to find the right sequence of steps, social engineering to trick the company into divulging their reset process, or really anything more shrewd than screaming at someone until they cave.

  • Jay (unregistered) in reply to MoSlo
    MoSlo:
    A Hanzo post?! Noooooooooooo!

    (ok, now to actually read it)

    I wouldn't bother, although I guess it's too late now.

  • gnasher729 (unregistered) in reply to Sir Galahad the Pure
    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)

    Name of countries may be translated, but not names of universities. UCLA and UCSD don't become UKLA and UKSD (or more likely KULA and KUSD) in German. (California = Kalifornien)

  • (cs) in reply to Rhywden
    Rhywden:
    Because if it was named after that particular writer they'd call it "Herrmann Hesse University".
    Says who? We have a Brunel University, not an Isambard Kingdom Brunel University.
  • B.D. Johnson (unregistered)

    He had practiced his "irate customer" voice before he called the hotline,

    Outside of Germany, the "irate customer" voice is a Christian-Bale-level furious rant.

  • Norman Diamond (unregistered) in reply to gnasher729
    gnasher729:
    Name of countries may be translated, but not names of universities.
    Yes they are. 東京大学 is translated to University of Tokyo. (Transliteration would be Toukyou Daigaku.)

    I'll let someone else translate Technische Universität München.

  • John Max (unregistered)

    Hanzo the egoist ninjaless prick, dont u have any shame posting this kind of stories....

    if u are THAT good, you wont be working as a Uni IT

  • Kretikus (unregistered) in reply to Balu
    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.

    The University is called after the Germann writer Herman Hesse (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Hesse).

  • (cs) in reply to Kretikus
    Kretikus:
    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.

    The University is called after the Germann writer Herman Hesse (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Hesse).

    Which still doesn't exist. The usual naming convention in Germany is "University of [Town]". Sometimes the university has a second name which follows: "Firstname Surname University".

    You won't find a university with an official name only including the surname, except for the really famous guys like Humboldt or Goethe.

    Hesse? Simply not famous enough.

    I mean, even one of the youngest universities, the one in Magdeburg is named: "Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg"

  • Schwanzo (unregistered)

    I wish Hanzo would just silently die.

  • Scourge of Programmers (unregistered)

    Is Hanzo living in a fantasy?

  • (cs)

    "Back in the early 1990's, G.R.G. worked at a certain university as a programmer. In addition to breaking into server rooms and deafening cute little chinchillas..."

    http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The-Mother-of-all-Interfaces.aspx

    That sounds familiar now...

  • (cs) in reply to Rhywden
    Rhywden:
    And a university with more than one campus in Germany? That kind of monster university we don't even have in Berlin, Munich oder Hamburg.
    Your slip is showing....
  • Cunso (unregistered) in reply to foo AKA fooo
    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.

    I just wanted to say that this story made me laugh so much more than any DailyWTF stories in the past few months. I guess it takes a truly terrible story to bring out something as great as this.

  • populis (unregistered)

    I wish this site allowed to give negative votes to stories. Especially to those Dresden ninjas.

  • dkechag (unregistered)

    Why are we subjected to this Hanzo crap? I've worked in IT while in grad school and I've never met anyone even remotely as annoying and idiotic as this guy.

  • eric bloedow (unregistered)

    reminds me of a story...as much as i can remember...a company had a fancy set of computerized Cash Registers, which periodically broke down...but for some dumb reason, the employees were not allowed to fix the problems themselves, they always had to wait from someone from the Register company, who the author of the story called "howler moneys inc". why did he call them that? because they were completely incompetent at doing ANYTHING but talk about how good they were. one problem was that the registers had a "master/slave" system, so the "master" Register needed to be rebooted...and the idiots from HM kept rebooting the wrong one, despite the employees repeatedly telling them which one was the master! that's all i can remember...

  • SomeName (unregistered)

    Sounds like wrong side taking the blame. If RadGaBa printer broke then they're supposed to fix it at their own expense.

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