• Cyrus (unregistered)

    So, they take up the day of several employees, moving, installing and setting up a new server as opposed to just buying new RAM.

    Nice...

  • sammy (unregistered) in reply to Cyrus
    Cyrus:
    So, they take up the day of several employees, moving, installing and setting up a new server as opposed to just buying new RAM.

    Nice...

    I've been hit with the bad end of this kind of decision before. You have to understand two things:

    1. The management is considering sunk costs versus additional purchases. Nobody cares about making a half-dozen salaried employees work extra hours if it means they can avoid making a purchase - after all, their salaries are budgeted anyway.
    2. If any of these people had been hourly contractors, they probably would have purchased the RAM instead.

    At a prior job, I was asked to lead an effort to get as many people certified as RHCEs possible. The smart way to do this would have been to identify the staff with previous Linux/UNIX experience, spend a couple grand apiece to get them Red Hat's boot-camp training, and have done with. Instead, management decided to invite anyone who was interested in the training, and have me prepare and teach a prep course internally. I spent hundreds of hours on it, and it spanned the course of maybe fifteen weeks in total.

    At the conclusion, I was the only person who got certified.

  • (cs)

    Please, don't just babelfish everything. It get's things wrong pretty often.

  • o_0 (unregistered)

    I still say the real WTF is visible control characters.

  • Robin (unregistered)

    Can someone clarify what was meant by being promoted "mitosically"?

    (I can't find it in the dictionary, so I assume it's mis-spelled?)

  • Zach (unregistered)

    To bad Nick's last name wasn't Burns.

  • Top Cod3r (unregistered) in reply to Cyrus
    Cyrus:
    So, they take up the day of several employees, moving, installing and setting up a new server as opposed to just buying new RAM.

    Nice...

    Yeah, but they are salaried, so the company got their time for free. RAM would have cost money.

  • Phat Wednesday (unregistered) in reply to Robin
    Robin:
    Can someone clarify what was meant by being promoted "mitosically"?

    (I can't find it in the dictionary, so I assume it's mis-spelled?)

    Look up 'mitosis'.

  • SomeCoder (unregistered) in reply to Monkios
    Monkios:
    Please, don't just babelfish everything. It get's things wrong pretty often.

    I noticed the same thing.

  • Gidgidonihah (unregistered)

    Eye of a needle? Rich man in heaven? Looks like someone has been reading the bible lately.

  • Ohnonymous (unregistered)

    Confessions of a software pirate?

  • (cs) in reply to Robin
    Robin:
    Can someone clarify what was meant by being promoted "mitosically"?

    (I can't find it in the dictionary, so I assume it's mis-spelled?)

    Mitotically. Apparently they mean that he split into two creatures, one having his old responsibilities and one having his boss's old responsibilities.

  • anon (unregistered) in reply to SomeCoder
    SomeCoder:
    Monkios:
    Please, I just Babelfish all. It has been something pretty wrong time.

    I saw the same thing.

    Translated from English to Chinese and back.

  • Jim Bob (unregistered) in reply to Cyrus

    I have huge frickin' balls and so does Nick

    captcha: darwin -- a man who wrote a theory of which I am the antithesis

  • Jim Bob (unregistered) in reply to sammy

    you failed, how does it feel to be a failure?

  • scott (unregistered) in reply to Robin

    mitosically == mitosis == one cell splits off to form another cell that does the exact function as it's parent cell. two exact cells are the product. in his case the former parent cell, the old boss, left the company i suppose to go transcribe rna or chill with mitochondria at the single(cell)s bars. yeah, that was lame.

  • I manage never to manage (unregistered) in reply to scott

    This type of thinking happens far too frequently.

    How many times does someone get laid off to save costs. Then two weeks later, the company realizes that the job they were doing was actually important, and starts the process to hire a replacement. They put out a job requisition for an expert in C, C++, C#, Java, .NET, Python, Ruby, Perl, Oracle, Sybase, GUI and server side development, etc. After months of not finding the perfect candidate, they realize that maybe they need to loosen up the restrictions, and finally hire someone. Then they're shocked when the person comes on board and needs time to become familiar with the internal systems, code base, etc.

    It ends up costing 10 times as much to find and train someone new (plus lost opportunity cost), but they saved a few bucks in the short run.

  • EmmanuelD (unregistered)

    "Holy crepe"

    That's probably the wrongest-but-funniest translation of Sacrebleu I ever seen, so you really deserves a cookie.

    (In fact, Holy blue is probably even worse, but it's a lot less fun too).

  • Zero (unregistered) in reply to EmmanuelD
    EmmanuelD:
    "Holy crepe"

    That's probably the wrongest-but-funniest translation of Sacrebleu I ever seen, so you really deserves a cookie.

    (In fact, Holy blue is probably even worse, but it's a lot less fun too).

    I think it was a joke.

    Captcha: Stinky, like French people.

  • (cs)
    "Obtenez-moi une garniture de papier. Oh ho ho ho." Or, in English, "Get me a pad of paper. LOL."
    This made me laugh. A lot.

    But the real WTF is the SRC of the image being "http://www.thedailywtf.com/Images/200706/binarystripe.png".

  • bleh (unregistered) in reply to scott
    scott:
    mitosically == mitosis == one cell splits off to form another cell that does the exact function as it's parent cell. two exact cells are the product. in his case the former parent cell, the old boss, left the company i suppose to go transcribe rna or chill with mitochondria at the single(cell)s bars. yeah, that was lame.

    it should be mitotically tho.

  • raphtee (unregistered) in reply to Phat Wednesday

    The word is mitotically.

    http://www.thefreedictionary.com/mitotically

  • scott (unregistered) in reply to bleh
    bleh:
    scott:
    mitosically == mitosis == one cell splits off to form another cell that does the exact function as it's parent cell. two exact cells are the product. in his case the former parent cell, the old boss, left the company i suppose to go transcribe rna or chill with mitochondria at the single(cell)s bars. yeah, that was lame.

    it should be mitotically tho.

    ah, mitotically. i was just answering what was "meant" by mitosically tho. not a definition.

  • Bob N Freely (unregistered)

    To be fair, in the mid-90s, RAM was still pretty expensive. In fact, I seem to recall there was a big price spike around that time, due to limited manufacturing capacity.

  • (cs)
    Nick thought for a moment. "Obtenez-moi une garniture de papier. Oh ho ho ho." Or, in English, "Get me a pad of paper. LOL."

    BEST...LINE...EVAR

  • (cs)

    This problem happens all the time in the govt. There once was a department that got no money for new buildings, but a huge windfall for "remodeling". So one small toolshed was remodeled with two huge side-wings. The toolshed became the entryway.

  • (cs)

    Even though salaried employees are already paid for, their time isn't free. Every hour wasted on bypassing bad company policy is an hour that could have been spent doing real work for the benefit of the company, but is gone forever.

  • (cs) in reply to Rootbeer
    Rootbeer:
    Even though salaried employees are already paid for, their time isn't free. Every hour wasted on bypassing bad company policy is an hour that could have been spent doing real work for the benefit of the company, but is gone forever.

    Not if the employees are in the habit of working over 8 hours. This is the bane of salaried workers. You spend time working around draconian rules and policies then you work overtime to finally get what you need done. The wasted time is not the companies because they still get what they need, but rather the employees time as they no longer have time to live and enjoy the fruits of their labor.

  • (cs) in reply to KattMan
    KattMan:
    Not if the employees are in the habit of working over 8 hours. This is the bane of salaried workers. You spend time working around draconian rules and policies then you work overtime to finally get what you need done. The wasted time is not the companies because they still get what they need, but rather the employees time as they no longer have time to live and enjoy the fruits of their labor.

    To which I apply a simple rule: If it ain't done in 45 hours, go home. If they want it done that badly, they'll hire more, or demand less.

    Of course, that assumes job security of the "they really can't afford to lose this guy" variety, and great big frickin 'nads.

  • Pat (unregistered) in reply to Zach

    It was LeBurns

  • (cs) in reply to jimlangrunner
    jimlangrunner:
    KattMan:
    Not if the employees are in the habit of working over 8 hours. This is the bane of salaried workers. You spend time working around draconian rules and policies then you work overtime to finally get what you need done. The wasted time is not the companies because they still get what they need, but rather the employees time as they no longer have time to live and enjoy the fruits of their labor.

    To which I apply a simple rule: If it ain't done in 45 hours, go home. If they want it done that badly, they'll hire more, or demand less.

    Of course, that assumes job security of the "they really can't afford to lose this guy" variety, and great big frickin 'nads.

    I know what you mean. I usually cap mine at 50 and rarely get that high. There has been some places that had a policy of "No comp-time" so I responded with my own statement of "No over-time". They didn't like that much but I stuck to it. Have I been fired for it before? Yes. And those places that would constantly try to push it but still not fire me, I left anyway, it wasn't worth the headache.

    As a developer, crunch times are different, but I do expect compensation for it in the form of extra time off that does not count towards my vacation. If you can't give after you take, I don't stay. Oh and I have rarely had a problem finding my next job with one exception, when the bubble burst I was out for 6 months. didn't hurt to bad though, I keep a nice bit set aside just in case. Makes it easy to walk away if I need to.

  • (cs) in reply to sammy
    sammy:
    At a prior job, I was asked to lead an effort to get as many people certified as RHCEs possible. The smart way to do this would have been to identify the staff with previous Linux/UNIX experience, spend a couple grand apiece to get them Red Hat's boot-camp training, and have done with. Instead, management decided to invite anyone who was interested in the training, and have me prepare and teach a prep course internally. I spent hundreds of hours on it, and it spanned the course of maybe fifteen weeks in total.

    At the conclusion, I was the only person who got certified.

    So what you're saying is . . . you're a terrible teacher?

  • Juggler (unregistered)

    My nephew (when he was around 4) would say, "Suck me blue!"

    This was a nice dance down memory lane...

    CAPTCHA: I wish my coworker would BATHE...

  • Noone in particular (unregistered)

    I've gotta say, it's obvious the French has been, shall we say... recreated for the purposes of this article. The French don't actually say Sacre Bleu (which is supposed to be a euphemism for Sacre Dieu or Holy God from the Louis the somethingth days). And pad of paper is either cahier which means notebook, or bloc-notes which means notepad, but the French are more likely to say un bout de papier, or a piece of paper...

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to rmr
    rmr:
    So what you're saying is . . . you're a terrible teacher?
    No - he's saying that there was no teacher at all, but the process of learning to pretend to be a teacher was enough to ensure he could pass the exam that he took along with the rest of the students.

    Reading comprehension. It's hard, but it's worth it.

  • Darwin (unregistered) in reply to capnPedro
    "Obtenez-moi une garniture de papier. Oh ho ho ho." Or, in English, "Get me a pad of paper. LOL."

    I guess that's intended to sound like Maurice Chevalier.

    But "LOL" in French is actually "MDR". Just so you know. :)

  • (cs) in reply to Gidgidonihah
    Gidgidonihah:
    Eye of a needle? Rich man in heaven? Looks like someone has been reading the bible lately.

    It's one of those "general knowledge" things. Sort of like quotes from Shakespeare and Twain. Do you really find it remarkable? Sigh.

  • Andrew (unregistered) in reply to o_0
    o_0:
    I still say the real WTF is visible control characters.

    ASCII Control characters are values less than 32 (SPACE), and "delete". They are not visible, but the BELL makes a beep on terminals.

    The article describes non-ASCII characters, above 127 (128-255). On IBMs they are smiley faces, British pound symbol, and what-not. This is different from ISO Latin-1.

  • Chas (unregistered) in reply to Noone in particular
    Noone in particular:
    The French don't actually say Sacre Bleu (which is supposed to be a euphemism for Sacre Dieu or Holy God from the Louis the somethingth days).
    It's a French-Canadian thing. French-Canadian swearing is almost entirely based on religious (as opposed sexual or scatological) words. The bad words include tabarnak (tabernacle, the structure in a Catholic church over the alter), sacrement, estie (a corruption of hostie, the communion host), calice (chalice), and ciboire (the little plate held under the chin of the communion celebrant to keep the pieces of the communion wafer -- which has been transubstantiated into the body of Christ -- from hitting the ground). Sacrebleu is an old-fashioned expression, something like "gol-darnit".
  • (cs)

    The real WTF here is that they didn't mention trying to take the memory out of the new "old" server to replace the offending RAM. 15 minutes and problem solved. I know it is possible that these were dissonant architectures and the memory would have been 32 pins simms when 72 was needed but I wonder if that option was even explored by the so called "IT" person.

  • Frost (unregistered) in reply to Monkios
    Monkios:
    Please, don't just babelfish everything. It get's things wrong pretty often.

    cough like using an apostrophe when you're not dealing with a possessive?

  • Oh (unregistered) in reply to KattMan
    jimlangrunner:
    KattMan:

    Not if the employees are in the habit of working over 8 hours. This is the bane of salaried workers. You spend time working around draconian rules and policies then you work overtime to finally get what you need done. The wasted time is not the companies because they still get what they need, but rather the employees time as they no longer have time to live and enjoy the fruits of their labor.

    To which I apply a simple rule: If it ain't done in 45 hours, go home. If they want it done that badly, they'll hire more, or demand less.

    Of course, that assumes job security of the "they really can't afford to lose this guy" variety, and great big frickin 'nads.

    I know what you mean. I usually cap mine at 50 and rarely get that high. There has been some places that had a policy of "No comp-time" so I responded with my own statement of "No over-time". They didn't like that much but I stuck to it. Have I been fired for it before? Yes. And those places that would constantly try to push it but still not fire me, I left anyway, it wasn't worth the headache.

    Must not live in California. You have to make, last I checked around $99,000 to be exempt from overtime.

  • Oh (unregistered) in reply to Oh
    Oh:
    Must not live in California. You have to make, last I checked around $99,000 to be exempt from overtime.

    To be clear: Software developers and certain other computer professionals.

    Not that overtime dollars make up for lost family time, but at least its not a total theft of your time.

  • (cs) in reply to Oh
    Oh:
    Must not live in California. You have to make, last I checked around $99,000 to be exempt from overtime.

    I think what the previous poster was saying that he demands overtime, not Overtime. Overtime is when the government says you must be paid Y * (base hourly rate) for hours worked over X hours in a week and whatnot.

    Whereas overtime is you saying to the boss "I worked 12 hour days all last week, and a half day Saturday. The project is deployed, so I'm taking Monday and Tuesday off. No, this is not a request, it's a statement of fact."

    That's why he said it takes "big frickin' nads". :)

  • ben (unregistered) in reply to Oh
    Must not live in California. You have to make, last I checked around $99,000 to be exempt from overtime.

    I can't imagine where you might have checked. The cutoff is twice the minimum wage, or $32k pa.

  • Oh (unregistered) in reply to ben
    ben:
    Must not live in California. You have to make, last I checked around $99,000 to be exempt from overtime.

    I can't imagine where you might have checked. The cutoff is twice the minimum wage, or $32k pa.

    California has a specific limit that is higher than other states. You're referring to the federal limit, which is much lower.

  • ben (unregistered)

    I looked it up for California. I don't think you did.

  • Oh (unregistered) in reply to ben
    ben:
    I looked it up for California. I don't think you did.

    That's funny.

    Here's a link:

    dir.ca.gov/dlsr/CPI/OTCPI.pdf

    The hourly rate listed is $47.81. Annualize that by 2,080 hours and you arrive at $99,444.80.

  • ben (unregistered) in reply to Oh

    The exemption that applies to most tech/computer workers in CA is the "Professional exemption" and it's twice the state minimum wage, which is what I said.

    http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/Glossary.asp?Button1=P#professional%20exemption

  • oh (unregistered) in reply to ben
    ben:
    The exemption that applies to most tech/computer workers in CA is the "Professional exemption" and it's twice the state minimum wage, which is what I said.

    http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/Glossary.asp?Button1=P#professional%20exemption

    You must have not seen my second post where I clarified I was referring to software devleopers.

    Yes, techs and PC maintence is the rate you give.

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