• (cs) in reply to KattMan
    KattMan:
    So who was collecting the paychecks and did Poss get audited by the IRS recently? Lack of a SSN? Are they an illegal alien?

    See the reason they didn't catch it was because he did have a SSN - 111-22-3333. Oops I probably shouldn't have put that in there, now people will get credit cards in POS's name and take all that money he's been Escrowing

  • Jay (unregistered) in reply to OzPeter

    After reading the "Who's Got the Monkey" story here a few weeks ago or whenever that was, I went home that evening and told my teenage daughter about it. About half-way through she said, "Oh, I thought you were talking about that magazine article." And she pulled out the latest issue of Focus on the Family magazine and pointed to the second paragraph, which described "Who's Got the Monkey" as the "second most requested resource". What are the odds that it would show up in two such disparate sources within a couple of days of each other? (I wonder if I can get a government grant to study this?)

  • Jay (unregistered) in reply to N Morrison
    N Morrison:
    In the well loved Infocom ('Zork') adventure game series, I was amused to find as I poked around in the code that the player was internally known as 'The Idiot' or some such.

    I've warned employees in the past not to use insulting names for test clients. Odd how these leak out to release versions all too often.

    I used to work on a software package that included billing functions, and I wrote the module to produce warning letters to be sent to customers whose accounts were past due. The client would create a "template letter" with the static text and they were supposed to put "$name", "$balancedue", "$accountnumber" and the like where they wanted values from the customer's data inserted. I threw together a sample letter that was included with our distribution so the client could see how it worked and how the file should look. My sample letter included text like "Please please please pay your bill" and "I need the money, I have a wife and a child and a dog and a cat to support".

    You guessed it: Several clients used that sample letter as is, and one called our help desk to complain that the text was inappropriate.

  • (cs) in reply to CK
    CK:
    You wouldn't believe how many Mickey Mouses there are in our production system...

    You wouldn't believe how many accounts in ours are:

    • Homer Simpson
    • Santos L. Halper
    • Waylon T. Smithers

    And a liberal helping of Bart's "prank call to Moe's" names:

    • Hugh Jass
    • Al Coholic
    • Amanda Hugankiss
    • Bea O'Problem

    And liberal helpings of others:

    • Ryan Coke
    • Eileen Dover
    • James Bond

    etc, etc.

  • Adriano (unregistered) in reply to TheRider

    Interesting, but "Gasolina" is not an Italian word, it's a Spanish word. The Italian equivalent is "benzina"

  • (cs) in reply to TheRider
    TheRider:
    Heh heh

    This reminds me of this little story: Once when I was a little boy, my parents and me were driving around in the italian-speaking part of switzerland, during summer vacation time. At some point I asked, from the back of the car, where we were. My mom looked out the windows and said: "Oh, we have just arrived in 'Gasolina'".

    I got one like that from last year. I was travelling through Mexico with my girlfriend, and in the middle of a multi-hour bus trip she said "Hey, can you look up on the map how much further it ist? This town is called 'Bienvenidos'"...

  • jtl (unregistered) in reply to Nitehawk
    Nitehawk:
    All of my test orders are for 123 Fake St. Schenectady NY, 12345.

    So Schenectady's main import is test orders that were sent to production...

    I bet the postmen there have some good stories.

  • (cs) in reply to Adriano
    Adriano:
    Interesting, but "Gasolina" is not an Italian word, it's a Spanish word. The Italian equivalent is "benzina"

    Isn't 'benzina' ... benzene?

  • JohnB (unregistered) in reply to Derek Hartley
    Derek Hartley:
    MindChild:
    I don't know. I like using:

    123 Forth Street Beverly Hills, Ca 90210

    I am surprised more people don't use that zip.

    Being in the UK, I've always used that zip for anything that required me to 'be American'.

    If you ever have to be Canadian, use T0K0Y0 (originally assigned, it is said, to Cardston, Alberta). Alternatively, you can send something to the North Pole using the Canadian postal code H0H0H0. For the purists: yes, Canadian postal codes have a space in the middle.

  • (cs) in reply to N Morrison
    N Morrison:
    In the well loved Infocom ('Zork') adventure game series, I was amused to find as I poked around in the code that the player was internally known as 'The Idiot' or some such.

    I've warned employees in the past not to use insulting names for test clients. Odd how these leak out to release versions all too often.

    If you hack Pokémon Blue to bypass the "enter your name" screen, you and your rival get assigned the default names NINTEN and SONY.

  • (cs) in reply to Adriano
    Adriano:
    Interesting, but "Gasolina" is not an Italian word, it's a Spanish word. The Italian equivalent is "benzina"
    Shows you just how lost they were huh?
  • Frost (unregistered) in reply to Nitehawk
    Nitehawk:
    Benanov:
    Geez, if you're going to use a test record, at least get the city and state to match the zip code.

    12345 is the zip code for Schenectady, New York.

    (The real WTF: I didn't have to look this up.)

    All of my test orders are for 123 Fake St. Schenectady NY, 12345.

    I'm partial to this address, synthesized from multiple sources:

    1313 Mockingbird Ln Walla Walla, WA 99362

  • Justice (unregistered) in reply to Frost
    Frost:
    Nitehawk:
    Benanov:
    Geez, if you're going to use a test record, at least get the city and state to match the zip code.

    12345 is the zip code for Schenectady, New York.

    (The real WTF: I didn't have to look this up.)

    All of my test orders are for 123 Fake St. Schenectady NY, 12345.

    I'm partial to this address, synthesized from multiple sources:

    1313 Mockingbird Ln Walla Walla, WA 99362

    A good city/combination to use for test orders (or online registrations, etc) is

    General Delivery Dyer, NV 89010

    Take a peek on Google Maps; odds are slim you'll be getting many orders from there.

  • PublicLurker (unregistered) in reply to FredSaw

    while that's nice, now often do you need a carrying case for your refrigerator magnets? :-)

  • Adriano (unregistered) in reply to poopdeville

    No. Benzene is benzene, benzina is gasoline.

  • Daemo (unregistered) in reply to Ben
    Ben:
    Benanov:
    Geez, if you're going to use a test record, at least get the city and state to match the zip code.

    12345 is the zip code for Schenectady, New York.

    (The real WTF: I didn't have to look this up.)

    The real WTF is that someone would be living at the GE plant.

    youve never had stuff delivered to your place of work? how do they get supplies delivery or new parts etc?

  • Car Nut (unregistered) in reply to Adriano

    I remember a Fiat with a Veglia fuel gauge emblazoned with "benzina"

  • Others (unregistered)

    The 12345 zipcode is acutaly a big problem for the post office, as well as 12345-6789, part of this comes from the fact that everyone (even the post office) used it as a 'sample' zipcode, and we all know how samples get used.

    Now they say you should use 98765-4321, and have reserved 98765 to be the 555 of zipcodes.

  • Mugger (unregistered) in reply to N Morrison
    N Morrison:
    In the well loved Infocom ('Zork') adventure game series, I was amused to find as I poked around in the code that the player was internally known as 'The Idiot' or some such.
    Here, have a mug.

    When that game was originally developed at MIT, the users were programmers, the implementors enjoyed laughing at themselves, and it could be assumed that players of this kind of game would enjoy laughing at themselves too. The cretin wasn't only designated that way in the source code, but could also be referred to in commands. One easy way to commit suicide was to type the command "kill cretin".

    There was a way for cretins to earn the game's respect. Ordinarily the command "look in mirror" would get the response "An ugly person is looking at you." In the endgame, the response changed to "A somewhat disheveled adventurer is looking at you." But you could still commit suicide by "kill cretin".

  • (cs) in reply to Ben
    Ben:
    The real WTF is that someone would be living at the GE plant.

    What's so hard to believe about that? GE don't give awards to just anyone that hasn't been fired. They only give them to the really committed workers.

  • POS TRAINING (unregistered) in reply to POS TRAINING

    remove the previous post, he is an impostor

  • (cs) in reply to Walleye
    Walleye:
    One of Dave Barry's books has a story of him driving around Germany, getting lost in every town and somehow alwasy ending up on a street called "Einbahnstrasse".
    Driving around Germany on the Autobahn, you will also notice that there's a town called "Ausfahrt" near every single exit.
  • (cs)

    That explains why i never got to meet NormalUser1 and SuperUser1 in person at my company. Thanks for solving the mystery.

  • (cs) in reply to DOA
    DOA:
    In my experience test accounts are very robust. You create one now and 10 years down the line it's still lurking in some dark corner of the system. In fact I'm pretty sure that in the case of nuclear war only the insects and tests accounts will survive...

    Do you know where the "in the case of nuclear war only the insects and ... will survive..." meme originated? I've seen it a few times now, but don't know where it came from.

  • M L (unregistered) in reply to OzPeter
    OzPeter:
    I knew that this sort of thing sounded familiar. I am surprised that nobody else has mentioned

    http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Ive-Got-The-Monkey-Now.aspx

    Which, after all the redactions and after people from Harvard Business said what REALLY happened, left the story as: "A test case that used to return 1 search result now returned 2 and the test case had to be updated." All the "funny stuff" was a complete fabrication or highly exaggerated.

    Makes me wonder how real this is. Questions spring to mind like -- why do people working in a warehouse need accounts on the POS system? Why would "POS Testing" have an HR record including date of hire (not a component of any POS system I've seen)?

    There's the TDF story and then there's a real story -- and ne'er the twain shall meet.

  • Wes (unregistered) in reply to POS TRAINING

    Ha ha, yeah, I definitely just stared blankly at this comment for a second before laughing out loud. Nice!

  • (cs) in reply to James
    James:
    Just Some Guy:
    I worked for an ISP whose very first customer was Mr. Blank. For real. So the very first row in our customer database was "ID: 1000 NAME: BLANK". That account got deleted more than once by well-meaning and unsuspecting customer service people.

    I have a colocated server which was rented from a small CA hosting company whose CTO's surname is Blank. (I still have the server, but the hosting company was sold; he's just moved to a nearby startup company, IIRC.)

    Sounds like the original creation of that surname would make a nice story as well. Maybe his great-great-great-grandfather left the "surname" field empty when he immigrated in the US?

  • SumoRunner (unregistered)

    "Maybe the invitation got lost in the mail on its way to 123 Main St, Anytown, USA 12345."

    Did you know there is actually a 12345 zip code and they do receive such things every day? I was the recipient of one such mailing many years ago. The zip code is actually assigned to the General Electric Co. plant in Schenectady, NY where I was working back in 1984 when I received an envelope from the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee addressed to Any Runner, Anytown, USA, 12345. The boys in the mail room just knew I was a runner.

  • ComputerDude (unregistered)

    Really doesn't surprise me. I've worked in POS development for a bit over a year. This is the least of the WTF's that I could come up with :)

  • Darkwulf (unregistered) in reply to Just Some Guy
    Just Some Guy:
    I worked for an ISP whose very first customer was Mr. Blank. For real. So the very first row in our customer database was "ID: 1000 NAME: BLANK". That account got deleted more than once by well-meaning and unsuspecting customer service people.
    An ISP I've worked for had a customer named "John Test". Naturally, his email addresses had variations on "[email protected]", and people making fake accounts during training sessions often used "test" and "traning" in those names as well. Poor John's email account got deleted, or re-purposed, or moved about ten times before he finally cancelled service...
  • SpamBot (unregistered) in reply to LieutenantFrost
    LieutenantFrost:
    Whenever possible, I enter "Denial" as the state in our test accounts.

    .... and country as Egypt?

  • Chris OConnor (unregistered)

    We had a similar situation recently, with an automated email to notify people of birthdays for other team members.

    Kinda nice - good fun - and might mean "cake" for morning tea.

    Imagine my surprise to get an email entited "Today is Service Account BizTalk Production's Birthday!"

    Click here to see a screenshot here...> http://www.grumpywookie.com/2008/04/14/bringing-cake/

  • (cs) in reply to Jay
    Jay:
    N Morrison:
    In the well loved Infocom ('Zork') adventure game series, I was amused to find as I poked around in the code that the player was internally known as 'The Idiot' or some such.

    I've warned employees in the past not to use insulting names for test clients. Odd how these leak out to release versions all too often.

    I used to work on a software package that included billing functions, and I wrote the module to produce warning letters to be sent to customers whose accounts were past due. The client would create a "template letter" with the static text and they were supposed to put "$name", "$balancedue", "$accountnumber" and the like where they wanted values from the customer's data inserted. I threw together a sample letter that was included with our distribution so the client could see how it worked and how the file should look. My sample letter included text like "Please please please pay your bill" and "I need the money, I have a wife and a child and a dog and a cat to support".

    You guessed it: Several clients used that sample letter as is, and one called our help desk to complain that the text was inappropriate.

    On a far more prosaic level, I'm currently filling in between jobs by doing a tele-marketing job. The computer bit of this involves a Btrieve era CRM system, which is actually surprisingly good at what it does. Unfortunately, it isn't configurable to modern client demands. Specifically, it produces documents in RTF format.

    So here's what we do.

    (1) Collect all the customer details over the phone, and these (crucially) include the email address. (2) Fire up the trusty RTF template and fill it in, complete with notes such as "This guy is a toss-pot who doesn't answer the phone, because he's always in meetings. Might be a useful idiot, though." (3) Email the result to ourselves. (4) Open the email attachment, and save it as a Word document. (5) Email the Word document to the boss.

    Unfortunately, step (3) defaults to emailing to the customer in question. It is quite important to make sure that one deletes the original addressee and replaces with one's own address.

    I live in fear that I will doze off and get this wrong.

    PS Why does my company still use this software? Largely because CRM systems, these days, charge $1000 per seat for overly-complicated, SAP-style shit.

    Where is OSS when you need it?

  • Pinky writing on behalf of the Brain (unregistered)

    I thought this was impossible, for anyone to be this stupid. And then I got called in the evening at home on my private line because HR in Texas had discovered someone called Chris P Bacon was in the system and had access to all kinds of financials stuff in Europe, oh woe be unto us, poor SOX compliant business. A test account, surely, with bloody large access control lists. The auditor was standing right there and they needed to remove the account straight away.

    I called Christina Paula Bacon up to explain her middle initial was giving the Yanks a spot of bother and could she ring them up and tell them to stuff the jokes. So Chris called and ended up actually quoting her contract number, employee number, and having to get her own local HR admin out of his evening dinner to vouche for the fact that nobody was playing a prank and Chris had been the controller for the entire African region for the last nine years, and had all that time been happily working out of Capetown. Her words "If being stupid were a capital offence, even George Bush would nuke Texas!" made it into my IRC quit message for months :)

  • eric bloedow (unregistered)

    a story i read: a classroom had two large posts in it, which appeared on the seating chart for some reason, so the teacher would sometimes call on "post" to answer a question during class...but at the end of the year, the teacher made a joke of it, giving Post1 and Post2 high grades and a perfect attendance record!

Leave a comment on “The Service Awards Ceremony”

Log In or post as a guest

Replying to comment #:

Log Out

« Return to Article