The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

Spork · 2010-09-07 Reply Admin

Neil:
Would you hire a builder to build you a house with all your cash and not bother to go around and check the progress and that it's coming along as you would want it?
This is the real world :)

A good consultant can spin enough wafflegab with the appropriate content to baffle any manager who decided to hire a consultant where an internal employee would have been a better choice.

2010-09-07 Reply Admin

TFA:
...a five page Word document that was their "documentation".

Which is worse: five pages of "documentation" or 100+ pages of worthless crap?

dubbreak · 2010-09-07 Reply Admin

Knux2:
Bill:
This is absurd. There was no such thing as VBScript, COM, or debuggers in 1979. DOS had not even been invented yet.
Nice try, Alex.

I think the reference to 1979 may have been a bit of sarcasm. As in, the meeting room would have been considered aggressively modern IF it had been 1979...

TRWTF is that Bill didn't get that.

Too bad it wasn't 50s modern, then it would be cool. 70s decor isn't scheduled to be in vogue again for another decade or two.

2010-09-07 Reply Admin

Phil:
Bells-Torgo, huh?
Does their insurance look after the place while the master is away?

Watch out for their attempts to massage you to death!

2010-09-07 Reply Admin

[quote user="Anonymous"]...snipped a bunch of whining about the deletion of off-topic comments made in response to an obvious troll...

Anonymous - nice trying to have a conversation with you. Too bad it was zapped...

2010-09-07 Reply Admin

Neil:
Why didn't Corey write a program to do the import himself?
Or manage the consultants when they came in to make sure they don't make a mess?

Probably because the high-priced consultants came with their own management structure that reported directly to the suits. So long as the suits thing everything is running fine, then Jedi hand wave "everything is fine."

2010-09-07 Reply Admin

That explains why the server needs to be continuously set to midnight:

"There iS No otHer wAy... It'lL be dARk Soon..."

D-Coder · 2010-09-07 Reply Admin

Matthew Parent:
If the clock is being reset to midnight every 8 minutes, how the server "know" when 24 (or 25) minutes has elapsed and that it's time to run hastur.bat?
I guess you could maintain a counter of the number of times the clock has been reset. When the counter hits a multiple of 3 you can run hastur.bat (or wait an additional minute).
I'm curious exactly how the consultants got everything to run. Did they manually run batch files every x minutes?

And you call yourself a programmer??!? (Actually I have no idea if you do.)

;; Pseudocode 24- or 25-minute timer
Counter = 0
Repeat
     Sleep 1 ;; second; Sleep 1000 if milliseconds, etc
     Counter = Counter + 1
     If Counter = 24 * 60 then ;; 25 * 60 if appropriate
         Call Hastur.bat
         Call GoatSacrifice.bat
         Call ReplaceEyeBalls.bat ;; etc
         Counter = 0
     End if
End repeat

2010-09-07 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
...snipped a bunch of whining about the deletion of off-topic comments made in response to an obvious troll...
-- Note from Alex: the TDWTF Forums welcome your discussion about health care legislation

I have deleted your conversation...pray I don't delete any further. Remind me what the topic was again?

2010-09-07 Reply Admin

davedavenotdavemaybedave:
What I don't understand about all the WTFs of this type is why the companies who receive the shitty work pay for it, or fix it themselves. If you employ a contractor to build you a new office building and he delivers a pile of sand with a revolving door on top, you don't pay for it. If you buy a new car, but they deliver a truck, missing two wheels, with gerbils instead of an engine, you'd just send it back. Why doesn't the techie involved explain to his bosses that the consultants have not delivered what they were contracted to provide?

Oh, but the consultants DID deliver what they were asked to deliver. They "consulted" plain and simple. No actual work, just "consulting". This leads to environments where you need to go back to midnight every 8 minutes. Obviously the consultants could only get 8 minutes of work done then needed to be paid, then they started over again.

Sounds logical to me!

Insert old joke on the tire on a swing and its various implementations, and how simple the original customer wanted it. Usually the "suits" unnecessarily complicated it, and the underlings had to clean up the mess. Typical!

2010-09-07 Reply Admin

D-Coder:
Matthew Parent:
If the clock is being reset to midnight every 8 minutes, how the server "know" when 24 (or 25) minutes has elapsed and that it's time to run hastur.bat?
I guess you could maintain a counter of the number of times the clock has been reset. When the counter hits a multiple of 3 you can run hastur.bat (or wait an additional minute).
I'm curious exactly how the consultants got everything to run. Did they manually run batch files every x minutes?
And you call yourself a programmer??!? (Actually I have no idea if you do.)
;; Pseudocode 24- or 25-minute timer
Counter = 0
Repeat
     Sleep 1 ;; second; Sleep 1000 if milliseconds, etc
     Counter = Counter + 1
     If Counter = 24 * 60 then ;; 25 * 60 if appropriate
         Call Hastur.bat
         Call GoatSacrifice.bat
         Call ReplaceEyeBalls.bat ;; etc
         Counter = 0
     End if
End repeat

Or you could just do GetTickCount() mod 24 or 25 minutes and ...

Oh wait, this is the daily WTF, your way is probably more likely.

2010-09-07 Reply Admin

Matthew Parent:
I'm curious exactly how the consultants got everything to run. Did they manually run batch files every x minutes?

Hee Hee Whooo boy whatta laugh! Oh you mean you're serious? Clearly you've never worked with consultants. They don't run anything! They don't even compile it. That kind of drudgery is for the little people. They just write stuff. Mostly copy/paste from previous clients.

2010-09-07 Reply Admin

davedavenotdavemaybedave:
What I don't understand about all the WTFs of this type is why the companies who receive the shitty work pay for it, or fix it themselves. If you employ a contractor to build you a new office building and he delivers a pile of sand with a revolving door on top, you don't pay for it. If you buy a new car, but they deliver a truck, missing two wheels, with gerbils instead of an engine, you'd just send it back. Why doesn't the techie involved explain to his bosses that the consultants have not delivered what they were contracted to provide?

Because you need to know the difference between a car and a truck especially when you are in the car building industry, i.e. the techie involved doesn't have the expertise / knowledge which is why the company hired the contractor in the first place :)

Which is why our dear friend in the article wasn't so smart in the end after all, he had a good idea but was unable to implement it or instil confidence in his ability to implement it, same thing in the end.

Those 2 / 3 blocks don't look like the most detailed plan I have ever seen, I would pay him about 20c for that.

2010-09-07 Reply Admin

Neil:
Would you hire a builder to build you a house with all your cash and not bother to go around and check the progress and that it's coming along as you would want it?

Example 1:

Your house, your money, you're going to live there when it is done.

Example 2:

Someone else's company, someone else's money, you're going to leave first chance you get and being able to put "Seized the strategic initiative to conceptualize and transition to a four million dollar paradigm toppling metaflow" on your resume is all you really want.

2010-09-07 Reply Admin

Hey! I recognize that complicated diagram. It's a Java somethingorother whatchamatizer. And yes, even in its original context, it seems awfully overcomplicated.

But then I haven't invented my own language yet, so what do I know?

D-Coder · 2010-09-07 Reply Admin

MG:
D-Coder:
Matthew Parent:
If the clock is being reset to midnight every 8 minutes, how the server "know" when 24 (or 25) minutes has elapsed and that it's time to run hastur.bat?
I guess you could maintain a counter of the number of times the clock has been reset. When the counter hits a multiple of 3 you can run hastur.bat (or wait an additional minute).
I'm curious exactly how the consultants got everything to run. Did they manually run batch files every x minutes?
And you call yourself a programmer??!? (Actually I have no idea if you do.)
;; Pseudocode 24- or 25-minute timer
Counter = 0
Repeat
     Sleep 1 ;; second; Sleep 1000 if milliseconds, etc
     Counter = Counter + 1
     If Counter = 24 * 60 then ;; 25 * 60 if appropriate
         Call Hastur.bat
         Call GoatSacrifice.bat
         Call ReplaceEyeBalls.bat ;; etc
         Counter = 0
     End if
End repeat
Or you could just do GetTickCount() mod 24 or 25 minutes and ...

Oh wait, this is the daily WTF, your way is probably more likely.

You got a lot to learn, grasshopper.

What if the OS decides to run some other task just as GetTickCount() hits the right number? Like, say, a policy import program?

I suppose you could set the job priority so high that nothing else runs, but that defeats the point, hmm? Or just don't let any other tasks run, but that etc.

2010-09-07 Reply Admin

jjtypospotter:
24 minutes, or 25 minutes? Which is it?

Both... and neither. It's an absolutely brillant concept!

frits · 2010-09-07 Reply Admin

"This is a good idea," the suit on the left said, "but I think you want hot porridge."
"This is a good idea," the suit on the right said, "but I think you want cold porridge."

"This is a good idea," the suit in the middle said, "but I think you want porridge that's just right."

Maybe they should've consulted Goldilocks.

2010-09-07 Reply Admin

Neil:
davedavenotdavemaybedave:
What I don't understand about all the WTFs of this type is why the companies who receive the shitty work pay for it, or fix it themselves. If you employ a contractor to build you a new office building and he delivers a pile of sand with a revolving door on top, you don't pay for it. If you buy a new car, but they deliver a truck, missing two wheels, with gerbils instead of an engine, you'd just send it back. Why doesn't the techie involved explain to his bosses that the consultants have not delivered what they were contracted to provide?

Because you need to know the difference between a car and a truck especially when you are in the car building industry, i.e. the techie involved doesn't have the expertise / knowledge which is why the company hired the contractor in the first place :)

Which is why our dear friend in the article wasn't so smart in the end after all, he had a good idea but was unable to implement it or instil confidence in his ability to implement it, same thing in the end.

Those 2 / 3 blocks don't look like the most detailed plan I have ever seen, I would pay him about 20c for that.

Think about it from the point of view of the suits: What do you use to determine the value? If you don't know the difference between 10 lines of clean code and 200+ lines of crap code (assume they accomplish the same thing) then how do you assign your estimation of the value? Cost is how. Or the number of lines. But what you need to understand is that they are reaching what they believe to be a rational decision. If you use different methodology to determine value you may or may not agree with them.

On top of that, they sense an "over-simplified" version and think there must be more to it than that...and then comes along a consultant that feeds into that belief and viola, million dollar budget.

And lastly, if you do not have the respect built up for the suits to have more confidence in you than they do the consultants, time to update the resume. It matters not whether you actually are less competent than the consultants or if the suits mistakenly believe that you are, the result will generally be the same: PAIN.

2010-09-07 Reply Admin

D-Coder:
MG:

Or you could just do GetTickCount() mod 24 or 25 minutes and ...

Oh wait, this is the daily WTF, your way is probably more likely.
You got a lot to learn, grasshopper.

What if the OS decides to run some other task just as GetTickCount() hits the right number? Like, say, a policy import program?

I suppose you could set the job priority so high that nothing else runs, but that defeats the point, hmm? Or just don't let any other tasks run, but that etc.

Okay, okay. Thankfully, I am not a programmer by trade.

Of course, that would have at least come up the first time I tried it and I'd have found a way to make it work, admittedly likely in some WTF-ish way given my lack of knowledge about the Microsoft platform. Does Windows have the alarm() system call or something functionally equivalent that is immune to clock setbacks?

Someone You Know · 2010-09-07 Reply Admin

ContraCorners:
If the clock is being reset to midnight every 8 minutes, how the server "know" when 24 (or 25) minutes has elapsed and that it's time to run hastur.bat?

I think the least hacky solution is probably to run hastur.bat from a remote system with a clock that works correctly.

2010-09-07 Reply Admin

Article:
"This is a good idea," the suit on the left said, "but I think you've forgotten how sensitive this data is. The process needs to be more complex."

Ok, I'll make sure that all of the necessary safeguards are in place.

"This is a good idea," the suit on the right said, "but I think your solution is too complex. We don't want developers involved with maintaining it. It should be something the DBAs support."

Ok, I'll make sure that the solution is designed simple enough so that the DBAs can support it.

"This is a good idea," the suit in the middle said, "but I think you're underestimating the importance of this project. We've already allocated a $2M budget for this, and are negotiating for another million. We're going to outsource this to consultants."

Yes this is an important project which is exactly why we should develop the solution in-house and not outsource the development. That way we can ensure that the solution meets the requirements with all of the quality checks. We will also be able to ensure that the solution is both simpler and more complex (i.e. simple enough to maintain by our DBAs and complex enough that it does everything that it is required to do). If we hired consultants we can only assume that their simple solution would not meet the requirements and that their complex solution would be unmaintainable. (on another note, why do we have developers if not to develop applications and solutions such as this? So that they can maintain the crap that the consultants left behind, of course.)

Besides, who would you trust more: consultants who only care about the paycheck, or in-house developers who have a vested interest in the company (if at the very least because their paycheck depends on it)

pitchingchris · 2010-09-07 Reply Admin

ContraCorners:
If the clock is being reset to midnight every 8 minutes, how the server "know" when 24 (or 25) minutes has elapsed and that it's time to run hastur.bat?

the first question anybody should have asked was WHY ? Why should I make my computer clock change because you were too stupid to reset a variable and do some simple 3rd grade math?

Yazeran · 2010-09-07 Reply Admin

Someone You Know:
ContraCorners:
If the clock is being reset to midnight every 8 minutes, how the server "know" when 24 (or 25) minutes has elapsed and that it's time to run hastur.bat?

I think the least hacky solution is probably to run hastur.bat from a remote system with a clock that works correctly.

And for fun do it three times in a row as others have suggested and safely listen for the screams.... :-)

(Although I would do something like: echo "sleep 60;hastur.bat;hastor.bat;hastur.bat" > end.bat ./end.bat & \d\d\d just to be on the safe side... :-) (Yes I know I'm mixing dos and unix system calls)

Yazeran

Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer.

Jaime · 2010-09-07 Reply Admin

ContraCorners:
If the clock is being reset to midnight every 8 minutes, how the server "know" when 24 (or 25) minutes has elapsed and that it's time to run hastur.bat?

Call wget to get the current time page (timezone.cgi) from the USNO and run it through awk to parse out the current time. What could be simpler?

D-Coder · 2010-09-07 Reply Admin

MG:
D-Coder:
MG:

Or you could just do GetTickCount() mod 24 or 25 minutes and ...

Oh wait, this is the daily WTF, your way is probably more likely.
You got a lot to learn, grasshopper.

What if the OS decides to run some other task just as GetTickCount() hits the right number? Like, say, a policy import program?

I suppose you could set the job priority so high that nothing else runs, but that defeats the point, hmm? Or just don't let any other tasks run, but that etc.

Okay, okay. Thankfully, I am not a programmer by trade.

Of course, that would have at least come up the first time I tried it and I'd have found a way to make it work, admittedly likely in some WTF-ish way given my lack of knowledge about the Microsoft platform. Does Windows have the alarm() system call or something functionally equivalent that is immune to clock setbacks?

You got a lot to learn, grasshopper. :-)

The first time it would work just fine. The 238th time, no. And at random intervals thereafter.

2010-09-07 Reply Admin

Cbuttius:
A fool and his money are soon parted... The real WTF continues to be that big financial organisations are clueless about managing their IT resources.
Pretty much every major investment bank I know of has their IT staff employed by business area rather than having a standalone IT department to handle technical issues across and in multiple business areas.

And they are still obsessed with head-counts rather than need.

I work for a bank ... granted, we're not a major investment bank, but we do spread out over several New England states. And we've got a standalone IT department! It works, more or less.

2010-09-07 Reply Admin

Jaime:
ContraCorners:
If the clock is being reset to midnight every 8 minutes, how the server "know" when 24 (or 25) minutes has elapsed and that it's time to run hastur.bat?
Call wget to get the current time page (timezone.cgi) from the USNO and run it through awk to parse out the current time. What could be simpler?

How about: We put an analog clock on a wooden table, Scan it in, decode it by measuring the angles on the clock to determine the current time. Post the results to a web server which we poll to find out if it is now after the time to run whatever we need to run next (as determined by an xml config file).

2010-09-07 Reply Admin

Yup, I was hoping someone would point out the name of the batch file. I'm assuming that name was edited in in post-processing? If so, good name, that project does look Lovecraftian (it's evil and it would drive anyone looking at it for long insane!)

davedavenotdavemaybedave · 2010-09-07 Reply Admin

Ben4jammin:
Neil:
davedavenotdavemaybedave:
What I don't understand about all the WTFs of this type is why the companies who receive the shitty work pay for it, or fix it themselves. If you employ a contractor to build you a new office building and he delivers a pile of sand with a revolving door on top, you don't pay for it. If you buy a new car, but they deliver a truck, missing two wheels, with gerbils instead of an engine, you'd just send it back. Why doesn't the techie involved explain to his bosses that the consultants have not delivered what they were contracted to provide?

Because you need to know the difference between a car and a truck especially when you are in the car building industry, i.e. the techie involved doesn't have the expertise / knowledge which is why the company hired the contractor in the first place :)

Which is why our dear friend in the article wasn't so smart in the end after all, he had a good idea but was unable to implement it or instil confidence in his ability to implement it, same thing in the end.

Those 2 / 3 blocks don't look like the most detailed plan I have ever seen, I would pay him about 20c for that.

Think about it from the point of view of the suits: What do you use to determine the value? If you don't know the difference between 10 lines of clean code and 200+ lines of crap code (assume they accomplish the same thing) then how do you assign your estimation of the value? Cost is how. Or the number of lines. But what you need to understand is that they are reaching what they believe to be a rational decision. If you use different methodology to determine value you may or may not agree with them.

On top of that, they sense an "over-simplified" version and think there must be more to it than that...and then comes along a consultant that feeds into that belief and viola, million dollar budget.

And lastly, if you do not have the respect built up for the suits to have more confidence in you than they do the consultants, time to update the resume. It matters not whether you actually are less competent than the consultants or if the suits mistakenly believe that you are, the result will generally be the same: PAIN.

That's not quite what I was getting at. There are all kinds of (often dubious) reasons why the consultants might have been used, but having taken the decision to use them, why was the delivery of an incomplete, non-working solution accepted?

If my boss orders a new PC from Dell, and it turns up with the wrong spec, he can't tell that himself because he knows nothing about it. If I look at it, though, and say 'hey, they sent the wrong thing' he's not going to argue.

Similarly, if the techie charged with implementing the consultants' code speaks up and says 'hey, they didn't finish this and it doesn't work' then why the funt would someone ignore that? They might doubt the competency of the techie, but as soon as they got a second opinion, they'd have to accept s/he was right.

2010-09-07 Reply Admin

frits:
"This is a good idea," the suit on the left said, "but I think you want hot porridge."
"This is a good idea," the suit on the right said, "but I think you want cold porridge."

"This is a good idea," the suit in the middle said, "but I think you want porridge that's just right."

Maybe they should've consulted Goldilocks.

You are an idiot and should be banned from using your mommy and daddy's modem. Given the context, I would think that they should talk to the Emperor (of new clothes, fame, not Star Wars).

2010-09-07 Reply Admin

ContraCorners:
If the clock is being reset to midnight every 8 minutes, how the server "know" when 24 (or 25) minutes has elapsed and that it's time to run hastur.bat?

Clearly the reset clock script needs to append a character to a file on a share somewhere, and when it reaches 3 bytes long, schedule hastur.bat and clear the file.

2010-09-07 Reply Admin

Things like that make me doubt we're in a recession.

Things like that make me understand why we're in a recession.

2010-09-07 Reply Admin

davedavenotdavemaybedave:
Ben4jammin:
Neil:
davedavenotdavemaybedave:
What I don't understand about all the WTFs of this type is why the companies who receive the shitty work pay for it, or fix it themselves. If you employ a contractor to build you a new office building and he delivers a pile of sand with a revolving door on top, you don't pay for it. If you buy a new car, but they deliver a truck, missing two wheels, with gerbils instead of an engine, you'd just send it back. Why doesn't the techie involved explain to his bosses that the consultants have not delivered what they were contracted to provide?

Because you need to know the difference between a car and a truck especially when you are in the car building industry, i.e. the techie involved doesn't have the expertise / knowledge which is why the company hired the contractor in the first place :)

Which is why our dear friend in the article wasn't so smart in the end after all, he had a good idea but was unable to implement it or instil confidence in his ability to implement it, same thing in the end.

Those 2 / 3 blocks don't look like the most detailed plan I have ever seen, I would pay him about 20c for that.

Think about it from the point of view of the suits: What do you use to determine the value? If you don't know the difference between 10 lines of clean code and 200+ lines of crap code (assume they accomplish the same thing) then how do you assign your estimation of the value? Cost is how. Or the number of lines. But what you need to understand is that they are reaching what they believe to be a rational decision. If you use different methodology to determine value you may or may not agree with them.

On top of that, they sense an "over-simplified" version and think there must be more to it than that...and then comes along a consultant that feeds into that belief and viola, million dollar budget.

And lastly, if you do not have the respect built up for the suits to have more confidence in you than they do the consultants, time to update the resume. It matters not whether you actually are less cowpetent than the consultants or if the suits mistakenly believe that you are, the result will generally be the same: PAIN.

That's not quite what I was getting at. There are all kinds of (often dubious) reasons why the consultants might have been used, but having taken the decision to use them, why was the delivery of an incomplete, non-working solution accepted?

If my boss orders a new PC from Dell, and it turns up with the wrong spec, he can't tell that himself because he knows nothing about it. If I look at it, though, and say 'hey, they sent the wrong thing' he's not going to argue.

Similarly, if the techie charged with implementing the consultants' code speaks up and says 'hey, they didn't finish this and it doesn't work' then why the funt would someone ignore that? They might doubt the competency of the techie, but as soon as they got a second opinion, they'd have to accept s/he was right.

Be careful to always remember that going along with the path of no or least resistance is almost always on the top of the list of goals for managers.

frits · 2010-09-07 Reply Admin

UTR:
frits:
"This is a good idea," the suit on the left said, "but I think you want hot porridge."
"This is a good idea," the suit on the right said, "but I think you want cold porridge."

"This is a good idea," the suit in the middle said, "but I think you want porridge that's just right."

Maybe they should've consulted Goldilocks.

color=white You are an idiot and should be banned from using your mommy and daddy's modem. /color Given the context, I would think that they should talk to the Emperor (of new clothes, fame, not Star Wars).

Cowardly troll is a punk.

You're the exact opposite of the truly confrontational Mr. Glanstron. I blow my nose in your general direction.

2010-09-07 Reply Admin

Fred:
Matthew Parent:
I'm curious exactly how the consultants got everything to run. Did they manually run batch files every x minutes?
Hee Hee Whooo boy whatta laugh! Oh you mean you're serious? Clearly you've never worked with consultants. They don't run anything! They don't even compile it. That kind of drudgery is for the little people. They just write stuff. Mostly copy/paste from previous clients.

Seems I've worked with very different consultants types than you have. They compiled and ran all kinds of things*. In production. A lot.

Yes, it is as terrifying as it sounds.

FYI, "things" mostly included copied/pasted things from previous clients.

2010-09-07 Reply Admin

Cbuttius:
A fool and his money are soon parted... The real WTF continues to be that big financial organisations are clueless about managing their IT resources.

A local college hires my wife at the beginning of each semester to help with incoming students and their infects laptops. To "save money" the college decided to get rid of the heads of the IT department and hire outside consultants. I'm sure you can see where this will head.

Well, they are "saving money" in the short run. Rather than the 6-8 weeks they usually have her there, "they" decided that 2 weeks would be enough. (That barely covers the usual start-of-semester madness.) We recently found out why they need her for only two weeks -- they will no longer offer the service to the students. If the student-workers who will do it part-time can't fix/clean the system, they will tell the student to go elsewhere and hire someone to do it. The students are already starting to complain.

Apparently, they've also decided that making sure the student's computers are clean and up-to-date "takes too long", so rather than requiring a scan for all critical updates, and requiring the school's choice of antivirus program (also with all updates), "they" decided to basically allow all of them on to the network and "we'll deal with a couple of infected computers later".

Then there's the broken LAN ports in the dorm rooms. Apparently, lots of them get broken over the summer. And some of the buildings are old stone structures, where wireless isn't practical. The person who worked 10-12 hour days, 7 days a week, at the start of the semester is no longer there. Instead, a few student-workers will do it "when they get around to it". So, two weeks into the semester, plenty of students still have no network access in their room.

And it's all downhill from here.

(Oh, that that's not mentioning the nickel-and-diming of the students, after raising tuition. For example, there is now a $1 "toasting fee" at the cafeteria if you want the bread toasted. Really!)

da Doctah · 2010-09-07 Reply Admin

UTR:
frits:
"This is a good idea," the suit on the left said, "but I think you want hot porridge."
"This is a good idea," the suit on the right said, "but I think you want cold porridge."

"This is a good idea," the suit in the middle said, "but I think you want porridge that's just right."

Maybe they should've consulted Goldilocks.

You are an idiot and should be banned from using your mommy and daddy's modem. Given the context, I would think that they should talk to the Emperor (of new clothes, fame, not Star Wars).

They're the same guy.

Really.

Have you ever seen the two of them together?

2010-09-07 Reply Admin

Fred:
Matthew Parent:
I'm curious exactly how the consultants got everything to run. Did they manually run batch files every x minutes?
Hee Hee Whooo boy whatta laugh! Oh you mean you're serious? Clearly you've never worked with consultants. They don't run anything! They don't even compile it. That kind of drudgery is for the little people. They just write stuff. Mostly copy/paste from previous clients.

For real? They don't even compile the bloody thing?

But then, any jerk ass could be a consultant...err wait, I think I get it now.

2010-09-07 Reply Admin

da Doctah:
They're the same guy.
Really.

Have you ever seen the two of them together?

So he's naked in Star Wars?

2010-09-07 Reply Admin

whiskeyjack:
da Doctah:
They're the same guy.
Really.

Have you ever seen the two of them together?

So he's naked in Star Wars?

I have exposed myself...pray I don't expose myself further. I could have gone my whole life without picturing that. Is that a lightsaber, or are you just happy to see me? CAPTCHA: eros -- how appropriate

jonsjava · 2010-09-07 Reply Admin

did nobody else notice the Cthulhu reference? Hint: batch file

2010-09-07 Reply Admin

Neil:
Kull:
Neil:
Why didn't Corey write a program to do the import himself?
Or manage the consultants when they came in to make sure they don't make a mess?

Because numerous programs have already been written to manage consultants... svn, tfs, cvs, Red Queen

Awesome, I didn't know consultants could be managed through source control systems, I wish I knew about the command "svn check consultants code for wtf" or "svn make consultant smart" sooner, could have saved companies millions!

Simple. You don't give them commit rights, and code review all their changes before committing yourself.

2010-09-07 Reply Admin

jonsjava:
did nobody else notice the Cthulhu reference? Hint: batch file

Nope. Nobody. Not a single one.

Other than the handful of other comments already pointing it out, of course.

2010-09-07 Reply Admin

hastur.bat needed to run every 24 minutes

Hmm I think the consultants were hastur.bating the entire time they were working on this!

Captcha 'abigo' - a large Spanish friend

jonsjava · 2010-09-07 Reply Admin

boog:
jonsjava:
did nobody else notice the Cthulhu reference? Hint: batch file
Nope. Nobody. Not a single one.
Other than the handful of other comments already pointing it out, of course.

Sometimes I'm dense. Other times, I'm blind. This is a case of both.

2010-09-07 Reply Admin

Has anyone noticed that you can click on it and princess pony appears on the screen?

2010-09-07 Reply Admin

jonsjava:
boog:
jonsjava:
did nobody else notice the Cthulhu reference? Hint: batch file
Nope. Nobody. Not a single one.
Other than the handful of other comments already pointing it out, of course.
Sometimes I'm dense. Other times, I'm blind. This is a case of both.

You can go blind from running hastur.bat more often than every 24 minutes.

2010-09-07 Reply Admin

hastur.bat! VERY classy Mythos reference there, Remy! That totally made my day. :D

2010-09-07 Reply Admin

Cbuttius:
A fool and his money are soon parted... The real WTF continues to be that big financial organisations are clueless about managing their IT resources.
Pretty much every major investment bank I know of has their IT staff employed by business area rather than having a standalone IT department to handle technical issues across and in multiple business areas.

And they are still obsessed with head-counts rather than need.

I take it you've never worked in a very large organisation.

Imagine your department is stymied by the 'one' IT department that cross-charges your department more than outside consultants would cost. They're also slow - they have a lead time at around 6 months before they'll start talking about a project, and figure it's at least 2 years away to completion.

Cross fade to aforementioned department hiring a few consultants to get the job done. A few dedicated guys manage to knock out the app in about 6 months at far less than the companies own IT department would charge.

The issue is when the 'couple of guys' are idiots and leave the company with a steaming pile of crap. That my friends is why there are so many WTF's.

It's all opportunity cost.

'Tis a Gift to be Simple

Leave a comment on “'Tis a Gift to be Simple”