The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

2013-09-17 Reply Admin

faoileag:
6) 23 Minutes to get from the server room to the car park, drive to the nearest shop with network cards on sale, buy one, drive back and get into the server room? Come on, please!

One word: Autobahn.

2013-09-17 Reply Admin

Well, Siegfried, there is a computer store on campus. I'll use our account to make the purchase.

PS. In Arnold's voice.

2013-09-17 Reply Admin

faoileag:
7) Most people in Hans shoes would just have shrugged their shoulders and told the blond guy: "your problem".

Perhaps because of this:

TFA:
"That was the Dean. We’ve got an hour to get the internet back or we’re all fired."

Would you really risk your job on your interpretation that all somehow didn't include you? Or maybe you would call the Dean back and ask for clarification? I'm sure that would go down well.

2013-09-17 Reply Admin

Anonymous Paranoiac:
Or barring that, that there wasn't at least a mostly useless server or PC laying around that they couldn't have pulled a network card from in order to restore service to the entire campus?

There was. Unfortunately it had been re-purposed as the gateway.

2013-09-17 Reply Admin

The Bodybuilder's name must have been Franz, because he PUMPED (clap, clap) IT UP! Akismet sucks

Zylon · 2013-09-17 Reply Admin

The techs from central IT in Berlin were an hour late, to Hanzo’s’s chagrin.

Ah, I remember the summer I spent renting a beachside chagrin.

2013-09-17 Reply Admin

ratchet freak:
faoileag:
So, a college in Hessen supposedly has a campus in Saxony but Central IT is located in Berlin. That's three different states.
Germany is a federal state just like the US of A, education is in the responsibility of the individual states, so this part of the "Hanzo"-stories is very badly researched.

I mean, would you write a story in which Princeton or the MIT operates an Albuquerque campus with Central IT for both situated in Washington DC?

or it is really well anonymised

I agree.

The university Dresden is probably a laundry in the US and the gateway they are trying to change is a washing machine.

Matt Westwood · 2013-09-17 Reply Admin

eVil:
English Man:
Because the largely non-socialist USA is the only country in the world who has workers' unions?

Everyone knows that nothing that can happen in the states can ever happen anywhere else, and likewise, nothing that ever happens elsewhere could possibly occur in the states.

This is because of Freedom, apparently.

Well it's one of the few places where a guy shoots his girlfriend's 3-year-old by accident who's playing finger-gun with him because he forgot the gun he was holding was real, live and loaded.

It's also one of the few places where a young lad staggering around looking for help after having had a nasty car crash is shot 10 times by a policeman he has approached.

And I can't think of many place where, after lots of people are killed by a madman with a gun, a large contingent of people claim how much safer it would be if everybody has a gun ...

2013-09-17 Reply Admin

Right, as if Germany doesn't have any Japanese immigrants...

Coyne · 2013-09-17 Reply Admin

It's Pat:
Coyne:

faoileag:
7) Most people in Hans shoes would just have shrugged their shoulders and told the blond guy: "your problem". Will Hans receive any cudos for saving the blond guy's behind? No. Will he be reimbursed for his expenses? Hey, this is a college. You so don't go to the secretary with your receipt and she opens the cashier.

Having worked at a college, admittedly somewhat less backward than this one, I can still confirm that the likelihood of reimbursement in a case such as this is: Dismal. Distant. Doomed.

Even a backward IT group would have a petty cash drawer, right?

Having a petty cash drawer and actually handing out cash are very different things.

Being at a slightly less backward college, the place I used to work used a voucher process rather than a cash drawer. Getting the boss to sign for a non-pre-authorized purchase voucher was...well, easier to just forget it. Even getting him to sign for pre-authorized purchase voucher was sometimes like pulling teeth.

db2 · 2013-09-17 Reply Admin

Next week's adventure: Hanzo roughs up an ATM switch at the University of Florida's Greenland campus (after flying out there from central IT's Siberian office).

2013-09-17 Reply Admin

Couldn't they just use the network card from the "new gateway"? Even though the machine was unbootable, the adapter would be actually pretty likely to work.

2013-09-17 Reply Admin

Irritating Enlightener:
Couldn't they just use the network card from the "new gateway"? Even though the machine was unbootable, the adapter would be actually pretty likely to work.

dual built ones?

pci-x vs pci?

ISA vs PCI?

zelmak · 2013-09-17 Reply Admin

Joe:
Irritating Enlightener:
Couldn't they just use the network card from the "new gateway"? Even though the machine was unbootable, the adapter would be actually pretty likely to work.

dual built ones?

pci-x vs pci?

ISA vs PCI?

Just cut off the bits that don't fit right.

2013-09-17 Reply Admin

AKFrost:
faoileag:
So, a college in Hessen supposedly has a campus in Saxony but Central IT is located in Berlin. That's three different states.
Germany is a federal state just like the US of A, education is in the responsibility of the individual states, so this part of the "Hanzo"-stories is very badly researched.

I mean, would you write a story in which Princeton or the MIT operates an Albuquerque campus with Central IT for both situated in Washington DC?

the University of California owns part of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. not a full campus, sure, but definitely school property across state lines.

And it probably does have IT personnel who answer to Washington, DC.

2013-09-17 Reply Admin

English Man:
Rhywden:
One word: Union.
Six words: This is not the United States.
Because the largely non-socialist USA is the only country in the world who has workers' unions?

The German government murdered a lot more trade unionists back in the day, so today's unions are a lot more important there than in the USA. As such, they don't bother so much with the minutiae of how things are run.

Incidentally, China also has trade unions, but they work in a different way again.

Coyne · 2013-09-17 Reply Admin

zelmak:
Joe:
Irritating Enlightener:
Couldn't they just use the network card from the "new gateway"? Even though the machine was unbootable, the adapter would be actually pretty likely to work.

dual built ones?

pci-x vs pci?

ISA vs PCI?

Just cut off the bits that don't fit right.

You are unquestionably a programmer.

2013-09-17 Reply Admin

Hangman:
AKFrost:
faoileag:
So, a college in Hessen supposedly has a campus in Saxony but Central IT is located in Berlin. That's three different states.
Germany is a federal state just like the US of A, education is in the responsibility of the individual states, so this part of the "Hanzo"-stories is very badly researched.

I mean, would you write a story in which Princeton or the MIT operates an Albuquerque campus with Central IT for both situated in Washington DC?

the University of California owns part of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. not a full campus, sure, but definitely school property across state lines.

And it probably does have IT personnel who answer to Washington, DC.

Specifically, the No-Security Agency.

lolwtf · 2013-09-17 Reply Admin

Obviously he broke the card by accident and the storyteller just thought it'd be more entertaining if it were intentional.

2013-09-18 Reply Admin

Coyne:
zelmak:
Joe:
Irritating Enlightener:
Couldn't they just use the network card from the "new gateway"? Even though the machine was unbootable, the adapter would be actually pretty likely to work.
dual built ones?
pci-x vs pci?

ISA vs PCI?
Just cut off the bits that don't fit right.
You are unquestionably a programmer.

Some PCI-X cards really do let you just cut off the bits that don't fit in a PCI slot. They operate at half speed. I actually use two that way.

2013-09-18 Reply Admin

mikeTheLiar:
What, no buttcrack today?
Filed under: where is buttcrack?

The president's daughter threw up on the hard drive that contained the photo, so it couldn't be posted today. Thank ${dieties}.

2013-09-18 Reply Admin

mikeTheLiar:
What, no buttcrack today?
Filed under: where is buttcrack?

The bodybuilder snapped the network card in half with his glutes.

Pastebreath · 2013-09-18 Reply Admin

Quality of stories is slipping, last one with Hanzo was as much idiotic as this one.

2013-09-18 Reply Admin

TRWTF is the clumbsy references to Aryan supremicism.

Steve The Cynic · 2013-09-18 Reply Admin

English Man:
Rhywden:
Coyne:
1) Not even a government agency would send three (3!) people from Berlin to Dresden to update a network gateway.
One word: Union.
Six words: This is not the United States.
Because the largely non-socialist USA is the only country in the world who has workers' unions?

Of course it isn't. And it isn't even the only one that has unions that impose stupid stupid stupid job demarcation rules. You know, the stupid stupid stupid rules imposed by the even stupider union that mean that only --> this guy is allowed to pick up that sort of object, and he has to be accompanied by his two mates, one to carry the special gloves, and the other to carry the toolbox. The picker-upper must then call for a bolt un-turner to release the bolt that holds down the object (because of the stupid stupid stupid rules about who is allowed to turn or un-turn bolts), and only then can he pick up the object. And then all of them go away, and file a grievance against you because you didn't want it where the stupid stupid stupid union rules say they are allowed to put it.

Did I mention that the rules are stupid?

This sort of union rule (cornucopia of bad words) lead my father to have (in the UK during the 1970s) a union card for a union that was totally unrelated to his line of work. He was a field service technician doing what we'd nowadays call outsourced IT support, and one of the company's customers was a closed-shop unionised printing press. If he went in there without his card, the union guys (i.e. everyone in the place except the managers) downed tools and walked out until he left.

So, yes, I think that, despite their origins, modern trade unions are a serious waste of space.

2013-09-18 Reply Admin

This is not how unions work in Germany.

2013-09-18 Reply Admin

Steve The Cynic:
English Man:
Rhywden:
Coyne:
1) Not even a government agency would send three (3!) people from Berlin to Dresden to update a network gateway.
One word: Union.
Six words: This is not the United States.
Because the largely non-socialist USA is the only country in the world who has workers' unions?
Of course it isn't. And it isn't even the only one that has unions that impose stupid stupid stupid job demarcation rules. You know, the stupid stupid stupid rules imposed by the even stupider union that mean that only --> this guy is allowed to pick up that sort of object, and he has to be accompanied by his two mates, one to carry the special gloves, and the other to carry the toolbox. The picker-upper must then call for a bolt un-turner to release the bolt that holds down the object (because of the stupid stupid stupid rules about who is allowed to turn or un-turn bolts), and only then can he pick up the object. And then all of them go away, and file a grievance against you because you didn't want it where the stupid stupid stupid union rules say they are allowed to put it.
Did I mention that the rules are stupid?

This sort of union rule (cornucopia of bad words) lead my father to have (in the UK during the 1970s) a union card for a union that was totally unrelated to his line of work. He was a field service technician doing what we'd nowadays call outsourced IT support, and one of the company's customers was a closed-shop unionised printing press. If he went in there without his card, the union guys (i.e. everyone in the place except the managers) downed tools and walked out until he left.

So, yes, I think that, despite their origins, modern trade unions are a serious waste of space.

You have specific instances of this practice happening, of course? Or has the above been cut from the whole cloth of your irrational prejudices?

"Goodness me, Labour Day is such a stupid stupid stupid idea! Everybody not allowed to do any work that day? So what happens is that someone accidentally sets fire to their comforter when smoking in bed. But of course, they can't ring the fire department because the telephone exchange has shut down because the operators are all off work because of Labour Day. On the remote off-chance you happen to live in a region of the US where such operations have been automated (I know, we're living in cloud-cuckoo-land here), you may be able to get through to the fire department, but, yes you guessed, Labour Day so they're not working.

"So Labour Day is a stupid stupid stupid idea because that means everybody's house will burn down and the entire population of the US will be burned to death before nightfall!"

Steve The Cynic · 2013-09-18 Reply Admin

QJo:
You have specific instances of this practice happening, of course? Or has the above been cut from the whole cloth of your irrational prejudices?

Well, for starters the thing about my father and the closed-shop printing press was, well, about *my father*, not some mythical "someone on the Internet". And I've heard tales of the insanity of job demarcation union rules from various places, like my roomie at uni, whose father had a demarcation-related grievance filed against him, or direct eye-witness testimony by one of the authors of _Dark Waters_ (about the US Navy's NR-1 submarine) concerning the working environment at Electric Boat. These sort of rules are triple-stupid because they add nothing positive to anybody's work experience, and cost the company that they are wielded(*) against a great deal of money because of reduced / lost productivity and/or morale.

(*) "Wielded" is the right word, for such rules are a weapon used by the unions against the employer, or possibly the other staff who are not members of that union, or something. But they are weapons none the less.

QJo:
...
"So Labour Day is a stupid stupid stupid idea because that means everybody's house will burn down and the entire population of the US will be burned to death before nightfall!"

Clearly we don't expect the specific date of Labo(u)r Day to apply to everyone. There are many fields of work which more or less MUST continue to be operating on more or less any public holiday - power stations, fire/police/ambulance services, coast guard / RNLI lifeboats, prisons, hospitals, and so on - but we equally don't expect these people to have to sacrifice a day off because of that. Instead, we (should) let them have some other day off instead. It's a shame in a way that they can't enjoy the same day off as the rest of us, but we also (I hope) try to arrange it so that in any one facility, they take turns being the one affected by it.

2013-09-18 Reply Admin

Don't worry, QJo is a marxist. Don't bother explaining anything about reality to him. For him it is only about the dream of one day becoming a state apparachik with absolute lifelong power who never has to justify his contribution to society ever again.

2013-09-18 Reply Admin

Steve The Cynic:
QJo:
You have specific instances of this practice happening, of course? Or has the above been cut from the whole cloth of your irrational prejudices?
Well, for starters the thing about my father and the closed-shop printing press was, well, about *my father*, blah blah yak pointless anecdotes etc. ....

Oh yes of course, there was a paragraph about some vaguely explained rules that daddy didn't agree with (clearly he was a lot cleverer than anybody else (or was he just a whine-bag?), but I missed that third paragaph on the first time round having got bogged down in the utterly blethering stupidity of the fatuous claptrap in the first.

Anecdotes from someone with a chip on his shoulder evidence does not make.

2013-09-18 Reply Admin

Steve The Cynic:

QJo:
...
"So Labour Day is a stupid stupid stupid idea because that means everybody's house will burn down and the entire population of the US will be burned to death before nightfall!"
Clearly we don't expect the specific date of Labo(u)r Day to apply to everyone. There are many fields of work which more or less MUST continue to be operating on more or less any public holiday - power stations, fire/police/ambulance services, coast guard / RNLI lifeboats, prisons, hospitals, and so on - but we equally don't expect these people to have to sacrifice a day off because of that. Instead, we (should) let them have some other day off instead. It's a shame in a way that they can't enjoy the same day off as the rest of us, but we also (I hope) try to arrange it so that in any one facility, they take turns being the one affected by it.

Hooray, he got it!

Exactly my point. I made up a stupid story about an institution that Americans hold dear, in counterpoint to an equally stupid made-up story about someone who wasn't allowed to pick something up unless accompanied by ... which, as a work of fiction, was utter rubbish.

What is it about you people that make you completely incapable of introspection?

2013-09-18 Reply Admin

napillo:
Right, as if Germany doesn't have any Japanese immigrants...

Except then his real name might be Hanzo and his nickname (possibly (unlikely)) might be Hanz. Try again next week.

2013-09-18 Reply Admin

Ozz:
faoileag:
6) 23 Minutes to get from the server room to the car park, drive to the nearest shop with network cards on sale, buy one, drive back and get into the server room? Come on, please!
One word: Autobahn.

Indeed, this makes the whole story much more plausible: He drove from Dresden/Hesse to computer shops in Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne (to get 3 different quotes), via Bavaria of course, on the Autobahn in 23 minutes, and he still had time left to take a quick lunch in Stuttgart on the way.

2013-09-18 Reply Admin

eVil:
TRWTF is not posting a (partially, at least,) bullshit story, on which people call out all the seriously unlikely details.

Like they did last week for mostly the same SUDs.

TRWTF is, having done the above, and been called out on all the details, subsequently featuring the really awkward "Sheldon Cooper-esque" comment from some guy whose nose is out of joint, which tries (and woefully fails) to address all the objections from other commenters.

Yeah, that's really pathetic. I'd thought Coyne was being sarcastic, but apparently Erik Gern, AKA Erro', takes it seriously.

Coming next week: Hanzo tries to install new software on the gateway, but then realizes he'd left one of the floppy disks in the bathroom! And the bathroom is on the second floor!!! (Dramatic music) WHAT IS HE GOING TO DO??? Cliffhanger!

2013-09-18 Reply Admin

TRWTF is that I continue to read all these comments. JFC, people, you are all insufferable.

2013-09-18 Reply Admin

I dunno, HeeHaw, the lead up to Zelmak being called a programmer was worth the read :)

Steve The Cynic · 2013-09-18 Reply Admin

QJo:
Oh yes of course, there was a paragraph about some vaguely explained rules that daddy didn't agree with (clearly he was a lot cleverer than anybody else (or was he just a whine-bag?), but I missed that third paragaph on the first time round having got bogged down in the utterly blethering stupidity of the fatuous claptrap in the first.
Anecdotes from someone with a chip on his shoulder evidence does not make.

For the slow of understanding in the audience: A closed-shop union workplace is one where non-union workers are forbidden, bytheunion, to work, and in fact the employer is normally forbidden to even hire them unless joining the union is a condition of hiring.

So when my father went in there, he had to have a union card for the union in question, or all the union workers would down tools and walk out until he left. His employer (a supplier of IT support services) paid for the card. In and of itself, the situation didn't bother my father, aside from the annoyance of having to be a member of a union unrelated to his normal work...

But the key phrase is "forbidden by the union". It's not about the printing press's owner forbidding it. If the sociopolitical environment backs such a thing, the owner can't get any union workers unless he agrees to hire only union workers (including visiting representatives of suppliers, if said reps are working in the union area). And the said suitable sociopolitical environment also guarantees that the union will "organise" the workforce if the owner tries to hire only non-union workers, thus bringing him back to the original closed-shop thing he was trying to avoid.

Steve The Cynic · 2013-09-18 Reply Admin

QJo:
I made up a stupid story about an institution that Americans hold dear

You also missed the point made in many places on this site about the fact that I'm not an American, so don't have any significant attachment to American institutions(*). You also win a "Whoosh" for completely failing to distinguish between reality, fiction, and hyperbolic exposition. My roomie's father got a union grievance against him precisely because he picked something up to move it within the lab, when doing such a thing was specified as being a union job.

(It's worth noting that in both that case and the Electric Boat case described in Dark Waters, the employer was a US defense contractor. I'm not sure what we should read into that about the reasons why US defense procurement costs so much...)

(*) My style of writing and use of idioms is influenced by nine years - most of the 1980s - that I spent living in the US, but I'm not American. I like some of the turns of phrase that Americans of that time used, and I continue to use them because of that.

2013-09-18 Reply Admin

I recommend "The Daily WTF" ban the use of the word "ninja" and all associated metaphors from future posts.

As others have stated, this post is pretty much pure B.S., but nijafying it makes the post itself the true WTF.

jas88 · 2013-09-27 Reply Admin

Let's see .. a couple of years ago two techs came across to replace a fibre transceiver on my end of our inter-building link. (Then discovered they had the wrong power supply for it, so I had to go and collect the right one from their building later...) Two for a simple media converter, so three for a server doesn't seem so unlikely.
If he's convinced it's faulty, breaking it in half actually makes sense to stop it being reused and causing future problems. It's not as if an Ethernet NIC costs more than a small meal these days. What would you do with a faulty component worth £10, preserve it for posterity?!
It had been running previously; powering it off, then on again would seem excessive.
Our extensions are in the internal directory; several central techs have theirs routed to their mobiles. Nothing odd there.
Depending how you interpret "Dean", that would quite possibly outrank anyone within 'Central IT', hence able to fire anyone in that department. If screwing up and causing major disruption - four, five figures of damage - doesn't get you fired, what does?
Here at least, there's a small computer retailer just off-campus; I could walk there and buy a new NIC in under 23 minutes. If I had to go to their main store, 23 minutes would be about right - on foot.
For a small purchase, that's exactly what we've done in the past many times: new keyboards, mice, Ethernet leads...

Absolutely nothing implausible or even odd there for a UK university setting, at least, except the "Windows gateway" (which could be something like a caching proxy, virus checker or similar, which could fit quite well).

2013-10-07 Reply Admin

This is totally made up. :-( There's no Hesse University in Dresden. (The "Berlin IT" stuff made me think - that's nonsense. Dresden belongs to Saxony which is a different state - they wouldn't have any ties to some central Berlin IT, they're doing their stuff themselves.)

This makes me wonder how much truth is there to the other stories on TWTF.

2014-05-03 Reply Admin

Concerning your timing-problem in 6) I can assure you that it would have been entirely possible at the Faculty of CS at the University of Dresden (*1) before they moved to the main campus (lab was ground level and had direct access to parking space) and even more possible today, as the main campus is closer to the inner city (*2). Furthermore in Germany cheap computer shops tended to set up a small branch close to the technical faculties. Close means in Germany: 5 minutes by foot.

But we all know that this didn't take part in Dresden. We also know that no people came from Berlin. Why do you people insist on clinging to these made up names?

(*1) https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Bayrische+Straße+10,+01069+Dresden,+Deutschland/Hans-Grundig-Straße+25,+01307+Dresden,+Deutschland/

(*2) https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Bayrische+Straße+10,+01069+Dresden,+Deutschland/Technische+Universität+Dresden+Fakultät+Informatik,+Nöthnitzer+Straße+46,+01187+Dresden,+Deutschland/

Waste Not, Want Not

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