• Joseph M. (unregistered)

    TRWTF is... um...

    TRWTF is...

    Wait. Where's the WTF?

  • Grasshoppa (unregistered) in reply to k1
    k1:
    But Joe was left to explain to the VP why his once-pristine computer was now overflowing with MP3s and demos of spinning cubes.

    Obviously, it was done by an evil hacker, out there in teh interdet.

    Seriously: is Joe so retarded to leave his mess in the VP computer?

    CYA

    Seriously?

    "Intern"

    captcha == aptent. I think I'm starting to like the verbal abuse.

  • (cs) in reply to BentFranklin
    BentFranklin:
    Mmm I remember Indy! It was sweet in its day. AutoCAD even ran native on it.

    But that's a pretty small CD collection you got there Joe. And why would 500 MB of mp3s overflow a new computer?

    I remember when I started university in 1996 I bought a CD-ROM full of burned mp3's off a friend. I had to pay him $10 to cover the cost of the CD, but it was filled with hours of music at 128 kbps. I still have it, somewhere.

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to akatherder
    akatherder:
    frits:
    I'm still waiting to hear about the possessed computer.

    Since the network was glacially slow and he was able to get stuff done outside of normal business hours, I think his desktop was still functioning as the webserver. So while he was seemingly doing "nothing", his computer was still pretty busy.

    See, that doesn't quite add up for me. The impression I got from the story of the Indy being stored in a closet, made me think that the thing wasn't even plugged in and running. If that's the case, surely QA would have noticed. On the other hand, if it had been running and was moved to the intern's desk and was still being used as a webserver after being restarted by the intern, then how did QA even notice that anything had changed?

  • AA (unregistered)

    Perhaps when one of the QA stuff noticed that it was always offline overnight?

    Or perhaps they eventually needed to check the cabinet for some unrelated reason.

  • Unless... (unregistered)

    The Daily WTF is getting duller.

  • anon (unregistered) in reply to the real wtf fool
    the real wtf fool:
    I had an Indy as my workstation for 3 years. Lightning fast compared to the old diskless SPARCstation it replaced.
    More accurately referred to as "dickless workstations".
  • Todd (unregistered)

    Why do you give away everything in the title. I like this site, but this was completely idiotic.

  • No Comment (unregistered)

    Comments are more fun to read then the story itself. The title should be changed to: This needs comments!

  • mh (unregistered)

    This is cute. It's not a real WTF, but it's the kind of thing that happens all the time in the cash-strapped non-ideal Real World, so it's cute.

  • Unimportant (unregistered)

    Actually the fact this story was posted here as a WTF made me go WTF ? So mission accomplished eh ?

  • acestar (unregistered) in reply to jonsjava
    jonsjava:

    You almost owed me a couple new monitors. Don't ask me how hard it is to remove Coke off a screen that's been on for a week.

    Oh, and funny one.

    That stuff is bad for your teeth (and if it's the non-diet variety, your waistline).

  • Xythar (unregistered)

    Good read, but kind of a pity that the title gave away the ending :(

  • rtatjhjh (unregistered)

    A VP capable of operating IRIX?

  • Xythar (unregistered)

    What's so hard about IRIX? I was using IRIX when working in industry-based learning as a student with zero experience.

  • (cs) in reply to jonsjava
    jonsjava:
    Don't ask me how hard it is to remove Coke off a screen that's been on for a week.
    Why would you leave the coke on the monitor for a week?
  • Tobias Reinhardt Oll (unregistered) in reply to Adam C
    Adam C:
    Is it only me that hates when jerks include the captcha word in their post and try to assign a meaning to it?

    yes.

    abbas - abbas 'tard I am

  • SCB (unregistered) in reply to acestar
    acestar:
    jonsjava:

    You almost owed me a couple new monitors. Don't ask me how hard it is to remove Coke off a screen that's been on for a week.

    Oh, and funny one.

    That stuff is bad for your teeth (and if it's the non-diet variety, your waistline).
    Serves him right. He shouldn't be snorting coke while programming, anyway.

  • commenter (unregistered) in reply to Studley
    Studley:
    Spoiling the story in the title? That's a new one.

    I wonder how many people would've gone to watch Star Wars Episode II: Darth Is Luke's Father?

    Fixed.

  • RIAA (unregistered) in reply to WhiskeyJack
    WhiskeyJack:
    I remember when I started university in 1996 I bought a CD-ROM full of burned mp3's off a friend. I had to pay him $10 to cover the cost of the CD, but it was filled with hours of music at 128 kbps. I still have it, somewhere.
    Your location has been logged. Please remain where you are. <sound of helicoptors closing in>
  • Chris (unregistered)

    A similar thing happened to a server i set up, but with slightly more "fatal" consequences..

    It was way back, and the customer wanted a file server, but didn't want to pay the licenses that came with the windows server, and as they had a small network running with a W98 (!) machine as their current server, and it being so unstable, they wanted a better solution. Getting to it, I installed a BSD box with samba and many other things to support the organisation, together with a set of cron jobs and scripts to have the whole thing updating itself and keep it ticking along just nicely.

    We stuck plenty of disk on the thing, far more than we expected to use, just to be on the safe side, and a few scripts to automate new users etc, as well as a web interface for managing the box. We did a few mechanical changes to the machine, replacing the fans with proper ball-bearing fans and so on, just to make sure there would not be any mechanical failures for the foreseeable future that could cause any problems.

    All were very happy with the set-up, and it did in fact work so well, that the unscheduled downtime were zero for a few years to come.

    Fast forwarding a few years. That little, by now quite grey, innocent looking machine in the corner of one of the shelves had now been covered in dust and particles, had piles of paper and other rubble placed on top of it, and while it was humming away, doing its chores dutifully, people came and went, and so did the knowledge of what that machine was, and what purpose it had, especially as new machines were installed in the same little room that initially was an ad-hoc solution to "server room" with it sharing the space with the floor mops and a couple of network patch panels.

    Eventually, the decision time for installing a proper server room came when the room got too hot and cramped to fit another server in, and they decided to move all the server stuff to the new cooled room over the weekend. As it came to be, someone made the fatal decision that the little ancient box on the shelf should be discarded, as nobody in charge no longer knew what it was for, and certainly, an ancient machine like that could seriously be of no use to anyone, or be used for anything? ...and so it went - quickly unplugged, carried to the window, and hurled down into the skip 6 stories below.

    Now you say: backups? Yes, the system did have a tape station with a tape robot, and it had dutifully done it's job over the years, only that the one that was responsible for keeping after it, had left the job, and not instructed their replacement about that part of the job.

    Also, the mail account for that person had been deleted, so the complaints no longer reached the person in charge to solve it, and as a result of time and neglect, tapes got worn down to breaking point, heads got clogged because nobody ran the cleaning procedure and so on.

    As Mr. and Mrs. nobody changed the tapes on a regular basis, things had gone downhill pretty quickly. The machine? Well, it had tried to dutifully alert the people around it to this fact, but since nobody really understood what that pesky "root" mail was about, that kept popping up every day, and didn't find out who sent it, or could turn it off, they had just set up a rule in their mail client to silently discard it.

    The aftermath: Monday morning arrived, and nobody in the office could get their files, especially critical did it become when they realized the accounting data and client information was missing. The search for the culprit started, and they tried to see what server had gone down, but all servers were up and running fine in the new shiny server room. Everything was perfect, only that, the data was missing... Nobody knew where that data was located, until they started looking at WHERE the clients tried to get the data from.

    They started questioning the staff that had worked over the weekend, asking them if they had changed anything on the servers, server names, anything that could explain why the clients couldn't reach the server anymore.

    It was at this moment that it dawned on one of the managers (that had been hired some time after that particular machine had been installed)what had happened - "we did throw out an ancient computer that had no keyboard or monitor attached, and that had just been sitting in the corner for years, together with some other junk that were no longer in use" in the general spetznas style operation "cupboard clean-up".

    Sadly, the tapes were of no use, and the disks were way beyond data recovery as they had not only taken the initial hit from a 6-story free flight but also been pelted with the concrete cut-outs from the walls 6 stories up.

    Sadly, It didn't take long after that, losing the client information and all accounting data, that the company went down in flames, creating another smoking hole in the ground and go bust.

    I guess this is what can happen when you don't keep records of important things, follow up on procedures etc, just because things works too smoothly.

    I am just happy that it wasn't me that had to say: Boss, I'm sorry, but i think i threw out the main company server into the skip 6 flights below from up here...

    Some 100 people lost their jobs because of an overzealous cupboard cleanout.

    Me? I had changed jobs not long after the machine had been installed, so i was no longer involved in any of what followed, but I came to hear about what had happened from a friend that had been working at the company when it all happened.

  • (cs) in reply to Chris
    Chris:
    A similar thing happened to a server i set up, but with slightly more "fatal" consequences..
    *applause*

    That was wasted as a comment - it'd have been better on the front page.

  • (cs)

    I shed a little tear for that poor server.

    Thrown out a window six stories up?!?! "Overzealous" is putting it politely. There are far safer ways to discard old equipment without destroying it in the process. Methinks someone had a thirst for destruction and just wanted to see something get wrecked.

  • No Comment (unregistered)

    Thank you Chris for proving my point ;)

  • (cs) in reply to somedude
    somedude:
    Star Wars V: Maybe I Needing Later Star Wars VI: ?
    Star Wars VII: Profit!!!

    Addendum (2010-02-19 13:28): Or more like Star Wars (VI)I: Profit!!!

  • Quirkafleeg (unregistered) in reply to just me

    Yes.

    Er, no. I mean no.

    IGMC.

  • Dan (unregistered) in reply to dkf
    dkf:
    I remember those Indys. Slow unless what you wanted to do was very fancy graphics. And with IRIX too. Windows was better (and Linux a pleasant dream).

    Floating point was also way faster. I had an Indy to begin with at my job, and its "fractal flames" screen saver would draw itself in under a second. A much faster (in clocks at least) PC still took several. Later I got an Octane R10000, which was even faster. It wasn't until PC's hit the 2GHz range before they could compete with the floating point capabilities of the 200MHz Octane.

    Now, Netscape was a totally different matter. Way better on PC's. A quick guess is that the SGI graphics cards had no 2D acceleration, only 3D.

    gus:
    It's supposed to have real flash graphics, but I type "ls" and I CAN SEE IT DRAWING EACH CHARACTER. The ls output came out at about 4800 baud. No more.

    Either you were in the pre-OS "console mode" or the machine was hopelessly bogged down with a lot of background apps. I've never had that problem with an SGI. Well, once, with the remote X terminals that all talked to the same SGI box. But not with a standalone single-user one.

  • (cs) in reply to WhiskeyJack
    Peter:
    Came close to doubling my schematic capture productivity once I was free of QEMM errors.

    Now that's a product I haven't thought about in a long time. I was a kid when people stopped worrying about that stuff.

    WhiskeyJack:
    Thrown out a window six stories up?!?! "Overzealous" is putting it politely. There are far safer ways to discard old equipment...

    But few ways are both more safe and more awesome!

    (Though that does super suck about the employees. I feel bad for them. Probably the customers too; that probably caused them no end of headaches.)

  • (cs)

    Could have been saved if he went into detail about the theft, who stole the server, etc. Oh well, just another WTF on Alex's part.

  • RogerWilco (unregistered) in reply to Dan
    Dan:
    dkf:
    I remember those Indys. Slow unless what you wanted to do was very fancy graphics. And with IRIX too. Windows was better (and Linux a pleasant dream).

    Floating point was also way faster. I had an Indy to begin with at my job, and its "fractal flames" screen saver would draw itself in under a second. A much faster (in clocks at least) PC still took several. Later I got an Octane R10000, which was even faster. It wasn't until PC's hit the 2GHz range before they could compete with the floating point capabilities of the 200MHz Octane.

    Now, Netscape was a totally different matter. Way better on PC's. A quick guess is that the SGI graphics cards had no 2D acceleration, only 3D.

    Actually the other way around according to wikipedia. The graphics cards were optimized for 2D X11 (including video for the webcam/teleconferencing tools). The CPU was optimised for integer and single precision floating point and would usually do the 3D tasks as it could do them much faster.

    Not many things had 17" 1280x1024 @75Hz displays, a 640x480 or so webcam with teleconferencing ability, 64 MB RAM, 100-180Mhz processor, sound, 100 Mbit ethernet in that era.

    It was the era of win 3.1 and very early linux with fvwm on 40 floppies. This was well before things like the 3Dfx Voodoo and such were available to the PC world. (3Dfx was founded by former SGI employees).

    They were very expensive workstations (although no indigo), but in my case the university already payed for them, so to me they were just amazing machines.

  • oheso (unregistered) in reply to Joseph M.
    Joseph M.:
    TRWTF is... um...

    TRWTF is...

    Wait. Where's the WTF?

    TRWTF is that "Miha" is a chica's name.

    And when she needed a new computer, I built one for her. Not the fastest thing on the planet, but light-years beyond the one she'd had previously.

  • (cs) in reply to Quirkafleeg
    Quirkafleeg:
    Yes.

    Er, no. I mean no.

    IGMC.

    Wow! You're a marine?

  • c64web (unregistered)

    This web-site is being served from a Commodore 64 built in 1982 using a Ethernet cartridge built by Fotios http://www.cbm8bit.com/fotios/ .

    It’s been online 24/7 for just over three years and has to date served over 500,000 web pages since the web counter was installed. if it’s not online it’s most likely under high demand or as it happens every week or so locked up due to dosing.

    c64web runs under contiki a multi-tasking networked OS for resource restrained computers

    Check it out http://www.c64web.com and drop a email to the Admin [email protected]

  • Quirkafleeg (unregistered) in reply to Randy Snicker
    Randy Snicker:
    Quirkafleeg:
    Yes.

    Er, no. I mean no.

    IGMC.

    Wow! You're a marine?
    Hmm? Sea creature of some sort? No…

    I'm actually a spider.

  • Here's a nickel, kid... (unregistered) in reply to Chris
    Chris:
    A similar thing happened to a server i set up, but with slightly more "fatal" consequences..

    ...snip...

    Me? I had changed jobs not long after the machine had been installed, so i was no longer involved in any of what followed, but I came to hear about what had happened from a friend that had been working at the company when it all happened.

    Kudos. This is why I keep coming back. I don't care about the stories, it's the comments that make this site. I can even imagine the site owner sitting back & saying "I've got a good article, let's fup it duck a bit & get the grammernazi's going today, or the people who bitch about the quality of a free web site or whatever.

    But occasionally, someone puts up something clever, or interesting, or dare I say it, even Insightful (tm Slashdot :)

    5

  • Here's a nickel, kid... (unregistered) in reply to Dan
    Dan:
    dkf:
    I remember those Indys. Slow unless what you wanted to do was very fancy graphics. And with IRIX too. Windows was better (and Linux a pleasant dream).

    Floating point was also way faster. I had an Indy to begin with at my job, and its "fractal flames" screen saver would draw itself in under a second. A much faster (in clocks at least) PC still took several. Later I got an Octane R10000, which was even faster. It wasn't until PC's hit the 2GHz range before they could compete with the floating point capabilities of the 200MHz Octane.

    Now, Netscape was a totally different matter. Way better on PC's. A quick guess is that the SGI graphics cards had no 2D acceleration, only 3D.

    gus:
    It's supposed to have real flash graphics, but I type "ls" and I CAN SEE IT DRAWING EACH CHARACTER. The ls output came out at about 4800 baud. No more.

    Either you were in the pre-OS "console mode" or the machine was hopelessly bogged down with a lot of background apps. I've never had that problem with an SGI. Well, once, with the remote X terminals that all talked to the same SGI box. But not with a standalone single-user one.

    I've worked w/ both *nixes & windoze for way too long. Both are fine in their arenas.

    In the late 80's I spent way too much money on one of the new 386's (even spent the extra $500 to boost the cpu from 16 to 20mhz :), but digged the ability to have a Real Computer at home (similar to the various mini's I had worked on).

    I really had a hard time finding anything that would tax that machine, it just flew! Finally I found a Mandelbrot generator at a BBS that could take upto 3 minutes to generate a plot.

    Anyways, one of the engineers at work had an NCR tower running (AT&T?) Unix. These were fairly popular, and the first micro designed to sit on it's side. I got to know the guy and he enthused about the tower, unix, etc.

    So he proudly showed me what he ran to use up the spare cycles...a Mandelbrot generator, displaying a plot pixel-by-pixel to an amber screen. He was using a standard, simple C program to loop through the math, because it took quite a long time (hours, perhaps?) to do the plot. I was interested because I had just discovered Mandelbrots myself.

    Sadly, I showed him the gee-whiz program I had found, displaying VGA plots in minutes. I guess I was young & dumb, and didn't realize what I was doing.

    We never discussed Mandelbrots, graphics, or computers ever again.

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