• (cs) in reply to justsomedudette
    I miss making little springs out of the perforated edges

    Those were good times. I also remember that the printing "tapes" ran forever before running out of ink.

    Also, first of second page!

  • Abico (unregistered) in reply to bkDJ
    bkDJ:
    Speaking of writers... "Because he wanted to knock off at 3:02, obviously." Knock off...? As an American, the only thing that means to me (when it doesn't take an object, i.e. "knock it off") is to copy something (possibly cheaply), so what is the author trying to say here?
    As another American, I hear it frequently as meaning stopping work or finishing something. Also as a euphemism for killing someone, though not as frequently in my day-to-day life.
  • doran (unregistered) in reply to bkDJ

    Knock off = finish work

  • justsomedudette (unregistered) in reply to bkDJ
    bkDJ:
    Speaking of writers... "Because he wanted to knock off at 3:02, obviously." Knock off...? As an American, the only thing that means to me
    As a non-American deal with it! You are not the owners of the English language or its colloquialisms.

    It means go home - wouldn't have thought it was that difficult to work out anyway.

  • Wildcatmike (unregistered) in reply to TRWTF

    This. I came to post that TRWTF is:

    “2.5” had become “2.5000”

    That's just plain wrong.

  • Ted (unregistered) in reply to OldCoder
    OldCoder:
    biziclop:
    What the hell were they selling hundreds of thousands of tons of?
    Don't get out much, do you? Grain? Coal? Steel? Fertilizer? Fish? Cement?

    I could go on, but I have a website to read.

    Greenbar!

  • Tom (unregistered) in reply to Wildcatmike

    Yes, and to expand on the oft-repeated "learn fixed-point maths" theme...learn ANY maths. You don't convert decimal to integer with a frickin' string concatenation.

  • Jim Hulsey (unregistered) in reply to GettinSadda

    Ever hear of overflow?

  • (cs) in reply to biziclop
    biziclop:
    What the hell were they selling hundreds of thousands of tons of?

    greenbar

    EDIT: arrgggh, Ted beat me to it

    anyways, ugly hacks are allowable when there is little time, and they actually work. but when they just create more issues, that's when someone needs to have a little chat with Andy...

  • blivet (unregistered) in reply to justsomedudette
    justsomedudette:
    I miss greenbar; I miss making little springs out of the perforated edges *sigh*

    It's always startling (and in this case pleasant) to be reminded of some small detail of the past that you had completely forgotten about. Thanks so much.

  • (cs) in reply to Abico
    Abico:
    bkDJ:
    Speaking of writers... "Because he wanted to knock off at 3:02, obviously." Knock off...? As an American, the only thing that means to me (when it doesn't take an object, i.e. "knock it off") is to copy something (possibly cheaply), so what is the author trying to say here?
    As another American, I hear it frequently as meaning stopping work or finishing something. Also as a euphemism for killing someone, though not as frequently in my day-to-day life.
    As another American, what people here are calling "greenbar" we knew as "watermelon paper".
  • Mats Svensson (unregistered)

    "Or else!" ?

    JFC!

  • Arvind (unregistered)

    I am from Asia, and we DON'T use dot as the thousand separator. We use comma.

  • Jack 27 (unregistered)

    So Andy's response to an unnecessary request was to do something that not only failed to address it properly, but actually made the printouts much more confusing for everyone.

    Though, as people have already pointed out, I get the feeling that this story has been hoplessly obfuscated in the rewriting.

  • swschrad (unregistered) in reply to Grumpy

    more than that. you could stuff a sheaf of greenbar under your arm, scowl slightly, and march out the door to... elsewhere... for a break without anybody thinking you were slacking off.

  • foo2 (unregistered) in reply to Doo-doo Facial Hair
    Doo-doo Facial Hair:
    And the only kind of green-, blue-, or brown-lined paper I remember from back in the day was used to print out source code or listings, not documents for customers, but maybe such a thing was done somewhere vOv.

    I was doing a short contract at a rather large car manufacturer named Toyota a few years back, and was amused to see a pile of green-bar paper sitting on a desk.

    I was less amused to find out that how they did their reporting & invoicing. It had been ages since I'd seen teams of people leafing though printouts, or seen a chain printer for that matter.

    I guess Kaizen was working a little too slowly there.

    To their credit they were rolling out a completely new system, although that one functioned exactly the same as the old one. Lol.

    "Extend my contract? Err, no thanks."

  • foo (unregistered) in reply to NMe
    NMe:
    Abico:
    Sorry, but Andy is in the wrong here. Maybe the guy was as much as a dick as his story says, but he did nothing to explain the problem. And on top of that, his solution was wrong.
    Very true. Just appending three zeroes in order to make a decimal value appear as though it's multiplied by 1000? Any idiot should know that this does not work
    Especially when the only concrete test case he was given is one where it doesn't work. I mean you can have some strange ideas sometime, but when you apply it to the actual problematic case and it doesn't even work for that one and you don't find something wrong about it, you have no place in a progamming job. As much as it hurts to say, I actually have to side with the sales manager here.

    Of course, that's all assuming the story happened as written. Which is unlikely: "65,536, which was the biggest number they could work with." (apart from the fact that it should be 65535), but then somehow being able to store fractions in the same 16-bit word? It doesn't add up. OK, maybe we shouldn't bash the new editors too hard, but I think it's better they learn early that people here actually read things, including the details, and know about the subject matter, so you either start paying attention soon, or get ready to get flamed for "creative writing" every day from now on.

  • the beholder (unregistered) in reply to justsomedudette
    justsomedudette:
    bkDJ:
    Speaking of writers... "Because he wanted to knock off at 3:02, obviously." Knock off...? As an American, the only thing that means to me
    As a non-American deal with it! You are not the owners of the English language or its colloquialisms.

    It means go home - wouldn't have thought it was that difficult to work out anyway.

    "wouldn't have thought it was that difficult to work out anyway." Work out...? As an American*, the only thing that means to me is to put some time exercising in the gym, so what is the poster I'm replying to trying to say here? Anyway, I don't wanna have to think about this. Put other words in there place and post a new comment. Or else!

    *not really american, not even close

  • (cs) in reply to bkDJ
    bkDJ:
    Also someone needs to teach the new writers that we like our HTML comments.
    The only value of HTML comments is to distract from the terrible writing, such as in this story. If they would bother proofreading before posting, there would be little need for the stupid things.
  • foo (unregistered) in reply to Zylon
    Zylon:
    bkDJ:
    Also someone needs to teach the new writers that we like our HTML comments.
    The only value of HTML comments is to distract from the terrible writing, such as in this story. If they would bother proofreading before posting, there would be little need for the stupid things.
    Isn't that what unicorns are for?
  • Dzov (unregistered)

    "and reached for the nearest bottle of whiteout." Hopefully he also reached for a bottle of greenout, or his corrections will be very obvious.

  • foo (unregistered) in reply to Dzov
    Dzov:
    "and reached for the nearest bottle of whiteout." Hopefully he also reached for a bottle of greenout, or his corrections will be very obvious.
    Didn't they have alpha-out back then?
  • Dann of Thursday (unregistered) in reply to Zylon
    Zylon:
    bkDJ:
    Also someone needs to teach the new writers that we like our HTML comments.
    The only value of HTML comments is to distract from the terrible writing, such as in this story. If they would bother proofreading before posting, there would be little need for the stupid things.

    You must be the life of the office holiday parties.

  • Eric (unregistered) in reply to PedanticCurmudgeon

    Small companies routinely have requests generated directly from the sales manager (who typically only has 1-2 salesmen working for him).

  • Jim (unregistered) in reply to ewanm89
    ewanm89:
    The easiest option, is multiply the quantity by 10 and convert to int, then add 2 0's hard coded into the printout.
    Would that work for 1.75?
  • JsD (unregistered) in reply to Mike
    Mike:
    The easiest option is to multiply by 1000!
    Sure would be, except the article talks bout other customers having numbers that would suddenly overflow if you did that.
  • Julia Gillard (unregistered) in reply to biziclop
    biziclop:
    What the hell were they selling hundreds of thousands of tons of?
    Carbon. And there was some tax to be made!!
  • Gunslinger (unregistered)

    So, TRWTF is Asia and Europe...

  • Young Un (unregistered) in reply to Grumpy

    What next, should we get rid of email because when you got a stack of letters delivered to your company mailbox, it let everyone know how important you are? Maybe we should get rid of cars too, because back in the day if you had a horse carriage bring you to the office, everyone knew who was the big muckity muck around the office. Idiot.

  • (cs) in reply to Jim
    Jim:
    ewanm89:
    The easiest option, is multiply the quantity by 10 and convert to int, then add 2 0's hard coded into the printout.
    Would that work for 1.75?

    Article didn't say the scale...so maybe the small interval is a tenth of a ton. Not that we can give this guy credit for being smart enough to think of something like that...

  • Mikhail (unregistered) in reply to bkDJ
    bkDJ:
    So, he didn't get confirmation from his boss, his solution was laughably wrong and terrible, he acted like even more of an ass than the sales guy at the end, and then decided to use wite-out instead of fix the code properly and leave for the day? TRWTF is Andy. Also someone needs to teach the new writers that we like our HTML comments.

    Speaking of writers... "Because he wanted to knock off at 3:02, obviously." Knock off...? As an American, the only thing that means to me (when it doesn't take an object, i.e. "knock it off") is to copy something (possibly cheaply), so what is the author trying to say here?

    Not all the world is American. Not all the English-speaking world is American (some of us actually speak English).

    I've heard knock off to mean:

    1. Finish work and go home ("Time to knock off, fellas!")
    2. Steal ("I left me treadly out the front, and it got knocked off")
    3. Copy ("He wears a knock-off rolex")

    I could also imagine it being used to imply giving oneself some enjoyment....

  • joker (unregistered) in reply to the beholder
    the beholder:
    justsomedudette:
    bkDJ:
    Speaking of writers... "Because he wanted to knock off at 3:02, obviously." Knock off...? As an American, the only thing that means to me
    As a non-American deal with it! You are not the owners of the English language or its colloquialisms.

    It means go home - wouldn't have thought it was that difficult to work out anyway.

    "wouldn't have thought it was that difficult to work out anyway." Work out...? As an American*, the only thing that means to me is to put some time exercising in the gym, so what is the poster I'm replying to trying to say here? Anyway, I don't wanna have to think about this. Put other words in there place and post a new comment. Or else!

    *not really american, not even close

    Diod you hear about the Constipated Mathematician? He worked it out with a pencil.

  • Mikhail (unregistered) in reply to Mikhail
    Mikhail:
    bkDJ:
    So, he didn't get confirmation from his boss, his solution was laughably wrong and terrible, he acted like even more of an ass than the sales guy at the end, and then decided to use wite-out instead of fix the code properly and leave for the day? TRWTF is Andy. Also someone needs to teach the new writers that we like our HTML comments.

    Speaking of writers... "Because he wanted to knock off at 3:02, obviously." Knock off...? As an American, the only thing that means to me (when it doesn't take an object, i.e. "knock it off") is to copy something (possibly cheaply), so what is the author trying to say here?

    Not all the world is American. Not all the English-speaking world is American (some of us actually speak English).

    I've heard knock off to mean:

    1. Finish work and go home ("Time to knock off, fellas!")
    2. Steal ("I left me treadly out the front, and it got knocked off")
    3. Copy ("He wears a knock-off rolex")

    I could also imagine it being used to imply giving oneself some enjoyment....

    And of course...kill someone (thanks for the reminder).
    "We're gonna knock him off":

  • Chris (unregistered)

    I agree with several of the posters here. The RWTF is Andy.

    Customizing an invoice per customer is laughable. Customizing it per country isn't. Further, simply adding 3 zeros doesn't solve the issue at all. Finally, even attempting to explain ANYTHING to a sales person is a complete and utter waste of time.

    Which leads us to the other WTF: Andy's boss. Quite frankly the id10t should have known what a PITA it would have been to customize per customer and simply shot it down.

  • neminem (unregistered) in reply to Mikhail
    Mikhail:
    And of course...kill someone (thanks for the reminder). "We're gonna knock him off":
    He said when it doesn't take an object. Knocking a person off is it taking an object. If you're just knocking off, no object, it does just mean "leave early" to me (or possibly, as mentioned, an Unusual Euphemism for a date with rosie palms.) Knocking something off in the sense of stealing it, to my mind, requires the object of the theft to be stated as well.
  • Raki (unregistered) in reply to Young Un
    Young Un:
    What next, should we get rid of email because when you got a stack of letters delivered to your company mailbox, it let everyone know how important you are?
    Oh, there's an easy fix for that. Just hold all your conference calls from your cubicle on speakerphone. That way everyone around you will know you are important enough to be invited to meetings!
  • (cs) in reply to Dann of Thursday
    Dann of Thursday:
    You must be the life of the office holiday parties.
    The Daily WTF isn't an office holiday party.

    Normally I wouldn't feel the need to point that out, but you seemed dumb and confused.

  • (cs) in reply to Mikhail
    Mikhail:
    Mikhail:
    I've heard knock off to mean: 1) Finish work and go home ("Time to knock off, fellas!") 2) Steal ("I left me treadly out the front, and it got knocked off") 3) Copy ("He wears a knock-off rolex")

    I could also imagine it being used to imply giving oneself some enjoyment....

    And of course...kill someone (thanks for the reminder).
    "We're gonna knock him off":

    1. is just "Finish work", and doesn't necessarily imply going home. E.g. (from the British National Corpus) "I assumed they'd knocked off for lunch".

    At quick scan through BNC also adds

    1. To reduce in price ("...they knocked off six hundred because there was the tiniest little scratch...")
    2. Simple combination of "knock" (collide with gently) and "off" as in e.g. "He was knocked off his bike by a car"
    3. To produce (generally hastily): "We knocked off the bare bones of a report to the policy and resources committee"
    4. To complete: "The horseshoe ridge that Ben Lawers dominates can be knocked off in a single day if you have legs of iron"
    5. To eliminate: "After you'd knocked off the highest and lowest assessments of the five judges, three scores still counted"
  • Malcolm (unregistered) in reply to Grumpy

    You forgot to mention all of the extra paper you had because the paper feed was above the top of the page (and you had to have a blank page in front of everything you printed).

    Or my fav... when someone manually rolls the page up to tear it off, and the printer would lose track of where you were on the page (and print the next 50 pages with the margin about 1/2 way down the page)

  • bkDJ (unregistered) in reply to Mikhail
    Mikhail:
    Not all the world is American. Not all the English-speaking world is American (some of us actually speak English).
    I know. Which is why I assumed it meant something I was unfamiliar with and asked about the expression. Thanks to those who answered, though. :)
    Mikhail:
    I could also imagine it being used to imply giving oneself some enjoyment...
    Sure, but anything can imply that!
  • SomeGuyOnTheInternet (unregistered) in reply to Grumpy
    Grumpy:
    You young 'uns missed out. Why you could walk around with a wad of greenbar tucked under your arm, and it was as good as a roll of hundred dollar bills. Chicks instantly realized that you were in the big-money computer business, a rising star!

    You and I remember the '80s very differently.

  • Herby (unregistered) in reply to Malcolm
    Malcolm:
    You forgot to mention all of the extra paper you had because the paper feed was above the top of the page (and you had to have a blank page in front of everything you printed).

    Or my fav... when someone manually rolls the page up to tear it off, and the printer would lose track of where you were on the page (and print the next 50 pages with the margin about 1/2 way down the page)

    Of course if you did this right you had carriage tapes that indicated the proper top (1 on the VFU) and bottom (12 on the VFU) of the page. Hopefully the people who take their report with them know how to advance the paper!

  • Matteo Italia (unregistered)

    People, you don't get it, TRWTF is both the salesman and Andy. This is both a "feature article" and an implicit CodeSOD, so it's two WTFs for the price of one.

  • (cs) in reply to bkDJ
    bkDJ:
    Mikhail:
    I could also imagine it being used to imply giving oneself some enjoyment...
    Sure, but anything can imply that!
    "That's what she said!"
  • Gigaplex (unregistered) in reply to TRWTF
    The real problem is that 2.5000 is wrong. He added three 000 to both 2 and 2.5 which gets you 2 thousand and 25 thousand. Also, if this was for Europe it should have been a comma in the abbreviated version. TRWTF is the fail programmer.
    It depends on what part of Europe - I think UK typically uses a decimal point as radix whereas most of the rest of Europe uses a decimal comma as the radix point.
  • (cs)

    What it was:

        Item                       KiloTons  Price/Kiloton     Total Due
    Heap of whatever                2.5        $139.00       $347.50

    What it should have been if he'd bothered to do his job right:

        Item                           Tons      Price/Ton      Total Due
    Heap of whatever               2500       $0.13900        $347.50

    "Well, you wanted the weight in tons, so I had to make it price per ton..."

  • (cs) in reply to Dzov

    "and reached for the nearest bottle of whiskey"

    FTFY (That's how I read it first time around) I am not an alcoholic.

  • Jibble (unregistered) in reply to Andrew
    Andrew:
    Once the sales manager cleared the scene, he rounded his desk, gathered up the invoices, and reached for his nearest resume.

    FTFY

    You quit your job every time somebody tells you to do something?

    His 'solution' was junk. He failed to format a number on an invoice.

  • Jibble (unregistered) in reply to flop
    flop:
    > I'm personally curious how he managed to store 2.5 in a 16 bit int.

    What's the problem? 2 in a byte, 128 in another - voilá!

    Ever heard of fixed-point math?

    Apparently the programmer in this tale hadn't. He didn't need to make the internal representation 1000 times bigger, just output it differently.

  • Mike (unregistered) in reply to JsD
    JsD:
    Mike:
    The easiest option is to multiply by 1000!
    Sure would be, except the article talks bout other customers having numbers that would suddenly overflow if you did that.

    Not if the only time you ever did it was in the print routines. The overflow is a storage precision problem, not a formatting the print output problem!

    But back in the early 80s, people tended to be happy of they got characters on the paper, not too many worried about if they were right and even less worried about the format.

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