• ray10k (unregistered)

    Well, that's the first time I hear of IT being ran by a goblin in a cave of old junk...

  • R. T. Garreth Johnson (unregistered)

    Looks more like some school or university than a real office.

  • (nodebb)

    And again, these places LIE about their environments, or they're so stupid and incompetent that they've never actually seen a good environment to compare to. What I find the most amusing is places where the manager/director/executive comes from a good company, and yet somehow ends up implementing complete shit, when they should know full well it's a bad environment because of their past experiences.

    I absolutely believe this story. I've seen way too many of these places myself. "We do things right around here" and all that bullshit. Although to be fair, the story never mentions if the rest of that was true; we see absolutely nothing about their development standards, just that the IT guy is Gollum and the domain controller is on its last legs.

  • Hannes (unregistered)

    And this is why you ALWAYS ask "can I see my future working place" in a job interview!

  • lamsworld (google)

    Gollum can't fix the server issue because it is leased from and maintained by a third party vendor on its last leg :D

  • lamsworld (google)

    I'm glad "frist" didn't make it in today also!! Love the site! Visit early and often.

  • djingis1 (unregistered) in reply to lamsworld

    ray10k just typoed it.

  • chreng (unregistered)

    I love the english in this little episode!

  • Burner (unregistered)

    It was a dark and stormy IT office...

  • TechnoGeist (unregistered)

    Not Necessarily. The company I work for used a Windows 2000 Domain Controller and Windows XP on the workstations until earlier this year. There was no Active Directory turned on, no LDAP anything, all it did was Authentication, WINS, and handled some file shares. It would periodically hang without a blue screen. Nobody would notice until they tried to access a file share or tried to change their password. If XP couldn't contact the domain controller it just authenticated based on whatever cached credentials it had from the previous login. The first time it happened, it took me a while to diagnose because the domain controller would still respond to pings, but that's ALL it would do. Every other service timed out.

  • Zenith (unregistered)

    The article did say Windows 2000, so no System Restore. Anyway, it's pretty common to see these places running on ancient equipment for compatibility reasons. I imagine the darkness was a defense against the update-harpies. You know the type, the new OS must be installed whether or not the hardware or software your business depends on (and for which there is no replacement budget) is compatible.

    I once pulled a LaserJet 8100 off the network (used SCSI instead) and put it inside a box under a desk to hide it from those Nazis. See, they decided that we had too many printers and they were too accessible, so they decided to cut the office down from ~20 to 3 (including a new copier that broke down every month and that we weren't allowed to have toner on hand for because vendor contract). Just hauled them off and threw them in a dumpster because reasons. To make matters worse, the 2 replacement printers were locked down by password and didn't start printing until you walked over and entered it T9/dumbphone style on the console. Complete clusterfuck as you can imagine. And it was like this all the time; no matter what I did to make workflow faster, there were always more and more idiots working against me...

  • Densaugeo (unregistered)

    So basically a standard office IT setup.

    It took a few minutes of reading a wondering 'where is the WTF?' for me to realize my expectations are just depressingly low.

  • Zenith (unregistered)

    And I think it's going to become even more common as Microsoft slowly but surely adopts the Google/OSS break-everything-every-build approach to development.

  • (nodebb)

    Did we ever determine if the spammer was the real blakeyrat or an impersonator? I know he got ranty on the forums but never seemed like the type to just spam things, let alone post NSFW material.

  • Mike Unfried (github) in reply to DocMonster

    Probably not, but it doesn't matter. Some of us have been maintaining a TamperMonkey script (should work in GreaseMonkey, also) which will filter out 99% of it:

    https://github.com/masterX244/BlakeyNope

    I only see two posts today that are likely to be *rat, and both are short and unobtrusive.

  • (nodebb) in reply to Mike Unfried

    greasemonkey is tested, too (firefox user here)

  • Mike Unfried (github) in reply to masterX244179

    Thanks, masterX244179. I am working on the "stub" modifications right now, so that it will show a clickable line item that shows the poster's name only, and allows the comment to be shown.

  • Yevhenii (unregistered)

    I hope that was just the room they use for hazing new employees, and the real IT office is in a different room.

  • _that_guy_ (unregistered) in reply to DocMonster

    It wasn't the real blakey.

  • _that_guy_ (unregistered) in reply to chreng

    Agreed, the writing was actually quite well done.

  • Norman Diamond (unregistered)

    Did we ever determine if the spammer was the real blakeyrat or an impersonator?

    I can only make an amateurish guess without even amateurish access to logs and stuff like that, but I think there are clues that he was the real one.

    I know he got ranty on the forums but never seemed like the type to just spam things, let alone post NSFW material.

    That doesn't provide any information from which to guess if he was real or not. People can get pissed off differently by different kinds of provocations. Whatever it was that someone decided to get so pissed off about, the pissee-turned-pisser could be either the real blakeyrat or an impersonator.

  • Norman Diamond (unregistered)

    The article did say Windows 2000, so no System Restore. Anyway, it's pretty common to see these places running on ancient equipment for compatibility reasons.

    What does System Restore have to do with it? Even though I seem to recall System Restore being absent from all Server versions of Windows, what could it even hypothetically possibly have to do with it? This particular system was slow and failing because all the disk drives were trying to cope with unrecoverable bad blocks and no remaining substitute blocks for relocation.

    If they needed Windows 2000 for compatibility reasons, they could install Linux on a new server and put Windows 2000 in a virtual machine.

  • ZB (unregistered)

    So once again, a "WTF" in which the entire thing has been anonymized and embellished into pure fiction. Good jorb guys.

  • DailyWTF_Comment_Cleaner_experimental.user.js (unregistered)

    Not sure why you'd want to show images on mouseover (eewww), but it'd be easier to do it in CSS

    .comments>.comment>div img{display:none}

    .comments>.comment>div:hover img{display:inline}

  • (nodebb) in reply to DailyWTF_Comment_Cleaner_experimental.user.js

    Better use a GH issue for suggestions like that. Also: Updated again

  • Ron Fox (google) in reply to DocMonster

    No they didn't lie (too much) ... their code is clean, they build their software the right way -- they just didn't tell him the infrastructure is crap.

  • Pista (unregistered)

    This "Hollywood writer" wannabe writeup is boring. Do us a favor: shoot it with some decent actors and post the clip instead of the script - that way it might even become enjoyable.

  • Appalled (unregistered) in reply to ZB

    RE: "So once again, a "WTF" in which the entire thing has been anonymized and embellished into pure fiction. Good jorb guys."

    Your post will be deleted. You criticized the Web Masters.

  • Appalled1 (unregistered)

    RE: "So once again, a "WTF" in which the entire thing has been anonymized and embellished into pure fiction. Good jorb guys."

    Your post will be deleted. You criticized the Web Masters.

  • Appalled2 (unregistered)

    RE: "So once again, a "WTF" in which the entire thing has been anonymized and embellished into pure fiction. Good jorb guys."

    Your post will be deleted. You criticized the Web Masters.

  • Appalled3 (unregistered)

    RE: "So once again, a "WTF" in which the entire thing has been anonymized and embellished into pure fiction. Good jorb guys."

    Your post will be deleted. You criticized the Web Masters.

  • Appalled1 (unregistered)

    RE: "So once again, a "WTF" in which the entire thing has been anonymized and embellished into pure fiction. Good jorb guys."

    Your post will be deleted. You criticized the Web Masters.

  • Appalled1 (unregistered)

    RE: "another useless article of just pure adulturated lies. if you dont have any real articles to post you could always skip a day or two. i am starting to wonder if that is why *rat wants you to remove this website."

    Your post will be deleted. You criticized the Web Masters.

  • Appalled2 (unregistered)

    RE: "another useless article of just pure adulturated lies. if you dont have any real articles to post you could always skip a day or two. i am starting to wonder if that is why *rat wants you to remove this website."

    Your post will be deleted. You criticized the Web Masters.

  • Appalled1 (unregistered)

    RE: "another useless article of just pure adulturated lies. if you dont have any real articles to post you could always skip a day or two. i am starting to wonder if that is why *rat wants you to remove this website."

    Your post will be deleted. You criticized the Web Masters.

  • Mike (unregistered)

    Am I the only one sitting here thinking that George got what he deserved?

    At the least it seems like his old boss cared enough to create a new/better process to reproduce issues after (presumably) seeing it as a good idea.

  • Zenith (unregistered) in reply to Norman Diamond

    The post I was replying to said something about the reboot taking the company down longer because of System Restore but that post vanished.

  • Nadir (unregistered) in reply to Zenith

    Your post didn't survive the "cutting edge" hd grinding during the third server reboot in the seventh circle of IT abyss.

  • Jim (unregistered)

    Totally believable.

    Long time ago the in a software company i worked for, the domain controller was experiencing disk failures on a daily basis. Being a RedHat linux running Samba on the oldest machine in the office (the boss was too cheap to buy a decent hardware or cough up for a Windows Server license) fsck was taking hours to complete leaving us without a working network on a daily basis.

    The best part was when the company accountant begged for my help - the server was located in a closet in her private office and one day started making such a noise she was unable to work. To my horror the noise was caused by violent vibrations coming from the server's HDD. I run to the boss with the news asking for a new HDD to be purchased immediately. His answer - "Are you a hardware specialist Jim? The last time i checked you were a mere software developer. Don't sweat over it, our Hardware Support Guy on call will come and fix it."

    Two days later (the accountant called in sick meanwhile, to avoid the noise torture) the hardware guy arrives with a smug on his face - "Oh you have vibration problems? Don't worry, I'll fix it in no time!". He runs to the hardware store across the street, buys 4 small rubber grommets and "silence" the disk.

    Everybody is happy - the accountant comes back to work, the boss saved a couple of bucks for a new HDD, the server dies quietly in its sleep two days later and the IT admin spends a day reinstalling the server on a "new" HDD we found forgotten in a supply closet.

  • Indeed (unregistered) in reply to ZB

    Used to be a huge fan (loong ago) but 'Articles' like this are why i rarely visit the site or even bother to click the RSS feed anymore.

  • Guntank (unregistered) in reply to Pista

    LEONARDO DICAPRIO!

    (“Um, maybe I’ll just come back later?” George offered.

    “NO!”)

    Is trapped in...

    (“It is done. Now go.”

    lots of screaming as computers blue screen)

    THE INFRASTRUCTURE!!!

  • Sir Robin the Not-Quite-So-Brave-as-Sir Launcelot (unregistered) in reply to Burner

    I would have said Lovecraftian, but yeah.

  • eric bloedow (unregistered) in reply to Zenith

    oh, you reminded me of an old story: a company decided that they had too many printers (nearly 1 printer for every 2 employees) and decided to remove some...and a crazy employee actually CALLED THE POLICE and tried to have the IT people ARRESTED for "stealing HER printer"! i think she got fired for that, eventually.

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