Jake Vinson

Feb 2008

Half Empty

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"I don't know how many times I have to say it — our server room is outdated and we need some money approved for new equipment. Or at least someone to come in and check out the air conditioner. It's making that sound again." Peter was losing count of the times he'd complained about their aging infrastructure.

"Oh, for f*ck's sake! How many times do I have to say that our equipment is fine?! Now would you kindly f*ck off?" Peter's boss's winning personality was made worse by all of the service requests. He'd always considered the requests to be power grabs from subordinates that wanted to see how much money they could milk out of him.


Gears in Demotion

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"Hey, Marcin, do you have a second to talk? Come meet me at my office. No big deal, just when you have a sec." Marcin spun around in his chair, stood up, and walked to his boss's office.

"Come in, come in," his boss waved. "And close the door."


Super Contact Management 3D

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Space Invaders + Contacts Management - Fun = Space Blitz.


(submitted by Kevin)


Perls of Wisdom

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The day after I finished "Final Fantasy VII," I sat down for lunch with some friends who had also completed the game. We all enjoyed it, but felt it wasn't all it could have been. We thought we -- a group of jobless, inexperienced students with no resources -- could do better. I was the only one who had ever flipped through a book on C++, so I became lead developer. Tony, who'd never used a computer for anything except playing "The Oregon Trail," had a knack for drawing and became lead artist. Everyone else (Dan and Tim) was split up between writing (Dan) and marketing (Tim). How hard could it be?

Well, it turns out that all those people thanked in the end credits actually knew how to do stuff.


Do You Sure?

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Do you sure? And just how sure do you? Thom P. sure does!


The Honor System

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After a few years at a large, soulless corporate conglomerate, "Henry L." needed a change. Since his skills were in high demand, he had no trouble lining up interviews at several other large, soulless corporate conglomerates. He'd grown tired of working at such large companies, though, and started looking into some smaller businesses.

After scrolling through a few pages of job posts, he found one that sounded perfect. "Small firm in the financial industry seeks skilled, motivated developer." Henry took a deep breath and called the number.


Interview with a Secretary

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Business was booming. Smartypants Software was selling licenses for their fancy new web portal software about as fast as they could generate license keys. Developers were working later and later into the night, and the tech support staff could hardly catch their breath between calls.

Management knew they had a big problem on their hands, though they acknowledged that having too many customers is a good problem. There was one bad problem, though — they were turning dozens of customers down who wanted to purchase a Java version of the portal software. So amid all the chaos, they began working on the new version of the software.


XML Abuse

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"Where I work we keep a lot of data stored in XML files," Ben writes. "They're not your average XML files, though — they're special." His colleague invented the following technique (recommended for senior level XML programmers only).

<rootNode>
   <numberOfAddresses>110</numberOfAddresses>
   <address_1>442 Fake St.</address_1>
   <address_2>61 Main St.</address_2>
   ...
   <address_110>3881 N 4th Ave. #5D</address_110>
</rootNode>

The Hard Way

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For some tasks, you're presented an opportunity to do things the easy way or the hard way. When your friend is proudly showing off his work at replacing a light fixture, the switch, and all the wiring, you might wonder why not just replace the dead bulb?

"I was just fixing a bug in our software, and I came across this function," Johnny A. writes. "It works perfectly — does exactly what it says on the tin. I can't help thinking it could have been done with a few less lines of code, however. One, for example."


Getting Past Security

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Say, Patrik M., what have we here?