The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

We Burned the Poop

by Jake Vinson in Feature Articles on 2008-08-28

Erik was in his robe, brushing his teeth and getting ready for bed when the doorbell rang. As he walked downstairs to see who it was, he was thinking that it was odd to have a late-night guest, especially on such a rainy night.

Standing at the door was his boss, holding a large cardboard box. Both he and the box were soaked, his eyes sad and his lip quivering. He stood there, motionless for several seconds, before opening his mouth to say, "Take some CDs. Take all the CDs you want."

147 comments - Last comment @ 2008-10-02

Encrypted For Your Security

by Jake Vinson in CodeSOD on 2008-08-27

"I have been helping a guy with a project," seebs wrote, "I wasn't originally involved, but when the three-month project was six-months late, I got called in to start on the other half. I still remember the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach when the developer told me "all fields are varchar for simplicity...'"

"There's a database of users who can log in. Now, we all know that you always store the password encrypted, right? Perfect, it's stored as MD5. Here's the three relevant fields in the database:

104 comments - Last comment @ 2012-02-10

Not in the Mood

by Jake Vinson in Feature Articles on 2008-08-21

Updates to the decades-old internally-developed bank management application had gone as smoothly as they could. No major issues moving from text screens on dumb terminals to text screens on Windows 3.1 to a GUI frontend in Windows 95. And now it was time for another major update; to give it the best GUI ever to appear in a decades-old internally-developed bank management application! And thanks to some good planning, respect for standard software development procedures, good tools, and a happy environment, the upgrade was going great!

That is, until the killjoys at Initrode Business Quotients threw a wrench in the operation. The application was actually more of a multi-application environment, all of which had to be able to talk to one another. As such, IBQ had to update its reporting application to work in the new environment. While their updates had gone almost as smoothly as those for the main application, they'd left out one feature.

106 comments - Last comment @ 2010-06-12

Doing the Heavy Lifting

by Jake Vinson in Feature Articles on 2008-08-19

After six years, Todd D. couldn't take the tedium anymore — his company refused to change with the times, and Todd wanted something more engaging. Seeing an opening at a publishing company, it sounded like the ideal change. He'd be going from a big software company to a more progressive publishing company with a software department; a good place for him to show his chops and actually make a difference. He aced his interview, as did the company — they'd proudly told Todd that they were happy to work with cutting-edge technology, had brand-new hardware, and a near-zero turnover rate. It was a no-brainer for him to accept their offer.

As he was about to head in to his first day of work, he got a call from HR. "Hi, Todd? I forgot to mention the dress code earlier. You'll have to wear a jacket and tie." Ugh, he thought, wondering if his suit was in presentable shape. At his last job he'd show up in a t-shirt and shorts. I guess I'll have to go shopping tonight. He dusted off his old suit, found a tie that didn't completely clash, and hopped in his car. If having to wear a suit would be the worst thing about his new job, it wouldn't be so bad.

239 comments - Last comment @ 2016-12-06

Hot, Hot, Hot!, The Last Interview, and A Wrinkle in Time

by Jake Vinson in Tales from the Interview on 2008-08-13

Hot, Hot, Hot! (from Rob Sutherland)
In the mid 80s, a headhunter found me a good lead for a coding position at a (now-defunct) auto manufacturer. When I showed up to the headhunter's office, a very large and very scary looking woman took me out to the cafeteria so she could smoke during the interview. Different times, the 80s.

I could tell right away that she wasn't impressed with me. She lit up a cigarette, blew a cloud of smoke across the table, picked up my résumé, looked at it, grunted, flipped the page, grunted again, and tossed the résumé to the middle of the table. After another grunt, she glared at me and said "get a haircut!"

59 comments - Last comment @ 2008-08-20

A Software Problem, A Marketing Solution

by Jake Vinson in Feature Articles on 2008-08-12

For Jason R., it was an exciting time. His company was trying to break into the telecom market with a new product that they'd get to build almost entirely from scratch. The only part that he wasn't excited about was that the major customers had very specific requirements that his team would have to meticulously follow. In this case, some bigtime POTS operators demanded that all servers must come from Sun, and any databases must be built on Oracle 8i.

One of the applications they were building had to interface with the clients' call data records (or CDRs). The most important use of CDRs is for phone bill calculation, so naturally they were stored in properly designed and indexed tables. The CDRs were stored alongside all billing records, and were frequently accessed by mission-critical internal applications, and they weren't prepared to expose all of that to a third party. So instead, Jason's company would have to construct CDRs on their own from the signaling message flow. Because the CDRs would be processed right away, they wouldn't even need to store them. The tentative architecture called for an Oracle database for CDR pipelining from the front end to the application backend.

186 comments - Last comment @ 2022-08-19

Packing Done Right

by Jake Vinson in Error'd on 2008-08-11

Submitted anonymously, one of our readers' companies uses a lot of CMOS batteries from Dell. To save time and money, they asked for fifty spare batteries instead of having them delivered individually. Dell was happy to oblige, sending one giant box with fifty small boxes inside; each with one neatly-packed CMOS battery. I can't help but be reminded of a similar incident from the past.

155 comments - Last comment @ 2011-02-09

What Do You Want on your Tombstone?

by Jake Vinson in Feature Articles on 2008-08-07

In an effort to gain marketshare, Initrode quietly built a new product — a network management appliance that out-featured and out-performed the competition's nearest equivalents. The R&D, testing, production, infrastructure, trade shows, demos, trials, last-minute feature additions, sales, and late nights had taken their toll on Chris W. and his colleagues, but they had built something they were genuinely proud of in the end.

The launch went smoothly from a technical perspective, though initial sales were underwhelming. After several months, their sales were paltry.

104 comments - Last comment @ 2011-06-28

The Dream Customer

by Jake Vinson in Feature Articles on 2008-08-06

"It's the strangest thing — I can't connect to the wireless anymore. I can still use the Microsoft but not the email."

The Microsoft was a key phrase that let Jay L. know that the woman on the line wasn't exactly what you'd call a power user. "I'll be happy to help. First, can you tell me what router you're connecting to?

228 comments - Last comment @ 2023-08-07

Connect Over What!?

by Jake Vinson in Error'd on 2008-08-01

No thanks, MSN Messenger, I'd rather not.

(submitted by Kamil K.)

74 comments - Last comment @ 2011-12-18