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"For three years, I've made my car payments on time and in full," Clark S. writes, "and the one time I'm a few days late — whooo boy — do they let me know. Phone calls at home, phone calls at work, letters, emails, you name it. As if that isn't bad enough, then there's the Late Payment Math."
Microsoft Vissa (from Mike Cook)
A couple years ago, after trying nearly everything to get my new Dell to work, I did the unthinkable. I called Dell's tech support. After giving the service tag and all that other jazz, I explained the problem to the technician.
"According to the BIOS," I said, "my computer has 4GB of RAM installed. But Vista Ultimate only shows 2GB."
Desperate times call for desperate measures, and in the midst of the Great Recession there’s quite a lot of desperation going on. Hourly bill rates that once made lawyers blush have come crashing down to the point of “wow, my gardener charged more than that.” And while the whole idea of “being selective with projects” is still around, the bar for what’s accepted has dropped to any and all projects. It ain’t pretty out there, especially for folks on the front lines like Matt.
“Four years ago,” Matt writes, “my company swore that we’d never talk to Initrode Global again. It wasn’t just their massive VB6 application that they refused to even consider upgrading, it was more that they insisted on fixed-bid estimates and constantly low-balled our numbers. Oh, and halfway through a project, they’d insist that we throw in an out-of-scope feature for free, since they were a paying customer and all.”
In the spirit of "dead A/C compressor at the office" day — which, as it turns out, is not really a fun day to celebrate — I thought it'd be a great opportunity to revisit this classic. I'm Sure You Can Deal was originally published on July 9, 2007.
Not too long ago, there was a small furor in the local media about a major disaster at The State's Technology Services Division. The details were a bit sketchy – mostly because The State was “unable to comment on an ongoing investigation” – but what was reported was that, for two full days, employees of The State were unable to logon to their computers or access email, and that this caused business within The State to grind to a halt.
When it comes time for month-end, quarter-end, and year-end, accounts will tend to display a wide range of emotions, from cranky to flustered to downright belligerent. Nothing – and I mean nothing –is more important than getting than getting accurate financials out on time. After all, without those reports, the executives would have no idea whether they should take credit for a good period or if they need to find someone to blame for poor performance.
As a financial systems developer for a mid-size company, Mike L had come to learn that there are times to be chatty and friendly with the folks in accounting and times to avoid even thinking about stepping foot in their area. Fortunately, since he dealt primarily with back-end data aggregation, he was never in a position to get in the accounts’ way and, therefore, never had to face the wrath of accountant. That is, until some serious miscalculations occurred in WBL01GLP.
Not too long ago, I went up to Windsor, Ontario with my lawyer, Mr. Van Dress. Like my netbook, I never like to leave town without legal representation. Since there are really only three things to do in Windsor – drink, gamble, and buy Cuban cigars – we picked up some stogies, drank until we were confident we’d win, and headed over to the casino.
Before long, I had blown through far too much money on blackjack, and Mr. Van Dress had “invested” just as much on craps. Checking our pockets, I had $2 in chips remaining and he had $8, so we walked towards the roulette tables to place one last bet. Which table? and Black or Red? were the burning questions, and the answer seemed obvious: Table #3 and Red. After all, the table’s counter showed that black had just come up four times previously, so that meant red would have to come up next. Right?
Got Tales from your interviews? Then send 'em on in!
The Easiest Interview Ever (from Adrian)
It had been many long years since my last job interview, so I was a little anxious about interviewing for a new job. So I studied. I prepped. I mock interviewed. I made sure that I’d be ready to answer every question that they could possibly throw at me, and I even came up with a long list of questions to ask them, just to make sure they knew I was interested.
Long before the advent of software, computers, or even electricity, Wolfgang von Kempelen debuted one of the world’s most spectacular technological marvels ever invented, even by today’s standards. Inspired by the then-famous illusionist François Pelletier, Kempelen wanted to build something so incredible that it would top Pelletier’s – and all others’ – illusions, and that he did. The year was 1770 and the machine was a chess-playing automaton known as The Turk.
The brains behind The Turk were springs, spindles, cogs, and gears, and they were all powered by a few turns of a large key. Some of the clockwork computed the moves while others controlled the automaton’s arm. Yes, there was actually a human-like (Turkish, in fact) torso attached to the cabinet that would physically move the chess pieces.
It was Anthony's second day on the job, and the sixth time he thought to himself, What The Fuuuuuhhhggggg, while searching through the code. At least, he thought that he kept that last sentiment to himself.
Not a moment later, his coworker asked "what is it?" and then scooted his chair over to see Anthony staring at the following code, mouth agape.
"I work as a support developer for the trading desk at a fairly large bank," Jay P.L. writes, "some of the automatic trading systems used have grown organically from what can originally be called an Excel spread-sheet. However, the complexity can sometimes be overwhelming."
Jay continues, "When traders find functionality that doesn’t quite work as expected, our usual response is, 'just send over the spreadsheet and we'll take a look at it.' Cracking open the VBA and debugging through the issue usually finds the cause relatively quickly. Most of the time, the issue can be blamed on a close colleague who made the mistake during a particularly hectic trading atmosphere under an abundant amount of stress and pressure. These situations are usually overlooked and forgiven. The issue fixed and returned."
Jul 09
