The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

All You Can Download

by Mark Bowytz in Feature Articles on 2009-08-25

Photo Credit: hugovk@flickr A little more than a year ago, Jason M. visited a small company named Jera Co. to write a proposal for wiring-up their office network. Michael, the office manager, described their environment as being a "simple arrangement with a handful of users." Upon inspection — boy oh boy — how simple it was.

It turned out that the office had only two PCs. One was laptop with Windows 95.A and the other was a Franken-puter sporting an AMD K6-2 Inside badge and Windows NT 4.0. File transfer between the machines were done through a floppy disk, unless of course the file was more than 1.44 megabytes, in which case, it was emailed from one computer to another. It was a kludgy solution to be sure, but that's why they were bringing in Jason.

128 comments - Last comment @ 2016-04-27

What the Ad? - Awesome Edition

by Mark Bowytz in Feature Articles on 2009-08-14

When I do my research for "What the Ad?", I see a lot of glitz, a lot of meh, and a lot of everything in between. For starters, this one from American Small Business Computers is a an example of how to get straight down to ...well...business.

On the left, you have the Cameo Connection bringing its 5 megabytes of fixed and 5 megabytes of removable Cartridge-Type Disk Drive to the party. Suave, smooth, classy.

98 comments - Last comment @ 2009-12-23

BlackBerry UI Magic

by Mark Bowytz in Feature Articles on 2009-08-11

OH HAI IM DOIN TEH MAGICZ! Adam never really had a lot of faith in those "Professional Networking Social Luncheons" that were hosted by his university's career advising office. Despite their seemingly good intentions, there was an air of the events being a safari for smarmy headhunters. But Adam couldn't pass up their latest offering: The Mobile and Telecom IT Ice Cream Social.

Hoping to break into the wacky, wonderful world of mobile IT telecommunications, Adam did his best to "bump elbows" with IT professionals in the mobile and telecom field. Armed with a stack of resumes in one arm and a bowl of strawberry swirl in the other, Adam was able to pass out all of his resumes and meet a few interesting people. Over the next few days, he received a few callbacks for interviews and, in the end, was able to land a gig at a large mobile provider on a small team lead by a senior developer named Carl.

Where the Magic Happens

128 comments - Last comment @ 2009-09-17

We <3 Concurrent Engineering

by Mark Bowytz in Feature Articles on 2009-08-06

Picture this. A completely empty room. Now picture this. A large pile of candy — a crapton to be exact — in the middle of the room and the door creaking open to reveal a class of hungry preschoolers, drooling over the goodies. And, as they walk through the door, each of them are given a sippy cup full of Red Bull.

That's basically how the electrical engineers and CAD designers were acting at the Fortune 500 hardware company where Jack works. Since the sales guy from EE-Graphix came in touting the features of their PCB Designer Enterprise Edition 2009 — and brought with them a pile of Krispy Kreme and Starbucks — the engineers and designers were bouncing off the walls. But it wasn't just sugar and caffeine that was making them jittery; they were experiencing a "feature high".

128 comments - Last comment @ 2012-04-04