The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

The Plural of Virus is not Virii

by Remy Porter in Feature Articles on 2011-07-28

The life of a contract killer is hard. The life of a contract network admin is possibly harder. Guillermo juggled a set of contracts with local businesses that needed help but couldn't afford a full time network administrator. This meant he was not merely a network admin, he was six network admins, often with overlapping hours.

One afternoon, he did a routine series of checks on his largest client's Exchange server. Everything looked to be in order, but this company had a huge quantity of mail going in both directions. The virus scanner on the server had archived nearly ten thousand suspicious files, named "creative" things like hotxxx.jpg.exe. The disk was getting a little fuller than Guillermo liked, so he navigated to the quarantine folder and tapped "CTRL+A".

Ajax in the Underworld

by Remy Porter in Feature Articles on 2011-07-12

Chuck had plenty of time to wonder about the smooth jazz that played on their conference call system. The beatless clarinet noodling was probably supposed to sooth you while waiting for others to join the call. In practice, it was frustration as performed by Michael Bolton.

It was a sound Chuck had become very familiar with over the past few days. He was consulting with an outside contractor so that they would know the internal coding standards. The meetings were scheduled at hours most convenient in England, not the US, which meant some early mornings for Chuck. But that didn't mean anyone from Ajax Solutions actually bothered to come to the meetings. The first time, Roger, the product lead claimed that he had been stuck in traffic on the M180. The second, it wasn't in his Outlook. He didn't bother with an excuse the third time.