The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

Free Magazines!!

by Mark Bowytz in Error'd on 2012-11-30

For Brent, the offer of a free magazine subscription is a pretty good draw. Sadly, he wasn't too thrilled by the number of available choices.

52 comments - Last comment @ 2012-12-05

Superhero Wanted

by Mark Bowytz in Feature Articles on 2012-11-29

A curious email arrived in Phil's Inbox. "Windows Support Engineer required. Must have experience of the following:" and then a long list of Microsoft products.

Phil frowned. The location was convenient; the salary was fine, just the list of software seemed somewhat intimidating. Nevertheless, he replied to the agency saying that he was interested in applying for the position.

78 comments - Last comment @ 2017-08-01

The New TODO and More

by Mark Bowytz in Coded Smorgasbord on 2012-11-28

While wading through hundreds of disallowed implicit casts and such from turning option strict on for a large project, Tevildo came across this little gem.

Sort of like Visual Studio's comment tasks except potentially visible to the user. Who knows, it might actually get attended to if a user reports it as a bug.

127 comments - Last comment @ 2013-04-19

TestCfg is a Required Field

by Mark Bowytz in Error'd on 2012-11-23

As if trying to navigate HR related websites isn't hard enough, Ned Wheeler was trying to log into his employer's HR website when he was greeted with this.

38 comments - Last comment @ 2018-01-10

Classic WTF: Cursed and Re-Cursed

by Mark Bowytz in Feature Articles on 2012-11-22

It's Thanksgiving here in the US, so we're taking the day off! So, here, enjoy a classic. Cursed and Re-Cursed was originally published on May 7, 2009.

Graham K. was working for an atmospheric chemistry research group in a university in Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia. They'd been running a field experiment in sugar cane fields on a government research farm that was roughly 1500km (~932mi) away in Mackay.

55 comments - Last comment @ 2012-12-19

Your Standards Are Too High

by Mark Bowytz in CodeSOD on 2012-11-20

During his interview, Michael was asked what his coding pet peeves were. Things that, as a developer, really got under his skin.

Michael replied with the best answer he could think of. "I hate working inside of sloppy code. I think that it's best to spend time coding up front to save yourself from headaches down the road."

140 comments - Last comment @ 2012-12-18

Captcha'd - Beware of OmenCat

by Mark Bowytz in Error'd on 2012-11-16

Sandra wrote, "I love cats, but I don't want any part of this freaky demon cat captcha."

54 comments - Last comment @ 2013-01-02

The Overloaded Time Table

by Mark Bowytz in Feature Articles on 2012-11-15

A few years ago, while on a SQL Server data warehousing project, my project manager sent me a request - create a table with all kinds of information based on a given date. You know – given a date, be able to figure out day of the year, day of the week, month, last business day of the week, and so on, making sure the table stores enough dates to keep it maintenance free. Oh, and one more thing, it’s going to be linked off of the already complex star schema that we were developing for. Why? For reporting purposes of course.

Thankfully, I was able to talk my way out of it by explaining how SQL Server has built-in date functions that can do the job on the fly and that if I were to make that table, I’d have to go through the trouble of writing a bunch of date-related code anyway. However, the original developer for the database that Terje Nilima Monsen works on, must not have been as lucky as I was.

113 comments - Last comment @ 2012-11-28

But...Anything Can Happen!

by Mark Bowytz in Feature Articles on 2012-11-14

Every developer eventually breaks something in production. Whether by negligence, ignorance, or just plain bad luck, it happens even to the best of us. "Oops" moments like these are the ones we learn and grow from. The broken thing gets fixed, some data may or may not get cleaned up, and everybody moves on a bit for the wiser.

Unfortunately for Matt, he doesn't get to take a mulligan; he works in the industry where bad code might not cost just money and time, but lives as well. His organization has a very good reason for putting in place a strict code review process ahead of every promote.

142 comments - Last comment @ 2012-11-25

Unbox Can't Math

by Mark Bowytz in Error'd on 2012-11-09

"Let's see... 580 GB free, 309MB used by Unbox, and -580 GB used by other files. Sounds about...right!?" writes Geoff.

51 comments - Last comment @ 2012-12-19

The Prime Candidate

by Mark Bowytz in Tales from the Interview on 2012-11-08

Some years ago, Phil B. invited a promising looking candidate for a developer role to come in for an in-person interview. The candidate in question, Boris, had a very impressive resume showing plenty of C and embedded systems experience; however, upon his arrival, it was clear that his communication and interpersonal skills left a little to be desired.

It wasn’t that Boris was rude or unprofessional, instead it came down to the fact that he was really, REALLY nervous. Throughout the interview, Boris sweated, fidgeted, stumbled with his answers, and eventually asked to be excused for a moment.

160 comments - Last comment @ 2013-08-08

A preSCRIPTion for Errors

by Mark Bowytz in Error'd on 2012-11-02

Bob P. received this validation error from a Merchant Account application for a company that returns pre-SCRIPT-ion medications for the pharmaceutical industry.

46 comments - Last comment @ 2021-11-07

The Frankenserver

by Mark Bowytz in Feature Articles on 2012-11-01

Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tom-margie/1538944466/sizes/s/in/photostream/; twm1340@Flickr "Hey Ryan! Glad I got ahold of you, have a minute to lend a hand?" spoke a surprisingly jovial voice on the other end on the NOC’s emergency support "bat phone". It was the company's email admin, Jeff.

"Sure! Hang on a sec." Ryan panted before frantically stabbing at the phone's mute button as if he had just been caught slacking. After finding his notebook and pen, Ryan unmuted his phone and told Jeff to continue.

76 comments - Last comment @ 2017-08-01