The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

Syncing...Sunk

by Erik Gern in Feature Articles on 2013-09-24

Like a ninja in the night, Hanz M., AKA Hanzo, stalks across Hesse University’s Dresden campus. The go-to man in the IT department, he fixes the messes that others leave behind. This is one of his stories.

The order had come from the Dean of Dresden campus herself. In an effort to maximize classroom time (and justify expenditure budgets), lecture times would now be accurate to the second. IT would be responsible for the deployment of new, centrally synchronized clocks.

129 comments - Last comment @ 2013-10-22

Waste Not, Want Not

by Erik Gern in Feature Articles on 2013-09-17

Like a ninja in the night, Hanz M., AKA Hanzo, stalks across Hesse University’s Dresden campus. The go-to man in the IT department, he fixes the messes that others leave behind. This is one of his stories.

The techs from central IT in Berlin were an hour late, to Hanzo’s’s chagrin. He and his boss Gertrude were waiting in the campus server room. The Dean of Dresden campus, after numerous complaints from staff about the internet connection, demanded that IT give them a new gateway. The old tower unit, a file server in a past life, was dropping more packets than it successfully received.

92 comments - Last comment @ 2014-05-03

I Didn't Do Anything

by Erik Gern in Feature Articles on 2013-09-10

Like a ninja in the night, Hanz M., AKA Hanzo, stalks across Hesse University’s Dresden campus. The go-to man in the IT department, he fixes the messes that others leave behind. These are his stories.

"Is your connection working?" Gertrude, Hanzo’s boss, asked one night. Hanzo had been hired by Dresden’s IT department just a few weeks ago.

87 comments - Last comment @ 2013-11-26