The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

Thanks Bill!

by Erik Gern in CodeSOD on 2014-01-30

Alan’s coworker, Bill, had a bumper sticker on the back of his desk chair: Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger. Bill acted the part, if all wizards looked homeless and didn’t shower for days on end. But Bill didn’t tolerate any criticism of his skills as a DBA, whether from Alan or anyone else at the company.

“Why would you use a stored procedure for that?” he’d storm. “Do you know how long that would take to execute?”

103 comments - Last comment @ 2014-02-03

Process Communication Hell

by Erik Gern in Feature Articles on 2014-01-14

Tariq learned on his first day at CyberPolitiburo about the Iron Curtain dividing the company.

"Here, downstairs, all the .NET developers work on the phone bank application," Simone, his new supervisor, told him. She wore a severe, Soviet-style pantsuit with red trim. "Upstairs, with their donor registry, it’s all C++ this, and GCC that. It’s practically the wild west there. There’s never been any reason to talk to each other, so it doesn’t happen."

132 comments - Last comment @ 2014-01-22

Universal Login System

by Erik Gern in CodeSOD on 2014-01-09

It wasn't every day at DroneDeliveries, as Antoine knew, that a user complained about having too much access to their e-commerce account.

"I swear, I'm not making this up!" she said over the phone. The user had logged in to check her recent order status. "My email address is [email protected], but when I typed [email protected], it logged me in!"

85 comments - Last comment @ 2014-01-24