The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

Classic WTF: Documentation by Sticky Note

by Erik Gern in Feature Articles on 2024-11-28

Today is holiday in the US, where we celebrate a cosplay version of history with big meals and getting frustrated with our family. It's also a day where we are thankful- usually to not be at work, but also, thankful to not work with Brad. Original --Remy

Anita parked outside the converted garage, the printed graphic reading Global Entertainment Strategies (GES) above it. When the owner, an old man named Brad, had offered her a position after spotting her in a student computer lab, she thought he was crazy, but a background check confirmed everything he said. Now she wondered if her first intuition was correct.

“Anita, welcome!” Brad seemed to bounce like a toddler as he showed Anita inside. The walls of the converted garage were bare drywall; the wall-mounted AC unit rattled and spat in the corner. In three corners of the office sat discount computer desks. Walls partitioned off Brad’s office in the fourth corner.

10 comments - Last comment @ 2024-11-29

Classic WTF: The Old Ways

by Erik Gern in CodeSOD on 2022-01-17

It's a holiday in the US today, so we're taking a trip into the past for a haunting classic about how things used to be. Original. -- Remy

Greg never thought he’d meet a real-life mentat.

“We’re so happy to have you aboard,” said Jordan, the CEO of IniTech. She showed Greg to the back end of the office, to a closed door marked with just one word: Frank. Jordan, not bothering to knock, opening the door.

15 comments - Last comment @ 2022-01-24

No Chemistry

by Erik Gern in Feature Articles on 2017-09-06

Tyler G.’s “engagement manager”, Sheila, had a new gig for him. The Global Chemical Society, GCS, had their annual conference coming up, and their system for distributing the schedules was a set of USB thumb-drives with self-hosting web apps.

“You’ll be working with two GCS representatives, Jeff and Graham,” Sheila explained. “They’ll provide you with last year’s source code, and the data for this year’s schedule. You’ll need to wire them up.”

48 comments - Last comment @ 2018-04-02

Disk Administrations

by Erik Gern in Feature Articles on 2017-08-09

It was a mandatory change control meeting. Steven S.’s department, a research branch of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health in Belgium, assembled in a cramped meeting room without enough chairs for everyone. Camille, head of IT, was nonplussed.

“These orders come directly from Security,” she began. “Just last month, we monitored over a hundred attempts to break into the HCP.” The Home Care Platform was a database of citizens’ requests for doctors’ visits, prescription coverage, etc. Steven’s team had developed a mobile app that gave citizens access to HCP’s records.

19 comments - Last comment @ 2017-08-15

Rubbed Off

by Erik Gern in Feature Articles on 2017-07-10

Early magnetic storage was simple in its construction. The earliest floppy disks and hard drives used an iron (III) oxide surface coating a plastic film or disk. Later media would use cobalt-based surfaces, providing a smaller data resolution than iron oxide, but wouldn’t change much.

Samuel H. never had think much about this until he met Micah.

27 comments - Last comment @ 2018-04-01

Dot-Matrix Ragnarok

by Erik Gern in Feature Articles on 2017-05-31

Fresh out of college and out of money, Johan K. started work at Midgard Manufacturing as a junior developer. His supervisor Ragna made it clear: he would only be responsible for coding error handlers.

“Our plant equipment is several decades old,” she said, “and we have to rely on the manufacturer-provided documentation for adequate coverage. To be honest, none of the senior developers want to bother. So instead of bothering one of them, you’ll be doing it.”

46 comments - Last comment @ 2017-07-28

Crash Diet

by Erik Gern in Feature Articles on 2017-04-27

WT Durham had never met Bruce, former sales executive and new COO of Prepackaged Pixels, before he paid a visit to WT’s department. They were responsible for maintaining the licensing API for the company’s toolkit bundle, which included their prized platform-agnostic GUI. The bundle was used for internal projects as well as for third-party licensing, and customers often bought the entire bundle just to use the GUI. Bruce wasn’t too happy about that.

Weird Al in his 'Fat' music video, wearing a fat version of a Michael Jackson costume.

“We’ve conducted several customer surveys,” Bruce said. “Two-thirds of our customer base only want the GUI toolkit, not the rest of our bundle.”

24 comments - Last comment @ 2017-05-03

Copy Protected

by Erik Gern in Feature Articles on 2017-02-27

Dominique finished her instant cup of ramen, her third day straight. She and the other developers at Bento had gone a month without pay as they finished the beta version of their only application: a browser for promotional materials of yet-to-be-released merchandise.

Her cellphone rang. It was CEO Stephen, who was wooing investors with a demo. “How hard is it to block a user from capturing a screen image?”

A menu offering a screen recording option

56 comments - Last comment @ 2017-09-21