The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

Best of 2022: Special Validation

by Jane Bailey in Best of… on 2022-12-29

Ah, password validation, how can that possibly go wrong? Original --Remy

Ah, routers. The one piece of networking hardware that seems inescapable; even the most tech-illiterate among us needs to interface with their router at least once, to set up their home network so they can access the internet. Router technology has changed a lot over the years, including how you interface with the admin portal: instead of having to navigate to a specific IP address, some of them have you navigate to a URL that is intercepted by the router and redirected to the admin interface, making it easier for laymen to recall. But routers have their share of odd problems. I recently had to buy a new one because the one I was using was incompatible with my company's VPN for cryptic reasons even helpdesk had no real understanding of.

8 comments - Last comment @ 2023-03-28

Special Validation

by Jane Bailey in Feature Articles on 2022-10-03

Ah, routers. The one piece of networking hardware that seems inescapable; even the most tech-illiterate among us needs to interface with their router at least once, to set up their home network so they can access the internet. Router technology has changed a lot over the years, including how you interface with the admin portal: instead of having to navigate to a specific IP address, some of them have you navigate to a URL that is intercepted by the router and redirected to the admin interface, making it easier for laymen to recall. But routers have their share of odd problems. I recently had to buy a new one because the one I was using was incompatible with my company's VPN for cryptic reasons even helpdesk had no real understanding of.

34 comments - Last comment @ 2022-11-04

Keeping Things Simple

by Jane Bailey in Feature Articles on 2022-04-21

Sandra from Initrovent, previously featured here on the site, has finally left that job, finding herself at InitAg instead. InitAg is a small agricultural tech startup, a little rough around the edges for a data science company, but overall functional. With one notable exception: The customer portal.

20 comments - Last comment @ 2023-12-11

Modernization

by Jane Bailey in Feature Articles on 2022-01-26

Micki worked for ConCom, a huge multinational development consulting company with offices on four continents. ConCom, in turn, assigned Micki's team to another multinational corporation, one that was looking for an ERP upgrade. Picture six developers in one little loft office, complete with dartboard, while the architects, POs, SMs, and the like were on another continent in a totally different time zone. At first they worked small tasks, proving themselves capable of being assigned the big upgrade project, and eventually, details started to come out of what the client really wanted.

26 comments - Last comment @ 2022-02-21

Best Of 2021: Totally Up To Date

by Jane Bailey in Best of… on 2021-12-30

2021 has been a year that flew by so quickly it's hard to keep up. But keeping up with changes can frequently be harder than it seems.

The year was 2015. Erik was working for LibCo, a company that offered management software for public libraries. The software managed inventory, customer tracking, fine calculations, and everything else the library needed to keep track of their books. This included, of course, a huge database with all book titles known to the entire library system.

8 comments - Last comment @ 2022-01-03

Totally Up To Date

by Jane Bailey in Feature Articles on 2021-10-04

The year was 2015. Erik was working for LibCo, a company that offered management software for public libraries. The software managed inventory, customer tracking, fine calculations, and everything else the library needed to keep track of their books. This included, of course, a huge database with all book titles known to the entire library system.

26 comments - Last comment @ 2022-03-09

Who Tests the Tester?

by Jane Bailey in Feature Articles on 2021-05-24

The year was 2001: the year before many countries in the EU switched from using their national currency to the new euro. As part of the switch, many financial software packages had to be upgraded. Today's submitter, Salim, was hired as an IT support staffer in a medium-sized healthcare organization in the Netherlands. While Salim had a number of colleagues, they had to support a greater number of small satellite offices, and so on occasion any of them would be left to hold the main office alone. It just so happened that Salim's first solo day was the day they were testing the software upgrade, with the CFO himself executing the test.

17 comments - Last comment @ 2021-06-01

Reinventing the Wheel

by Jane Bailey in Feature Articles on 2021-03-29

There are often two types of software development departments mentioned: the kind where software is the product, and the kind where software enhances or sells the product. ChemCo is a third type: a physical chemistry lab, one with extensive customization of lab setups and computer-controlled devices that need to be programmed, as well as a need for statistics and simulations to handle the results. The team includes one C/LabVIEW magician, one Octave specialist, one Java developer, and one Python scripter. Therefore, most of the computer-controlled setups have LabVIEW GUIs and C DLLs for the logic, though some have Python over top of the DLLs instead.

25 comments - Last comment @ 2021-04-05