Recent Feature Articles

Jan 2008

For Security Purposes...

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As the IT Director at a Real Estate company, most of John Sadowski’s work revolves around document management. Since many documents are still transmitted by the age-old method of facsimile, his company uses a fax-to-email service to help inject some modern technology into the realm.

Their fax-to-email provider has a slick web interface with excellent security. He became a bit worried, however, on the day he needed to change the email address that faxes were sent to. After clicking on [Change Email Address] button, the website displayed the following message:

120 comments - Last comment @ 2024-10-19

Rutherford, Price, Atkinson, Strickland, and Associates Dentistry, Inc

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Dr. Rutherford July 19th, 2004 marked a new chapter in New Portlandopolis’s rich dentistry history. It was on that day that the bitter rivalry between Dr. Rutherford, DDS; Dr. Price, DMD, DDS; Dr. Atkinson, DMD; and Dr. Strickland, DDS/DDS-PhD, had finally come to an end. Though there’s much debate on what exactly started the feud, everyone knows what brought the dentists together: the nationwide “denta-corps” that can out-price, out-service, and out-anything their small, family dental practices.

Although the partnership talks had begun years before, July 19th was their agreed-upon D-Day, wherein the four separate practices would officially combine to be Rutherford, Price, Atkinson, Strickland, and Associates Dentistry, Inc. In the months leading up to D-Day, and after much bickering and debate, the four dentists got everything ready from new signage to new logoed toothbrushes. The only thing that remained was combining their computer systems. That task was left to Aaron B, an IT consultant who had the pleasure of working with each office through many of the “ugly years.”

123 comments - Last comment @ 2017-06-22

Phoning It In

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In the late 1980s, Andrew Harkavy was working as a lead developer for a large hotel chain. He was responsible for 240 hotels that ran off 4 regional minicomputers. Each minicomputer served around 60 hotels, with six ports designated for each one for its terminals, printers, IT dial-in support, etc. Most of the time things worked pretty well, though the hardware was being pushed to the limit.

One day, Andrew got a call from a hotel employee with a strange issue — the screen's output kept coming out of the printer. Some time later, Andrew got another call from the same hotel employee, this time it was print jobs being output to the screen.

100 comments - Last comment @ 2010-08-10

Announcement: WTF in Polish

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I am very excited to announce the launch of The Daily WTF: Wersja polska at pl.TheDailyWTF.com.

61 comments - Last comment @ 2009-05-14

The Speed-up Loop

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“So what do you think about the opportunity,” Ben’s recruiting agent asked. He thought about it for a few moments. It wasn’t exactly what he was looking for, but then again, he had been out of work since November of 1989 – nearly three whole months – and figured he should probably get back in to the swing of things. He told the recruiter that he’d like to talk to the client and asked to schedule an interview for the following week.

“Actually,” the recruiter replied, “they need someone A-S-A-P. Can you go in any sooner? As in, later today?”

231 comments - Last comment @ 2023-08-08

Lock and Key

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When a young, entrepreneurial beautician decided to open up a tanning salon, she wanted her new business to be "high-tech." She wasn't exactly sure what that meant, let alone how to go about doing it, so she retained the services of a software consulting firm to help her get there.

The first order of business, so the consultants said, was to develop a "complete management package." This involved tying together and customizing several different software applications-point of sale, accounting, customer relations-into "one congruent solution." Whatever that meant, it sounded good and the business owner went with it.

73 comments - Last comment @ 2008-08-08

Announcement: Yet Another New Look

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It was that time again. The Daily WTF needed yet another new look. I don’t know about you, but the pastel look wasn’t quite working for me anymore. While I could go on and on about the new “missing corners” look and gradient heading colors of the new theme, let’s take a peek into TDWTF-past at some of the old looks…

 

214 comments - Last comment @ 2008-01-25

The Horrible and Stupid System

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Jared L. was feeling good. After a nightmarish stint at Initrode Global (That's One Way to Secure It), he joined the staff at CollaboSmart. His days of waking up to an ever-present sense of dread were over. And he could hardly believe that it had ended a mere two months ago.

After he left, Jared kept in touch with his friend Stephen, who still worked at Initrode. Eager to catch up on how each other were doing, they met for lunch.

144 comments - Last comment @ 2008-01-31

O Error, Where Art Thou?

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Another day, another bug to resolve. This time, Mark C. was tasked with figuring out why users of their behemoth, in-house disaster of an application were getting the following message from time-to-time:

We're sorry, but your request cannot be processed at this time for the following reason(s):

Unable to delete
This sale has been previously approved.

72 comments - Last comment @ 2016-12-08

Suzanne the 1000th Malone

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"In my home county of Wake County, North Carolina", Scott "Malone" wrote in, "when you request library books from another branch, an automated telephone system will call you back when the books arrive at your local branch. However, whenever my wife reserves books, the telephone system calls up and lets 'Suzanne the 1000th Malone' know her books are ready."

The messages sounded just like this: suzanne1000.mp3. Or, if you can't listen to that message:

This is the Wake County Public Library. Suzanne, the 1000th, Malone, you have materials waiting for you at the Cameron Village branch. They will remain on hold for three days before returning to circulation. Thank you, and have a good day.
146 comments - Last comment @ 2013-11-22

The Really Big Log File

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As the only computer programmer in his family, Kim Johnsson is uniquely qualified to solve any technical problem that might come up, ranging from installing a digital camera to fixing the "blinking 12:00" on a microwave. A recent support call had him diagnosing the all-too-common "it keeps crashing with all these messages" problem on a cousin's computer. After a lot of back-and-forth, Kim was finally able to determine what one of the messages was like:

101 comments - Last comment @ 2010-12-03

Infinitely Recursive Accessibility

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The Section 508 amendment to the 1973 Rehabilitation Act updated and extended the act beyond its original 1973 text, which simply allowed individuals with disabilities to participate in federally funded disco dancing competitions. Section 508 specifically applies to technology and electronic communication to minimize or eliminate barriers to people with disabilities. And as is wise to do with all federal mandates, Clive S. took this one seriously.

After developing a web site and presentation about how to be safe with online banking for a government web site, Clive got to work adding accessibility features. He made sure that images had descriptive ALT tags, he summarized every chart with text, and ensured that all video presentations were captioned.

93 comments - Last comment @ 2016-12-08

Access Abomination

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In his college years, budding developer Troels L. wanted to get a leg up over his fellow students. He figured a job to supplement his studies would serve him well, so he looked for employment at IT firms, banks and insurance companies, but no one was hiring students. The companies only had positions available to candidates with degrees.

Finally, Troels found a large non-IT company in his area that was looking for college students for a planned project. He read and re-read the job post to assess whether he had the skills called for in the project -- specifically in the area of database integration using a trio of technologies: Access, VB and Encarta.

86 comments - Last comment @ 2008-03-01

Announcement: Free Sticker Week Reminder & Update

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Today is your last chance to (easily) get a WTF Sticker through the free sticker form or PayPal! After today, stickers will only be available via snail mail.

The "TheDailyWTF.com" sticker is a 2"x3" sticker that's designed "to last outdoors for a long, long time" and is "great for applying to anything that gets exposed to the elements of weather." It's made of vinyl (which means that it's easy to remove in one piece) and doesn't have a super-strong adhesive (which means that removing it won't also remove whatever it's attached to).

33 comments - Last comment @ 2008-01-07

Biltmore Can't Log In

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"Biltmore can't log in," David's boss said in a panic, "you need to fix this. Now!"

It was the perfect way to start a Monday morning. When Biltmore couldn't log in, that meant that Biltmore couldn't get Biltmore's executive reports. And that meant that the entire company would grind to a halt and focus entirely on getting Biltmore's reports.

155 comments - Last comment @ 2012-02-07

One User at a Time, Please

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"Wait, why do you need to shut the SQL Server down?" Henry O. didn't like where this conversation was going. "We've got a lot of people using the database right now. I'd really like to do this upgrade without shutting it down."

"Well, we have to shut it down," Tom, the vendor, reiterated. "Because... because."

43 comments - Last comment @ 2008-01-31
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