The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

We Burned the Poop

by Jake Vinson in Feature Articles on 2008-08-28

Erik was in his robe, brushing his teeth and getting ready for bed when the doorbell rang. As he walked downstairs to see who it was, he was thinking that it was odd to have a late-night guest, especially on such a rainy night.

Standing at the door was his boss, holding a large cardboard box. Both he and the box were soaked, his eyes sad and his lip quivering. He stood there, motionless for several seconds, before opening his mouth to say, "Take some CDs. Take all the CDs you want."

147 comments - Last comment @ 2008-10-02

When In Doubt, Choose "C"

by Alex Papadimoulis in Feature Articles on 2008-08-27

“Wait a sec,” the Edutron Systems rep interrupted, cutting off the principal of River City High, “your students still use pencils and paper to take exams!?” The rep insincerely chuckled, adding “don’t tell me you’re still using slide rules to teach arithmetic!”

As shifty as the sales rep was, he did have a good point. It was 1993, after all, and the information superhighway was on the verge of explosive growth. If the principal knew one thing, it was that he – and most certainly, his students – did not want to be left in the dust. And if nothing else, Edutron Systems could help point River City High towards the onramp.

167 comments - Last comment @ 2008-10-30

Not in the Mood

by Jake Vinson in Feature Articles on 2008-08-21

Updates to the decades-old internally-developed bank management application had gone as smoothly as they could. No major issues moving from text screens on dumb terminals to text screens on Windows 3.1 to a GUI frontend in Windows 95. And now it was time for another major update; to give it the best GUI ever to appear in a decades-old internally-developed bank management application! And thanks to some good planning, respect for standard software development procedures, good tools, and a happy environment, the upgrade was going great!

That is, until the killjoys at Initrode Business Quotients threw a wrench in the operation. The application was actually more of a multi-application environment, all of which had to be able to talk to one another. As such, IBQ had to update its reporting application to work in the new environment. While their updates had gone almost as smoothly as those for the main application, they'd left out one feature.

106 comments - Last comment @ 2010-06-12

Unix? With QuikBill?!

by Alex Papadimoulis in Feature Articles on 2008-08-20

“I’ve got an interesting little project for you,” Simon’s boss said as he stopped by Simon’s cubicle. He dropped a several-page document on desk and continued, “take a look at this letter we just got from EBS. We’d better jump on this soon.”

Dear Vendor,

As I’m sure you’re aware, our primary focus at Enterprise Business 
Systems is to enable our clients to formulate key objectives through 
strategic initiatives to develop a comprehensive strategy that will 
provide the critical foundation for creating a proactive, synergy
-driven directive for utilizing technological approaches to achieve 
cross-departmental   -- snip --

As such, beginning October 1, 1993, all vendors must submit invoices 
electronically through EBS QuikBill™, the latest in our suite of EDI 
products. Invoices not received in this manner will be discounted 2% 
and extended 60-90 days. Please contact your procurement officer 
immediately to get set up with EBS QuikBill™.

Sincerely,
Accounts Payable
Enterprise Business Systems

121 comments - Last comment @ 2008-09-02

Doing the Heavy Lifting

by Jake Vinson in Feature Articles on 2008-08-19

After six years, Todd D. couldn't take the tedium anymore — his company refused to change with the times, and Todd wanted something more engaging. Seeing an opening at a publishing company, it sounded like the ideal change. He'd be going from a big software company to a more progressive publishing company with a software department; a good place for him to show his chops and actually make a difference. He aced his interview, as did the company — they'd proudly told Todd that they were happy to work with cutting-edge technology, had brand-new hardware, and a near-zero turnover rate. It was a no-brainer for him to accept their offer.

As he was about to head in to his first day of work, he got a call from HR. "Hi, Todd? I forgot to mention the dress code earlier. You'll have to wear a jacket and tie." Ugh, he thought, wondering if his suit was in presentable shape. At his last job he'd show up in a t-shirt and shorts. I guess I'll have to go shopping tonight. He dusted off his old suit, found a tie that didn't completely clash, and hopped in his car. If having to wear a suit would be the worst thing about his new job, it wouldn't be so bad.

240 comments - Last comment @ 2025-07-23

A Barely Accessible System

by Alex Papadimoulis in Feature Articles on 2008-08-14

Calculating the true cost of downtime is almost impossible. There's not only the obvious loss of labor to consider, but all sorts of indirect losses like missed opportunity, repair expenses, customer frustration and so on. Fortunately for Eric M.'s company, the management knows exactly how many real dollars it will cost them when their system -- "MCL," as I'll call it -- goes down. Eric's employer is a logistics service provider with a sole customer: a major U.S. automaker. His company is primarily responsible for getting the right auto parts to the right areas in the right plants, on time. Any unexpected delay or shipment error and the entire assembly line can shut down -- and when that happens, the service provider gets to foot the bill to the tune of $5,000 per minute.

To manage this mission-critical distribution operation, the logistics service provider trusts MCL. The MCL system is also responsible for running the rest of the company's mission-critical operations. As each of the 500-per-day trucks pull up to the company's massive warehouse with inbound material, MCL tracks and directs them to one of the 200 or so loading docks. Similarly, when the 300 or so crates on the trucks come in, their order number is scanned and the contents moved.

162 comments - Last comment @ 2008-08-20

A Software Problem, A Marketing Solution

by Jake Vinson in Feature Articles on 2008-08-12

For Jason R., it was an exciting time. His company was trying to break into the telecom market with a new product that they'd get to build almost entirely from scratch. The only part that he wasn't excited about was that the major customers had very specific requirements that his team would have to meticulously follow. In this case, some bigtime POTS operators demanded that all servers must come from Sun, and any databases must be built on Oracle 8i.

One of the applications they were building had to interface with the clients' call data records (or CDRs). The most important use of CDRs is for phone bill calculation, so naturally they were stored in properly designed and indexed tables. The CDRs were stored alongside all billing records, and were frequently accessed by mission-critical internal applications, and they weren't prepared to expose all of that to a third party. So instead, Jason's company would have to construct CDRs on their own from the signaling message flow. Because the CDRs would be processed right away, they wouldn't even need to store them. The tentative architecture called for an Oracle database for CDR pipelining from the front end to the application backend.

182 comments - Last comment @ 2009-02-24

What Do You Want on your Tombstone?

by Jake Vinson in Feature Articles on 2008-08-07

In an effort to gain marketshare, Initrode quietly built a new product — a network management appliance that out-featured and out-performed the competition's nearest equivalents. The R&D, testing, production, infrastructure, trade shows, demos, trials, last-minute feature additions, sales, and late nights had taken their toll on Chris W. and his colleagues, but they had built something they were genuinely proud of in the end.

The launch went smoothly from a technical perspective, though initial sales were underwhelming. After several months, their sales were paltry.

104 comments - Last comment @ 2011-06-28

The Dream Customer

by Jake Vinson in Feature Articles on 2008-08-06

"It's the strangest thing — I can't connect to the wireless anymore. I can still use the Microsoft but not the email."

The Microsoft was a key phrase that let Jay L. know that the woman on the line wasn't exactly what you'd call a power user. "I'll be happy to help. First, can you tell me what router you're connecting to?

227 comments - Last comment @ 2023-08-07

Sampo Uh-Oh

by Alex Papadimoulis in Feature Articles on 2008-08-05

Over the course of 100-plus years, Sampo Bank had grown into one of the largest banks in Finland. Since its founding in 1887, Sampo stayed ahead of the technology curve, introducing the first modern payment system -- the postal giro -- in 1939, becoming Finland's first adopter of IBM's "electronic brain" in 1958, and amassing nearly one million users of its online banking service by 2006.

But alas, in today's acquire-or-be-acquired world, Sampo was swallowed up by Denmark giant Danske Bank. On Nov. 9, 2006, Danske announced not only the acquisition, but that it would integrate all IT platforms -- online banking, merchant processing, account management and so on -- in 1 year, 4 months and 15 days, by Easter weekend of 2008. And come hell or high water, they would meet that date.

183 comments - Last comment @ 2024-06-10

Follow-up: Redirection with Smoke And ... Smoking

by Alex Papadimoulis in Feature Articles on 2008-08-01

Back in August of 2006, I published Redirection with Smoke And ... Smoking. Among other things, the article described what the experience was like for visitors to Marlboro.com:

If you were using something other than Internet Explorer, you likely experienced a familiar sight: a blank page as a result of the site being coded for IE only. In and of it self, that's not too big of a deal, even for #20 on the Fortune 500 List, Altria.

The fun part, however, was why Marlboro.com only worked in IE. To redirect visitors to actual content, they programmatically set the HREF property of a hyperlink on the page and then executed the (IE-Only) click() method on that hyperlink. That meant a noticible redirect for Internet Explorer and a dead page for everyone else.

82 comments - Last comment @ 2008-08-12

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