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It was the early 1990s and Frank was living the dream – unshaven, in pajama bottoms and his favorite hockey jersey, having just woken up at 12:18 PM, was now working in the dim light of his basement on one of his freelance projects. Just as he was sipping a cup of coffee, the phone rang.
Frank tried fruitlessly to fight an unexpected open-mouthed yawn when he picked up the receiver. "OOOOAAAaaahhhh... hello?"
Rick worked for a regional ISP that provided hosting services. The customer base consisted primarily of consumers and small businesses, so the ISP offered a lot of "a la carte" services for things like SSL, authentication and database access.
A small chain of pet stores in the tri-state area, MegaPetCo, approached Rick's company because it was trying to expand into other cities and states. Having outgrown its current provider, MegaPetCo wanted Web space, a database and a few e-mail boxes. After careful consideration, it opted for the $74.99/ month Advanced Package that included a 10MB database, 100MB of disk space and 100GB of bandwidth.
"Is this campus tech support?," the caller said before Michael even had a chance to say hello, "I hope this isn't a recording because we have a serious problem with one of the detectors here. It won't open files!!"
Used to working with the frantically confused user, Michael replied in a calming voice, "Now calm down, let's start out with your user id and—"
Matt was excited: he had landed his first real web development job. Granted, it pretty far down on the totem pole – webmaster for a local wholesaler – but it was a foot in the door. Next job he might have the opportunity to do a little bit of PHP. And the job after that, maybe some MySQL. Soon enough, he’d be a full-fledged developer with a résumé overflowing with buzzwords from AJAX to Zend.
But for now, his job was to maintain the wholesaler’s website. Several years prior, the company had spent a bundle ($20K +) to have the site professionally designed by some local web development shop, and had been managing it in-house ever since.
Back in the early 90's, Marcus worked for a company we'll call SuperbNet. They were the European equivalent of CompuServe and a boasted a continent-wide network that you could dial-in to to post messages, share pictures, chat interactively, and so on. But unlike CompuServe, SuperbNet's infrastructure was built for reliability using specialized Tandem servers that could never fail.
For years, users were thrilled to pay upwards of $10/hr (on top of any long-distance charges) to access SuperbNet, and SuperbNet's Tandem systems — programmed with a customized version of FORTRAN — ran wonderfully. Because nothing ever seemed to break, the system was designed to go back years upon years to see everything that had ever been posted since first going online. It was as perfect of a world as could be. That is, until this thing named the "Information Superhighway" came along.
NPR Is Reading My Email (from Tom)
I was on a teleconference one day and saw another call coming through. It was Heather Jenkins, a fairly common caller to tech support, so I decided to send the call to voicemail. Whatever it was, it could wait.
As soon as my new voicemail indicator lit up, the phone rang again. It was Heather, so I sent the call to voicemail.
Chest puffed out and walking absurdly fast, Dietrich called out various rooms as they passed. "Built in the 70s, you'll find our building is an absolutely stunning marvel – processing room! – of modern architecture. Top to bottom, function has – restroom! – dictated the form. You'll find no unnecessary extravagences – another restroom! – within these walls." His heels clicked and echoed as he led Chris S. and another fresh-faced recruit on the grand tour of RNTP's corporate building.
Chris had been trying to get a word in, and seized the opportunity as soon as he could. "Wow, this building is hu-"
"Support ain't gonna be no big deal," Scott B.'s boss told him, "it's a weighbridge fer cryin' out loud! They don't got no movin' parts and they ain't gonna go breakin' in the middl'a the night."
Scott found the conversation reassuring. While he was happy to help his company expand into the business of selling and managing weighbridges, he was reticent to commit to 24x7 for emergency support, especially when support meant possible on-site visits within a fifty mile radius. But the boss was right, it's a weighbridge — truck moves on, weight slip prints out, truck moves off — it don't get no simpler than that.
Years ago, Peter worked as a highlyly paid IT consultant. You know those guys who come into the office in Italian suits and take over the large conference room as their "office" for six weeks? Well, Peter was one of those guys. But unlike the stereotype, he actually earned his hourly rate while applying his expert experience to several projects. He also had the luxury of working with some very highly skilled (and also highly paid) professional colleagues.
However, times started to get tough and Peter was having a harder and harder time finding a position as a consultant. Soon, he had to face facts — he'd have to explore other employment options, including getting a job as... a regular developer.
Since I got tied up on a lovely production failure yesterday (hence the Classic), I figured today'd be the perfect day to rehash "//TODO: Uncomment Later", originally pulished on March 14th, 2007.
What was your worst production failure?
"Stu-dennnt!" Bill called out for Gary with the level of respect Gary had become accustomed to, in a tone not unlike Superintendent Chalmers's calling for Principal Skinner. "Is this... decaf‽"
Gary had grown numb to the lack of respect. He used to remind himself that this was his first job out of college, that he'd eventually earn Bill's respect, that if he just kept his chin up and proved himself then someday Bill would treat him like an equal. Over time, that inner voice gave up.
May 09