The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

PIN Panic

by Mark Bowytz in Feature Articles on 2012-08-30

Credit: racheocity@Flickr; # 54 :: 02/23/10 :: My door handle Bill T's morning was off to a really bad start. First, his alarm went off late. This forced him skip his morning coffee which, in turn, made him so groggy that he blew right through a stop sign on the way to work causing a near-miss with some guy on a bicycle. A passing police cruiser noticed the event and Bill was issued a citation, the writing of which resulted in him arriving almost an hour late to work.

And now, just when things couldn't get any worse, his security fob didn't work.

154 comments - Last comment @ 2013-04-03

Healthy Competition

by Remy Porter in Feature Articles on 2012-08-28

“This one’s going to be a little different,” Tom said.

Rich agreed, although for the wrong reasons. He thought it was going to be different because this was their first really big contract. Rich worked for Tom at a “new media” company young enough to have that “new company” smell. They had just landed a contract with Initrode to add some major features to their website.

127 comments - Last comment @ 2018-01-09

Can of RAID

by Remy Porter in Feature Articles on 2012-08-22

"The rent must be cheap," Alex mused as he pulled into the muddy field that served as a parking lot. He guided his car into a spot beside another car, which happened to be up on blocks. The building he was here to visit was a double-wide trailer that had started rotting before Alex was born and didn't intend to stop until well after he was dead.

It wasn't a very nice office. Alex was there because his employer owned it, and the handful of employees located at this site depended on its local RAID for file storage. Sometime over the weekend, the RAID failed, and now he needed to fix it.

113 comments - Last comment @ 2013-11-03

The Unimportant Clients

by Mark Bowytz in Feature Articles on 2012-08-21

Credit: Marcin Wichary@Flickr; Data processing center, pt. 5 About a decade ago, Coyne's employer at the time hosted various application systems for multiple clients running on their IBM host.

The clients ranged from a high profile Fortune 100 client all the way down to companies that were so small that they would probably rank in the Fortune 10,000,000's...and it was up to Coyne to do a Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) for one of the clients' application systems. Specifically, the applications were responsible for payroll, direct deposit, etc.

110 comments - Last comment @ 2022-05-06

The Process that Never Failed

by Mark Bowytz in Feature Articles on 2012-08-15

Richard fumbled with his key card, taking care not to accidentally spill his coffee as he entered the conference room. Normally, he was as much a morning person as the next guy, but for him, arriving to work for a 7AM meeting was best suited for the birds. Richard had some hoped that this meeting would at least involve some donuts, but he knew better. After all, they don't title happy project kickoff meetings "Damage Control".

When Richard arrived at the conference room, everybody else was in the same hazy state he was, each nursing a large cup of joe and awkwardly attempting to stifle a yawn. Everybody that is except for Richard's director who nervously got down to business.

106 comments - Last comment @ 2012-08-19

Refresh Your Virus Scanner

by Remy Porter in Feature Articles on 2012-08-13

Timmy threw open the door to the team room. Panting, he cried, "We're being hacked!"

Blair and the rest of the team slouched into action. They knew the web server was down, but that was hardly unusual. The "web server" was Blair's desktop from five years ago, reformatted and turned into a host for their home-grow project-management software. It dwelled under his desk, away from the light, and was not generally considered mission critical. The fact that it was down, again, didn't rate a high slot on anyone's priority list.

147 comments - Last comment @ 2012-11-08

There's a Rat in my Computer, Naughty NAS, and other Support Stories

by Mark Bowytz in Feature Articles on 2012-08-07

There's a Rat in my Computer (from M. Fragger)

A man called in distraught. "There is a rat in my computer!"

125 comments - Last comment @ 2017-08-01

The Long Goodbye

by Remy Porter in Feature Articles on 2012-08-06

Herwig smiled at Greta as he entered the glass-walled copy-center. "Excuse me, but do you mind if I ask you a few questions?"

Greta smiled back. Over the past week, they'd certainly seen enough of each other. "Of course not."

135 comments - Last comment @ 2012-10-23

Oh, so THAT's what's wrong!

by Mark Bowytz in Feature Articles on 2012-08-02

Hey - just a quick reminder - if you haven't checked out our free Daily WTF T-Shirt Giveaway sponsored by our friends at New Relic, you might want to get on it before it ends. Supply is limited to 250, so sign up soon!

John Kupski received a call from a user recently about a failed laptop. The irate user complained that his laptop was dead, had not worked at home all weekend, and he had no idea what had happened to the unit even though it had stayed put on his dining room table the entire time.

101 comments - Last comment @ 2012-09-27

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