The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

Confessions: Every Five Minutes

by Mark Bowytz in Feature Articles on 2012-09-26

Credit: Psion Workabout Pro "I'm still a student," writes Rob J., "but recently I completed an internship for my Computer Science courses with a manufacturing company nearby. The company's process machines were totally computerized and their IT department consisted of the Network Administrator and the Software Developer (fortunately 2 different people), supporting the entire IT needs of the company of nearly 200 workers."

"As a developer / admin intern, I caused my share of disasters; yes, I managed 'sudo rm -rf /*' on the Linux server that wasn't backed up and I broke another two Windows boxes using SysPrep, all on relatively small servers that weren’t that difficult to rebuild, thank goodness. Overall, despite these disasters, I felt that it was a good experience and I learned more after cleaning up after the systems that I broke."

85 comments - Last comment @ 2012-12-10

Finish the Finnish Audit

by Remy Porter in Feature Articles on 2012-09-24

Many European nations require their citizens to serve in the military. For those not ready for that Starship Troopers-esque future, most of those nations offer a civilian alternative. In Finland, this is called “siviilipalvelus”.

Siviilipalvelus is what brought Sampo to a small sub-department of the Finnish Treasury. He had programming skills, and they had a programming problem. They had an application which was older than Sampo, and at this point no one knew what the original requirements were, nor whether it met those requirements. There were half a million lines of code that were ported across many environments, and not nearly enough eyes to review them.

81 comments - Last comment @ 2018-01-03

Connected to the Connector to the Connection to the System

by Remy Porter in Feature Articles on 2012-09-20

“The users want some changes on the ticket form,” Bucky, the smiling intern said. “I was told I should talk to you.”

Jesse laughed. “Oh, I know that form well.”

80 comments - Last comment @ 2019-08-30

The Slowdown

by Remy Porter in Feature Articles on 2012-09-11

The marketing firm managed the web presence of several large banks and needed a Unix admin. Nick had spent the past decade running heavy HP-UX servers in the banking industry. It seemed like a very natural fit, and Nick thought he was going to enjoy the faster pace in a smaller firm.

The firm, as he learned, was broken into two major branches: consulting and everything else. Everything else existed to keep consulting happy, since consulting pulled down the big bucks. On Nick’s first day, his boss Ted introduced him to Larry, one of those consultants. Larry had some very important things to tell everyone who worked with the server team.

“There are two Windows boxes in the data-center,” Larry explained. “Those are mine. Do not touch them. Ever. Nod if you understand.”

128 comments - Last comment @ 2021-11-26

The Reporting System

by Remy Porter in Feature Articles on 2012-09-05

“Hey, is that a COBOL book on your shelf?”

Matt looked up and saw his boss, Jack, poking around the corner of his cube wall like an oncoming iceberg. “Huh? Oh, that. Yeah. My dad gave that to me as a joke…”

95 comments - Last comment @ 2012-09-11

Classic WTF: Making a Difference

by Alex Papadimoulis in Feature Articles on 2012-09-03

It's Labor Day here in the US, so we're taking the day off. So, here, enjoy a classic! Making a Difference was originally published on March 20, 2008.

When Chris walked off the platform with a computer science degree in hand, he knew one thing for sure: He'd have to start all over again in the business world. And with a dizzying smorgasbord of technologies and a whole world of concepts never broached in school, Chris knew he'd need guidance from a mentor.

40 comments - Last comment @ 2013-09-28

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