The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

The Tye That Binds ...(part 2 Real Escape String)

by Lorne Kates in Feature Articles on 2013-03-28

He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He should just say nothing. Smile and nod. Keep his head down.

126 comments - Last comment @ 2016-12-02

The Tye That Binds

by Lorne Kates in Feature Articles on 2013-03-26

"The System is too slow," Aargle's manager told him. No hello, no small talk. Direct and to the point, like a shiv.

When he'd started at MediDyn, Mack, his team leader, assured him that Tye's management style just grew on you. Two months later, Aargle assumed he'd meant like a tumor.

96 comments - Last comment @ 2013-04-02

Accounting for Development

by Remy Porter in Feature Articles on 2013-03-20

Karen glared across her desk at Tom. “Did you install Visual Studio on your computer?”

“Yes,” Tom replied, unsure why she radiated waves of fury at him.

129 comments - Last comment @ 2013-05-31

Freelance Fun with Dick and Jane

by Dan J. in Feature Articles on 2013-03-18

When you're a freelance software developer and the relatives come calling, you learn quickly - if you want to keep your business afloat - how to let them down easy. When friends of relatives come calling, however, it gets tougher, especially when they're as enthusiastic as Jane.

Dick's second cousin (once removed) had pitched Jane's idea as "similar to Khan Academy or MIT's online college", which didn't really float Dick's boat: it sounded either extremely boring or impossible. But Dick sat down for coffee with Jane anyway, and found himself confronted with the following business plan:

91 comments - Last comment @ 2013-06-01

Less is More

by snoofle in Feature Articles on 2013-03-14

Pratik K. left work on very late on Friday with plans for an awesome weekend. He had earned it. Each application that was part of the new release had been tested in the test database, both individually and as part of an end-to-end drill that included both vertical and horizontal functional and stress testing. His code was bullet proof. All the signoffs had been acquired. The DBAs were ready. The SAs were ready. He could heave a sigh of relief, let go and have some fun. And so on Saturday night, out he went. Drink he did. Late he came home. He got the call at 5AM Sunday morning. Something was horribly, horribly wrong.

The business users had kicked off what they thought would be a 15 minute job early Saturday afternoon. When they came back several hours later, all the applications were hung. The users couldn't access the database. After everything had been so thoroughly tested, how could such a catastrophic failure have happened? What had gone wrong? The customers were already expecting the release to be installed for their use by business-open on Monday morning. This absolutely had to be fixed now!

147 comments - Last comment @ 2013-03-22

I'm Sensing Some Tension

by Mark Bowytz in Feature Articles on 2013-03-13

Darren A. writes, "I've just started a new job for a company that (on their own admission) needs some help. The developers are a little behind the times while the testers are a lot behind the times."

"My uphill task is to educate them in the ways of continuous integration, source control, design patterns, OO design, unit testing and automated building, testing and deployment. Their communication skills need some work too. I haven't risked a peek into the code yet but based on the following defect ticket, I suspect I won't be pleased."

107 comments - Last comment @ 2017-09-25

A Misleading Memory

by Ellis Morning in Feature Articles on 2013-03-12

6:55 PM. Tom's shift ended in precisely five minutes. Neither he nor any of his late-shift copilots were on the phone at the moment, so increasingly carefree banter flowed through an otherwise empty office. His co-workers discussed that new game, Myst, and the latest puzzle that stumped them. They'd keep it up all the way out to their cars.

There was one break in the banter: 6:59, that magical time when everyone rushed to his or her cubicle to hover a finger over the button that would release him or her from the phone queue. Tom jumped out of his chair and joined them in that much. Performing late-day housekeeping on his open tickets had taken longer than he’d anticipated, but it was good not to have to wait out the eternity that stretched between 6:55 and 7:00.

142 comments - Last comment @ 2013-12-27

Hardware Mismatch

by Charles Robinson in Feature Articles on 2013-03-06

“Ugh, this server is such a pile of garbage!” Eric shouted for the 10th time that week. The “server” was an aging desktop that fell out of use several years prior. Eric’s team needed to resolve a performance problem in their production BizTalk environment. The best thing they had to simulate that environment was running virtual machines on this over-matched computer that you wouldn’t even give away to your kids. Such “recycling” was the standard at Eric’s company. Whenever they needed hardware to assist with development, Eric argued with the hardware guys just to get a handout of scraps from them. This time was no different.

In hopes of actually getting a usable dev server, Eric knew he would have to contact Mitch, the cranky head of the hardware team. A machine that was in its prime back when MySpace was the social media king would be an improvement. Eric carefully drafted a respectful, polite, and painfully courteous email to Mitch, explaining the inadequacies of their current setup and how this was keeping them from supporting production.

111 comments - Last comment @ 2013-03-19

War of the Worlds

by snoofle in Feature Articles on 2013-03-04

Laptops Rule! At Cheryl C's company, most of the work was done, and all of the data was stored on Linux servers, but everyone used laptops to access the network and by extension, their Linux servers. Most of the time this worked out well. However, when something went wrong... support was handled by two different organizations: one in her company and one on The Other Side. Specifically, the company on the other side of the merger. Two behemoths had merged into one mammoth colossus of Jurassic proportions.

For the past 18 months, all sorts of efforts had been ongoing to divide the responsibilities to eliminate the redundancies. Managers met. Managers fought. Managers decided that it was redundant to have two PC support organizations, two network support organizations and two Linux support organizations, so they decreed that Cheryl's company would support the PC world and the other company would support the Linux world and the network. And never the twain would meet.

77 comments - Last comment @ 2013-03-13

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