Tech Stories

1. Paperless Future http://www.flixxy.com/the-paperless-future-emma.htm [By: Park7] Comment on Story Comments Saw that one... and while it's not exactly for that reason, it is true that my father saw how the "paperless office" was developing in the early days of computers, and bought shares in a paper company. Definitely a good decision... -chazz

2. Needed for a Day Some vendor sent one of our users a zip file. When I tried to unzip the file, I discovered that it was encrypted. I told the user that we need to find out how to decrypt the file. Instead of telling us how to decrypt it, the vendor unzipped it for us and sent us the files, which we put on our network drive. Why would they encrypt the file in the first place if they would also be the ones to decrypt the file? My gut feeling is that some crackhead who works for that vendor wanted to feel important for a day. [By: Park7] Comment on Story Comments Important (in the government sector) equals (=) impotent -beatmewithstick

3. The day the internet died This is what happens when you add 1 second to time http://www.theblaze.com/stories/leap-second-and-violent-storms-how-the-internet-died-twice-this-past-weekend/ [By: Park7] Comment on Story Comments Temporal mechanics gives me a headache. Just fix it and send me back. - Captain Janeway (not verbatim) -ravensentinel saw this problem break a few java apps at work. found the second added in syslog but didn't put 2 and 2 together until reading about it on the register monday. -boxcar And how did Windows handle the extra second? Ignored it until the next time sync wad done. And they say Windows is so unstable that you could look at it cross-eyed and watch it do a BSOD... -VoiceOfSanity

4. Newest Windows Version The following link was in yesterdays paper http://www.gocomics.com/workingitout/2012/06/10 [By: Park7] Comment on Story Comments Too bad the new version crashes, just like the old one. -docbrown01

5. Fed Ex Delivery I hope you weren't expecting a monitor delivery http://finance.yahoo.com/news/fedex-addresses-tossed-monitor.html [By: Park7] Comment on Story Comments I had FedEx throw a case over an 8 foot tall fence once. Fortunately it was well padded from the manufacturer. -AniMaL If the driver gets fired, I'm sure UPS will snap him up in a second. (Do you know how hard it is to break the frame of a brick saw? UPS managed to do it.) -MeanDean I've had them throw my package from their truck onto my neighbors porch. Fortunately my mother-in-law saw them and made them pick it back up and deliver it to my house next door. Luckily the package was well padded, and nothing was broken. This is not the only time this has happened. -Gunpe I've never had a problem with Fedex or UPS. DHL, on the other hand, managed to completely mangle a computer that my Dad had shipped. -DukeOfURL I read elsewhere that this story is a year old. Doesn't make it less sad. But FedEx reassigned this douche, not fired - he's probably doing the same shit in a warehouse these days. -Captain Trips My ex-boyfriend had a similar experience with UPS. Difference is that he didn't see or record the tossing or dropping. Same effect: smashed display. -FuzzyElf

6. 10 Most Hated Jobs Note the technology positions that are in this list http://www.cnbc.com/id/44038159 [By: Park7] Comment on Story Comments wow... when the hell was someone behind me taking pictures of my ass?! -Harm Yep, my job's on there. (Feigns Shock) -TechieSidhe 1-item-per-page slideshows make baby Tim Berners-Lee cry. -Seamus @ Seamus: /agree. Altho, the picture on tge 'product manager' page included a cute piece of eye candy. -Aelin236 And here I expected a link to this site: http://www.cracked.com/blog/9-types-job-that-will-destroy-your-soul/ (warning, cracked.com, use at your own discretion) -Fortytwo

7. Brain Fart Moment I am a programmer and I have a network ID. I also have another ID for a different application. The other ID is similar to the network ID, and it also has a 4 digit number at the end of it. I have had both IDs for about 5 years. When I tried to logon to the other application, I could remember the 4 numbers, but I couldn’t remember what order they were in. I some different combinations and finally got it on about the 5th try. Although I am glad that I forgot my user ID instead of my password, because after 3 incorrect password attempts, it locks your account. [By: Park7] Comment on Story Comments Oops.... -Grue

8. Let's Get it Started A manager who works down the hall came into our call center and said that someone turned off his PC. He wanted to know what button was the power button. Someone informed that it was the button with the white dot in the middle. He said that’s what he thought it was, but he was afraid to touch it. It begs the question - what was he afraid of? Did he think that he would break it? Did he think that he might get electrocuted? Or something else? [By: Park7] Comment on Story Comments What I'd like to know is this, how the hell has he never turned on his computer before? -Calydor He probably never turns it off - which means his is the computer the cleaning crew uses to surf pron at night. -Ramblin Depends on if you've had any "creative wiring" issues with your PC cases. I'm sure someone has wired up a shockey power button before, and if so please post the video! -exzyle2k Remote activated electroshock LART ... drool. Must see if I can slip this into the next PC refresh unnoticed. -AussieFoot When you work in an office full of electrical engineers, you never trust any surface that has any resemblence of being conductive! Reminds me of the time I had brought the pulsator for an electic fence in to the shop to repair it... Wish I had a security cam aimed at the back door that day, modifying the timing to pulse 2/second and wiring it to the metal doorknob. I watched one guy grab the handle 4 times before going back to his car to get insulated gloves. -garwain If you were a real BOFH it would be electrocuted...... -Enzedder

9. What's That Smell? I had been at work for about a half hour. Some of my other coworkers had been out of the office. Ihen I thought I started to smell something out of the ordinary. When a coworker returned, I asked him if he smelled something. He said he did. I told him that I thought it smelled a little bit like smoke and he said he thought it was raw sewage. When another coworker returned, we asked him if he smelled something. He said he did. When we asked him what he thought it was, he said "hot dogs". [By: Park7] Comment on Story Comments After the next round of "what's that Smell?" will you be playing "pin the pointy stick on the weathergirl?" -ChildofCthulhu I thimk if we REALLY did see a weathergirl, we would be doing our best Lynyrd Skynyrd imitation of "What's Your Name?" -Park7 Comment 1: Try playing "What's That Smell" after having lunch at a Mexican restaurant. -LordObsidian Comment 2: At my office, "That Smell" (another LS reference) was once the battery backup on a server overheating and rupturing. -LordObsidian Comment 3: There are a few girls on the Weather Channel I would not mind pinning. -LordObsidian Hot dogs would actually make sense. If they're being grilled, then smoke is expected. As for what they're made of, raw sewage is probably not too far from the truth... -Chromatix now i'm hungry for a hotdog... -Harm These weather girls? http://joshitoshi.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/weather_girls_raining_men.jpg -docbrown01 Wasn't that the name for the movie, "Weekend at Bernies 3" -Biosynthetic At least its nothing like this http://probablybadnews.com/2009/10/07/funny-news-headlines-whats-that-smell/ right? -judoprincess JudoPrincess gets the win! -TieDyedDinosaur It's what The Rock is cookin'! <runs for lart shelter> -mechajock

10. Can You Compare Apples and Organges? At a previous employer, some incompetent twit was a programmer. They fired her shortly after I started and gave me her responsibilities. We were using a software package from another company and the programming was done using COBOL and VSAM was the file structure. In their programs, someone had defined in working storage a variable called apples with a value of 3 and a variable of organges (apparently, someone didn’t know to spell oranges) with a value of 0. If the program had an invalid VSAM return code, it would display the file name and the return code, then execute a statement “divide apples by organges giving core-dump�. The division by 0 would cause the program to fail. As any programmer with a half brain would know, a successfully compiled program doesn’t mean it will work – it just means that all of the statements are valid. After she was gone, I found a listing of a compiled program that she was having trouble with. My sups name was Gary. She had circled an apples/organges statement and wrote “Gary, is this a valid COBOL statement?�. She either forgot that the statement was valid because the program compiled successfully and/or she thought that you couldn’t compare apples and organges. [By: Park7] Comment on Story Comments COre dumps are not much use to the majority of COBOL programmers. Far more usable is the ABENDAID version that identifies and prints the contents of different control blocks and the IO Buffers. Tracing ACB to RPL to IO Buffers automatically is FAR more helpful than a raw dump. -TieDyedDinosaur That statement, although possibly correct, is nonetheless not very a-peel-ing. -RiffRaff it sounds a little fruity to me.. -Bynar Used to be that we had to force a divide by zero to get control in the debugger... I am sure glad those days are gone. -chazz COBOL?! Aaaaaah! We still use that language? Anyway, too many apples and oranges equals major core-dump and we don't need a program to know that! -Biosynthetic Chuck Norris can compare apples to organges. -AmazingKreskin Divide apples by oranges (man those oranges are sharp!), add some grapes, a little melon - voila! Fruit salad! -Enzedder Enough of this fruity pun shit - Organges is an alternative river in India. :-) -Gromit Cobol, Vsam, core dumps, AbendAid... all are things I'm glad I no longer have to deal with. Still have to work around incompetent twits, otherwise we'd have a royal flush here. -concept14 Decades ago I had to work on a set of COBOL programs running on an IBM System/36. *shudder* I slogged through and did a fine job if I say so myself, but the client (a state worker) threw a fit. Every time she cancelled an operation, the program would report "OPERATION ABORTED" and this offended her strong pro-life sensibilities. Did I have to change every error statement that used the A-word? You betcherass I did. I hate state employees. (Yeah, even you, Tub) -SalParadise

11. Do we REALLY need to pay this bill? The company that hired me had me working on the Accounts Payable package they had bought from another company. Initially, most of my assignments was to create reports that weren’t available with this packaged software. Since I was new to this system, I occasionally called their support line with a question. I had been employed with this company for no more than 6 months when I called the support line with one of my questions. After they verified the company I was with, they tranferred my call over to the collections department. Collections told me that the support bill hadn’t been paid and they wouldn’t give me an answer until it’s paid. I told my manager about it. He referred me to the CIO. When I told him, he asked me “Do you REALLY need this question answered?� [By: Park7] Comment on Story Comments I encountered this same situation, naturally the problem was one that prevented the system from working. Yes, the support bill was paid. -TieDyedDinosaur "Do you REALLY need the customized reports?" Wait, if they decide they don't, there goes your job... -Divinar My company did the same thing "We don't really need support for this software, it works fine" is what I was told. -LazyLemming I've fought this battle to many times. Why should we spend money on something that you should prevent from happening? Upgrade? Patch? Hell, it works fine now...EERRRKKKK -AngrySup At SAGGY Software AU, the CFO decided to not pay the maintenance contract on the (aging) servers because they never failed, and didn't tell anyone. I only found out when I had to call *ell when the guaranteed-to-fail DLT backup drive failed, and it cost $400 just to get the *ell tech in the front door, and more to get it fixed. Guess who was eventually all-but-fired for this, and it wasn't the CFO. -Wraith556 "OK, so we can't fix our Accounts Payable to Pay our Account with you until we Pay the Account so you can help fix our Accounts Payable?" ("I'll take, "Things I'd Like To Say", Alex, for $500!") -Voz Since it was the users in Accounts Payable who wanted the assignment completed, the accounting department paid it -Park7 Back in the days when 300 MB of disk space meant a disk pack with 8 12" platters in a dish-washer sized enclosure costing upwards of $50K, I worked for a company that had one of these attached to a DG MV/4000 computer. One day, it, as h/w will occasionally do, failed. Big time. The dreaded head crash. Disk platter and drive heads totally kaput. Fubarred. Big time. No problem, we have a $3000/year maintenance contract. Or so we thought. It turns out our idiot company pres decided that this contract was a totally unnecessary expense, and cancelled it. Without telling us. Imagine our surprise when we learned that (a) DG would be out to repair it, not the next day, but some time within a week. During which we're totally DITW. And (b) it will cost us the full price of a new drive and disk pack. And imagine the CEO's surprise when we marched into his office to tell him all this.... -rdwells I've been on the other side of this. A customer was telling us they hadn't accepted a system, even though they'd been using for a year, and therefore wouldn't pay for it. One day they dropped a 400kg weight ten feet onto the computer. We said "I'm sorry, but the accounts department wont let us buy you another computer until you pay for the last one." They faxed a copy of the cheque within the hour. -rurwin

12. I thought I might be dead One former employer would buy a software package from a vendor and we would create reports that our users wanted, but not available with the system, and if necessary, work on any problems that weren’t taken care of by the vendor. One of the systems that I worked with was Accounts Payable. By and large, it was a pretty good system, except for the check reconciliation. I ended up creating some fixes for that portion of the system. If a good programmer had worked with this system at a prior time, it would be obvious to them what I was trying to do. If a good programmer that never worked on this system looked at my changes, it would take some effort for them to figure what I was trying to do. If a fscknugget looked at my changes, their head would explode if they didn’t get assistance from someone else. Shortly before I handed in my resignation, our department told us that 2 coworkers and myself, who worked in the in the same office area, would be moved somewhere else. However, I left before the move took place. About 3 months later, I had some personal business to do at my former employer. In the meantime, they hired a fscknugget to replace me. While I was there, I decided to check out the area where my former coworkers were moved. There were 2 of my former coworkers and my replacement. After I exchanged hellos with my former coworkers, the fscknugget figured out who I was. He said to me “Oh, so YOU’RE the guy that I want to strangle!� I replied “Why do you say that?� He said “Oh, that recon system!� I just shrugged my shoulders and said “Hey - it was working fine when I left� and then said goodbye. [By: Park7] Comment on Story Comments Revenge is a dish best served electronically -Efexs Reminds me of going back to a Bank that I used to work for and seeing one of my hacks in production. "Hey, I wrote that", "No you didn't", "yeah, okay..." fsknug. -AngrySup Mr. Tornado takes credit for some of the work I do. Especially spyware cleaning for the suctomer. If credit is due, I give credit. Otherwise, I acknowledge what I've done. -AdmiralLaurie

Customer Misconceptions

2. CoWorker Misconception: When you give me a list of users to process, most of whom I do not personally know, I would rather have their maiden names, not their married names that are now being used in the system. [2010-03-25]

3. This is a corporate miscomception. If a company that is losing money and is unwilling to spend it on staying current with its technology and has a Director of IS, creating a brand new CIO position and a brand new VP-telecommunication & technology position will help improve the IS Department and prevent the company from going under. [2010-01-11]

Tech Rules

2. Don't blame excluded experts A former employer held “management only� meetings for several months that would have a HUGE impact on the systems I support (I was the only programmer supporting these systems) and exclude me and any input that I can provide, because it was decided that confidentiality about this project was extremely important. When I found a better job and handed in my resignation (I gave them 2 weeks notice), they tell me tell me about this project and that it MUST be done in less than 2 weeks. In reality, if they wanted someone who knows the systems to do it right, it would take approximately 6 months - assuming that is their only assignment during that time. When the “quick fix� (the only option available because of the deadline) implodes on you, don’t blame me. Oh, well. At least it allowed me to give them an appropriate “going away� gift. [2009-07-02]

Customer Types

Co-Worker Types

2. Status is Important My boss at a previous employer required a weekly status report from all of his programmers, and then held a staff meeting every Monday morning, which primarily consisted of the programmers reciting a summary of their status report. Despite the fact that he should be well aware of my workload because he personally gave me all of my assignments and received these weekly updates, he also wanted a DAILY status report from me. I think this idiot expected me to stay late to do this. I felt if this jerk was too stupid to figure out why I was so far behind in my work, I would give him what he deserved - I quit working a half hour early, did his f*ing daily update, and then left on time. And this bozo was probably clueless why a persons’ productivity does not improve when they spend less time doing actual work and more time giving him updates. [2009-07-02]

Customer E-mails

2. "Sometimes I'm just a full-time blonde" [2011-07-19]

3. "I’ll be here all day" I received a voice mail message from a luser. She wanted me to call back and concluded the message with this phrase. There’s only one minor problem. My work day had ended at 4:00 PM, I had left the office around 4:02 PM, and the call was placed at 4:04 PM. [2010-03-29]