It's the End of the World! Oh noes!

In the run-up to Y2K there was no shortage of doomsayers. Systems would shut down. Banking software would go tits up and fortunes, if not lost, would be reduced to their 1900 or 1970 values. Planes would drop out of the sky. Software everywhere would crash.

And then came January 1, 2000. The world didn't end. It wasn't even thrown back into the stone age. Planes didn't fall from the sky. Systems didn't shut down. Banking software kept working. The worst problems most of us saw were nuisances, dates like "January 4, 19100" and old calendar apps mistakenly adding a February 29th to the year. The doomsayers disappeared and the IT industry was mocked by a flood of fuckwits chiding us for having made such a big deal about Y2K.

But for the alarms three years prior, it could've gone very differently.

x-posted to da brog.

Thirsty

It was 10:30p.m. I was out with some workmates having some tasty Kölsch beer. My cell phone rang.

"REC, this is $GeneralSupportManager. Can you join a conf call with $LeadResourceManager, $DocManager, $PM-Guy and $OtherSeniorManager? We're discussing the Daylight Savings Time issues."

x-posted to da brog.

$CompCorp Update: Narrowing Down the Suspects

Some time back I figured out what $CompCorp's creative admin had done and told them the solution, which required $$$Custom$$$ $$$Programming$$$ $$$Group$$$ because of the mess they'd made of their database. They got lucky: I had an idea which I passed on to $$$CPG$$$ to pull a little switcheroo on the database and make it think it was in Arabic all along so that the data could be correctly migrated. Setting this up took a couple hours but saved days of scripting and testing, which in turn saved $CompCorp thousands in custom programming charges and tens of thousands in lost time.

$CompCorp was happy to get a quick and cheaper fix, upper management gave me a tip of the hat for it, but no good deed goes unpunished. Upper Upper Management saw my solution as an "unconsidered revenue-reduction activity" and "detrimental to support division future earnings projections" which they told Upper Management. Shit runs downhill.

x-posted to da brog, sans typeface poll.

No, nein, non, nei, niet, नहीं, нет, いいえ...

September 29:

We are in the process of upgrading the Hardware and Software Environment for the Windows operating system, not $YourBigApp.

Well that sounds easy enough. Everything you need to know is in the Supported Systems guide. And you're too fucking lazy to look at it or your grasp of English and ability to look at simple tables is so tenuous you need your hand held. But dammit, when I give you the answer, quit asking me the same fucking question!

x-posted to da brog.

Update: Either the Chinese or Korean word for "No" borked the intro. Chinese and Korean removed from title.

Cow-orkers IX: No Time Like the Present

Most people don't give time a lot of thought. If you log into an application and enter some data, you can look at your watch and that's the time you did it. It could be a lot more complicated than that inside the system architecture though, and I've become $MegaCorp's expert on the subject. I've had to write a couple documents and issue two edicts, one of which is basically translated as either, "Just give me any ticket that references time," or "Take any ticket about time and then take credit by getting me to resolve it for you playing Chinese Whispers."

Carla's supposedly at my seniority level. My mentoree Paul has been with us for about six weeks now and is considerably more competent than she. He proves this Every. Single. Fucking. Day.

Also inside, a glimmer of hope.

x-posted to da brog, sans poll.

Cow-orkers VIII: Sour Stuff

Germans need lots of "oxygen". They're always complaining, Ich kriege keinen Sauerstoff ("I'm not getting any oxygen"). If only. At the same time they also complain about drafts being terribly unhealthy and even have a special belt for motorcyclists to "protect their kidneys" from all that cold air rushing by. German bikers even wear it in summer.

Twenty below 0°C isn't uncommon in winter here. And yet there are a lot of Germans who will insist on opening the window all the way despite gale force winds, dropping the temperature 30 degrees in as many seconds. Because they "need some oxygen".

x-posted to da brog.

Cow-orkers VII: Is That a Knife in My Back or Are You Just Happy to Use Me?

I just got a note from Kris, a manager two levels above me. Lenny is out on holidays and won't be back until January. I'd given him some advice on a ticket and he'd (surprisingly) done the proper thing and credited me with an assist. Unfortunately that meant that since the customer came back with another question, I was asked to give further answers. That meant I had to read through the entire ticket.

Lenny had been playing Chinese Whispers (or "Telephone").

x-posted to da brog, sans poll.

P.S. Enjoy a holiday GooTube link.

Redefining the OS

Tired from the flight back. Much stress. No time to tell long stories and no concentration to type them. BigHugeTelco made sure I wouldn't have to.

x-posted to da brog.

Kindergarten

Since no current monkey wants to get near Citrix problems and our few Citrix-knowledgeable monkeys have all moved on, if "Citrix" appears in the ticket, "REC" appears in the ownership field. Since most Citrix tickets are related to the massive Citrix problem I sorted in May, I'm getting quite a few sweeties. I know the entire problem inside and out and wrote the resolution, and I have a handy-dandy copy of it in my boilerplate collection to send to those customers who're too lazy or stupid to bother looking at the Knowledge Base.

Then there are the fuckwits.

x-posted to bogspot

Pres. Bill Clinton, System Administrator

Imagine one of those porcelain bobble-head figures mounted on the dashboard of a 1944 Jeep driving 90mph over, say, the lunar-like lava fields of Iceland. That's pretty much what my noggin looks like today as I repeatedly smash it into the my-head-shaped-dent in front of my keyboard, high atop Munich on the first floor of the Panopticon.

1) Please let me know, what is the meaning of “YES” under "CHANGES REQUIRED" column in patch installation document.

Gaaaaaahhhhh!!!!! <thunk!>

x-posted from the blog