The Daily WTF

The Firing Offense

Charles Robinson — Tue, 21 May 2013 10:15:00 GMT

Egon was fortunate enough to land a front-line support job fresh out of college, but he didn’t enjoy a single minute of it. He continued to slog thru the seven circles of Helldesk for about a year until he found an opportunity to move on. An opening at nearby WTF University’s Electronic Engineering department needed to be filled by a well-rounded IT guy. Egon didn’t think he had much of a chance to land the job, but desperation made him try.

The head of the Engineering department, Bill, invited Egon in for an interview. “I’m not going to lie to you,” Bill said. “We don’t have anyone to keep our computer systems running right now since the last guy left on a ‘Mission’ to South America. We’re in a bind here so if you know the difference between a computer chip and a potato chip, you’re qualified enough.” The interview didn’t get any harder. He explained to Bill what knowledge he had and asked what the workload and hours would be like. “Oh, I don’t know. We don’t care what hours you work as long as you’re available if we need you. If nothing is going wrong with the computers, feel free to make yourself at home in our lab and do some ‘research’ of your own. Would you be able to start next week?”

It was hard to say “Yes” any faster than Egon did.

Several weeks at WTF U flew by and Egon knew this was his dream job. He made more money, the work load was very light and he didn’t have to deal with complete morons on the phone any more. He couldn’t think of any set of circumstances where he would leave, especially not for a silly ‘Mission’.

The biggest problem Egon ever faced was determining just what to screw around with during his ample downtime. There was the 16 core workstation that he installed “borrowed” copies of several computer games on. There was the electronics lab where he would make Frankenstein devices out of spare circuit boards and resistors. He even wired up some motion sensors to the doors so they made the Star Trek door opening noise when someone entered.

Egon was free to do nearly anything. He discovered the “environmental testing chamber” was just the right temperature to keep a case of beer refreshingly cold. He spent his lunch breaks sipping a few brews then crushing the cans with a device he made out of an old vacuum pump. During times when WTF U was out of session and the department was practically empty, he would include more illict, combustible refreshment with his liquid lunch. The industrial ventilation system took care of the smoke.

Any of these things might have been a firing offense, anywhere else. The students loved him, the faculty were happy with his performance, and Bill hadn’t heard a single complaint. Something else entirely got Egon fired.

One day, he found some old mag-stripe readers in a forgotten desk drawer. Egon blew the dust off and connected one to his workstation via parallel port. More-so out of curiosity than malice, he decided to see how hard cloning his WTF U security badge might be. His badge did everything from pay for his lunch in the cafeteria to grant him access to areas restricted only to Engineering personnel.

The stripe on the card was bi-phase encoded and used a standard ISO character set so Egon was able to write a quick app to decode what was essentially plaintext. One swipe, and Egon was stunned to find only his staff ID number staring back at him. Impossible! Everyone’s staff ID number was available in the University’s directory. Anyone could view it. Armed with someone’s staff ID number, Egon or anyone with the know-how could make an ID card from credit card, train ticket or just a piece of card with some VHS tape stuck to the back. Once the card was cloned, it might be used for anything from paying for parking to getting in to the BioChem lab where the smallpox sample was kept!

Egon couldn’t keep this knowledge to himself. He called Bill right away and explained the issue. “Thanks for reporting this!” Bill said. “I’ll pass this on to my superiors and make sure they know you’re the one who discovered this!” Egon hung up and beamed with pride. Surely he had done a good deed and saved WTF U unthinkable troubles down the line. Maybe he would even get a raise or a promotion to “security expert” or something!

The next day, Egon came to work, ready to receive his due accolades. Instead, he found Bill at his desk frowning and holding an empty box. “I’m sorry, kid. The powers-that-be interpreted your findings as a blatant attack on our security system and they told me to fire you immediately… There’s nothing I can do. You did good work, while you were here.” Egon’s head spun as he grasped at the reality that his dream job came to an abrupt end.

Egon struggled to say something to Bill. All he could come up with was “Can I at least get my beer out of the enviro test chamber?”

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CodeSOD: The Truth of the Matter

Remy Porter — Mon, 20 May 2013 10:00:00 GMT

When Ben found this block of code, he had some questions: who wrote it, and what was it supposed to do?

if (showOptionsButton == true)
   showOptionsButton = false;
if (showOptionsButton == false)
   showOptionsButton = true;

The genius responsible was Jim, one of the senior developers. On paper, Jim was Ben’s mentor. What was the code supposed to do?

“Well,” said Jim, “I want to toggle the state of showOptionsButton. If it’s true, it should be false, if it’s false, it should be true.”

“Except,” Ben said, “this will just always set the value to true.”

“No it won’t.”

“Yes, it will,” Ben said.

“No it won’t.”

They executed that loop a few times before Ben attempted to break out. “It will. You need an else clause.”

“If I use an else, it’ll run both clauses. I only want it to run one.”

Ben gave up on trying to correct Jim’s logic. "You could just do, showOptionsButton = !showOptionsButton.

“I’m trying to change the value,” Jim said, “not compare them. I’d love to explain the basics to you, but I really need to get this feature finished.”

Ben let his mentor get back to work.

Remy will be wandering the halls as an attendee at Tech Ed, 6/3-6/6. He'll have a stack of stickers and buttons, if you can find him. Think of it as a scavenger hunt.

Error'd: Screw You Oracle Interceptor!

Mark Bowytz — Fri, 17 May 2013 09:00:00 GMT

"I work for an IT department in a large department store and while scanning through some old code, I ran upon this gem," writes Steve C., "I can't say that I disagree!"

Evi Vanoost wrote, "Wells Fargo needs to make up it's mind. I mean, did the password get created or not?"

"Local retailer called Pick 'n Pay have started a smart shopper card, and recently, I tried to swap points for cash and got this error," wrote Emil S., "now I'm not sure whether it'll load unlimited points or it'll zero out everything I've got."

"Really, the first part of solving the problem is recognizing that you have one...and then seeking help," advised Marta Dalton.

"While recently doing some patent investigation work, I had occasion to look at the features of Cochlear's hearing aid devices," wrote Allan Chandler, "As you can see, it appears that Cochlear considers 'head injury' to be a rather important feature of all hearing aids."

Fred suddenly has a bunch of time on his hands while waiting for Time Machine to finish.

"I can think of at least one reason why I'd not want to upgrade for that price," remarked Rodger Bobard.

Kilobits and Drillbits

Erik Gern — Thu, 16 May 2013 10:30:00 GMT

Kristian stood on the deck of the USS Marianas, the sun in his face. The Marianas and her sister ship, the USS Abyssal Explorer, were a two-boat exploration team, scouring the Atlantic for oil deposits not yet tapped by offshore rigs. The sea rolled beneath him, far calmer than it had been the day before. It was a perfect day off the coast of Brazil in the south Atlantic.

So perfect, the satellite connection would be five by five to download all those patches that the Marianas urgently needed.

He reported to the toolpusher, Cameron, whose smiled revealed eerily perfect teeth against a greasy face. “Day off for the team, huh?” he shouted over the engines. “No other way to get those patches?”

“Well, the ship’s only got a 128 kilobit satellite connection,” Kristian said. “It’ll take hours just to download them all, and at least that much longer to run them all in sequence.”

“The Abyssal Explorer’s connection is 256 kilobits,” Cameron said. The Abyssal Explorer had their communications refitted a month prior. “You know, the boys would love a day off, but why can’t they download the patches? I mean, 256 is twice as fast as 128, right?”

“Of course!” Kristian would have hugged Cameron if the toolpusher weren’t 6’4” and covered in engine grease. “There’s a 2.4 gigabit ship-to-ship network, so they can send the files to us once they’ve been downloaded. It’ll cut the download time almost in half and give me time to run other maintenance, too. But, you know, your team will still have the morning off--”

Cameron had already grabbed the PA mic. “Boys, report immediately to the rec room for an all-hands mandatory meeting. We’re gonna be sitting around the whole morning, so someone better bring some movies!”

Some Rig Crew

Kristian’s counterpart on the Abyssal Explorer, Harris, had been in the field for only a few months. But Kristian thought he could handle a few downloads and a network transfer.

Kristian got on the radio. “Blue Boat Tech, this is Red Boat Tech.”

Harris’s nervous voice answered. “This is Blue Boat Tech. What’s going on, Kristian?”

“We need you to download the service patches over there on your computer and send them to us. You should also apply the updates there once they’ve been downloaded.”

“Say again, download patch files, install locally, and send them to you?”

“Correct, Blue Boat.”

“Okay, got it, Red Boat. The toolpusher will be happy to hear it over here. Blue Boat Tech, out.”

Kristian got to work on the other maintenance while the patches downloaded on the Abyssal Explorer’s computers. As he passed by the rec room, he noticed the rig crew gathered around an old VHS player. A stack of Police Academy tapes sat next to the TV, and Steve Gutenberg’s mug stared back at him from the TV.

The Drill Hits Shale

The crew were into the fourth entry in the Police Academy series when Kristian began to worry. He had organized the rat’s nest of wires behind the consoles, checked every faulty drop in the ship, and had even restrung some exposed cable that engineering couldn’t be bothered to cover. Surely Harris had had enough time to get those patches. He asked Harris over radio whether their connection had dropped.

“Negative, connection is 5 by 5,” Harris said. “The patches were downloaded, installed, and mailed to your address.”

“MAILED?!” Kristian’s shouting triggered feedback in the radio. “Mailed? Blue Boat, the point of you downloading those patches was so we could transfer the files over the ship-to-ship network.” Kristian made a mental note not to check his Outlook window for the company account so he didn’t tie up the 128 kilobit uplink. “Look, just send the files over the network.”

“Negative, Red Boat. Uh, I deleted the files once I finished mailing them.”

Kristian sighed. “Okay, Harris, you’ve done enough damage. We’ll be out the rest of the day here while we download the patches on our end. Red Boat Tech, out.”

Kristian began the download over the Marianas’s pitiful 128 kilobit satellite connection, then walked to the rec room, where Cameron was about to put in Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach. “Those computers still tied up, Kristian?” Cameron asked.

“Afraid so, guys,” Kristian said. “Hey, are these movies any good?”

“Not after Gutenberg left,” Cameron replied.

CodeSOD: Habla Currency

Bruce Johnson — Wed, 15 May 2013 10:15:00 GMT

Adam worked for a company that sold check printing machines. It was not a particularly large company, but the machines were cutting edge when it came to the latest and greatest technologies to prevent check fraud. So while the company was doing well enough, until now the company was selling equipment solely in the United States. At least, that is, until one of the more enterprising sales people decided to ‘branch out’.

In this case, the branch was a small Mexican bank. It was not known how the salesperson even made contact with the bank. There were rumors flying around that it involved a drunken night in Cabo and a lost wager in a cock fight. And maybe a tiger in a bathroom. But none of this is germane to Adam’s story.

In order to install the machine that had already been promised, there had to be a modification made to the software that operated it. Specifically, it need to be able to print the checks in Spanish. For Adam, that would be no problem…so long as the checks had a value less than 29 pesos. Adam’s grasp of Spanish didn’t go much beyond that level.

Fortunately, the nephew of the owner of the company (or was it the second cousin of the wife of the owner…it’s so hard to keep that straight) was fluent in Spanish AND VB.NET. So the task to write the translation component was contracted out.

After a week, the completed module was sent back to Adam, who ran it through some unit tests. It appeared to be working. Well it appeared to be working up to 29 pesos. But Adam did notice something odd with the formatting on the decimal portion.

To get to the bottom of this (as well as to perform the requisite audit on code that was going into production), Adam reviewed the source code for the module. What he saw caused the same reaction as one gets when Wolverine cleans a school blackboard.

Because of the nepotism involved, Adam felt that a written review would cover most of his butt. So he added his comments to the code directly.

' First off, the method name is not particularly descriptive of what
' method does. But beyond that, it takes the value as string. Does
' the coder expect that the check values are being manipulated as 
' strings?
Public Function SpanishMoney(ByVal num As String) As String
  Dim dollars As Decimal
  Dim cents As Integer
  Dim dollars_result As String
  Dim cents_result As String

' Interesting that the case is hardcoded in a variable. As opposed
' being flexible by allowing it to be passed in to the method

  Dim WordCase As String = "U"

' Nice conversion from a string to an integer to a decimal. No reason
' to go straight to decimal. Yes, the purpose is to get just the
' dollar portion, but really?
  dollars = CInt(num)

'### Convert the decimal to the equivilent string of words
  dollars_result = Words_1_all(dollars)

' I’m guessing that Words_1_all doesn’t know how to handle a value
' of zero? And I’m not bilingual, but I’m pretty certain that the
' Spanish word for 0 is not ‘zero’ but is cero.
  If Len(dollars_result) = 0 Then dollars_result = "zero"

' Interesting that they decided to check for the string and not
' the numeric value that has already been converted
  If dollars_result = "uno" Then
     dollars_result = dollars_result & " peso"
  Else
     dollars_result = dollars_result & " pesos"
  End If

'### Cents
' There is enough boxing and conversion in this statement for me to
' open a gift wrapping business
  cents = CInt((num - dollars) * 100.0#)

' Make sure a zero outputs two significant digits, but 1 through 9
' output only one. This is the source of the problem I noted
  If cents = 0 Then
     cents_result = "00/100 MONEDA NACIONAL"
  Else
     cents_result = cents & "/100 MONEDA NACIONAL"
  End If

'### Combine the results.
  SpanishMoney = dollars_result & " con " & cents_result

' Check to see if anyone has hacked the program to change the 
' hard coded case value

  If WordCase = "U" Then
     SpanishMoney = SpanishMoney.ToUpper
  End If
End Function

By the time he was finished, Adam had the urge to go scrub his hands with soap. Or maybe just wash out his eyes. But he had done his part (what little that was) and passed his comments on to his boss. Hopefully his boss would take them seriously. But more importantly, Adam hoped that the salesperson didn’t decide to take a vacation to Russia or China any time in the near future.

Speak No Evil, Pat

Dan Adams-Jacobson — Tue, 14 May 2013 10:30:00 GMT

It was with a great deal of enthusiasm that Pat, fresh out of college, joined Multinational Bank. Their technology division was the pride of the financial industry, and the on-boarding session Pat received did not disappoint: he was treated to a full day of slideshows on compliance, whistle-blowing, and, most importantly, ethics.

When on-boarding was complete, Pat's first port of call was one of the bank's many conference rooms. His team was in the process of taking over a project from a remote office via a flurry of emails and conference calls. These were simpler times, before Cisco's robust line of telepresence solutions. If the bank had deployed videoconferencing, as they would a few years later, Pat's story might have turned out very differently.

Pat was having a good morning: he managed to gulp down a bowl of cereal at his desk and pull a fresh cup of coffee just in time to make it to the conference before his manager showed up. When the manager, Bob, and Pat's teammate Steve entered, an unfamiliar face trailed behind them. Before Pat could introduce himself to the newcomer, the Architect cleared his throat on the far side of the speakerphone. The Architect, having ruled over His Project with an iron fist for three years, was somewhat domineering when it came to knowledge transfer, loath to let his Great Work languish in the hands of Pat's team. But bowing as he must to the corporate will, his influence was limited at this point to imposing a strict roll-call.

"Good morning, Bob here," Pat's manager said. Pat waited his turn.

"Steve here," Steve said. Pat looked to the other new guy expectantly. When the stranger hesitated, Pat drew in a breath, prepared to speak.

"This is Pat," the stranger blurted. Pat was taken aback. He was about to comment on the coincidence when Bob caught his eye. With a hiss too quiet to register on the speakerphones of that era, he silenced Pat. And so, eyeing Bob fearfully all the while, Pat learned the contours of his new job: learned he was in the midst of a web Bob had been spinning since long before he was hired.

The synonymous stranger, Pat soon learned, was not named Pat. His name was Archibald, and, with his decade of C/C++ experience, he was the linchpin of Bob's plan. Since the Architect had made it clear that only a deeply experienced developer could possibly be an appropriate inheritor of His Project, Bob's epiphany was to pull the senior Archibald in for the conferences alone while hiring a greenhorn at one-third the market rate to actually handle the development.

With no choice but to play his part in the charade, Real Pat spent a month taking notes, while his sinister alter-ego did all the talking on the calls, going so far as to engage in full-blown arguments with the Architect about the project's architecture. One particularly stormy call ended with such passive-aggression that Bob, Steve, and Evil Pat took the next day off in outrage. Real Pat had almost settled into a peaceful morning of solo coding when Bob's name appeared on his call display:

The Architect insisted on going ahead with that morning's meeting, and the only one there to attend was Real Pat. Real Pat, who had never spoken in the meetings before.

Real Pat, who, aside from possessing a fraction of the domain knowledge, sounded nothing whatsoever like his twisted doppelgÃ¤nger.

Bob's only advice before hanging up the phone was that Pat should stand at the far end of the room, hoping the speakerphone would obscure his voice enough to continue the ruse.

Armed with that suggestion and little else, Real Pat could only watch the minutes tick by, the Project's doom at the hands of the Architect - and his doom along with it - all but assured.

Real Pat did his best. Sitting across the room, facing away from the speakerphone, he begged the Architect's forgiveness for the mysterious technical difficulties that made him so hard to hear. Between that and the best damn impression of Evil Pat that he could muster, the Project was saved. Pat and the Architect forgave each other for "their" disagreement, and agreed that the next phase of the Project would be a resounding success.

For playing his part in the web to perfection, Bob gave Real Pat the next day off. Pat spent it adding "professional mimic" to his résumé.

CodeSOD: The Impossible Blob

Lorne Kates — Mon, 13 May 2013 10:15:00 GMT

BlobConfig.config not found, said the error console of The Blob-- the "insane in every way" system Sep's company produced.

Because a millisecond earlier, The Blob erroneously determined Sep's computer already had a copy of the config file, and didn't automagically create it.

Because one second earlier, The Blob couldn't find the substring "No such file or directory" in the output of "ls -l %BlobDirectory%/BlobConfig.config"

Because five seconds earlier, Sep's local instance of The Blob issued that command to Sep's OS.

Because ten seconds earlier, The Blob (installed on localhost) connected via SSH to localhost

Because fifteen seconds earlier, The Blob ran an "cleverly" optimized routine to try to check for the existence of the system-critical config file.

Because five minutes earlier, Sep ran his local instance of The Blob for the first time.

Because thirty minutes earlier, Sep had configured everything on his brand new computer to his liking, except for the local instance of The Blob.

Because an hour earlier, Sep was assured by his coworker that The Blob would automagically configure itself on the new machine without intervention.

Because some years earlier, someone thought themselves clever enough to write the following optimization into The Blob's startup routine:

public void ConfigFileExistsOrCreate() { String result = null; remoteCon = SSHConnection("localhost"); result = remoteCon.sendCmd("ls -l %BlobProfileDirectory%/BlobConfig.Config"); if (result.contains("No such file or directory")) { String fileContents = "smb://GlobalShared/UniversalBlobConfig.config"; remoteCon.putFile("BlobConfig.Config", fileContents, FileType.Link) } else { // no-op! File exists! } }

Because as clever as that person was for optimizing the creation of a static, 400 byte configuration file that itself was just a linkfile with a hard-coded path-- they weren't so clever as to remember the company was based in Switzerland.

Because hundreds of years earlier, French became one of the national languages of Switzerland: written, spoken, and more pertinently (and much later) available to select as a localizational language in Linux.

Which Sep had done.

ls: Impossible d'accéder à BlobConfig.Config: Aucun fichier ou dossier de ce type

Impossible, indeed.

Error'd: Where I Come From, We Don't Need July

Mark Bowytz — Fri, 10 May 2013 10:00:00 GMT

"Someone FINALLY got it right!!" Farz wrote, "In my native language, we don't have translations for seven months out of the year. Way to go Windows Live!!"

"I know Dell is supposed to be going private, but I didn't know that it would be up to me to keep them afloat!" writes James Helms.

Ben N. sent in the following screenshot whilst shopping online. I bet some pun minded categorizer at Amazon thought that having a BOLD cup of coffee sounded REALLY good at the time.

"Developer's excuse for screwing up #439: Sorry, I was eating a milky way, so I forgot to fix any issues with the feed." wrote Chris M.

Wilt writes, "I know the budget is tight, But even if it wasn't, I don't think I could justify NVIDIA at that price."

"I'm fine that Thirstin Howl's track Spit Boxer isn't on Spotify," writes Nick, "but their suggestion wasn't quite what I was expecting."

"Things aren't looking so good for being able to read 'Fine Cooking' on my iPad," wrote Jeff.

Fire Rescue, Troubled Widgets, and Other Support Stories

Mark Bowytz — Thu, 09 May 2013 10:30:00 GMT

The company that Karl J. works for recently signed a contract with a big North American corporation and everybody’s really excited at the prospect. Practically overnight, their flagship product - a platform-as-a-service solution – would gain a boost of about 40,000 users and an accompanying in-stream of cash too.

But there was one detail that made everybody, well mostly management, feeling nervous: their client insisted on having 24/7 support. But, you know what? That’s OK! Karl’s employer hired a 3rd party agency to do the grunt work of front-line support and escalate non-trivial issues when they would arise, around the clock.

Services were purchased and that money was used in turn to purchase even more services to keep it all running smoothly. Unfortunately, the 24/7 support agency proved to be less capable than originally anticipated. Or perhaps somebody forgot to tell them that what they actually did.

===========0006401801=================
Fri 05-Apr-13 01:56p
======================================
NAME:Tim
COMPANY:abbotsford fire rescue
PHONE:604-123-4567
"Based on your service agreement with 
NACK/Fuzzbin, is this a high, medium,
or low severity? If you are not sure, 
we'll assume its either high or medium
and contact the on-call now"          
SEVERITY: HIGH[x ] MED [  ] LOW[  ]   
NOTES:198 Emerson St, SomePlace
Electrical system has been
compromised. fires from electrical.
"Thank you for calling an on-call   
    technician will contact you as    
         soon as possible."           

--------------------------------------
Message History  Account: 63101234
Taken:  Fri 05-Apr-2013  1:54p UN
Serial#: 1
===========0006401801=================

It's Too Windy! (from Jeff W.)
"Man, I guess that when it picks up out there, the wind sure can blow those loose bits around!"

Troubled Widgets (from Dean)
A while back, Dean's wget requests started failing for no apparent reason. So, he submitted an incident to his local IT staff to try and get wget pushed through the firewall, some how, some way.

Here's the text of the incident:

I just recently my wgets have started failing. firewall issue?
wget -P . 'http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/read_more-7.x-1.x-dev.tar.gz'
--2011-11-11 11:46:05--  (try: 2)  http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/read_more-7.x-1.x-dev.tar.gz
Connecting to ftp.drupal.org (ftp.drupal.org)|140.211.166.134|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... Read error (Connection reset by peer) in headers.
Retrying.

So a few days later, someone from IT (who just happened to be the CTO) came to Dean's desk to help with my issue, in person. The first words out of his mouth? "So, tell me, which widgets are you having troubles with?"

HP Support Gives Me the Warm and Fuzzies (from Dan H.)

DanH : I'm trying to get this printer, and a P1505n, set up on a Linux print server (for evaluation purposes),
but hppi diagnostics doesn't recognise them. There are no firewalls in the way, as I successfully
tested a 2500 series printer last week.

** An agent will be with you shortly. **
** You are now chatting with HP_bod . **

HP_bod : Welcome to HP Total Care Chat Support for Imaging & Printing Group. My name is HP_droid. Please give
me a minute while I review your problem description details.

DanH : Ok, thanks.

HP_bod : DanH, as I was reviewing your details, I came to know that you are using HP Color Laser Jet CP1515n
Printer connected to a computer with operating system as LINUX and you are facing issue as you are
not able to install your printer on your computer. Am I correct?

DanH : Mostly. :) I've installed the model scripts, but the HPPI utility can't complete the networking check
on these printers.

HP_bod : DanH, I greatly appreciate that you have forwarded your concern and have given us a chance to assist
you on this matter.

HP_bod : As a consumer myself, I can certainly understand your frustration.

HP_bod : I, on behalf of HP Technical Support take the ownership of this issue and will try to resolve this
issue to the best of my abilities.

DanH : Thank you.

HP_bod : You are most welcome, I am here to assist you.

HP_bod : DanH, I would like to inform you that you are trying to install the driver of your printer from the
CD which came initially with the Printer, the drivers in that Installation CD are on compatible to
the Operating System as Windows XP.

HP_bod : I will assist you but before that I need your confirmation of the above mentioned statement?

DanH : I'm not trying to install the drivers from the CD. The printer server is a linux operating system, so
I got the model scripts from HP in the internet.

HP_bod : Ok.

HP_bod : DanH, I would like ot inform you that we do not have the correct expertise on the Operating System
as Linux.

Cheaters Never Prosper

Erik Gern — Wed, 08 May 2013 10:30:00 GMT

"That's quite an impressive resume, Fred," Avi said. The phone interview had gone well so far; among the several hundred applicants for Senior Developer at BigBoxCo, Fred's qualifications put him among the top five Avi had spoken to. Fred himself was amiable, if slightly over-confident.

"Thanks, Avi," Fred replied. "I hope I have what you're looking for."

"Regarding your last position at IniTech," Avi said, "which ended about six months ago, why did you decide to leave? It looks like you'd be taking a step down working for us, since you were the project lead on their flagship software."

"Well, management didn't care for my coding style," Fred said. "I write fast, test faster, and iterate often. More agile than Agile, you might say."

"I might." Avi decided to see what Fred's "coding style" looked like. "Okay, I'm going to establish a guest session on our collaborative IDE. Just type in the URL I give you, followed with the session token."

"URL?" Fred sounded affronted.

"Yes, the address to access the session."

"I, um. . . well, okay."

Avi spelled out the URL and session token, but Fred couldn't seem to figure it out. Finally, Avi just emailed the URL to Fred's address. "Oh, got it now," Fred said.

Avi sighed. "Okay, I'd like you to write a function that merges two integer arrays of arbitrary length. Don't worry about performance for now."

Immediately, a piece of code flashed into the IDE. "Okay, done," Fred said.

The jig was up. "Fred, where did you copy this from?" Fred wasn't getting that Senior Developer position, but Avi wanted a confession before the interview was over, if just to satisfy some need for justice.

But Fred wasn't forthcoming. "I just typed it all right now. Look, you can run it if you'd like--"

"Fine, Fred," Avi interrupted. "Then how would you change this to avoid duplicate entries?"

"Oh, just change that one there to a negative one." Fred's voice faltered.

"What one, there's no--" Avi said, before he spotted a lowercase l, which looked like a 1 in the IDE, twelve lines down. "Okay, we're done, Fred," Avi said, hanging up before Fred could sputter another word.

Although he wouldn't get a confession from Fred, Avi wanted to see where the code came from. He ran a simple search with the idiosyncratic method signature. The first result was a Stack Overflow question. Typical, Avi thought, just before he opened the page and saw the truth: the code came from the question itself, not one of the answers. The code would never have compiled, much less run.

Announcements: England DevOps Talks/Workshop and a London Meet-up

Alex Papadimoulis — Wed, 08 May 2013 08:00:00 GMT

I'll be heading to England next week to talk about DevOps and Cloud Stuffs.

May 16 (Thu) @ Coventry User Group (What is DevOps Anyway?)
May 21 (Tue) @ Cambridge User Group (What is DevOps Anyway?)
May 22 (Wed) @ London (Practical DevOps & Continuous Delivery: A Hands-on Workshop)
May 22 (Wed PM) @ Software East (Implementing DevOps… and Making it Actually Stick)
May 23 (Thus) @ DevOps Summit London (Implementing DevOps… and Making it Actually Stick)
May 24 (Fri) @ Cloud East (Racing Thru the Last Mile: Cloud Delivery & Web-Scale Deployment)

London Get-together!

Who's up for a pub nite? I'm thinking somewhere in London on Friday, May 24 and/or Saturday May 25. If you're up for getting together for some dinner and drinks, please drop me a line and we'll figure something out. And hey, first round's on me!

##
Update: Whoops! I meant May, not June!

CodeSOD: A Cascade of Failure

Dan Adams-Jacobson — Tue, 07 May 2013 10:30:00 GMT

Ben sent in the following snippet from a PHP site. His description of the site as a whole is unpublishable in most countries, but among his frankly shocking profanity he pointed out a lack of error checking and comments, and an abundance of unreadable inline code and confusing, unnecessary functions.

When Ben tried to describe the following routine though, he broke down, weeping openly. While we wait for him to regain his composure, let's ponder the depth of wrong present in this code:

<style type="text/css">
.file_1
{
    height:26px;
    float:left;
    background:url(../images/input2.png) left top no-repeat;
    width:188px;
    border:0px solid #A7A9AC;
    font-family:Arial; font-size:12px; color:#4a4a4a; font-weight:normal; text-align:left;
}

<?php
for($i=0;$i<count($FileClassArr);$i++)
{
?>
    .<?php echo $FileCLassArr[$i]?>
    {
        height:26px;
        float:left;
        background:url(../images/input2.png) left top no-repeat;
        width:188px;
        border:0px solid #A7A9AC;
        font-family:Arial; font-size:12px; color:#4a4a4a; font-weight:normal; text-align:left;
    }
<?php
}
?>

</style>

That's right, every file gets its own CSS class. And, just so none of the files get jealous of each other's classy style, they're all exactly the same! Why wouldn't you just define one class and apply it to every file's HTML element? We'd ask Ben if he discovered the original developer's rationale, but we don't want to set him off crying again.

There, there, Ben. We're misting up a little bit on your behalf.

Trust Your Instincts

snoofle — Mon, 06 May 2013 10:30:00 GMT

I'm not looking for a new job, but a head-hunter called (from a five year old resume) with a position that sounded pin point perfect. Since there is nothing going on at work, I thought I'd check it out.

At the interview, I met some mid and senior level developers, and the team lead. They asked the usual technical, problem solving and how-would-you-x type of questions. I answered fairly well, and established a decent rapport while trading war stories. They seemed to feel the same way, as they grabbed the manager to chat with me afterward.

I spent about 30 minutes answering higher level architectural, support and management type questions. Then he asked me something for which I was completely unprepared.

"Do you ever read The Daily What-the-F***?"

"Um, sure; I read it often! Why?" (my fault for asking)

"Have you ever read any articles by 'snoofle'?" (uh oh; where is this going?)

"As a matter of fact, I have; why do you ask?" (again my fault, I was flustered)

"What do you think of the way he seems to deal with incompetent co-workers and management?"

(How to proceed?)

"I think he accepts that IT is there to support the business, and that you can't always do things the 'right' way; but it's important to ensure people understand the cost of running up a technical debt. Then try to gently nudge them in the right direction. What do YOU think of him?"

He generally agreed. I sensed an opportunity: "What would you do if snoofle walked in here, sat down in this chair, handed you a resume and asked to be considered for this position?"

"I'd hire him outright!"

"Without tech'ing him out?"

"Yes; I know the type from his writings."

"What if he and I were both sitting here?"

"I'd probably go with snoofle..."

"(With a smile) Even though your team has already decided I'm a keeper?"

"I think so, but you're here and he isn't..."

I asked if I could use his PC to show him something, opened up a browser, went to TDWTF, logged in as snoofle and showed him. After a moment, his eyes bugged out...

Shortly after the interview ended, I got a call from the agent: "Congratulations; you got the job!"

That night, something about the manager's willingness to blindly hire an unknown entity started to bug me. I don't know why; it just did. The next day, I begged off and declined the position.

Naturally, the agent gave me the hard sell, but then I got a call from the hiring manager...

"Why did you turn us down?"

I explained my uneasiness with his willingness regarding an unknown entity, and politely thanked him for his time and consideration.

After some futile pressure on his part, he continued (hesitatingly): "You know, I can tell folks your real name..."

To myself: What the... did he just threaten me?

I told him there was nothing I could do to stop him, but if he did, then I'd be completely justified in posting all over the Internet about his threat - identifying him by company, department and full name. Then I advised him to let it go. Then I hung up.

Interviewing is something of a soft scientific/artsy kind of process, but when all is said and done, trust your instincts.

Error'd: What's This?

Mark Bowytz — Fri, 03 May 2013 10:30:00 GMT

"I just wanted to know what a certain pending charge meant on my credit card, unfortunately the help text popup didn't know either," writes Alex N.

"I was looking at a mortgage prepayment calculator and after entering the terms of my current loan, the usual ads about how much I could save popped up," wrote Tawnos, "Not only would I get to pay closing fees, but I'd pay more every month!"

Mark G. writes, "Sorry Facebook, I don't go hanging out in graveyards any more than you do."

"Guess I'd better hurry and do my transaction before the...battery runs out?"Steve T. wrote.

"I had a crazy idea that I might want to buy some HP ink," writes Ari Stinik, "Seems I'm mistaken."

"Apparently, according to Twitch TV I was born on the first of español, 1980. At least they got half the language properly translated." writes W. Espinosa.

"You don't get to look this good for peanuts indeed!" remarked Bas van der woude.

Slacking Off

Remy Porter — Thu, 02 May 2013 10:30:00 GMT

“It’s a small, dynamic company.” “We’re growing, and growing fast!” “Our agile team needs some strong management, and we think you’re right for the job.” “Your paycheck is going to be so large Ed McMahon will deliver it.”

Michael had heard this pitch before, but this time, he decided to take the position. The IT director, Lisa, had her head on straight and a clear vision for what she wanted from Michael and his new team. Those eight developers and eight testers had languished without any meaningful oversight for the better part of a year. The result: a team behind schedule, over budget, and the best developers fleeing for better prospects.

With Lisa backing his decisions, Michael waded into the muck, protected by confidence. He started the cleanup process with one-on-one sessions with everyone on the team. Jeffery was cheerfully optimistic about their prospects. “I’ve only been here six months, but I’ve seen a big turn-around. Our last sprint delivered its targets, and with fewer defects than ever.”

Larry, the senior-most developer, saw a far more dire future. “I’ve gotta be honest, I think we’ve been too micromanaged the past few months. Jeffery knows how to play politics and avoid doing any real work. The entire time he’s been here, he’s gotten management to help him avoid work.”

The rest of the team agreed with Larry. Jeffery wasn’t a slacker, but an active obstacle who worked to erect barriers to the central goal of getting things done. Michael knew that this would be a serious problem in the long run, so he scheduled some extra time with Larry to get to the root of the problem. What was Jeffery doing to hold the team back?

Pleased to be the center of attention, Larry explained. “For starters, Jeff refuses to touch the code. Just refuses.”

“Interesting, because he’s done the most check-ins during the past month.”

“Oh, check-ins, sure. Him and that cockamamie source-control stuff. It’s a great way to look busy when you aren’t actually doing any work. We’re running ourselves ragged, working right on the production boxes.”

“You… you change live code?”

“That’s right,” Larry said. “We’re serious around here. ‘Performing without a net’, as I like to call it. ’Course, now, we’ve got to put everything through source control or Lisa comes storming down here in a fit. It’s a real pain.”

“I see… and what else has Jeffery been doing?”

Larry spent a moment in thought. “Well, here’s a good example- we needed to make some changes across all 25 customer databases. And Jeffery refused to do it.”

“Refused?”

“Refused. He wanted to write a script, then he wanted to spend a few days testing the script in DEV and STG. Ain’t nobody got time for that. I went ahead and made the changes myself.”

Larry happily went on, listing Jeffery’s vile sins against productivity. Jeffery was unsatisfied with the efficient system of tracking defects by word-of-mouth and the odd email; he demanded an actual defect tracking system. Jeffery wanted to use continuous integration and waste time writing unit tests for vital modules. His worst sin of all was refusing to sign off on releases with easily exploitable SQL injection vulnerabilities. “Our end users just aren’t smart enough to know how to exploit them, anyway. It’s such a non-issue.”

Michael sat down with Lisa, and laid out his opinions on this conflict: Larry, not Jeffery, was the biggest obstacle to team success.

Lisa agreed. “Larry wouldn’t know bad code if it lodged in his anus and threw a noisy party.” Together, they made Jeffery the team lead and moved Larry towards an infrastructure role.

Things turned around. The burndown chart fell faster than Facebook’s stock price. With management support, Jeffery put even more effort into helping the team be successful. He volunteered lunchtimes to teach the others how source-control helped them. He worked extra hours adding unit tests. After ten weeks, they were close to a shippable release.

After eight weeks, however, the money ran out. Their initial release target dates were so far in the past only archaeologists were interested in them. Investors and creditors asked uncomfortable questions about their money. Upper management did what upper management always does when money is tight: cut costs. Michael and Lisa, as management overhead, went out the door first. Jeffery, who was the newest developer and who negotiated a great starting salary followed them.

Larry had been with the company since the dawn of time. Larry hadn’t seen a raise in six years. Larry cost little. Larry not only kept his job, but was promoted to fill the management vacuum. Now, he had to do the jobs of Michael, Lisa and Jeffery on top of his usual work. Larry had no fear, because he had some ideas for making the team more efficient. The first thing he did was get rid of that pesky source control system…