Distribution

I'm in the wrong business.

In order to ingratiate myself to management and colleagues alike, right after our local data center was moved to the UK for "consolidation" I built a local file server. This held various software builds available via resumable FTP. Since Windows Exploder has never been able to move 12GB of data across even a 10 fibre channel connection, this pleased everyone.

That wasn't enough. I also made directories full of general tools and easy HTTP download menus for my fellow monkeys as well as setting up shares for management applications and data. Once I got my hands on a couple external drives I was able to then offer each monkey 20GB of personal temporary space and set the server up to auto-delete after 14 days. Considering our laptops only had 20-40GB drives, this was seen as a godsend. I was a hero and thanks to automating everything, didn't have to do much except occasionally manually check builds and add some new tools.

But as always happens, the regular availability of such a service was slowly taken for granted. Until, of course, there was no availability. One of the external hard drives with 250GB of builds died and within a week, the video on the machine's motherboard died and wouldn't accept an ISA card as a substitute. Compaq sucks.

Luckily we had one more of this exact model which was working. I was able to swap out the drives and spared myself a full install of Win2K3 and other software. Within four hours I had the system up and running and was once again the office golden boy, if only for a day. The external drive with the builds was another matter.

Both the disk and the housing are shot. We need a new one. Here at $MegaCorp we have to go through a procuremnet process. My latest manager (I'm no longer under Vera!) ess-plained what we had to do. Knowing how important it is to have builds locally available, he told me to go to the procurement site and he'd approve immediately.

No problem. Once I fought my way in through seven -- count 'em, seven log-ins -- I was on my way to getting a brand-new, shiny external drive. Except that I couldn't find it. Back to $Manager who explained that it's hidden and gave me some keywords to try. Success!

It was shaping up to be a four-banananana day. I got to the page and with only 71 clicks (yes, I counted) managed to order the thing and send off the Procurement Approval Request. A 500GB drive would come in as a cost of almost €300! I can get the same damned thing for about €99 in a local store but we're stuck with this procurement crap.

I figured it was just a matter of that being some sort of internal accounting number, that we'd only actually pay the €82 wholesale but that the €275 was a cost basis to include accounting, shipping, and all the other departmental disbursements.

$Manager asked me to come to his office. No prob. I'm a hero today. I didn't tell any customer to fuck off. My queue is clear. I can do no wrong.

"Did you SEE how much they fucking want for this drive?"

Uh... yeah. But we need the drive and we're not allowed to go out and buy it on our own.

$manager happens to have some private distributor accounts for his own sideline business and did a quick look-up.

"We can't afford this in the budget. Here's what you need to do: Go back, go to custom orders, I'll send you this distributor information and attach it to the Procurement Request. In the notes tell them that we have to go to an outside supplier because this is only 40% of what the standard supply costs are."

No problem. "I'll also add something about the standard supplied model being an unreliable drive and give 'em a link to something too technical to bother reading."

"Good idea."

So the procurement request has gone through and we're waiting for an approval from the HQ Asset Procurement division, undoubtedly something which will require approval from no fewer than five levels of hierarchy. If I get the drive before the end of the year I'll be surprised.

But something wasn't sitting right. How the hell can we be cost-basing a hundred-euro drive at almost three times its value? I asked my buddy in the equipment holding pen in the basement. The guy's a serious troll-under-the-bridge but I've helped him out a couple times so I get what I want and I don't have to appear between 14:00 and 15:15 to get it. I'm welcome down in his cage any time.

"Asset Procurement has contracts with suppliers for stable prices."
"Stable?"
"Yeah. We get guarantees for a stable price for 12-24 months on every item. We lock in at the current price and they have to sell us whatever it is at that price for the next year or two."
"Uhh... WHAT?!"
"Huh?"
"You're telling me that we're paying 2006 prices for a 500GB drive in 2008?"
"Yeah."
"Same for the 2006 model laptops?"
"Yup," he said through his teeth as his lips held onto the cigar stub.
"Where do I sign up to be a supplier?"

Wotta deal. It takes a village to raise a village idiot and that's probably where we found the guy who negotiated that contract. Fuckwit.

Archie

I am the (proud?) owner of a first-place medal. In bowling. My 5-man team's combined best score never exceeded 730 and yet we beat the other seven teams at a $MeegaCorp-sponsored evening out at a bowling alley. It wasn't because the others sucked even worse than we did.

When I was sent off to summer camp as a kid, I was provided with reading material consisting primarily of Archie and Richie Rich comic books. I wasn't allowed to take books like Principles of Orbital Mechanics because "they might get ruined". More importantly, I was geeky enough that I didn't need the aggro and torment my bunkmates would've heaped on me for the entire month had they seen me reading such things.

Oddly, one Archie storyline stayed with me through the years. Archie was in some athletic competition and kept being bested in every activity, always coming in second. Reggie beat him in a race and Betty beat him in the long jump and so on. Even Jughead beat him in something. But Archie won gold at the meet. He did this because he placed consistently 2nd whereas the others who'd gotten first place in one event placed 4th or 5th in others.

Supergeek noticed something wrong and I demonstrated that the author was lazy and hadn't actually done his math; the numbers didn't add up and I said so. "Jesus Christ, Canine! Who the fuck adds up scores in a fucking Archie comic?" my fellow 9-year-old incarceree screamed. My nickname for the rest of August was Columbo.

But I was intrigued. Could there be a way to make the scoring work so that Archie could win even though he always came in second place? It took me a few tries but I figured out how it might work.

In my university prob/stat course we had to write programs in some glub-awful language like MAPLE. The Archie conundrum was still in my head and so I used it as the basis of a complex assignment. It turns out that theoretically it's quite probable that a second-placer will win overall as long as he's consistent and there are enough other actors (probabilty becomes >50% at 6 or 7 actors).

And now it's happened to me in real life. An evening of bowling on the $MegaCorp dime. We came in second place in each of the three full games played. But while some other team would soundly trounce us in one round, they'd play poorly in another. We played consistently and won.

The best thing of the night wasn't winning the damned "team-building" event -- like I could give a rat's ass about that. It wasn't even the free food (we had to pay for our own beer). It's that my Archie conundrum which has followed me for three decades or so has finally put to bed.

Me. First place in bowling. Insanity, I tell ya.

Cars & Trucks

Part 1 in an irregular series about bad management

Imagine what things would be like if a major truck manufacturer -- let’s call it Peterworth – were to function like $MegaCorp. If Peterworth wanted to get into the automobile manufacturing business, it might make sense for them to purchase Maserati. It's a high profile manufacturer, a market leader in its division, and Peterworth would stand to gain valuable technology as well as aerodynamics and design engineers. However, it would be absurd for Peterworth to then insist that Maserati use the Cummins ISX engine for production vehicles.

But perhaps Peterworth’s managers might respond that the 11-liter Cummins truck engine offers 530 horsepower while Maserati’s top engine only puts out 405hp. If management’s only goal was brake horsepower and they ignored everything from design to weight to fuel usage we would at least understand the reasoning behind such a bad decision.

But this is only the tip of the iceberg. Peterworth likes consistency throughout their design and production. One constant design element is cab-over: to access the engine the entire cab rotates up and forward hydraulically. Maserati engineers would protest that the engine is in the middle and it’s impossible to lift the entire body to expose the engine since the car incorporates unibody design for safety and stability.

Peterworth management ignores the explanations and demands a new, cab-over design, telling the Maserati engineers to figure out how to do cab-over to expose the engine which wouldn’t fit under a normal hood anyway, and that if safety is an issue then they better get back to work on the design already. After all, they’re part of Peterworth now.

The engineers figure out how to mount the massive engine in the middle behind the driver, cut the body and strengthen it using steel beams, incorporate a cab-back design so that the back half of the body can lift and rotate, and they do their best to make the thing aerodynamic.

The drawings still look workable even if the result looks nothing like previous Maseratis. But then a Peterworth engineer notices that there’s no way to stack the front of one car onto the back of another. Maserati engineers ask why the hell you would need to do that to which the Peterworth engineer responds, "So we can deliver the things." Trucks are normally delivered by chaining a few cabs onto the fifth wheel of the truck in front of them, sending them out to dealers in this configuration three to five at a time.

Of course the Maserati engineers are floored and try to explain that cars are delivered using car carriers which can hold six to eight at once. Peterworth replies that the have no car carriers and their market research shows that customers like the current delivery method. Some smart-assed dog-monkey in Maserati asks Peterworth management if customers had been asked about car delivery being handled the same way as trucks and is quickly muzzled.

So the engineers go back and make further design changes to reinforce the rear of the Maserati with more steel so that if can bear the additional weight. They then realize they have to increase the tire size and change the rear suspension. Maserati engineers also have to modify the front design to add weight and a linkage so that this stacked delivery method could function.

The car is now uglier than a 1972 Volvo, heavier than a Hum-Vee, has the aerodynamics of a garden shed, the handling of a canoe, and costs more than a Ferrari Enzo. But Peterworth management is thrilled because the car meets all their metrics: it has the highest horsepower available in a stock car, uses many of the same parts already used in production in other divisions, and it’s capable of being delivered using the Standard Delivery Methodology.

Despite poor reviews, complaints, dropping sales, drastically reduced customer satisfaction and constant demands that Maserati cars at least perform and handle like they used to, management sees raving success thanks to the chosen metrics being fulfilled.

Management has another idea: worker equality. The workload is widely distributed at Peterworth and there's no reason that the Maserati people should be treated differently. Peterworth's way of thinking doesn't allow them to differentiate between the ¤100/hr engineers, ¤80/hr monkeys, ¤30/hr secretaries and ¤8.37/hr outsourced monkeys. They all know Maserati, they can and will all do each others' jobs.

It doesn't matter that most secretaries have never drawn a single mechanical sketch in their lives or that the engineers don't know how to hand-bore an engine. Work is to be distributed fairly, meaning each person will complete X number of "tasks" each day. Anyone working for the Maserati subdivision ought to know how to work on Maserati issues.

The workers themselves are smart enough to know their limits so while some engineer is trying to figure out how the hell some glub-awful spreadsheet was put together, the secretary who should be doing it is asking him about metal alloy shear strenght since she's been tasked with a piston redesign. They're not allowed to trade tasks; management knows best. But they end up wasting even more time trying to figure out how to do their assigned tasks and helping others to do the tasks they themselves could do best.

But management is also always on the look-out for ways to improve a product. They approach the engineers and tell them that there’s only one small problem with the car: it’s not pulling enough weight. Literally. Next year’s design needs to raise the rear end and incorporate a fifth wheel so that the car can haul at least a standard 20´ trailer. The following year’s model can be upgraded to allow for hauling a full 40-footer.

This is exactly how management at $MegaCorp think and act. If you thought you knew who $MegaCorp was before, you can now be certain whether you’re right or wrong.

ATTENTION JULIE BECKMANN INFIDEL:

...and the rest of all you Googlies: Turn off that fucking geotracking already! When I go to Prague and need to use your site, I can't fucking find anything! I don't speak Czech and I don't know which fucking link is the one which will give me your goddamned page in English!

Geotracking is stupid. That's why most of us gave up on it a decade ago, about three and a half weeks after we figured out how to do it with some JavaScript and cgi. That's what the fuck cookies are for. If I don't have a cookie, default to the goddamned locale for the TLD I entered in my browser. If I wanted to see the results from google.de or google.co.uk I would've typed them -- and not google.com -- into the fucking browser. Do you have any idea how many fucking expats there are in this country? Stupid question; of course you don't or you wouldn't do this.

If I go to google.COM (or .co.uk, or .ca, or .nz or .au...) then give me the fucking site in English you fuckwits. Don't sit there querying my browser about the computer's locale; I have it set to Iceland, Afghanistan and/or Barbuda to fuck with anyone else trying to track me for marketing through any machine on which I have to run Windows (thanks for working on Linux compatibility for PhotoShop, BTW).

If I wanted your German site dann hätte ich google.DE in der verdammten Browser-Instanz eingetippt. Og ef ég vil lesa þetta á íslensku, skrifa ég google.IS í Firefox, fávitarnir ykkar. I typed google.COM. English, motherfuckers; I SPEAK IT. Or allow language specification through a language code prefix the way Wikipedia does it: en.google.com, de.google.com, jp.google.com. Simple, huh?

You're doing this with Adsense, too. All attempts to view my account are met with your stubborn insistence on throwing up the new T&Cs in German, even though I'm logged in and you know my preferences. You force me to click through this page and accept or deny the new T&Cs. In German. By doing this you're giving me all sorts of rights you really didn't intend to.

German law makes it very clear that unless a contract benefits all parties it's invalid. We already have an agreement and you must live up to it if I'm not willing to renegotiate. You're not giving me a choice to keep my old contract or accept the new one, a condition $MegaCorp was forced by law to do when they took over $BigCorp. They made the new contract slightly more agreeable in order to get me to sign.

A contract which I'm coerced into accepting though I don't understand it is equally invalid. This boils down to the following: by using that goddamned geotracking and not giving me any option to change the language so that I can read the contract in a language which I am comfortable with in a legal sense, you have denied yourself any new rights this contract gives you. Any attempt to enforce the new terms when they differ from the old terms will be futile. Stupider still, the Accept/Bug-Me-Later/Deny radio buttons and accompanying text are in English. So you know I want English and still refuse to present it to me.



I speak German but not at a level necessary to understand the ramifications of legal documents. The less-than-stellar outcomes of my German legal experiences serve as clear evidence of this. You're not allowing me to read the goddamned documents in the language of my choosing which happens to be your official language of record.

I am now no longer legally bound by the AdSense contract, Google. You are; I'm not. I know you don't realise this yet because your I18N group is seriously lacking thanks to your decision to do most internationalisation work via volunteer intarweb translators. Y'all might want to read up over at Michael Kaplan's blog. I'm curious: how long did it take you to realise how much you were pissing off Spain when their calendars were starting on Sunday instead of Monday? Was it before or after you realised the Icelanders were upset because they could search in Klingon, Fuddian and SwedishChefian but not in their native language?

If you, like the typical geek coders you hire (fluorescent tan and only the most abstract idea which end of a girl is "up" much less "in"), just have to keep the damned geotracking turned on, then for fuck's sake add a fucking language preference dropdown at the top of every single page. Or just pay attention to any of the 14 cookies for each of my IDs that you've dropped in my browser, almost every one of which specifies English as the language of choice. Like both of the AdSense-accessing accounts.

In case you haven't been really paying attention to what I've been writing over the past couple years, Im willing to entertain job offers and it seems like y'all are in some serious need of an I18N czar. I prefer to work primarily from a home office (currently in Krautreich) although I'm willing to commute. I fly business when you want me to show up for meetings because you'll expect me to be functional within 20 minutes of arrival at SFO and that ain't gonna happen if I'm stuck in cattle class.

So here's the deal. You turn off the geotracking and I'll consider your job offer as long as it's in English. I think that's fair.

Charting the Present

A picture rather than the usual thousand words. Click for a legible version.



That pretty much sums it up. Now back to some guy's HP-UX problem. Not that I know HP-UX but that didn't stop me from getting chosen to resolve it,. The Citrix problem that came in from Germany, from a German, written in German, needing technical knowledge... that went to someone in Bangalore. Her only comment in the ticket: "What is Citrix?" It's in my queue now.

Which Side Are You On?

Current Location: Near a high tower
Current Mood: Murderous
Current Music: Billy Bragg - Back to Basics

So the conf call is over. I was right. Had I not had the logs beforehand we would've been completely confused and gone in the completely wrong direction based on their verbal descriptions. But just before it began...

Another mail from upper manager arrived with a distribution list including extra names of people who had nothing to do with this issue or customer. Like the director of Program Contract Management. I ess-ploded.

John the upper manager is actually an upper upper upper manager. And instead of doing his job and getting a PITA customer to provide information so that I didn't have to sit on a conf call with my thumb up my ass saying, "Durr, I don't know," for the duration, he instead demanded I waste time and make us look like incompetent jackasses. This company has a cornucopia of stupid from which each level of management drinks more deeply than their underlings.

Luckily my lowest-level manager did manage to get the company to send shit in and delay the call. This angered upper upper upper manager who believed we should simply be on the phone rather than pissing about with technical information. When 1500 users are doing nothing but searching their machines for winmine.exe, most companies don't want group hugs and idiots empathising with their situation. They want fucking answers.

Can we have a customer focused monkey assigned to this ticket. The customer is extremely concerned, most of their business is unable to run and we won't speak to them!

I spoke to the customer, they are reasonable, they feel they can explain what they have done quickly on the phone and are willing to work with us on this but just would like the reassurance of a discussion.

Please help.

Judy,

FYI for when the customer satisfaction complaint arrives.

Regards,
John

I hit the fucking roof. He's not only put in writing the claim that I'm not "customer-focused" (a Very Bad Attitude indeed), he additionally added his expectation of a customer complaint.

As soon as the call was over, I got to work. Not responding would only indicate my acceptance of his letter. 'S how it works in shitty corporate life. I'll be damned if this cocksucker's bullshit is going to affect my reviews.

John,

I strongly resent the baseless and patently absurd characterisation that I am somehow not "customer-focused". I'm currently focused on 31 customers and I have a long history of high customer sat.

I followed procedures and asked management to do what management does whenever we're confronted by an customer making unreasonable demands. Discussing the problem without seeing the logs is an exercise in futility and a waste of time which could be better spent resolving other customer problems. I have been told to follow such a procedure by three different managers over the past eight years.

$BigInsurer sent the logs and we were able to make a diagnosis. Had they not sent the logs this would have been impossible; their descriptions of the problem would have led us /away/ from the true cause. On the call I provided further information and testing procedures they can follow. Before joining I sent an answer which they agreed was more easily understood when read.

Please retract your unconscionable statement and atrocious characterisations of me. I'm shocked and appalled that you would not only fail to support me in trying to do my job but that you would publicly claim I was not "customer-focused" and note such an expectation of negative feedback.

Oddly enough mail from him has since dropped to zero. $BigInsurer is happy. Their system is working and they're getting quick updates from me. They're praising me in each reply.

One might expect this bastard to try and take credit for this by having forced me onto the call. Enough mail and customer comment proves otherwise. What this fuckwit John doesn't know is that I know his boss supports my position. I know this because $LowestManager was at the big meeting where $BigBoss explained this. As dangerous as my response might seem, my ass is covered. Turns out that John has become notorious for screwing the workers and taking the idiot customers' sides despite explicit corporate policy to the contrary. Which side are you on, Boy? Which side are you on?

Not five minutes after hitting send, up popped an IM window from sn4tchbuckl3r the manager in Bulgrohungria. "OH NOES! We fucked up a ticket! Nobody answered for a week! Can you take it?"

Why me?

"It's Citrix."

Of course. Surprisingly it wasn't filed by $VeryTouchyCustomer. That company is in the same country, and the business is related. More importantly, it reads almost exactly like tickets which $VeryTouchyCustomer does send in.

<clicky clicky>gg: $VeryTouchyCustomer $OtherCustomer
A subsidiary.

<clicky clicky>SELECT Contact, DataCenter from T_CUSTOMERS WHERE Profile=(SELECT Profile FROM T_CUSTOMER.$OtherCustomer);

Like Wile E. Coyote, he never learns. As he stood there in his Acme Shell Corporation Account suit wringing his hands with anticipation of the answer he so wanted to hear, I pushed him off the cliff with a quick cut & paste from the last $VeryTouchyCustomer ticket. At which point Sandra walked over to ask me certain Citrix-based questions. I didn't have to ask for whom. She was curious about $StupidDocument and hadn't yet had a chance to talk to Gloria.

Dinner was half a tray of 4-day old leftover Indian take-away and bottle of 18-year-old single malt Scotch. I finished my entire meal.

Heart Attack

No, I didn't go to Donnie's Happy Place. A couple weeks of pneumonia followed by a vacation during which I caught a cold gave me enough time out of the orifice that I actually arrived today in what could almost be termed a state of "calm" (for values of boolCalm < "mania").

Inside three hours my blood pressure has returned to its usual value of astronomical-over-gargantuan.

Right away I was hit with bad news: Mini-Me is gone. Fucker. He sent me a note. I don't blame him. Under the circumstances I'd've done the same thing. Smart puppy, Paul. Getting out before his skills deteriorate and he's locked into this hell the way so many of us are with few externally marketable skills is the smartest thing he can do. The pay increase doesn't hurt either. The reasons for his departure are the subject of a half written, less-ranty entry.

As I started clearing out a load of dead and forgotten tickets, I was visited by a TAR who wanted to know about Citrix. He then started arguing with me saying that we do support it as if he himself was the fucking customer. A light went off. He wasn't arguing like just any customer, he was arguing just like these jackasses.

"Joe," I asked, "is this about $VeryTouchyCustomer?"
"Yes, why?"
And I explained all our time they've wasted over more than a year, coming here, having me go out there, letter after letter after document. They thought they'd found a loophole. This belief was made possible by their ignoring the fact that I'd told them "Vendor-verified" still doesn't mean we'll deal with any problems. Shit won't work, period.

I checked the worldwide tickets for references to Citrix. There are only two people in the company not getting Citrix tickets: me and Mini-me, odd because we're the only two people qualified to answer them. Mini-Me knows at least enough to cut and paste my answers. Not so the other monkeys. I had to add notes to a dozen other people's tickets.

And that should've been the end of it. But it wasn't. It never is.

Gloria showed up. Wanting to know about Citrix. And vendor verification. And documents. Gloria's some sort of non-technical Company Rep. No, she hadn't talked to Joe. No, she's not sure if it's for $VeryTouchyCustomer. I had her check. Of course it was, and I got to spend the next 30 minutes explaining the same shit to her that I'd told Joe an hour before. While she didn't fight like Joe did, she kept interrupting because she didn't understand how "vendor verified" wasn't the same as "$MegaCorp certified and supported". Muppet.

And just as I got back to the CubeDesk of Hate high atop Munich on the first floor of the Panopticon Greenhouse, up popped a note. I have a Sev-1 ticket from $BigInsurer. Surprisingly their data center is not on any subcontinent but rather an actual island. Oh joy of joys!

It was then that a flood of mail came in. Escalation mail. A quick peek at the audit trail showed me the following:

• 11:17 Ticket submitted
• 11:19 Escalation level 2
• 11:20 Escalation level 1
• 11:24 Activity: phone number changed
• 11:26 Activity: Manager response
• 11:29 Ticket dumped in dog's lap
• 11:29 Escalation notice sent to REC, managers, upper managers
• 11:31 Demand for conf call
• 11:34 REC requests basic information, logs, etc. since none were provided
• 11:37 Conf call details provided
• 11:38 Conf call details changed
• 11:41 Another demand for conf call
• 11:44 Response to info request: we'll wait for the conf
• 11:47 REC demands info immediately, gets manager to explain pointlessness of joining call.
• 11:53 REC receives demand from upper management to get "customer-focused" and join call
• 12:12 Lower manager gets customer to agree to send logs and reschedule conf call
• 13:04 REC receives logs eleven minutes before conf call

Fuckwits, all of them. In ten minutes the fun starts.

I know need nitroglycerin. I just haven't decided if it would be more appropriate to ingest the shit or just detonate it.

To be continued...

IRCing Wat Ur Doing

After four hours of conf calls with people so stupid the only reason that they don't check the level of gasoline in their cars with a lighter is that flicking a Bic without a 14-page PowerPoint explanation is beyond their feeble mentalities, I finally got home. In trying to relax I hopped on #husi at slashnet and got into a chat with others facing the same sorts of hell that I do. Thanks to aph for sparring with me and making me laugh in a moment when all I wanted to do was deepen the my-head-shaped-dent in front of the keyboards.

The sad thing is that it's nearly impossible to tell this "conversation" apart from real internal communications. Only the lack of useless managerial buzzwords -- "synergy" and "paradigm"come to mind -- prove this wasn't cut and pasted from internal mails.

[00:06 aphrael] dear developers: the problem QA is reporting is critical and must by its description be something low-level. the minor fixes you are throwing at them with "this ought to fix it" without actually bothering to investigate the problem are ... useless.
[00:06 aphrael] please stop wasting their time and mine. thank you, integration.
[00:07 REC] Dear QA, please to be writing accurate reports of EXACTLY what the problem is. Please to be providing images of the test beds and the logs, monitors and dumps we need to fix it. Love, Eng.
[00:08 aphrael] engineering: the problem is that the software does not print. at all. this should be trivial to reproduce. love, integration.
[00:09 REC] Dear Sales, please to stop fucking telling customers about all the great print features which Eng hasn't worked out and QA can't certify before you sell the product, leaving US to come up with a fucking solution. Love, Support
[00:09 aphrael] Dear Support: our product is a printer. Love, Management.
[00:10 REC] Dear Management, please to be providing some fucking ink already. Love, Support.
[00:11 aphrael] Dear Support, Sales, QA and Management, Ink? I think we've found the problem. Love, Eng.
[00:11 REC] Dear Integration, Please to write specs for ink. Love, Eng.
[00:12 aphrael] Dear Eng, Project Management provided this spec for ink three years ago. Why haven't you implemented it yet? Love, Integration.
[00:14 REC] Dear Integration, PM inserted said spec in an Excel sheet which was copied over as a WMF file into Word. This Metafile was dropped into a PowerPoint presentation. Our department uses HP-UX. Please to be sending text files. Love, Eng.
[00:15 aphrael] eng: aah! i see the problem. you deviated from the spec in this fashion, while the other engineering department deviated in this other fashion, and the two outcomes don't work together. please resolve.
[00:16 REC] Dear Integration, Please note that each Engineering department works independently. If integration between the two is necessary, I think we know which department needs to pick up some slack.
Love, Eng (Division 1A)
[00:17 aphrael] see, this is the joy of integration. all responsibility with no authority!

I was never much of a Dilbert fan and now I live that fucking cartoon. Somebody kill me please.

I Luv Teh Webs

Hi b3tans and b3tards. Yes, it's me, Mister Splashycunt. I wish I'd made the newsletter for a compo entry or some stupid experiment but trolling'll do.

Note: I did not submit this blog to b3ta nor do I know who did.

N.A.V.Y.

When I joined the Navy many moons ago, I quickly learned that the name of the service was really an acronym: Never Again Volunteer Yourself. It was a lesson that I continue to forget.

"Hi, Monkeys. $MegaCorp has a new support contract with Microsoft and we don't talk directly to Blackie and his department anymore. Instead we follow $MSprocess. We need a couple volunteers to be our internal contacts."

Well shucks, I'd been dealing with Blackie and his gang and had acted as a go-between for a lot of my fellow monkeys for years. This could be another rung on the ladder to the position of ESSM (Extra Super Senior Monkey) and the additional 20 bucks or so a year that such an esteemed position offers. The more projects like that I accept, the fewer tickets I have to take. Works for me.

With a second round of nagging mails our chief hooked another sucker, none other than Lenny. I pointed out that I hadn't had the training. "That's OK. We'll get it to you in the next couple weeks."

Suzi can't wait a couple weeks. She sent Lenny a request to file a ticket through $MSprocess and CC:d me. Lenny's note arrived not ten minutes later. "REC, I didn’t get chance to attend the $MSprocess training. Could you please log this issue on this occasion?"

Before I could laugh, up popped our annoying-as-fuck IM app. It was Lenny.

14:27 lenny: hi REC
14:27 rec: hey
14:27 rec: I think it's a hoot
14:27 lenny: is it?
14:28 rec: We both suckered ourselves to do this, neither one of us has a bloody clue, and no help or direction is being offered
14:28 rec: If I didn't laugh I'd have to cry.
14:28 rec: So I'm laughing.
14:28 lenny: kool

Ten minutes later came a mail with some links to what will undoubtedly be some very protracted, painful Death-by-PowerPoints with some fuckknuckle or another droning on and on, in an incomprehensible accent which appears to have been designed to do nothing other than rape the English language. If I'm really lucky, however, there'll be a link to the actual PPT slides and I can dodge what appears to be a total of some 11 hours of this particular circle of hell.

That'll have to wait, though. I have some tickets to answer. Somewhere in Estonia a fuckwit is trying to modify the contents of the HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\FontSubstitutes
key. On an IBM BladeCenter. A blade which is running Solaris 10.

Cow-Orkers XVI: Starkbier!

My married-with-kids colleagues, annoyed last night that we couldn't get into the strip club because the doorman didn't like the fact that I was wearing Adidas and not Florscheims or Ballys, are now thanking me. Under the cold light of sobriety they realise that had we indeed gone in, they'd be regretting this morning a lot more than they otherwise do with just the two liters of Starkbier each one drank last night. I'd had three; maybe I was a bit wobbly, too.

I want to thank the doorman for this because I fucking hate strip clubs. He has no idea what sort of favour he did me, and I don't just mean saving me from having to throw down double the normal beer price. He saved me from the whole thing. I don't "get" strip clubs. What's the attraction?

There's an attractive girl who you're allowed to look at but whom you can't touch. You're encouraged to give her lots of Teh Munniez but no matter how much you hand her, you can't touch her and she won't touch you. She has a boyfriend or a girlfriend (or both), despises you, and is trying to figure out what she has to do to get the rest of your money without actually having to talk to you, let alone countenance allow physical contact.

I ask again, what the fuck is the attraction? Why do people go to these clubs? Why do my cow-orkers insist on going there once drunk? I've been married. I know what it's like to want to see something fresh and different and that's why I pay €40/month for 16Mb downstream DSL -- to fill the My Documents\Faxes\Sent Faxes directory with 447GB of hot chicks doing anything you can name and quite a few things you've probably never even thought of. What do you expect from a guy whose browser home page is set to Ogrish and who was a pre-1996 alt.tasteless participant?

We can get drunk every fucking night for all I care. We can become the bestest buddies EVAR each evening, then return to this hellhole each morning and piss and moan at each other as is our daily routine. That's fine. Just leave the fucking strip clubs out of it. They're a waste of time and a waste of money. More importantly, this dog ain't married. If we stay at real bars there's a chance that I might be sniffing some bitch's crotch before the night is over. More importantly, she might be sniffing at mine without the expectation of any one-way financial transaction.

You want to keep me happy, cow-workers. Never forget I'm the Linkmaster.

With Easter coming up, the Starkbierfest is now over, but in another few weeks, the Spring Festival begins. It takes place on the Theresienwiesen -- the same spot where the Oktoberfest takes place -- and is little more than a smaller version of same festival, but cheaper and filled almost exclusively with locals. And to this festival, in one of the two or three beer "tents", a group of us will congregate after work at least once. And there we will drink. And at 10:30 p.m. as they're kicking us out, one of the group will have the brilliant idea to go to a strip club. Half a dozen such "clubs" are only a mile away.

I'd like to believe I'd just go home and play Spin the Black Circle, but I'm as much a seventeen as the idiots I deal with all day, though in a non-technical way.

School Daze

Of all the things about high school that sucked, PE class was way up there on the list. The girls' coach was the stereotypical, manly-looking, semi-pro volleyball-playing bulldyke bitch, but she was nothing compared to Coach Marissey. Marissey was the absolute archetype of late 1970s high school coaches, an asshole, sadistic, self-important and imagined ladykiller. A real-life John Kreese, head of the evil dojo in Karate Kid who demanded all address him as "Coach" instead of "Mister".

I relived a little piece of hell almost three decades behind me last night in a dream, and woke up to a realisation.


At least I'm sleeping again, but I'm once again dreaming vividly, usually reliving something out of my past. Winning a pinball tournament is great; sitting in school not so much so. Marissey had called me out of class to his office.

Since I didn't like sports, Marissey didn't like me. My school was freaks and jocks and my PE class was freaks and geeks. I wasn't even that high on the social ladder. I was a freaky, geeky loner. There's nothing worse in the mind of a team sports coach than an individual.

Coach: Canine!
REC: Yeah?
Coach: You're playing football this afternoon. Be on the field at 2:00p.m. Here's your class absence note for 7th period.
REC: But I play chess, not football!
Coach: Don't get smart with me! I'm in charge of school intramurals and you're playing football. Today.
REC: But I don't even know how to play!
Coach: You'll learn on the field. You're going to be a linebacker.
REC: What the hell is a linebacker?
Coach: You block the other team from running into your line.
REC: But I only weigh 127 pounds!
Coach: Here's some pads.
REC: Coach Marissey, I'm still wearing a knee brace from tennis last month! I have a doctor's note.
Coach: Your doctor's not here and he's not in charge of intramurals. Your teammates should help prop you up.
REC: What?!
Coach: Be on that field at two or you've got a month of detention.

And when I woke up, clipped on my access badge and headed for the Subway, it dawned on me. I'd been wrong throughout high school. It really does prepare you for real life. You only have to know where to look. Marissey would feel right at home here assigning me another ticket from some customer suffering constant core dumps in a Solaris system.

Le plus ça change...

Oh, and since someone's bound to ask, I didn't go on the field and I didn't play linebacker. I did probably the most fuckwitted thing possible. Instead of attempting to gain Marissey's respect by at least suiting up and trying to participate just for one play, I went to the school library and got the Policies & Procedures book. Armed with the exact policy I went to the vice principal and told him I'd be damned if I was doing a minute of detention for not playing stupid football.

The day my doctor's note expired Marissey had me running laps for the entire PE period. Every day. For the rest of the school year. Rather suddenly there were only nine spots on the intramural chess competition roster, down from the original ten. Guess who didn't get to compete at County or State. "Budget," said Marissey with a grin.

Enough self-delusion through the fog of 20-some years of adult experience. Marissey wouldn't have found any respect for me. He would've laughed at my ass being bulldogged, then screamed at me for being a pussy and not playing anymore. He was such a dick.

Be Careful What You Wish For

Confession is supposed to be good for the soul. I hope it helps mine. I feel so dirty, not about what I did but certainly about the results. My actions helped spark new interest in an organisation I wish would go away because their real interest is "brand awareness" rather than their stated and perceived goals. They're so bad that one of their founders left in disgust and started a new group which uses its funds for action rather than more fund-raising and showy but pointless gestures.

The secret's revealed here, Richard. I am responsible for that damned whale being called "Mr. Splashy Pants". I didn't make up the name (that honour goes to Omar Zayed), but I made it popular.

The 26th of November was just another shitty Monday. While waiting for an installation to crash I was perusing b3ta looking for some interesting links since I had no good ideas for the compo (not having seen the Transformers) or the QOTW. That's where I saw mince's link to Greenpeace. Everyone on b3ta thought it was a hoot and was voting for the name. The link first appeared at b3ta at 17:43 UTC. With the b3ta clicks "Mr. Splashy Pants" had gone from 4% to 5% of the vote and held a sad fifth place behind a bunch of crappy newage-sounding names like Talei, Aiko, and Mira.

I saw the link an hour after it had been posted and discovered that multiple votes were counted. Unfortunately I didn't have the time or determination to write a little program to do that for me... but I knew who did and would. I also don't have accounts at a lot of the big sites like MeFi and BoingBoing nor upmodding hordes on reddit and digg... but I know who does.

I had three motives. Firstly, it was funny. The sheer silliness drew me in. Secondly, basing any action or policy on the results of a fucking Web poll is sheer stupidity. They can be easily manipulated by just one determined person. Whether Greenpeace got egg on their collective face as a result of my actions -- be it using a pre-pubescent taunt as the official name of a mascot or publicly pussing out like the Washington National Zoo did when they decided the that "Tai Shan" was a much better moniker than the wildly popular "Butterstick" (they must be kicking themselves now) -- mattered not to me. And thirdly, I wanted to Tom Sawyer someone who doesn't like me.

Two minutes later I'd posted the call to action over at kuro5hin and HuSi as well as in a mail to a group of friends. There's one sad sack at kuro5hin who hates the site with a passion and despises me as well, and yet he can't help himself and continually returns, only to be banned again. Banning him can't stop him reading the site , and he still does regularly.

He's a student in Arizona. He knows how to program. He has a single bloody-mindedness which compels him to shit all over the Web wherever possible. Richard's description of how this person hit the Greenpeace system was exactly in line with how he also hits other sites in his vandalism attempts. When Richard's Greenpeace blog was posted I knew I'd completed objective number 3.

After Greenpeace threw away that brief click-fest our little vandal noticed and most certainly dropped the rate down, spreading the clicks through various proxies. As I expected, those with accounts at the big sites started posting the story as well. It was submitted to digg, reddit, BoingBoing 14 hours later, and MetaFilter another day after that, after which it spread quickly through E-Mail. A few days later I myself received one of those E-Mails which had been forwarded at least five times.

By the time the story appeared on BoingBoing "Mr. Splashy Pants" already had close to 80% of the vote, and there it was going to stay. I'd achieved Objective #2. The world was good. Greenpeace were stuck with using that name or publicly negating the poll which, within a day, was being slammed with legitimate clicks. Except...

Except that this thing was growing legs. People liked the name, and by "people" I mean everyone except for the weenies who submitted the sea-goddess names for the competition, but possibly even one or two of them. Oh, and Greenpeace executives. They weren't happy about it. But someone there finally recognised the value of a viral, grassroots campaign. That Clever Dick also noticed that rather than making them a laughing stock it was generating a lot of interest. They did what anyone would do under the circumstances: they went for the cash. Before the contest was even over they were already selling MSP bumper stickers and T-shirts and raking in the bucks.

I probably wouldn't be so angry if I was getting 10% of all the merch they're able to flog thanks to me. Who the fuck would've shelled out 13 bucks on a "Talei" coffee mug?

Why write about it now, so long after it happened? Because it's torturing me. "Mr. Splashy Pants" is turning up everywhere. What started as an opportunity to make a sort of political statement (Web polls can't be trusted) and laugh instead helped Greenpeace with their image, their popularity and their finances. The final straw was a picture at reddit this morning of a whale-shaped snowfall map with more than 1200 upvotes. No one would've even submitted, let a lone vote up, a picture called "Talei snowfall". But "Mr. Splashy Storm"? TEH FUNNAY INTARWEBS MEME JOAK!!11!eleven

I'm not claiming that had I not done this no one else would have, but I think it's unlikely. The contest had been going on for a while and was, up to that point, only four days away from closing. Greenpeace was going to call some whale "Talei" and the world wouldn't have given two shits. Instead they got user-involvement, held the competition open for another few weeks and let the buzz continue. And it worked.

I was the snowflake which started the avalanche that helped Greenpeace shed a bit of its "humourless hippie" image. Out, damn'd spot! out, I say!

Oh yeah, I'm a fuckwit. Here's hoping someone comes along with server logs or links to prove it wasn't me. Please.

x-posted to HuSi, sans poll

In My Sights

Lasers! Pew pew pew!

MAME's running and I'm busy playing Nintendo's 1980 Radar Scope in preparation for the next time I visit my brother so I can finally give him the ass-whooping he so richly deserves. He owns an original upright and practices the only game he could ever consistently beat me on. I'm in the zone on wave 5 with all my ships and still no damage when Jabber pops up.

Yo, REC!
I got a little problem maybe you can help.

I hit pause. This can't be good, but Joey's cool. We've gone out a few times and I like him so the game has to wait.

REC: What's up?
Joey: I got this guy with a problem with the Dev client. If it manages to open, it freezes. If it gets past the freeze it crashes. Same thing happens with the connected client. They're on Windows.
REC: OK, Windows what?
Joey: XP. They said they're on a supported platform.
REC: Did they tell you it was on XP?
Joey: No, but it's got to be that or Win2K.
REC: It don't gotta be nuttin'.

A little bell was going off in my head.

REC: Happens in both Dev and Connected client?
Joey: Yeah. I've been trying for a week but I can't reproduce it.
REC: But normal browsers work?
Joey: Sometimes.
REC: Sometimes?
Joey: That's what he said, but I wanted to just focus on the Dev and Connected clients to rule out the server stuff.
REC: Hold on a sec...
Joey: ok...

Clicky-clicky-clicky where the fuck is that goddamned ticket? I know it, I know it, I just sorted this same shit out maybe a week or so ago. And another light bulb: Joey's been working on this problem since about the time I dealt with mine.

REC:
When did you get this ticket?
Joey: last Wednesday

Clicky-clicky ORDER BY DATE clicky-clicky

You motherfucker.

REC: The guy you're dealing with, his name is Abodha, right?
Joey: Yeah. You looking at my ticket now?
REC: Nope. Have a look at ticket 12-A45-33701
Joey: Hold on.

Abodha, This is a summary of our communications so far:

18FEB Abodha: I have installed Connected Client on my Remote Machine. Still doesn't work.
18FEB REC: Are you getting any errors when trying to access using a supported platform ?
20FEB Abodha: We are not facing this problem on other Remote Machines which are having Micrisoft Windows XP only 2003
20FEB REC: Windows 2003 is not certified as a client OS
27FEB Abodha: Escalate!!
27FEB REC: Escalate what? OS is unsupported.
29FEB Abodha: Problem is on server with windows server 2003.
29FEB REC: Windows 2003 not supported. Does it work on your XP workstations?
03MAR Abodha: We are talking about connected client on server not workstation
03MAR REC: Windows 2003 server is not supported for running ANY client. You cannot run a Connected client on your server.
05MAR Abodha: Your documents don't say windows 2003 is not supported
05MAR REC: Our documents don't list more than 70 million programs that aren't supported. We only list what we do support. Windows 2003 is not on that list as I explained in painful, technical detail two weeks ago.

You can't run a client on any Windows Server platform, period. This ticket is closed.

Joey: I've got tickets piled up waiting because of this guy!
REC: I don't. My short temper is an asset.
Joey: You're still an asshole sometimes
REC: You say that like it's a bad thing. I'm outta here at 4pm today. How about you?
Joey: 8pm if I'm lucky.
REC: By then I'll be downloading Dirty Jobs and drinking a large glass of port-finished Edradour.
Joey: Fuck you.
REC: If only you'd said that to Abodha.

A twenty says that fuckwit files the another ticket again today or tomorrow, tweaking it further to hide his lies. One E-Mail to management, one to all my SYSOPS homies.

Root Cause: सप्तदश ("saptadaza")

Terms of Enragement

un·planned (ŭn-plānd')
adj.
1. Not intended; unintentional.
2.
a. Having no particular purpose, organization, or structure; random.
b. Not thought out or prepared in advance; spontaneous: an unplanned adventure; an unplanned picnic.

My E-Mail today:

*** MEGACORP NOTICE ***
**** CONFIDENTIAL ****

*** URGENT NOTICE ***

$ServiceApplication will have an unplanned emergency outage for important patching tomorrow, 01 MARCH 2008, from 07:00 to 08:00 EST.

Customers will not be able to log issues during this time. Employees will not be able to access the database at this time. Customers should call the 800- hotline.

blah blah blah

If you know it's going to happen at some time in the future, and you send out messages to warn people that it will happen in the future, then it can't fucking be "unplanned" you fucking morons!

Maybe someone can explain to me why we're keeping this Confidential. If the customers won't be able to log in, how the fuck will they know to call the fucking 800-number?

How the fuck does anything get done around here when everything is designed and run by mental midgets who make junior beauty pageant contestants look like fucking atomic physicists?! I heard less idiocy from my cow-orkers at McDonald's when I worked there as a teenager. At times it's tempting to just go back to fast food management, where the system in place is sensible and the hardest things to deal with are ensuring the teenagers show up when scheduled and that they ask all customers if they want fries with that. Not terribly challenging, I admit, but I wouldn't be so prone to smashing my head into walls and my desk.

Making fast food look even more attractive is the installation of wireless in most of 'em, so my actual routine wouldn't change terribly much. If only it paid a little better.

Please Allow Me to Introduce 'Myself'

"I" is a subject pronoun.
I went to the store.
Joe and I work in the same building.
Signing documents is something I hate to do.
I am called ReallyEvilCanine.

"Me" is an object pronoun.
You were talking to me on the phone earlier.
Julie asked Joe and me the same question.
She gave me the documents to