Thank You, John Grisham

One of Grisham's best novels which also translated well to film was The Rainmaker. It happened to run on TV a few weeks ago and a good thing that was, because a great scene remained fresh in my mind. As a result a response I sent to a customer was missing a line I might've otherwise inserted.

Regina's company hadn't patched $OurBigApp yet and the Microsoft 918899 roll-up which would permanently disable the 917425 and 919010 compatibility patches was about to be released.

Some days I'm Jackie Lemanczyk, others I'm Evert Luftkin.

Regina is one of those kindergarteners I deal with. Regina knows some big words, like "escalation", a process she kicked off by complaining that she wasn't getting correct or useful information from me. My team manager looked through the ticket and agreed Regina's a tard.

Every time I told her that the 918899 update would break her system and explained how it would do so, she'd come back with, "What I still don't understand is why should $YourBigApp not work if it gets patched with 4.c.2 after the August IE patch," and repeatedly asking me if the August update maybe did have a compatibility patch after all despite telling her no four times already.

Regina,

On August 3rd I explained that you need to apply Patch 11 BEFORE you allow the August security roll-up to be installed on XP SP2 workstations.

On August 4th I explained that there is no further compatibility patch and reiterated my response from the previous day.

That same day I responded again that there was no August compatibility patch and again confirmed my answer from the previous day.

Later that afternoon I clearly stated AGAIN that none of your Windows XP SP2 clients will work correctly with the August Microsoft security update in a 4.c.2 environment.

I wrote the same thing again on August 7.

Later that same day I explained it once again in further detail.

On August 8th I explained it again.

I have so far explained that XP SP2 with the August 918899 patch will not work correctly on any version 4.c environment prior to 4.c.11 seven times. The answer is not going to change. There is no point in asking me if you should also test against 4.c.1 because it won't work correctly.

YOU MUST UPGRADE YOUR PRODUCTION SYSTEM TO 4.c.11 OR HIGHER BEFORE YOU ALLOW MICROSOFT'S AUGUST SECURITY PATCH (KB 918899) TO BE INSTALLED ON WINDOWS XP SP2 CLIENTS.

IF YOU TRY TO RUN AN XP SP2 CLIENT WHICH HAS HAD MICROSOFT'S AUGUST SECURITY PATCH (KB 918899) INSTALLED AGAINST YOUR 4.c.2 PRODUCTION SYSTEM YOUR SYSTEM WILL NOT WORK.

I am closing this ticket.

Regards,

REC

You must be a fuckwit, fuckwit, fuckwit.

I want my Root Cause: 17! I deserve to have it. I need it!
x-posted to HuSi with a poll.