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 sign.

"Myself" is a reflexive pronoun. That means it reflects back to a previously used or implied pronoun. It does not and cannot stand alone in English. "Myself" can only appear in a sentence where the pronoun I or me was already used:

I went to the store myself (because someone else I'd asked to do so didn't).
I myself don't care for black pudding. OR I don't care for black pudding myself.

"Myself" is not a subject:
Myself went to the store.

"Myself" is not an object:
She gave myself the documents to sign.

Stop it already! Using "myself" rather than "I" or "me" does not make you sound clever or important. It makes you look like a fucking twat trying to impress people with your incredible literacy skills when you are, in fact, demonstrating just how fucking incompetent you are when it comes to basic language usage.

In other news, this made me laugh a lot harder than it should have done.

My father’s family name being Canine,

and my atheist names Really Evil, my infant tongue could make of all names nothing longer or more explicit than "Reelk". If last Wednesday was your birthday but you only told me this an hour ago, you don't get to be angry at me for not baking you a cake.

I've been bombarded by a barrage of fuckwits ever since leaving the warm confines of the Dog Pound this morning. To the couple who tried to push their way into the train this morning before the departing passengers could get out while holding hands, I'd actually hoped to knock both your asses to the ground.

Yesterday was a management bitchfest about a ticket of mine that some fuckwits wanted to re-open. Management was of the opinion that I should've answered the Reopening Request two days ago. I explained to them that I am quite likely to do just that whenever I receive such notice, which, not surprisingly, I hadn't. Management forwarded me the notice they'd received about this request and the notice they received after 24 hours had passed and I hadn't responded.

What was the request? Just these pigfuckers. Why did they want to re-open the case?

"We are now requesting to please be reopening and revisiting the issue. This is in fact due to the fact that we are now experiencing the same problematics in our office in Hyderabad."

The solution is the same as before, you fucking moron: patch your fucking XP workstations. Re-open Request DENIED. Stop wasting my oxygen.

Among the 50 or so mails I had to wade through this morning was the following:

From: "MegaCorp Auto-Delivery System" [mcads@megacorp.com]
To: REC
Cc:
Subject: New Re-opening Request
Sent Date: Feb 22, 2008 9:20 AM
Received Date: Feb 22, 2008 9:20 AM
Priority: Normal

Ticket Re-opening Requests
(This is a real time report)

You are receiving this mail if you have a Reopen Request for a ticket which needs to be reviewed and acted upon by yourself.

Ticket #: SysAdmin 1A-2X6-11
Request Age in Days: 2
Created ticket: 2/20/2008 10:50:49 AM

That's some mighty strange "real time" reporting there, Hoss, not to mention the fucking atrocious English. I shall rant about the inappropriate use of reflexive pronouns next week. Promise.

Reopen notification forwarded to management three times until I finally got an acknowledgment. That's one more potential hit that I won't take at the next semiannual review.

Weird Al

I love the film UHF. It had just the right amount of stupid and did a good job at parodying both TV and en entire genre of cheesy films which people like Adam Sandler still insist on making. As a bonus Victoria Jackson gets a lot of screen time.

Watching that film is one thing, living its vignettes is another.


I haven't had a ticket which could be considered even remotely interesting in over a month. What I've had are a bunch of fuckwits who watched this and thought it was a training video:


Update: embedding this vid was killed. Have a direct link.

A smattering of examples:

Do we need to mount the File System on Unix if it is located on Windows?

Nah. You just need to swap polarity on the network cables.

We do not understand, whether this user preference is some kind of server preference parameter, or if it is stored, in the CONTACTS table or what

You think -- despite my explanation -- that employee user preferences might be stored in the customer contact tables and you insist on appending "Systemwide and Database Engineer" to your name on all mail? The title alone speaks volumes.

Or this exchange:
Corp: Do you support 64-bit Windows 2003?
REC: No.
Corp: When will you support it?
REC: Never.
Corp: Why not?
REC: We don't process and calculate, we just move tons of data.
Corp: But we want 64-bit Windows
REC: Why?
Corp: Because it's 64 bits!
REC: And that's better because... why?
Corp: Because it's more than 32, duh! ESCALATE! MONKEY TOO STUPID TO REALISE 64 IS TEH BETTAR OF 32.
REC: You want to buy new hardware and a new OS to run our software which won't, in fact, be able to run our software half as well as your current hardware.
Corp: Yes it will!
REC: Who told you that?
Corp: The hardware vendor.

Fuckwits. Every last one of them. At this point I'd be thrilled to get a Citrix issue.

Mail Blues

If your job is "Solution Specialist" and you're the manager of a department which is about to offer a training in some gee-whiz neat-o new stuff a particular upcoming release includes, I have a few tips for you.

1) Choose the correct addressee list.

The "EntireBuilding" mail alias is supposed to be used for things like someone leaving his lights on in the parking garage or a car blocking a delivery truck or free coffay and cake at 4:15 this afternoon. The fine people of $SupermarketChain, the schlubs at $FinanceCo, the weirdos who sniff glue at $FurnitureOutlet and the various building staff don't give a shit about our software.

The "EntireMegaCorp" mail alias is for things that interest all of us, like the free coffay but only for MegaCorp employees. Since 97% of us have nothing to do with your very specialised application and 84% of us can't touch it for security reasons there's little justification in filling my fucking mailbox. Idiot.

The "MySmallGroup" mail alias exists for a good reason. Use it.

2) Err on the side of caution.
When one considers our craptastic mail system one is quite justified in concerns that a mail didn't go through. There is a right way and a wrong way to deal with this.
The Right Way:
1) Wait 15 minutes for it to be delivered to you as well
2) Check your Webmail account (which is more reliable than the POP-3 system) to see if a copy of your mail was delivered to you.
3) If, after 30 minutes you still don't see it in your Webmail (having refreshed it from 15 minutes ago), then re-send it.

The Wrong Way:
1) Send the mail.
2) Send it a second time immediately.
3) Send it a third and fourth time five minutes later.
4) Send a follow-up mail asking people to please reply if they got the last mail since you forgot to add a return receipt each of the four previous times.


3) Consider your content wisely.

There is a right way and a wrong way to highlight points you wish to make when you want to differentiate the importance of those lines.
The Right Way:
1) Outline format
2) If it is utterly impossible to get your info across otherwise, font size changes

The Wrong Way:
Three different fonts
Multiple font sizes on the same line
Four different colours
Dingbats and smilies

And while I'm on the subject, yes, I know we're expected to use big graphics but including them is not a requirement. Megacorp is quite proud of its ubiquitous and very expensive logo. While it's not necessary to send the graphics, they can be included. There is a repository and creation template. But if you're unable to find the desired graphic, do not start searching the Intartubies for 800MB animated GIFs like Judy does. Judy is a secretary. You are not. Judy is bubbly. You are not. Judy's job is to be happy and perky. Yours is not.

Four mails, each 7MB, all looking considerably less professional than a 14-year-old's MySpazz page. Half of us had to log into the goddamned Webmail client just to delete that shit since it put us over quota, at which point our standard POP-3 mail clients fail.

And no, that's not the end of it. You'd be disappointed if it was, so here's the punchline: The product being discussed:

.

.

Business Inteligence.


I swear.