Patchwork

What's the fucking point of a four-day weekend if every goddamned store is closed? Fucking Germans.

And in the Inbox is ticket x30109q00335 from "Karl".

We are exhausted with two things:
Really, Hoss? Me too. MegaCorp's way of doing business and the people it does business with. People like... you.

1)Microsoft incompatibilty
2)Functionalities being taken away.

Huh? There are Windows versions of the Gimp and Tux Racer.

Do you perhaps mean changes in Microsoft functionality whenever they fix something in their OS and the resulting need to patch our software to deal with that? What exactly do you want me to do about it? Do I have some special power to make Microsoft stop disabling shit? Tell them to cut it out yourself; You're the one handing them 50 grand a year, not me.

Microsoft is going to disable and remove shit whenever they damned well feel like it. DriveSpace. MSJVM. Progman. If you were an actual administrator and not a chimp you'd know how to deal with some of these problems.


We dont want to upgrade your software too
So you'll patch Windows but not the software running on Windows which won't run if you don't patch it? Huh? Look, every time Microsoft disables functions we have to re-write parts of our software. If they deprecate some more functions that they used to recommend as Best Practices, what the fuck do you think will happen? Either don't take the patch that will disable $OurBigApp or patch everything.


Now you say you are changing support for version 3.c.5 so what functionalities is $MegaCorp planning to discontinue on $YourBigApp version 3.c.5?
Which ones would you like us to discontinue? We aren't changing the functionality of the fucking software, you knob end, just how much we're willing to help you with it and how much we're charging you to hold your hand and fix your fuck-ups. That's why the Notice of Changes to Support for versions 3.c.x wasn't called Notice of Functionality Removal for versions 3.c.x.

We're not taking away any functionality. There are minor support changes. You have to patch our software if you install the drastic Windows patches.

And that should've been the end of it. But noooooo...

You say you don't take away functionality but $MuuxMarketServerProg is GONE! We need $MarketServerProg! Tell Microsoft to bring it back!

Tell Microsoft, huh? To bring back our software module. Which didn't go away but rather only had a very clearly documented name change due which can be found in every fucking tech journal and news site to some shitheel suing us for daring to use the name he used on his bugalicious sold-three-copies-in-1998 program which has since lain dead, the download Web page not having been updated for more than a decade.

Read the fucking docs. Patch your software. Follow the post-patch instructions and use the new name of $MarketServerProg (which is the totally unintuitive $MuuxAppServerMarket).

I need a cup of coffee which I'll get right after closing this ticket Root Cause: 17-Fuckwit . Maybe I'll get lucky and someone will walk by with some Valium. Or Haldol. Beggars can't be choosers.

Dear Japan,

Your clocks are running seven hours too fast. PLZFIXKTHXBYE!

I like my Japanese cow-orkers. I really do. Of course, I've never had any "face-time" with them which might explain this lack of animosity. But when I need to work with them I either have to be up at 3am (and sober enough to function) or I might as well send snail mail. One round-trip communication takes three days.

I needed a database in Shift-JIS, the most common Japanese encoding. It's crap compared to Unicode... hell, it's crap compared to anycode, it being a freaky Microsoft hack to enforce their idea of codepages and still work with previous Japanese standards like JIS X 0201 and 0208. Wacky stuff if you're one of the couple dozen codepage supergeeks. I know I'm lame. Haz a cat. In fact, take two; they're small.

So what the hell do I want with a Shift-JIS DB when its suckage quotient is so high? It seems we have a bug, one that I not only pointed out about eight fucking years ago but which also should've been dealt with by the time $OurBigApp supported Unicode.

ATTENTION AMERICAN DATABASE-PROGRAMMING INFIDELS: There is a huge fucking difference between "character" and "byte". Not for you normally, but for most of the rest of the fucking world. One byte per character works fine for English. ASCII is also sufficient for Latin, Swahili and Hawaiian. It is rumoured that there are other languages, many of which have more characters than can be addressed with a single byte.

It turns out a field length of 5,000 characters isn't actually 5,000 characters but 5,000 bytes. For the Japanese this means that they can only squeeze in around 2,200 characters, not quite enough for what this field is designed to contain. But only in UTF-8. In Shift-JIS and UTF-16 with their fucking surrogate pairs the number becomes even more grim -- around 1600 characters.

So why didn't I just install a fucking Shift-JIS database on my own if I'm such a Mr Smarty-Pants? Setting up the DB is easy but our installer which adds and shapes the schema sucks. It's overly complicated (more than 90 screens of text and clicky goodness). That alone isn't a problem. I don't speak or read Chinese and I can still not only install but administer Windows in Chinese, both Traditional and Standard. Microsoft sucks but at least their suckage is uniform across languages. Same dialogs, same layout, same buttons, same icons. Not so $OurBigApp. The Japanese installer is nothing like the English which is nothing like the German, so I can't even run a side-by-side installation and select the correct radio buttons or fill in the proper fields.

I can read some Japanese but with so little chance to use the language I've lost much of it over the past 12 years. A few smrt peepul might think, "Duh! Just select the dialog text, copy and then paste it into Teh Ghugel Translator!" Yeah, I thought of that. Our programmers had different ideas:

window.properties.AllowSelectText=0.

Fuckwits.

Survey Says...

Dear Microsoft,

When I fill out your dynamic survey, and in it I specify that I'm not a manager (question #21), that I have nothing to do with corporate policy (question #25) and that my job duties entail IT and software support (question #35), do not then throw management-style idiotspeak at me in a follow-up question.

In your current job, which of these statements best describes your strategic engagement with corporate IT policy?
Please select only one.

• Setting IT strategy, policies and/or goals for your company
  
• Working with others to help establish IT strategy, policy or goals for your company
  
• Translating business requirements of internal clients into technology solutions
  
• Implementing established IT strategy, policies or goals
  

None of those, you fuckwits. What the fuck does number three even mean?

At 2:30 yesterday some guys from $BigComputerCo stopped by to meet me in the CubeDesk of Hate. They're involved in hardware consulting for customers implementing $OurBigApp. Hi, How are you?, Nice to meet you, Thanks for the card, Why the fuck are you talking to me? I don't even deal with these guys tangentially. An hour later Shrek told me that we're going out to drink Glühwein (mulled wine) with them in half an hour. Cool beans!

That half hour became a full hour, in which time the rain had started. Instead of going within walking distance of my home we were going to the winter fairgrounds. Fine. Then Shrek told me they're treating us. Aw, HELLS yeah!

The guys were nice enough, the beer was free, we chatted for a few hours, and at the end of it I may be getting some free rack boxen. Big rack boxen. Stuff that's anything from 4-16U and runs some flavour of UNIX. Now I just have to figure out where the hell to plug it in -- I can't afford the juice at home.

One week from today I will be in a bar in Paris although not on $BigComputerCo's dime. Say luh gair.