Tuesday, July 28, 2009

LookOut

A lot of stupid found its way into my inbox. This is nothing new, except that yesterday I was dead tired due to a super-pregnant wife who couldn't sleep and is in much pain, so my cognitive shields were in desperate need of recharging. I knew better than to actually go into work but I couldn't help looking at my inbox and responding.

No matter how fast I type (and I can beat 80wpm on a good day), I tend to forget points as I get involved with other points, so I've learned to make notes for important mail in order not to miss out on a salient fact in my corporately-acceptable non-ranting missives to the Powers That Be. Notes which I tend to write in much the same way as I write this blog because it's just that stream of consciousness shit.

You can see where this is heading...


$BrokenBusinessProcess_X requires subprocesses H1, J1, K1, L1 & L2, M1/2/3/4 and N14. $MistarManagar decided he's going to make things better (read: worse) by modifying subprocess L1 to cover M1-4, moving them to Q7/8/9/10/11/12/19. Yet another bureaucratic "simplification" which complicates things further. And so I fired off a quick note.

Except I've learned over the years that "firing off quick notes" is akin to "raping babies" and so I open a few text editor windows and spew my bile in them. And then I cool off. And then I come back and extract the actual content and reorganise it into some semblance of bullet points to be addressed. Which I then let myself think about and reconsider so that I can address them in a way which ensures both my child's parents remain gainfully employed.

Fire up Notepad and rant away.

$MistarManager,

You're a cuntnuzzle. You suck donkey cocks for a living. You're more incompetent than Amy Winehouse in a fucking surgical theatre. Process L1 is ass. Process L2 is even more ass. You can't fix it, you moron, so cut your losses. Join us. Come to the dark side. You know just like the rest of us that $BrokenBusinessProcess_X is completely fucked. Cut the shit. Look, We can deal with K1 but not if you try to break it into K1/2/3/4a/4b/4c/4d. Ain't gonna happen and you know it. Get on -board and we'll support you. (Fail to and we'll be sharpening our knives).

Love, REC
Fine. Bullet points established. Certain bits might be a bit strong but the general feeling is conveyed. There's no way in hell I'm actually sending this though. Not even if I took more drugs than Keith and Michael combined could I be stupid enough to do that. And so I wait, let the points filter through, come up with "acceptable" ways to present my opinions, and then I'll send off the mail.

Oooohhh! An oldie but a goodie!

Where was I? Oh yeah....

Let me just proofread this quickly. MS LookOut has a decent enough spell-checker, and unlike FireFerret and LightningBird, it has all the company addresses and the specialised terms in it. I'll use that.

{copy}
{click}
{control-N}
{paste}
{F7}
{fix, fix, fix}
{control-A}
{copy}
{paste into Notepad}
Right, that's done. Now to write the "correct" mail
$MistarManager,

I received your note concerning the modification of Processes L1 and L2 earlier and hope that I'm not disturbing you as I would like to take a moment of your time to discuss them with you. Process L1, since its inception, has been of questionable benefit, at best. You were on the conference call when we discussed the trebling of resources necessary in order to implement such a process and in practice, not only has it required a quintupling of resource allotment but those involved in carrying out this process have found that they are not relieved from their other tasks which already exceeded their expected output capacities based on both worker metrics and Charts 12-YP-14 and 12-PP-09 which you yourself presented at the $UpperManagementMeeting last September.

In this meeting it was you who pointed out and described in great detail the potential difficulties resulting from any number of exigencies in any one of a set of potential affecting variables. It is for precisely these reasons tat I believe you may wish to reconsider the point of L2 as regards its standing in the overall position of $BrokenBusinessProcess_X with respect to sub-processes M3 and M4 as well as the potential knock-on effect to process G which up until now has been wholly unrelated but which, when one considers the externalities raised by questions concerning K4c, could possibly become a serious mitigating factor.

{blah blah blah 18 more paragraphs of this sort of shit blah blah blah blah}
Spell-check.
Re-read.
Tweak.
Spell-check again.
Hit send.
Notice that the business-like mail is still visible but that the "framework" mail window has disappeared.
Notice the Outbox icon blink and disappear.
Remember there's no Exchange Server to allow for a hasty recall.

Wait for a pink slip with a big 17 written on it.

In my defense the guy really is an incompetent cuntnuzzle who's managed to Peter Principle himself at least three steps beyond what he's capable of handling.

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Tuesday, July 21, 2009

An Ideal World

We have certain business processes which are supposed to be followed. In their misguided attempts to stick their heads as far up their asses as possible management have finally recursively pushed their foreheads out from between their teeth. The sensible processes refined over years are no longer adhered to quite as they were in the past nor quite as one might hope for in a company of over five thousand people worldwide with revenues in the billions.

An example:
L-user -> On-site SysAdmin: HALP! There's sand in my vagina! The App's not working!
On-site SysAdmin: Stay calm. Try Foo.
L-user: OK. Tried it. Still doesn't work.

On-site SysAdmin -> $MegaCorp 1st line support: HALP! There's sand in my vagina! The App's not working! Already tried Foo!
$MegaCorp 1st line support: Stay calm. Try Bar.
On-site SysAdmin: OK. Tried it. Still doesn't work.

$MegaCorp 1st line support -> $MegaCorp 2nd line support: HALP! There's sand in my vagina! The App's not working! Already tried Foo and Bar!
$MegaCorp 2nd line support: Stay calm. Try Baz.
$MegaCorp 1st line support: OK. Tried it. Still doesn't work.

$MegaCorp 2nd line support -> REC: HALP! There's sand in my vagina! The App's not working! Already tried Foo, Bar and Baz!
REC: Stay calm. Set logging to ALL, run foo, bar, baz, quux and muux. Send logs, screenshots and run a truss.
$MegaCorp 2nd line support: OK. I'm sending it to you.

REC: {ponder}
REC: {research}
REC: {this game's neat}
REC: {test}
REC: {this one's also pretty cool}
REC: {epiphany}

REC -> Engineering: We have a defect. Here are the details. Repro environment on 4DA33.testbed.internal.megacorp.com. Directions, truss, logs, screenshots, dumps attached.

Engineering -> QA: Here's a fix. Test it.

QA -> Eng: We tested it. Looks good to go. Here's the protocol and results.

Eng -> REC: Here you go, Sport. All nice and pretty and working.

REC -> L-user & On-site Admin: Here you go. Enjoy.

L-user & On-site Admin -> REC: Thank you!!!!

That's how it's supposed to work.
Now for a little dose of reality:

L-user -> REC: HALP! There's sand in my vagina! The App's not working!
REC -> L-user: Talk to your On-site SysAdmin.
L-user -> REC: NO!!! FIX IT NOW!!!!!
REC: OK, fine. Stay calm. Set logging to ALL, run foo, bar, baz, quux and muux. Send screenshots, logs and run a truss.
L-user: WHAT? SAND! VAGINA! Wash it for me now! What's truss? Are you calling me fat? I don't see truss.exe under Start:Programs! HALP!!! Why do you need all this?! FIX NOW!!
REC: Let me hold your hand as I explain in excruciating detail how to perform the tests. You'll need help from your admin.
L-user: Here's a screenshot.
REC: Run ALL the tests and send me the results.
L-user: WAAAAAHHHH!!!! There's sand in my vagina! I don't have time for this! Fix it now!
REC: Please run all the tests as specified and send all results. Failure to do so will result in this ticket being considered abandoned.
L-user: {petulance}
L-user: {pissing and moaning}
L-user: Fine Mr Smart Guy. Here! Now get the sand out of my vagina!!!

REC: {ponder}
REC: {research}
REC: {This Joey Betz guy writes some really nifty games}
REC: {test}
REC: {Other "classic" Flash games are great, too}
REC: {epiphany}

REC -> Engineering: We have a defect. Here are the details. Repro environment on 4DA33.testbed.internal.megacorp.com. Directions, truss, logs, screenshots, dumps attached.

Engineering -> REC: Huh? Rejected. We need a repro environment.
REC -> Engineering: The repro is on 4DA33.testbed.internal.megacorp.com as I wrote already.
Engineering -> REC: Huh? Rejected. We need the logs.
REC -> Engineering: The logs are already attached.
Engineering -> REC: Huh? Rejected. Not reproducible.
REC: WTF???
REC -> Management: Look at ticket A7-44W-1A. Eng is dicking about again.

Management <--> Eng: {tons of E-Mail I shouldn't have to look at but which is CC:'d to me anyway, allowing me to catch them out in one lie after another.}

Engineering -> REC: Here you go, asshole. Test it.
REC -> Engineering: Fuck that shit. I ain't QA, bitch. Pass it to QA, follow the testing protocol, then send me the patch and report.
Engineering -> REC: It's done. You can test it.
REC -> Engineering: Fuck that shit. I canNOT test or approve. Send that shit to QA.

QA: Huh?
Eng: It works.
QA: Oh. OK. Approved.
REC: Give me a cert.
QA: We're fresh out. Take our word on it.
REC: Bite me. Follow the Approval Process and send me the cert.
QA: Fine. Approved.
Eng: We're outta here, suckaz.

REC -> L-user & On-site Admin: Here you go. Approved by Eng and QA.

L-user & On-site Admin -> REC: FORGET THE TWATSILICATES! THERE ARE GIANT CHAINSAWS UP OUR BUTTS! THIS PATCH JUST CRASHED OUR FUCKING PRODUCTION SYSTEM YOU ASSHOLE! HAAAALLLLPPPP!!!!

Only another 23 years of this and then I can retire. If I don't have an aneurysm first.

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Thursday, August 30, 2007

A Path Less Traveled

Three weeks of sick leave is hard to enjoy when the reason you're taking it is because you are, in fact, sick. Very sick. Between the illness and medicine I was worse than useless. All I really recall of more than a week of lying in bed was the dreadful thought that I was unable to think. I couldn't watch an episode of Top Gear without getting lost. I couldn't even follow the story line of a lottery drawing. I wondered if that's what Alzheimer's is like and that scared the piss out of me. Luckily I could no more hold onto any train of thought for more than a few seconds than I could hold a 747 down on the ground.

Upon my return to work I found I still had almost as many tickets as I'd had a few weeks before, most of them with requests to the customers to wait for my return since I'm the specialist for that particular problem area. Great. Loads of low score surveys await me.

I plowed into the mail first. After re-sorting to highlight the 2000 useless, auto-generated internal mails about problems with systems I don't use, the ETAs for service restoration, the extensions and completions I had a manageable 1500 or so to slog though. Best to start at the top and get the most current shit sorted.

Shit was right: ESCALATION!!!11!shiftone

The topmost mail was from some manager who'd promised an idiot yesterday that I'd call him today. Bullshit. I won't be in my office when they arrive at theirs and I can't stay late.

I fired off a note stating that such an action was unacceptable. You don't make a promise on my behalf without clearing it with me first. You don't presume to know my schedule and you sure as shit don't volunteer me to stay at least three hours past my normal working day. I have a life outside this fucking cubicle and that's too short as it is.

The E-Mail I sent back expressed these sentiments. Fuckwit manager, rather than accept reality, took offense. I've now insulted her as well as clearly refused to do my job. That got me a 15-minute talk with Greg, a former peer and now manager covering for my other managers who are all away. For fifteen fucking minutes I sat there explaining my mail and my position on the subjects it covered, all to his nodding and follow-ups beginning with "Yes, but..."

Greg has apparently already had the managerial prerequisite lobotomy.

Idiot Manger in the US got her way: some poor schlub over there is in the assist box on the ticket. She made him call the fuckwit. His notes span eight entries. And I was right: the fuckwit not only never bothered to look at the answer he was sent two weeks ago, he didn't understand the subject matter at all. My poor colleague had spent more than four hours on this fuckwit. Four hours! To explain -- using monosyllabic words and diagrams with pretty pictures of bunnies and duckies -- the following ultracomplex 3-step procedure:

  1. Go to the NetSource Admin screen
  2. Go to DataSource subsection
  3. Enter the true network storage paths with FQDNs after testing that they're pingable through a fucking command prompt.

That's it. Open the fucking admin application, go to the right page, enter the fucking path, done. My technotard girlfriend could complete that inside 30 minutes.

If your job is in a data center/NOC and you have no idea what the fuck "UNC", "path" or "FQDN" mean, you are not a "network administrator", you're a fuckwit.

Root Cause: 17

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Monday, April 23, 2007

Cue the Singing Vikings

If my knowledge of $PortalCrap was water, a ladybug could die of thirst. I know that no one can describe it without a load of buzzwords and marketing phrases like "unified portal framework with an industrial strength foundation which includes flexible deployment architectures to drive maximum portal value at minimum cost" and "modular services which include search, collaboration, content management, and interaction management through extensions which expand the value and reach to provide solutions to a greater set of enterprise challenges. to help minimize risk and meet specialized requirements."

OK, but what the fuck does it do? Who knows? Who cares? The only thing that I know it does is hog the goddamned communications ports. It's a petulant child that wants all the candy. If it can't have ports 80/8080/443/8443 all to itself, it won't play. Load $PortalCrap first and we can't use standard comm ports. Load $OurBigApp first and $PortalCrap will refuse any SSL connections.

How do I know this? Because I spent days back and forth with some schmuck who told me that his system which had "no third-party apps" was still failing. It was like being in a Monty Python Sketch:


REC: So what system are you running?

Customer: Well there's UNIX and third-party software; UNIX, $YourBigApp and third-party software; UNIX, $YourBigApp, database and third-party software; third-party software, $YourBigApp, database and third-party software; third-party software, UNIX, third-party software, third-party software, $YourBigApp and third-party software; third-party software, third-party software, third-party software, UNIX and third-party software; third-party software, third-party software, third-party software, third-party software, third-party software, third-party software, baked beans, third-party software, third-party software, third-party software and third-party software; or a five-rack Beowulf cluster of high-end blade servers with a petabyte of RAID-10 storage running a homogeneous mixture of supported UNIX flavours, database, $YourBigApp and third-party software.


REC: Have you got anything without third-party software on it?


Customer: Well there's third-party software, UNIX, database and third-party software. That's not got much third-party software on it.


REC: I don't want any third-party software!



With Ethereal logs I was able to see what was happening and managed to get this guy to reproduce it, but only by promising him that we would indeed also install the spa... I mean, third-party software. Which then broke the system. The fix: he can have the spam... dammit! He can have his $PortalCrap as long as he installs it somewhere other than on any server with $OurBigApp.

Because a lot of our customers use spa... I mean, $PortalCrap, I wrote a Notice. Last year. When prodded, our Doc Manager sends out another request for approval every few months. She did so for this Notice last week.

My Notice is simple and complete. It describes the problem seen, fully explains the cause, and even provides the solution, all in fewer than 300 words. Comes the reply from the Product Monkey responsible: I don't have enough knowledge in this area to comment one way or the other.

You don't need to know it, you fuckwit! You're supposed to know it but you don't need to! Everything's right there in the Notice! Just OK the goddamned thing and we won't get another customer submitting another ticket because spam is causing spam to break whenever spam is installed on spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam...

x-posted to HuSi where there's a poll.

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In compliance with $MegaCorp's general policies as well as my desire to
continue living under a roof and not the sky or a bus shelter, I add this:

DISCLAIMER:
The views expressed on this blog are my own and
do not necessarily reflect the views of $MegaCorp, even if every
single one of my cow-orkers who has discovered this blog agrees with me
and would also like to see the implementation of Root Cause: 17-Fuckwit.