Wednesday, October 06, 2010

There's a NetApp for that

PRIO-1! PRIO-0! THE SKY IS FALLING! WE'RE DOOMED!! HAAAALLLP!!!

What a way to start the day. A quick look showed Srini works for $BigInterwebs who are still in development. You can't have a Prio-1 if you're in development, and if you want 'round the clock support, $MegaCorp makes you pay extra for it. So I don't feel too bad that it was almost lunch before I even see just the tip of this iceberg.

Reading through the problem, it was going to be after lunch before I answered it. The puppy needed feeds and it's marked Prio-3 (because that's what it is).

I'm not being as much of a dick as it seems. Srini is in California; his day starts after mine is well over, and thank fuck for that because it means he's unlikely to ever get up early enough to try calling me. Copypasta continues:

$YourBigApp %datastore% param has a limit of 255 char length since we are limited with 4 filesystem folders in our Production Environment so unable to include additional folders.Please let us know below are there any available options!!

1. Reference a config file to maintain this param value or any enhancement in future.
2. Any alternative to specify a way to store more folder names
A field length of 256 characters for the directory list should be able to allow even the least creative out there to specify at least 10 sub-directory location. And since one subdirectory can safely hold around 2.1 billion (~231), it's going to be a special challenge to run out of room anytime soon. And I told him so, even explaining how to map and rename in a network-neutral sort of way.

And that was Srini taken care of. If only some of these other tickets were as easy.

This morning I logged in and the IM went nuts, popping up windows from four different mooks at Central who had tried to ping me about some ticket. There were more than a dozen mails all referring to the same damned ticket number. It dawned on me that I hadn't finished building a repro yesterday and this weird international sorting problem was a big deal for $EuroTelco...

And then I saw which company had the ticket number:
Escalate!! make the priority to 2!!

We have a limitation on the filer provided NetApp storage which can accomdate 91k files per folder but our environment creates around 40K files per day since we have trasncripts,email and other attachments. This is the defect..

You have NetApp storage? Which we don't support. Which we told you {clicky-clickety-click} a whole month ago we don't support. And you went and got it anyway even though it's unnecessary, a burden on our system, causes you a performance hit, and it can't hold more than two days' worth of your files in a directory?

Had you listed to us in the first place you'd have saved time and money and aggro and you'd have a system which, based on your stated fill rate of 41K docs a day, would be able to hold no fewer than 2004 years' worth of files.

Root Cause:17 - Fuckwit.
We already told you this shit but yeah, what do we know?

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Thursday, July 15, 2010

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.

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Tuesday, July 29, 2008

A Hot Market

The Panopticon -- designed like a giant greenhouse -- is well over 30° today. I have a massive backlog, more than a dozen callbacks and two full repros I have to build, and fuckwitted baby-talking cow-orkers. No fucking air conditioning. Still, this isn't the worst place in Germany to be working. This is, an office around 300km northwest of here. I could almost feel sorry for Sven Düsterhaus.

I really don't give a rat's ass about Oracle vs. SAP and CEO pissing contests, but I grew up with the law, worked in it briefly, and on occasion have found comic relief in file courtroom documents. Scientology slapdowns aside, there's some good stuff out in the dockets, whether it's that defense of a student's use of the word "fuck" (anyone have a link to that?) to the entire SCO fiasco, I occasionally take a few hours to read some long document and cross-check it over at LexisNexis.

A buddy told me this morning that I had to check out Oracle's amended complaint. Holy massive collusion, Batman! The scope and scale is un-fucking-imaginable. The aforementioned Sven is SAP's chief counsel and he's fucked. The company knew, all the way to the top. Their documents prove it. The contracts show that customer were participatory in what they had to know was illegal.

When I first heard of Tomorrow Now from a friend who'd left Siebel to join up I asked him how the fuck they could possibly have more information on the software than Siebel itself. He was kinda vague but insistent that they'd succeed and chided me for refusing their offer. TN, he told me, was even going to be offering patches. Umm... how?

Reading through the complaint I found out exactly how: they'd load up their copies of older version, download patches (which they weren't authorised to take), apply it, run a diff on the machine, then collect the mods and rebrand it all.

Question for any Oracle people out there: how the fuck did Tomorrow Now manage to download five terabytes of software before you noticed something fishy? And that using a bank of 20 servers scraping your entire site and catalog from just one IP address?!

The filing reads almost like a Grisham novel without the guns and hotshot attorneys. I'm going to give away the ending: the last page is a demand for a jury trial. Not even the Chewbacca Defense can save SAP. Their only hope may be Steve Martin's old schtick. I'm positively giddy.

Contractually obligating customers to illegally download thousands of gigs of software from the supplier they're leaving? Fuckwits. Only a German like Henning Kagermann could actually think that Oracle wouldn't sue because then they'd have to sue their own customers, too, utterly failing to realise that Oracle could just grant the customers retroactive licenses in return for, um, returning to Oracle. And paying the back maintenance fees, natch.

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Thursday, May 24, 2007

Pests

Today we received what has to be the most fuckwitted ticket we've ever received. EVAR. It puts all the screenshot people to shame. It's a special kind of fuckwittery which is in a class by itself. And it's mine.

I have experienced something worse than the fuckwits who sully my workplace, waste my bits, force me to wear out keyboard after keyboard and who have caused me to create a dent in my dense laminate desk in front of the keyboard. If you've read the Bee Guy's site, you know that the accidental importation of a pest can be absolutely devastating. In their natural habitat they can be controlled but in a new environment they can wreak havoc. So it is with Varroa in North America, so it is with cane toads in Australia, so it is with Guidos in Germany. Glub help us, they've arrived.

The ride to Regensburg is normally a fairly pleasant 90 minutes across the middle Bavarian hills. Due to the number of passengers, Deutsche Bahn normally uses double-decker carriages but on the weekends, it's usually the old-style cars. The new seats are impossible to lie across and generally uncomfortable thanks to their brilliant ergonomic design. It's loud in the area between where the carriages join, and there you might find a toilet.

In the carriage behind me sat the three children, the oldest maybe 16, the youngest still waiting for his growth spurt. I recognised the look immediately, chuckled, shook my head and went back to the sudoku puzzle. You see, in Germany everyone tries to find some niche, some way of standing out and drawing attention. Within a month of the German release of Boogie Nights there was some blonde ditz sporting rollerblades, calling herself "roller girl" and making the talk show rounds. No, she didn't do porn films nor would she even though so many celebrities here have done so to get their fame. Gina Wild, Dolly Buster, and a whole host of others whose names don't mean shit outside this here Reich.

If it's in any way different -- a look, a style, an activity -- as sure as shit stinks some Germans will do it. The Guido look appealed to these little twits. Fine. Hell, the guidos in NYC get laid (if they can get it up after all that coke) so maybe it'll work here. Plus it's a new look: baggy, flappy clothes, custom-ripped stuff, "bling", shaved eyebrows, kid stuff.

And had the trio just copied the look it would've been fine. But they didn't just copy the look. They had to be authentic, and that means "annoying". They'd traipse like little girls together to the bathroom which honestly is so small that obese passengers can't get in at all, so one would have to wait outside. Then they'd head back to their seats. To get between points A and B they'd open the door by me AND WE WOULD ALL BE DEAFENED UNTIL IT CLOSED and then open the door at the other end of the carriage SO THAT IT GOT EVEN LOUDER and after a couple minutes, they'd do this in reverse.

These girls needed to go back to the bathroom every 10 minutes. After a few times one of them decided what he really needed to do while waiting for the other two was to stand in the doorway and block the door SO THAT IT STAYED REALLY LOUD. As they walked back to their seats, the stench of cheap cologne wafted through the carriage. They were dripping in cologne, hair gel and eyebrow wax. That shit's like this decade's jheri curl for whitey.

When they held the door open again I asked the little douchebag to let it close but he couldn't hear me. So I tapped him on the shoulder and repeated my request, even the "please". The kid screamed something at me but then moved away. A minute later as he came back through with his friends, the oldest one started shouting at me. Along with the shouting came the threats of physical violence and he was posturing real pretty.

My first instinct is to remove the threat. I was in a confined space, had one shitball to my side and another in front. What I'd have to do would be a quick jab to my left followed by a reach to pull the biggest one into a sleeper hold. But this is Germany. Even if the kid hits me first I can't hit him back unless my life is in danger. You can go to jail defending yourself.

The stupid look, the eyebrow wax, the cologne, the pugilistic attitude, the irresponsibility, the overall senselessness has come to Germany, and unlike NYC we're ill-equipped to deal with it. A preemptive strike would've changed their attitudes quickly. Were I in the US I could've done so in most states having been threatened, especially since a controlling hold isn't seen in the same way punching a guy's lights out is. We also have this air of social acceptance. I'm all for laissez faire as long as the fuckers aren't causing me any problems. But here you're supposed to be "tolerant"; you must show respect even for those who themselves show none.

With luck this'll die out quickly and the little shits will be mocked. That's actually quite likely. But since Guidos come from NYC and hang out in clubs and, as I mentioned before, seem to get some play, it may grow, and if it does, I'll be looking for a new place to live. Norway perhaps; the Finnish language is bloody difficult to learn.

And the other idiots?

Our Customer has built an external website with $YourBigApp through which they want to sell their products – mostly $SpecialtyProduct to their customers. Unfortunately, their built-with-$YourBigApp website seems to return very low ranks by external web engines and web crawlers like the ones from google. If a customer in Belgium types in the keyword $SpezielProdukt" (Dutch for $SpecialtyProduct), it is difficult to find the customer website back in the result list. Obviously, if the customer adds $CustomerName to the keyword list, this is OK, but then the customer would be knowing that $Customer is actually selling $SpecialtyProduct (which they mostly do not).

Because of the fact that their built-with-$YourBigApp website scores bad with web engines in promoting and selling their products, the customer starts questionning whether $YourBigApp was the correct product to actually build their customer facing website with. This issue is becoming very political

Consequently, we need to give them our best possible advice of what advice, methods, tips, tricks are to improve the ranking of their built-with-$YourBigApp website by web engines and web crawlers. This issue is becoming very urgent.

Thanks a lot in advance!

My answer:

Dear Fuckwit,

If you don't know how to bake a cake do you blame Pillsbury for their shitty flour?

Go die,
REC

OK, wishful thinking. I sent 'em a couple links to search engine info as well as to that Slashdot story from a few weeks ago.

This ticket has to convince Internal Apps Development to implement my Root Cause: 17-Fuckwit. I don't know what else to close this out with. "7-Not an issue"? "12-No research"? I have to pick something and for the life of me I have no idea which root cause to choose. Only a 17 fits.

x-posted to HuSi.

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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.