Mindless IT questions

[Fifty2One]

Ok my turn to rant.

I've been building web-based applications for this firm for a while now as a 3rd party contractor. They decide they need to employ someone in-house who who will do all the administrative stuff and help out on some coding (vb.net/c#). Fair enough.

So all the code is written in an n-tier structure where the business objects are seperated from the web pages blah blah blah. I spend the best part of three weeks explaining to the newcomer why we do this. "Yeah cool. I see that. That really makes sense" etc etc is the response.

So I've built a bunch of classes to abstract away from an xml news feed service. All the newcomer has to do is grab a typical class called article and load the webpage with it's properties. Well he's had previous .net experience hasn't he? So when his boss says can you create a list of articles each with a brief summary of the article text, he decides to go it alone.

First off he writes some code to trim the body text to a minimum number of characters. He doesn't check beforehand that the body text is at least the length of the string he's trying to trim down to. So with all short articles an error is thrown.

He then proceeds to NOT place this code in one place in the business object which I had told him about a thousand times to do but in every single webpage where the article is rendered. (It turned out to be 10 different places). He installs it on the live server and of course the news service sends down a short article through the feed and the site breaks.

I have to trawl through the site searching for all the copies of the crappy code and point it to a singular debugged function.

Don't get me wrong. Writing buggy code is human. But if someone has taken hours explaining to you how to do something you don't know how to do and then you proceed to just completely ignore them. Then I start to get aggravated.

Geeee DanCat if you and this other person team up and get a government or large coprorate contract the two of you could carry this tag team on until retirement age and then get on the consulting bandwagon.
But seriously if you keep hopping into the bail the bugger out mode then the person will never take ownership or responsibility for the messups created... let the employer get pissed enough and then save the day BEFORE they promote the newcomer for all YOUR hard work.

 

[Fifty2One]

Darn, I have to buy another new printer; the darn Paper light is on again and it refuses to print any of my forms.

 

[Banana]

Dan-cat, buy the newcomer a toaster.

It'll teach him a lesson!

 

[dan-cat]

But seriously if you keep hopping into the bail the bugger out mode then the person will never take ownership or responsibility for the messups created... let the employer get pissed enough and then save the day BEFORE they promote the newcomer for all YOUR hard work.

It's an interesting point.

I've stayed in this mode because as a 3rd party contractor, I need to keep my good name intact. So I've always assumed that jumping in and fixing this kind of stuff would do that. But as you say, I might just be doing the opposite.

 

[dan-cat]

Dan-cat, buy the newcomer a toaster.

It'll teach him a lesson!

It was almost his phone that grew an arm today.

 

[Sum Guy]

At my place of work, I recently finished a secondment to a different department.

Seems I'm the only one that knows enough Access to do the job, including the outsider they hired to do it. Anyways, I fixed up the mess and made it work.

Week from now, I'm starting a new job. Same firm but in a different building. I have just discovered that they will changing the program that we download the raw data from into my database. The result, none of my queries will work.

What do you think? Another secondment or will they be blaming everything on me.

Already covered my a$$ if its the second choice.
If its the first, "Sorry, I just started here. I can't go on a secondment for at least 6 months".

 

[Fifty2One]

Just got back from the plant floor because My printer is not printing, all the cables are connected and I tried a couple of times to print - it just is not working...
The barcode printer needed a restart, they have been glitchy since new, however I have to laugh at I tried a couple of times to print because there was 137 print missions in queue and the time spread from first to last was 5 minutes
... LOL

I mentioned to the end user that if it doesnt print immediately after clicking the print button on the screen - call me

 

[Wayne Cramer]

At my place of work, I recently finished a secondment to a different department.

Seems I'm the only one that knows enough Access to do the job, including the outsider they hired to do it. Anyways, I fixed up the mess and made it work.

Week from now, I'm starting a new job. Same firm but in a different building. I have just discovered that they will changing the program that we download the raw data from into my database. The result, none of my queries will work.

.

I love when this happens! I'm a contractor at a firm where the powers that be changed all the SAP enterprise system reports and voila - all the Access applications I've been working on puked. No concern about the fish downstream when making the change. But, as a contractor I love people like that watching out for my job security. If I was na employee I'd be pulling my hair out.

 

[Fifty2One]

At my place of work, I recently finished a secondment to a different department.

Seems I'm the only one that knows enough Access to do the job, including the outsider they hired to do it. Anyways, I fixed up the mess and made it work.

Week from now, I'm starting a new job. Same firm but in a different building. I have just discovered that they will changing the program that we download the raw data from into my database. The result, none of my queries will work.

What do you think? Another secondment or will they be blaming everything on me.

Already covered my a$$ if its the second choice.
If its the first, "Sorry, I just started here. I can't go on a secondment for at least 6 months".

hahaha just reread this one and was thinking - why not suggest they sub contract the fixes to SUMGUY Inc? You could do the fixes after hours as an outside contractor


lol just finished explaining that there is no toner or ink cartridges in a thermal printer which is why it needs thermal paper. someone with the bean counting hat on purchased paper for the production area that is plain paper and they were trying to source new cartridges for the printer because it was generating blank sheets.
Good thing the bean counter bought 12 cases of plain paper rolls for a further price break

 

[dan-cat]

I'm going to rant again just to show that it is not always non-technical people who are clueless.

I'm re-developing this web-site that currently uses a single 2MB xml file to store its collection of products. On the main product page the entire xml file has to be loaded into memory in order to filter out the single product required. I'm rewriting it so it a single record is pulled from SQL instead.

Get this. On one single load event of the page. That 2mb file is loaded into memory no less than 5 seperate times. There are four related products for each product that need to be displayed on the page. So instead of loading the collection of products once and pulling one at a time from this single collection, these "third party contractors", yes folks these people are doing this for a living, loaded the entire collection into memory from scratch for each related product. Unbelievable.

 

[Sum Guy]

I'm going to rant again just to show that it is not always non-technical people who are clueless.

I'm re-developing this web-site that currently uses a single 2MB xml file to store its collection of products. On the main product page the entire xml file has to be loaded into memory in order to filter out the single product required. I'm rewriting it so it a single record is pulled from SQL instead.

Get this. On one single load event of the page. That 2mb file is loaded into memory no less than 5 seperate times. There are four related products for each product that need to be displayed on the page. So instead of loading the collection of products once and pulling one at a time from this single collection, these "third party contractors", yes folks these people are doing this for a living, loaded the entire collection into memory from scratch for each related product. Unbelievable.

How many days would that take to come up on dial up?

 

[KalelGmoon]

Hi all. I am back and I love the stories, I know I get my share here. they all had me rolling

and on the co.uk debate thing. isnt this site still owned by an American? or has that changed in the couple monthes since I have been gone?

 

[boblarson]

and on the co.uk debate thing. isnt this site still owned by an American?

Never has been owned by an American (as far as I know he's not American unless he's transplanted). It is owned by Jon who lives in Brighton in England.

 

[Call_Me_Sam]

Can i add a discussion with our NoHelpdesk..

Me: My wifi connection isn't working.
IT: that's because you need a network cable
Me: but the office is wifi enabled..that's why we moved here..
IT: No i'll have to order you a cable..all laptop need to be hardwired
Me: but i'll need to go to meeting rooms for presentations
IT: Ah, the wifi will work in the meeting rooms
Me: then why not in my part of the office itself, which is two steps from one of the meeting rooms..
IT: because the office isn't wifi enabled...
Me:..??? but we moved because the whole office would be enabled...
IT: it is enabled..but not for deskbound laptop users..???
Me: i'm not permanently desk bound that's why i have a laptop????!!

Can anyone see where this was going...a week round and the IT Analyst who was ordering a cable came and said i won't be needing a cable, because the office is wifi enabled...

 

[oumahexi]

My boss asked me to phone the schools to say their email was down so they shouldn't try and access it. I was supposed to tell them that we'd email them when it's back up???
I told them to try the following day as it was already after lunch.

 

[ASherbuck]

After installing a program update I was called back to the user's desk approximately 15 minutes later. They were complaining that the screen had just gone blank and the latest update must have broken it.
I moved the mouse, screen saver turned off and the user was wowed with my amazing trouble shooting skills.

For a while, in high school I volunteered to tutor seniors on things like reading email, reading news sites, etc. Wow.
CD trays became coffee holders, people were picking up the mouse and sticking it on the screen, we had a guy trying to read, with his glasses on, the bottom of a cd. It was a riot, we had fun.


My bosses are very hesitant to trust technology. It took me forever to convince them that we should at least be using a machine or external hard drive to back up user data. I finally get the green light, "Back up the data then reformat the machines." I reformat, and get a phone call the next morning. "Where's my file?" "On the external." "I don't like it, put it back the way it was before."
So I just linked the folders to the external and renamed them the way they were originally, no one has noticed yet.

 

[rainman89]

I get a lot of "My keyboard is broken, it wont type" or "my computer is frozen."

I click on the screen with the mouse to activate the window and it starts typing..........

I love my job

 

[Fifty2One]

Why is it that the people that whine the most for computer retraining when there is even a minor modification to an app are the same people that can hack through all the security and firewalls on night shift so they can surf the net during break times...

 

[secretcrowds]

Having to tell someone how to scroll through files in a folder using the scrollbar at the bottom of the file window...

a sad sad day

 

[Friday]

Many years ago I told a woman in our office that if she would move the mouse in a circular motion it would affect the speed of the computer, clockwise would speed it up, counter clockwise would slow it down. Then two years down the road I notice she is still doing it whenever she thought the pc was running slow...

We had a senior manager at corporate hq rename a bunch of the folders on our network data drive. He didn't think the names made sense. Of course, none of our programs would run after that...