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Dilbert is a documentary. My experiences here prove it.
Thursday, February 08, 2007
A co-worker told me today, that "this is the only place I've heard a programmer say, 'I'm not a techie,' and was proud of it."
I think that sums up this place pretty accurately.
I think that sums up this place pretty accurately.
Wednesday, November 19, 2003
Been a while...but I gotta vent.
New thing today. A consultant, who has been here for years, sends my boss an email this morning, saying that "nothing's working."
Senorita Gilligan (my boss) says something to the effect of, "I thought moving these databases was transparent and we wouldn't have to notify the programmers." Don't know where it got that idea, because I never said that. Anyway, I asked for specifics, and this consultant told Senorita Gilligan that database x and database y didn't work. Hmmmm, I responded that database x was down because we are refreshing it--all the programmers were informed two days ago this was coming. And as for database y, yes, there were some problems this morning, but they were all fixed by 10 a.m.
Great way to start the day.
***** later
OK, just talked to the consultant. Never said any such thing to Senorita Gilligan. What a complete fucking total lying asshole Senorita Gilligan is! Such a turd, the entire world should know.
New thing today. A consultant, who has been here for years, sends my boss an email this morning, saying that "nothing's working."
Senorita Gilligan (my boss) says something to the effect of, "I thought moving these databases was transparent and we wouldn't have to notify the programmers." Don't know where it got that idea, because I never said that. Anyway, I asked for specifics, and this consultant told Senorita Gilligan that database x and database y didn't work. Hmmmm, I responded that database x was down because we are refreshing it--all the programmers were informed two days ago this was coming. And as for database y, yes, there were some problems this morning, but they were all fixed by 10 a.m.
Great way to start the day.
***** later
OK, just talked to the consultant. Never said any such thing to Senorita Gilligan. What a complete fucking total lying asshole Senorita Gilligan is! Such a turd, the entire world should know.
Thursday, August 21, 2003
God, these "consultants" they hire....
We have one here, a former employee, who does application stuff. You know, like "how to use" and reporting bugs to the vendor, etc. Not a technical person, per se, but she does have a degree in computer programming. Allegedly.
We're trying to improve performance on a screen, so we try adding an index to a column. This is pretty basic stuff, but the index does not seem to help the performance. The column we indexed was the column used to store the student's first name. When performance did not improve, this consultant said, "Maybe it's the parent's name that got indexed."
Grrrrr. We didn't add any indexes to the parents table; we only added an index to the students table. Maybe she thought that the database just magically indexed some table besides the one I typed. Yeah, that's it--the gremlins must be active today.
We have one here, a former employee, who does application stuff. You know, like "how to use" and reporting bugs to the vendor, etc. Not a technical person, per se, but she does have a degree in computer programming. Allegedly.
We're trying to improve performance on a screen, so we try adding an index to a column. This is pretty basic stuff, but the index does not seem to help the performance. The column we indexed was the column used to store the student's first name. When performance did not improve, this consultant said, "Maybe it's the parent's name that got indexed."
Grrrrr. We didn't add any indexes to the parents table; we only added an index to the students table. Maybe she thought that the database just magically indexed some table besides the one I typed. Yeah, that's it--the gremlins must be active today.
Wednesday, August 20, 2003
I don't know who's worse - duhvelopers or damagement.
I think that damagers who used to be in duhvelopment are probably the worst possible lot.
Do they ever think? Do they ever plan? Will they ever get a clue? Don't hold your breath.
There's a report that has to get written. It's mandated by the state. Of course, the old systems that produced the report have both been replaced. And, of course, no one ever planned to run this report on the new systems. So, now, someone has to write a report that is basically a clone of the old report. The only difference is the source of the data.
One of our damagers told a duhveloper to just "throw it into" a certain database. Of course, that database is for small, non-critical applications. Not a stand-alone report. It's ONE FUCKING REPORT--put it in one of the systems that provides data for it. It's a financial accounting report--maybe it should live in the accounting system? It reports on student-related data--maybe it should live in the student records system? No, just throw it into another database. Then we can move data between THREE DIFFERENT SYSTEMS, instead of just two.
I think that damagers who used to be in duhvelopment are probably the worst possible lot.
Do they ever think? Do they ever plan? Will they ever get a clue? Don't hold your breath.
There's a report that has to get written. It's mandated by the state. Of course, the old systems that produced the report have both been replaced. And, of course, no one ever planned to run this report on the new systems. So, now, someone has to write a report that is basically a clone of the old report. The only difference is the source of the data.
One of our damagers told a duhveloper to just "throw it into" a certain database. Of course, that database is for small, non-critical applications. Not a stand-alone report. It's ONE FUCKING REPORT--put it in one of the systems that provides data for it. It's a financial accounting report--maybe it should live in the accounting system? It reports on student-related data--maybe it should live in the student records system? No, just throw it into another database. Then we can move data between THREE DIFFERENT SYSTEMS, instead of just two.
Friday, August 15, 2003
Hooray for the TCG!
Today, the TCG (Top Computer Goddess) announced she is leaving.
She is not retiring (though that is only a few years ago, if she wished).
She is not taking another job.
She is just quitting. This place was getting to her, so she just quit.
So, hooray for the TCG!
I am so happy for her, that I don't even mind having to work tonight and tomorrow (Saturday). My only question for everyone else was: "Who are they going to dump Scour's work on when it can't do it?"
My happiness was tempered by a duhveloper incident, but TCG's news is so awesome, I am back to being happy again.
And my happiness just grew. The Skipper, the person in charge of our department, just sent out a mail message to all sites about an upgrade--the one I'm installing tonight. In this messages, he mentioned the minimum PC requirements for this version of the software, which includes (and I'm quoting here), "400GB processor"--BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Now, the 'G' and the 'M' aren't even close to each other on the keyboard. And it's MHz, to boot. I love it when idiots make themselves look even more stupid.
Today, the TCG (Top Computer Goddess) announced she is leaving.
She is not retiring (though that is only a few years ago, if she wished).
She is not taking another job.
She is just quitting. This place was getting to her, so she just quit.
So, hooray for the TCG!
I am so happy for her, that I don't even mind having to work tonight and tomorrow (Saturday). My only question for everyone else was: "Who are they going to dump Scour's work on when it can't do it?"
My happiness was tempered by a duhveloper incident, but TCG's news is so awesome, I am back to being happy again.
And my happiness just grew. The Skipper, the person in charge of our department, just sent out a mail message to all sites about an upgrade--the one I'm installing tonight. In this messages, he mentioned the minimum PC requirements for this version of the software, which includes (and I'm quoting here), "400GB processor"--BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Now, the 'G' and the 'M' aren't even close to each other on the keyboard. And it's MHz, to boot. I love it when idiots make themselves look even more stupid.
Tuesday, August 12, 2003
God! Am I only allowed to work with total morons? Just a sample from today:
(running a script in Production which bombs): "Oh, do I need to create them tables first?" Uh...YES, asshole!
(a night-time job doesn't give expected results): Are you sure the job updated the flags? Uh...YES, butt-munch!
If it had a fucking brain, maybe it could debug code. But, it can't. And there are multiple "it"s here. Like fucking tribbles, I swear....
(running a script in Production which bombs): "Oh, do I need to create them tables first?" Uh...YES, asshole!
(a night-time job doesn't give expected results): Are you sure the job updated the flags? Uh...YES, butt-munch!
If it had a fucking brain, maybe it could debug code. But, it can't. And there are multiple "it"s here. Like fucking tribbles, I swear....
Monday, August 11, 2003
Another week, another duhveloper.
This time it's Scour. It wants to create a sequence in an Oracle database. It has looked up the syntax in the book but doesn't know what to do. It won't even try something without asking someone else (in this case, me) to do its work for it. The syntax that was so confusing to it? Create Sequence. That's it.
I don't know about you, but if I wanted to create a sequence and the only syntax I could find was Create Sequence, I'd try, oh I don't know, maybe Create Sequence sequence_name?
This is in a development database. It is supposed to be a place for developers to play and try stuff so they won't bother me. Jeez!
*********************
OK, I started this blog to complain. It's all about my unhappiness.
However, I feel an urge to be honest, and share the good along with the bad.
We are preparing for a major upgrade. Before the upgrade is installed in production, we want to install it in our test environment. Now, if we have to change our application, we compile the code in test and copy the compiled code to production (long story; not my decision). So, the test database is the only place we compile new code. We compile it in test, then test it the test database, and then copy the code to production.
But in preparation for our upgrade, we are going to blow away our test environment and install the upgrade there before the production upgrade. So, no one can compile anything at all once I blow away the test database & install the new version there. This will only be for a few days.
So, one of the duhvelopers is heavily involved in this upgrade. He* is very eager to have me blow away the test environment, just to piss off the other duhvelopers.
I have turned him* to the dark side. I'm so proud!
*See, when you turn to the dark side, you get a less demeaning pronoun!
*********************
What part of I'll email you when it's done. is not clear? Jesus fucking Christ, if it doesn't have an email, the task is not done! Is that so hard to understand?
New rule: Every phone call asking for information already explained to be arriving via a different media (e.g., email), will delay work on requested task for one day. If it is dumb enough to call seven times, it can wait a week.
This time it's Scour. It wants to create a sequence in an Oracle database. It has looked up the syntax in the book but doesn't know what to do. It won't even try something without asking someone else (in this case, me) to do its work for it. The syntax that was so confusing to it? Create Sequence. That's it.
I don't know about you, but if I wanted to create a sequence and the only syntax I could find was Create Sequence, I'd try, oh I don't know, maybe Create Sequence sequence_name?
This is in a development database. It is supposed to be a place for developers to play and try stuff so they won't bother me. Jeez!
*********************
OK, I started this blog to complain. It's all about my unhappiness.
However, I feel an urge to be honest, and share the good along with the bad.
We are preparing for a major upgrade. Before the upgrade is installed in production, we want to install it in our test environment. Now, if we have to change our application, we compile the code in test and copy the compiled code to production (long story; not my decision). So, the test database is the only place we compile new code. We compile it in test, then test it the test database, and then copy the code to production.
But in preparation for our upgrade, we are going to blow away our test environment and install the upgrade there before the production upgrade. So, no one can compile anything at all once I blow away the test database & install the new version there. This will only be for a few days.
So, one of the duhvelopers is heavily involved in this upgrade. He* is very eager to have me blow away the test environment, just to piss off the other duhvelopers.
I have turned him* to the dark side. I'm so proud!
*See, when you turn to the dark side, you get a less demeaning pronoun!
*********************
What part of I'll email you when it's done. is not clear? Jesus fucking Christ, if it doesn't have an email, the task is not done! Is that so hard to understand?
New rule: Every phone call asking for information already explained to be arriving via a different media (e.g., email), will delay work on requested task for one day. If it is dumb enough to call seven times, it can wait a week.
