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Top 10: True Stories from the Software Development Front
10. Flew a support specialist across the country (6+ hour flight) at great expense to make emergency repairs to a server. Upon arrival, discovered the problem: server was unplugged from the 110V electrcal wall socket. The cleaning person needed someplace to plug their vacuum cleaner in.
9. During a critical software demo, discovered that one of the developers had replaced our corporate logo with an animated .GIF of El Chupacabra, fangs dripping with blood.
8. Discovered that for the past 10 weeks, our project manager had been copy-n-pasting the Project Status Report in its entirety, because "no new milestones had been achieved." This practice was uncovered when somebody noticed the Christmas vacation schedule was absent from the prior week's report.
7. Installed a remote workstation reboot widget on a programmer's workstation, that allowed anyone with PING access on the network to restart his PC rudely. The reason: person in question was an eBay addict and loved sniping auctions at the last possible second. His screams of agony were *epic*. Same programmer also played FPS games on company time. He never did figure out what was happening; kept begging IT to get him a "computer that worked."
6. A programmer thought it would be funny to search-and-replace every occurance of the "Are you sure?" dialog in our software with "Are you fucking sure?". The team kept discovering and fixing "Are you fucking sure?" dialogs weeks later, and I'm certain at least one build made it through quality testing and was used by customers.
5. Marketing guy complained his Drive C was out of space. When IT came to swap in a bigger drive, discovered the reason it was full: gigabytes of pornography.
4. Once delivered software to the customer with hardwired IP addresses in the product. ("Funny, it worked fine back at the office...")
3. Once spent 10 minutes explaining the legend of El Chupacabra to a room full of high-power executives in suits (see #9 above).
2. To fix a customer emergency, we built a new server from scratch (hardware + software) in one hour, then drove like a madman to the airport to personally fly the server cross-country in business class. Yes, it had its own ticket and occupied the seat next to mine. Time was so tight I made it to the Atlanta airport 15 minutes before departure, and left my car parked in the tow-away zone at the curb; threw a $20 bill at a porter and begged him to watch my car until co-workers following me to the airport could claim it (try THAT post-911). I had no baggage, had forgotten my suit jacket, but by GOD that server got delivered and installed 4 hours later and worked perfectly the first time. I also had no return ticket and had to buy one with my own credit card.
1. For 45 minutes, I distracted a room full of potential customers with jokes and UFO conspiracy theories, because the demo laptop was password-protected and nobody knew the password.
10. Flew a support specialist across the country (6+ hour flight) at great expense to make emergency repairs to a server. Upon arrival, discovered the problem: server was unplugged from the 110V electrcal wall socket. The cleaning person needed someplace to plug their vacuum cleaner in.
9. During a critical software demo, discovered that one of the developers had replaced our corporate logo with an animated .GIF of El Chupacabra, fangs dripping with blood.
8. Discovered that for the past 10 weeks, our project manager had been copy-n-pasting the Project Status Report in its entirety, because "no new milestones had been achieved." This practice was uncovered when somebody noticed the Christmas vacation schedule was absent from the prior week's report.
7. Installed a remote workstation reboot widget on a programmer's workstation, that allowed anyone with PING access on the network to restart his PC rudely. The reason: person in question was an eBay addict and loved sniping auctions at the last possible second. His screams of agony were *epic*. Same programmer also played FPS games on company time. He never did figure out what was happening; kept begging IT to get him a "computer that worked."
6. A programmer thought it would be funny to search-and-replace every occurance of the "Are you sure?" dialog in our software with "Are you fucking sure?". The team kept discovering and fixing "Are you fucking sure?" dialogs weeks later, and I'm certain at least one build made it through quality testing and was used by customers.
5. Marketing guy complained his Drive C was out of space. When IT came to swap in a bigger drive, discovered the reason it was full: gigabytes of pornography.
4. Once delivered software to the customer with hardwired IP addresses in the product. ("Funny, it worked fine back at the office...")
3. Once spent 10 minutes explaining the legend of El Chupacabra to a room full of high-power executives in suits (see #9 above).
2. To fix a customer emergency, we built a new server from scratch (hardware + software) in one hour, then drove like a madman to the airport to personally fly the server cross-country in business class. Yes, it had its own ticket and occupied the seat next to mine. Time was so tight I made it to the Atlanta airport 15 minutes before departure, and left my car parked in the tow-away zone at the curb; threw a $20 bill at a porter and begged him to watch my car until co-workers following me to the airport could claim it (try THAT post-911). I had no baggage, had forgotten my suit jacket, but by GOD that server got delivered and installed 4 hours later and worked perfectly the first time. I also had no return ticket and had to buy one with my own credit card.
1. For 45 minutes, I distracted a room full of potential customers with jokes and UFO conspiracy theories, because the demo laptop was password-protected and nobody knew the password.
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This Top 10 is a bit different, in that every single one of these items actually happened to me, or was witnessed by me.
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Comments23
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oh wow.
what a life.
what a life.