Reply With QuoteWell that's your problem right there. You don't spread pixie dust on computers, you shove it up the ass of anyone stupid and incompetent enough to have such ridiculous expectations!Originally Posted by Alikat Astrae
I vill just vithhold ze antidote.
/evillaugh
Well that's your problem right there. You don't spread pixie dust on computers, you shove it up the ass of anyone stupid and incompetent enough to have such ridiculous expectations!
OMFG Shitty Enterprise Developers for the LOSE.
So I get an escalated ticket, because I'm one of two people who are the highest helpdesk escalation points that doesn't also have the title "Manager" or get deployed into the field. I'm apparently becoming something of a favored child for orphaned tickets that noone else wants to deal with. Okay by me, I signed up for this.
A client has an issue with a piece of software someone sold them. Nobody seems to know who sold it to them, they vendor has probably been bought out once and had their subsequent parent company bought out as well since this was originally installed but I get assigned to work on it because noone else, not even one of the engineers who is more knowledgeable than I am, can figure it out. I'm the "last ditch" guy but it's been 14 hours and I'm still sitting here, mouth agape due to the amazing levels of fail.
This app allows viewing of some sorts of scanned somethings on a remote server. I'm not fully clear on what exactly it does because you have to sign in to see it work. My job was just to get them to the point where they COULD sign in.
This is a java app. Noone on site knows anything about it except that it's absolutely necessary for THEIR clients and that it's not working.
So I remote in.
Begin troubleshooting.
Check the shortcut properties (no icon, mind you, just the blank "broken image" icon that windows 7 gives).
Suddenly, a shortcut target line that's so long it word-wraps to two lines (almost 3) if you paste it into notepad appears.
It's calling (Path to javaws.exe) -longswitchname (path to file).
Pretty straightforward, you'd think. Just edit the shortcut properties to match the extant setup and everything should work!
Nope. Chuck Testa.
Am I upset yet?
Not so, my lord. I am too much i' the sun.
As it turns out, each and every individual install has SIXTY FUCKING FOLDERS in C:\%userprofile%\Application Data\Sun\Java\Deployment\cache\6.0
and they ALL contain various patches of the same fucking program (Which I might add will not launch directly.)*AND* each of the computers has multiple users logging into it *AND* they use an antivirus solution that has it's own firewall (rant for another time).
The shortcut path calls, at the end of the excessively long string, a 16 character hexadecimal extension-less file, of which there are multiples in each of said 60 folders, in order to launch the actual application.
Chose the wrong one?
Fail with non-descript java error.
On the wrong java version?
Fails faster with non-descript java error.
ABSOLUTELY NO FUCKING DOCUMENTATION.
I banged my head against the desk for about an hour, made it work on one machine, and then find out that that hexadecimal-named extension-less file?
Unique hexadecimal name for EVERY SINGLE FUCKING MACHINE even if it's in the same one of the aforementioned 60 folders. No porting shortcuts from machine to machine with group policy or folder redirection, just hunting down files without extensions (literally, I had show file extensions for known file types turned on) and trying them one at a time until java stopped throwing errors FOR EVERY SINGLE COMPUTER AND EVERY SINGLE USER ON THAT COMPUTER.
The program also only works when you have a particular version of java installed and ONLY if you have no OTHER versions installed so there was all sorts of rebooting fun figuring that out.
I got it all working in the end, but I really wanted to beat the shit out of whichever project manager or developer came up with THAT particular software licensing concept, all for an app that used a several hundred kb file to connect to the internet.
I fucking hate "enterprise" software.
For copyright purposes, all of my posts are covered under the "Do What The Fuck You Want To Public License"
http://sam.zoy.org/wtfpl/
Noone should sue or be sued ambiguously.
Oh wow and I thought I had it bad this week, failing to install Windows 7 at home. Had two different dvds, one even an original oem, the other burned from iso. Didn't get anywhere with either.
Resin for the fresh install was a new ssd for windows so there was another possible source for failure.
Gave up after 5 hours. Found out that the "missing dvd drivers" message means "your install medium is fuxxed" instead. New dvd yesyerday, no issues.
I've run into that a ton of times with poor writers/writer software.
I usually solve it by finding something else to do and burning stuff at x1 speed and pretending I'm at "I'm going to go make a sandwich" levels of dial-up internet.
Some things just try to optimize beyond their capabilities.
For copyright purposes, all of my posts are covered under the "Do What The Fuck You Want To Public License"
http://sam.zoy.org/wtfpl/
Noone should sue or be sued ambiguously.
funny part: I burned the nonfunctional disk at work, so I had enough time to burn it at 0.1x speed ;-)
(and the other non-working disk was an original recovery disk, heh)
We have some devs like that too. However the network nazi pushes reboots and makes the machines reboot with unsaved work. Makes for entertaining status meetings "waaah, my machine rebooted and lost my work". And the silly thing is that they're the productive devs.
heh wow, outside of crashes even SOE warned about reboots and gave a window to get to safety and that was a video game and not someone's workstation with work critical stuff to save.
Today we sail
On the Solar Rail
For there's much we just don't know
So farewell with a kiss
Then it's fast for the mist
Till we're sleeping in the cold below
Yeah, I'm no Mordac, Preventer of Information Services.
Give them an inch and they will take a mile. Big boys and girls don't need to have their hands held.
I'll lower the Dev team slowly on a rope while they're dangling over an immense CPU cooling fan, and when they beg me for mercy, I'll say "File not found."
Coworker: I got an email from EFax
Me: Okay
Coworker: I don't use EFax and never heard of it
Me: So delete it, it's spam
Coworker: But it got sent to a bunch of people in one of the legal departments, and a couple managers, and even CC'ed to a few guys a couple times each
Me: It's spam, delete it
Coworker: But we were looking at an electronic fax service
Me: Was it EFax?
Coworker: No
Me: Delete it, it's spam
Coworker: If we lose business because you made me delete this EFax email, I'm blaming you
Me: If it gets sent to two people twice, it's spam
Coworker: But it was sent to legal!
...
Monday night I call my immediate boss and ask him if I should drive in so we can run our routine test & Maintenance on the systems that had the power backup issues recently, and he got back to me an hour later and said no, the Dev team lead was using the array. So the power failed Tuesday morning, and the targeted systems went down hard, and when my immediate boss tried to point out to the main boss that we'd been ready to prevent that the night before, he replied "I thought you'd use that excuse."
I hope you keep track of every request to do proper system checks. Every time they say no so that you can point out that the dev team is why the system crashed.
Today we sail
On the Solar Rail
For there's much we just don't know
So farewell with a kiss
Then it's fast for the mist
Till we're sleeping in the cold below
How the fuck is the TRUTH an "excuse"?
Your "main boss" is a shithead who has no business managing anything.
For copyright purposes, all of my posts are covered under the "Do What The Fuck You Want To Public License"
http://sam.zoy.org/wtfpl/
Noone should sue or be sued ambiguously.
That is true about quite a few "main bosses", though.
'This world may be another planet's hell.'{Aldous Huxley}
'After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.'{Aldous Huxley}
Those mandatory patch/reboots happen in the middle of the night. The guys go home with unsaved work.
How does a power outage ever cost more than a few hours of work? People suddenly forget the basics of source control systems?
Meddle not in the affairs of Wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger. - Gildor Inglorion
Because they run a gigantic batch-style operation running across a network consisting of hundreds of CPU's and they are doing it in some shitty older version of Fedora Core in such a sloppy fashion that if multiple units in the network crash they wind up losing hours of work output. We can't even perform maintenance on these units without what they call "a graceful shutdown." I believe deep down that these yahoos are such lazy sloppy programmers that they leave records open between file operations just to save time by not properly closing after each transaction. Otherwise we wouldn't see so much havoc arising from every crashed raid array and nearly every forced restart.
its too bad their processing software does not work like Luxrender. When I do something complex in my modeling and render it over my network. The software Luxrender every 20min saves what is called an FLM file that contains everything done to that point Pretty much if the power goes off and I come home and boot everything back up, It will pick up from that progress point. Naturally computer rendering is far different than what your devs are doing though.
Today we sail
On the Solar Rail
For there's much we just don't know
So farewell with a kiss
Then it's fast for the mist
Till we're sleeping in the cold below
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