More shit that pisses you off: What does that say about the quality of your emails?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > More shit that pisses you off: What does that say about the quality of your emails?

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Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

stevewm posted:

I don't want to see or hear anything more about credit cards, ever again...

For the past week, been working on converting our retail stores over to a new credit card platform so we can accept EMV, contactless, etc.. We have been burned several times due to the liability shift, so it was made priority to make the switch ASAP.

Some issues have cropped up at our test store. So I've spent several days running register and ringing customers out so I can see the issues myself that were coming up and figure out how to solve them or report them to the developer. Its been "fun". What has surprised me (though it shouldn't have I guess) is how many times problems are the fault of the customer. A huge amount of people simply don't know how to handle EMV cards yet. I thought our new system was simple... Put the card in, pick debit or credit when asked, enter PIN# or sign when prompted. Remove card when prompted. About every other customer gets a look of dread on their face when you tell them they have to insert their card.

A few seem to have an irrational fear of EMV cards. Had more than one customer pay with cash when they realized they had to use their chip.

People are strange....

Oh, you're introducing PIN credit cards in US now? When I visited US I got retailers that had no idea how to use a PIN CC. Their system accepted the cards but they just put it in then take it out (not giving the terminal to me to put the PIN in) and then wonder that the transaction got declined. But it is much simpler to just swipe and sign the drat receipt. Wireless is even easier for small (under $100) transactions.
And since it provides no benefit to the customer (the PIN), no wonder people are reluctant to use it when what they had before was working just fine.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2017 23:08

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 14:11

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

Thanks Ants posted:

Contactless payment in a pub is dangerous, let me tell you

I agree. The only solution is to not step inside a pub.

Avenging_Mikon posted:

Uh....

What is the advantage to the consumer of having a PIN to the credit card? The money is not theirs, not until they pay the bill .The card gets stolen, they get the charges reversed. I can see how it helps Visa, the merchants and the payment providers, but the consumer? And please, don't say it helps lowering transaction fees, cause' those are now in the stratosphere.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2017 23:29

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

Thanks Ants posted:

Why are so many application developers totally incapable of getting search right? Why does this piece of poo poo application I am trying to use not support any way to search for two words that must appear in the results, and instead treats everything as OR, even when surrounded in quotes?

Because when you do get it right, you make a multi-billion dollars company. The rest just make do with what they have.

# ¿ Apr 21, 2017 15:00

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

CitizenKain posted:

Thankfully its from a provider that knows how to do this. Or at least that's what I've been told. Either way, not my issue.

I did once have to explain to someone why it would be impossible to copy 60gigs of data across a T1 line in 2 days. Saying "I need it in 2 days though" is not going to make it go faster.

Why isn't FedEx a method to consider? They have overnight shipping and they can transport TBs of harddrives/flash drives/optical if needed. Beats having to upgrade your internet connection for once in a blue moon issue.

# ¿ Jun 6, 2017 06:26

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

Agrikk posted:

Your DNA? :Gattica:

Chip implanted in your body when you're born. Unique ID, can automatically recognize you when you're using a computer or talking with an agent over the phone. The commercials could be tailored to me and me alone when I'm walking on the street. What's not to love? And, oh, no more passwords. Ever. At all. Every website would automatically know who I am (name, address, everything) just by visiting the site, since all computers/tablets/devices would be able to pick up the chip's signal and transmit it to whoever is asking. If it can't (if I'm using bootlegged hardware) I am probably a criminal and will report me to the police.

What could possibly go wrong?

# ¿ Jun 9, 2017 03:49

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

stevewm posted:

Java itself though, it's going to be a long time before it goes away unfortunately.

All that people have to do is to make something better (for the server) and Java will go away. So far nobody has, but the future is open.

# ¿ Jul 25, 2017 18:56

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

Gounads posted:

My current contracting gig is "Rebuild our flash based flagship product in JS"

out of the frying pan into the fire

# ¿ Jul 25, 2017 19:39

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

Volmarias posted:

Just like COBOL right?

Exactly like COBOL. When the industry had something better/cheaper they moved. Those that are not off COBOL yet cannot justify the expense of moving. So yes, java will obviously die on the server too at some point when something better will come along. It hasn't yet, so it hasn't died yet. The tools that exist now that aim to kill java on the server are laughable at best. They'll grow ... maybe. They'll improve ... maybe.

# ¿ Jul 25, 2017 23:35

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

Isn't, for a timecard application, much better to just read security cards swipes/signals? why do they have to bother with providing UI to the people? a management UI is needed, of course, but why more than that?

# ¿ Jul 28, 2017 22:53

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

poo poo pissing me off: YAML

If I cannot use nano to edit a drat configuration file without FUBAR it, you're doing it wrong. INI, XML, JSON have their issues, yes, but holy cow I can use whatever drat editor I please, whatever tab spacing i want, however many spaces i choose, and the consuming program will be happy to oblige. gently caress off YAML and whoever insists on using you.

# ¿ Aug 1, 2017 18:13

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

The Fool posted:

I have had no issues using nano to edit yaml files, I don't know what your problem is.

Well ... I did. I do.

code:

property:
    <tab>subProperty: val

and the parser shits itself. with vim all is good.

The concept of "watch your spaces or we throw up" is simply insane in and of itself for a structured text format.

# ¿ Aug 1, 2017 18:43

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

stevewm posted:

Officially YAML doesn't use tabs, it uses spaces. Some parsers do accept tabs, but it should be spaces for best compatibility.

I've been messing with Home Assistant lately which uses YAML for everything. Spaces and new lines ONLY. Tabs anywhere will stop it dead in its tracks. Once I learned to stop with the TAB key, my problems went away.

Exactly my point. Thank you.
Tabs vs spaces is a worthy debate for humans. Parsers should not have these kind of requirements/preferences. If they do, they're wrong.

# ¿ Aug 1, 2017 18:57

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

The Fool posted:

If a standard specifies spaces, just use spaces and move on.

"People do dumb things, learn to live with it" is an advice that can be given to 99% of the "poo poo that's pissing me off" things. Yes, I live with it (until I'll change it), doesn't mean it won't be pissing me off.

On the workstation, yes one can configure editors/IDEs/whatever but when you have to ssh into some god knows what server, and just need to change/add that one property once in a blue moon, asking for a preconfigured environment... that's a bit much.

# ¿ Aug 1, 2017 23:56

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

Yes is aws, but I am now in the process of setting the drat thing up. Building a sane image, getting stuff deployed from build server, etc.

But this was not about "how to bend over for yaml" question ( though I thank you for the help). It was a rant on how yaml is an idiotic format, that needs something like that to be even usable (without killing the space bar). And there are people out there who even like it (they did choose it for their stupid application). And that's what's pissing me off.

# ¿ Aug 2, 2017 00:46

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

Ursine Catastrophe posted:

poo poo not pissing me off: after years of dealing with legacy codebases in PHP and Perl, I finally got to work on a project with our non-legacy team. Fully automated continuous integration, builds that automatically kick back on failed BDD or insufficient unit test coverage, development sandboxes that can be spun up and down in AWS with two commands.

Question: what's up with BDD? Is it useful? One of my former companies implemented BDD, but either they were doing it wrong or the thing is just a pile of poo poo, but it didn't look useful at all. At least that implementation was just purely a waste of time. Never seen anyone doing BDD, it was the only time in my life that I got to hear about it and experience it.

# ¿ Aug 2, 2017 14:51

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

DigitalMocking posted:

2) I'm in demand and will stay in demand.

This point right here is probably the most important to drive down the fear of what will happen if one gets laid off. When AI will take over, creative jobs will be the last ones to go. And by that time, humanity will have figured out what to do in the new world order.

# ¿ Aug 11, 2017 21:23

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

The best thing about getting kicked in the butt? Moving forward.

# ¿ Aug 26, 2017 06:09

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

xzzy posted:

I wonder what the day was like of the IT person who had been complaining for years that this was going to happen. And the IT person who inevitably gets traced as the one that "allowed" the vulnerability to stay open.

And if both are the same person, hopefully they got a lot of saved emails documenting how it's an organizational fault.

And if they do, then what? Suing a rich corporation, who can drag it for years before the person will die of stress? I mean, it's better to have those emails than not, but ... not much good can come out of it.

# ¿ Sep 8, 2017 03:47

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

Judge Schnoopy posted:

"Shipping a product can often take precedence over doing it the "right" way. This is such a prevalent practice that it has a name: Technical Debt."

gently caress you gently caress you gently caress yooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

It's prevalent enough to have a BAD name. To call out BAD practices. It's BAD you gently caress!

Boy i'm getting irrationally angry at this.

Wait, are you saying that if push comes to shove and you have to choose between the "right" way vs delaying a product you will say "gently caress the product"?

# ¿ Sep 27, 2017 21:36

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

Collateral Damage posted:

If you do it the right way from the start following proper coding practice won't delay your release.

That's true, when the release date is reasonable (something that you and the client agreed upon, you had all the information upfront and nothing changes between now and the release date). As we all live in the real world, reasonable release dates are more often than not non-existent. Sometimes is bad project management, sometimes the execs are incompetent assholes, sometimes the client decided that gravity no longer attracts but instead repels objects, and so on and so forth. Reality has a way of showing it's ugly teeth, no matter how good of a developer are you.

Yes, employing bad practices consistently, refusing to change when shown better, using that stack overflow post as an excuse for your lovely coding is a problem. But it is a different problem. Standing up to your principles is wonderful, as long as you have something to put on the table at the end of the day. Luckily, in our line of work, nowadays is relatively easy to be principled and have a job (they're on every corner, just need to look).

Judge Schnoopy posted:

My issue is that spouting that ideology as principle normalizes technical debt as a byproduct of timely releases.

A well planned dev cycle should be released on time without technical debt. Yes, sometimes it's a necessary evil, but if it's a prevalent, regular occurrence you have institutional issues. All technical debt should be addressed with cost / benefit analysis, not just a shrug of the shoulders an a "welp they even have a common phrase for this, no biggie!"

It does normalize it. Which is why only incompetent developers use that as an excuse for their poor coding. It is important to notice them, see if you can avoid them/their team and decide if it's worth taking them on or just bailing out. Being confrontational is not always the best course of action.

# ¿ Sep 27, 2017 23:14

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

Attestant posted:

My new supervisor loving loves tickets. You have to have a ticket for everything. So they open them, a lot.

Simple task. A ticket is opened.

Said simple task that requires me to contact the end user directly, who is away for a week. So my supervisor opens a second ticket to remind me about the first ticket.

Now at the end of the week user is still away, but previous two tickets are unresolved, so naturally they open a 3rd ticket to remind me about the first two tickets.

I get fed up, close the two reminder tickets with a comment that the end user will be back on Monday, and that nothing can be done before it.

They open a 4th ticket to remind me about the first ticket again.

Open a ticket about having too many tickets.

# ¿ Sep 29, 2017 12:34

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

RFC2324 posted:

I used to try and get my co-workers to eat from the indopak place across the street when I lived there, and the one person willing to try it turned bright red because it was so spicy(it was pretty bland for indian food, imo). The rest complained that it looked like diarrhea or they just refused to eat anything foreign

Recently I got a coworker that likes to eat lunch at his desk. Indian-ish descent i think. Anyway, whatever he eats at lunch is so spicy that I choke from 10m away. How the hell can people stand such things, much less eat them, is beyond me.

# ¿ Dec 12, 2017 22:32

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

Jeoh posted:

the presence of antivaxxers is a hostile work environment imo

And potentially a dumb work environment. Borrowing a line from the "flat-earthers": If she is willing to take that stance on a solved non-issue, what stance will she have on debatable problems, work related issues? Wouldn't anyone from now on just question her competency to perform even the most basic work duties?

# ¿ Dec 20, 2017 19:40

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

It did take me an hour today to make a normally 15 minutes commute. Should I have expected that? Yes, but not that bad. The traffic was bumper to bumper all the way. We did get over 15cm of snow, and it was just loving bad. If I would have had a manager to yell at me for it I would have told him to go gently caress himself. I had to shovel my way out of the driveway and take the kid to school (late) and get to work.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2018 15:54

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

Bob Morales posted:

Did you make an effort to leave early, or did you just leave at the usual time? Or even worse did you walk out the door and start shoveling at the time when you would normally leave?

Yes I did wake up an hour early and started doing everything earlier than usual, still, no dice. There were 3 accidents on the road to work, slow moving cars (bumper to bumper), total mayhem.

Bob Morales posted:

If you're an hourly helpdesk/callcenter person, that's how it works.

Not everyone gets to be a snowflake and come in when it's convenient for them.

Which is why I'm thankful for being a normal developer that can work anytime, anywhere and that I don't have to deal with customers. I have no idea how much those callcenter people are being paid, but it is nowhere near enough if you have to be an 8:00 AM robot, no matter what, even if WW3 started in your city.

That poo poo kills one's soul.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2018 16:18

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

Bob Morales posted:

And you got 15cm, we got 2-3 cm. I said I can understand when we get a lot because like you said it fucks everything up and you don't know what will happen on the roads.

Well now, you cannot take snow amount as an absolute number. Here in Ontario, 2cm is not even a thing to talk about. The 15cm (or whatever it was) did entail a warning from Environment Canada. But in places like Texas I would assume 2cm shuts down the entire state. And that's fine because it is not worth it to invest in snow removal equipment if you get 2cm of snow every 15 years.

Bob Morales posted:

And again, these are developer jobs they're just support jobs. You need to be on time just like any other service/labor job.

Yeah, since I never worked at a job where I had to be there at X:00 sharp, I cannot relate. Spoiled? Certainly. Snowflake? Most likely. I would definitely not last 2 days at such a job.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2018 16:45

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

Pissing me off:
I saw this in my android log when I started up Spotify, while connected to my home's WiFi.

code:

01-20 19:35:58.586 9354-9547/? E/awo: Exception sending measurement:Failed to connect to b.scorecardresearch.com/127.0.0.1:80
01-20 19:35:58.591 9354-9547/? E/COMSCORE: java.net.ConnectException: Failed to connect to b.scorecardresearch.com/127.0.0.1:80
                                               at com.android.okhttp.internal.io.RealConnection.connectSocket(RealConnection.java:143)
                                               at com.android.okhttp.internal.io.RealConnection.connect(RealConnection.java:112)
.....
                                               at auo.run(Unknown Source:8)
                                               at aup.run(Unknown Source:0)
01-20 19:35:58.593 9354-9547/? E/awo: Measurement was not transmitted: c1=19&c2=15654041&ns_ap_an=Spotify&ns_ap_pn=android& ....

So Spotify, even when one has a paid account, still tries to connect to tracking websites. The only reason it couldn't now it is because I'm on wifi and my DNS is redirecting to 127.0.0.1 a bunch of domains, including that one. But otherwise ... that poo poo is open-season. What a load of motherfuckers. I understand to do that with a free account. But even with a paid one. :10bux:

is not loving enough.

# ¿ Jan 21, 2018 01:51

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

Jerk McJerkface posted:

I join a conference call for a colleague to assist a client with restarting nginx, just a quick nginx restart, but now the site they are turning up doesn't work so everyone assumes I broke it. I was just called to do /etc/init.d/nginx restart now figure our why your javascript or whatever isn't working.

You touched it. Of course you broke it. Duh...

# ¿ Feb 1, 2018 20:46

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

silicone thrills posted:

on DickTrauma's boss

How the hell do people with that level of anger problems make it into that level of power? Also like... people really do rage smash poo poo? Like... adults rage smash poo poo?

Most people who make it into that level of power have that kind of anger problems. It's a requirement for the job. If you don't have these problems, you're missing out.

http://uk.businessinsider.com/ceos-often-have-psychopathic-traits-2017-7
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/21/apparently-psychopaths-make-good-ceos.html

# ¿ Feb 3, 2018 01:02

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

Dick Trauma posted:

I'm probably going to have to go with "put it on a laptop so bad no one ever uses it" as my strategy.

There's no way for me to cover myself short of a signed memo from the COO saying "I, the COO order Dick Trauma to violate the terms of the software license" and we know that will never happen.

Unless you can cover your rear end with said letter (notarized to the wazoo), it's not even a question. You will be the first to be thrown under the bus when the poo poo will hit the fan. Don't budge.

On the other hand, everyone has a price. Name yours, see if they can make it happen. And make it more expensive than the entire license fiasco.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2018 00:59

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

Panthrax posted:

It's not even a feature discrepancy. We pay something like $28k/year for slack and I'm pretty sure the plus version, at $50k+ won't do what I need, which is import private channels and dms. They do have a SCIM API to bulk change emails though. Don't know if you can bulk enable accounts though. I doubt the bosses are keen on spending an extra 25k/year to save me from some carpal tunnel though.

Hold on, at $28k/year isn't it cheaper to just host your own IRC server?

# ¿ Feb 14, 2018 16:04

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

xzzy posted:

But then it won't be slack, and all the cool kids are using slack.

No one in the IT world wants to be caught not using the trendiest software.

True that. At my work (we're a very small start-up) I just installed RocketChat because one of the owners wanted to. For all 5 of us slack wouldn't be a big deal anyway, but rocketchat promised video conferencing. It turns out that they use a 3rd party service for that. Which works ... mostly.
Is unbelievable how difficult it is to find some good video conferencing software on linux. One that would support screensharing would be even better. Compared to windows or macs, Linux really sucks at this. We had to use more than once Skype for android, since the skype-for-linux is still in its infancy.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2018 16:39

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

Wibla posted:

Why do you run Linux on your workstations though? It's not exactly an optimal desktop OS, and it probably never will be either. If you really need native *NIX, macs are (still) better.

Because we need to. Our work is mainly on linux, neither macs nor windows would work for us. Now, windows can emulate linux but to go and give Microsoft a pile of money just to be able to use a windows based videoconference software ... that seems dumb.

xzzy posted:

Did you look into Zoom? We recently bought it where I'm at and the linux folks seem content with it.

I did not, will do.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2018 16:51

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

Agrikk posted:

Yeah, but you Linux folks pride yourselves on command line wizardry. Text chat should be good enough right? After all, who needs a GUI?

That "meme" died in 1998. Come on.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2018 17:42

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

stevewm posted:

Well that was a strange one...

A store called and said one of their cash registers' time was way off.. Which it shouldn't be because they sync to a domain controller. So of course I first check the domain controller and it's right. Then I connect to the computer in question and run "w32tm /stripchart" I could see the computer dropping 3-6 seconds behind as each actual second ticks by.

Eventually I figured out that "Sandisk SSD Dashboard" that I had installed some time ago to update the SSD firmware was somehow causing it. Remove it and everything is back to normal.

Cash registers nowadays have SSDs? What a time to be alive!!!!!

# ¿ Mar 2, 2018 16:08

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

Bob Morales posted:

You 'pay' the $3 to wear jeans on Friday (it goes to charity)

That kinda implies that you cannot wear jeans on any day?

# ¿ Mar 2, 2018 19:54

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

Bob Morales posted:

Nope

Before, it was only a couple Fridays a year.

All I can hope from a place like this that they are upfront about this policy (and possibly other quirks of the day-to-day operations) to potential new hires. There would be nothing worse than to show up on your first day dressed normally for the job, only to find out that you need to "suit-up" because the owner was born 10 decades ago, and thinks that whatever was good for those in the 1920s it is good for you now as well.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2018 20:10

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

Humphreys posted:

I don't spend money on good beer if it's just drinking to dull my anger from work. Cheap and LOTS of it.

I used to think that after 3 beers basically any beer would do. But once, I visited US and just wanted some beer to have by the time I get back home ( :canada:

) and the only thing they had in that store was budweiser. I had Bud Light before in my life, which was piss but drinkable, so surely Budweiser red cant be too bad. It was. The amount is irrelevant. It is the most awful thing that I ever tasted that wants to pass as beer. Never again.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2018 13:39

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

Bob Morales posted:

Only 10% diskspace remaining on on FS1

*fire up windirstat*

19GB of Audible books in someone's folder
3.5GB of some user's family reunion photos
60GB of scanned orders going back to 2010 (we print them...then scan them???)
20GB of ping pong tournament videos from 2012

Buy more hard drives. Duh

# ¿ Mar 9, 2018 20:46

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 14:11

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

Jaded Burnout posted:

Oh man, that is pretty bad. I mean, I'm in the same boat but as I say as a contractor, so I make it up in zeros. That said, I had a client with an asymmetrical notice period; 6 weeks from me, 0 seconds from them.

FYI it would be very unusual to have a notice period shorter than a month in the UK for most salaried office jobs, sometimes longer, and always symmetrical.

The americans make it up in zeros too, compared to others. They have non-existent (almost) taxes as well, but also non-existent (almost) services and social security.

# ¿ Mar 28, 2018 01:05

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > More shit that pisses you off: What does that say about the quality of your emails?

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