Post 'em

Do Your Own Damn Research
Me:
Him: :downs:
So, my phone rings. I pick it up. "<company>, this is Wolfy," I say.

:downs: "Yes, hello, Wolfy, I have a question about databases that I could ask you."
"Sure, what's up?"
:downs: "I am trying to write out <table> to a CSV file, and it won't let me write out files larger than 32 kilobytes."

Now, <table> can be in excess of 3 billion rows. If this doesn't illustrate my point, we have 8 programs that each process 1/8 of this table's child table, which can take up to a week and a half of constantly running. It's. Big.

However, it's not my place to question the reason why they wish to do this; I'm here to answer this gentleman's question. Now, I call malarkey on his claim that it limits to 32k files, but...again, whatever. I can't prove that it's not a problem, and this guy won't hear it.

So, I suggest to him that he process <table> in batches of 250,000 rows. Then, for each batch, he writes out a file. At the end of the program, merge all of the files together and present the user with the one merged file. I recommended he use cat and piping to do this.

:downs: "Okay, okay. You will e-mail me when you have found how to do this?"
"Uh...uh...well, I really don't have the time to research that for you."
:downs: "Okay, okay. I will then, uh, research this 'cat' in UNIX."

...the Hell? How do you get any kind of worthwhile degree in SE or CS without any UNIX or Linux experience? And to do his research for him? Really?

Always Read the Question First
Me:
Him:

"josh...should this child program be performing a full scan of table?"
"It depends; are they only concerned about data that's been inserted into the database after the parent ran, or are they concerned about data that may have been updated since the parent ran?"
"yes"
...
"That wasn't a yes or no question."
"oh...sry...didnt read the entire question"

Wait, so programmers need tech support now?

We truly are doomed.

As for work stories, I could tell you hundreds of times that customers flipped out and started swearing or being really rude, but they all blur together. There was one time that we called the police on a customer and they came and dragged him away though. That was neat.

Oh yeah, and one time a bunch of thugs came in, flipped out, and started beating each other. One of 'em grabbed a bat from sporting goods and one grabbed a crowbar outta hardware and the guy with the crowbar won. He started beating the ever-loving **** outta the poor dude. One of our managers got involved and got a crowbar to the arm. I was the guy who called 911 on that one. The strange thing is, they all got up, left the store, got into the same car, and left. I have no idea what that's all about unless they kidnapped the guy.

I want to preface this by saying that I am very happy with my job and am in no way wishing or wanting to work somewhere else.

This is not so much a complaint as it is a fun story to tell -- I seem to have become the go-to guy for "urgent stuff that we procrastinated on for a long time and then allocated one day towards to do a job that takes considerably longer because we weren't sure how long it'd take". Pretty much every week during the summer I would get at least two or three emails that said something like

(This is clearly exaggerated ... but not by too much)

Is this like a thread about those guys that gaze out the window pinching people's heads?

I mean not knowing how to do something and asking someone really isn't stupid. Especially if they're bogged down white collar and really need a hand on something they don't totally understand.


Here is an example of actual work place stupidity;

We're unloading a loose load belly section, located at the tail end of an airbus A-300

Now you do this with a conveyor belt on wheels, and the door is about 15 feet up. So picture a rather steep plane.

Anyways, the guy up on the belly is doing his job, the container on the ground is getting loaded. Then he rolls this 200 pound spool of cable into the door way. If you've never seen a spool of cable, they're ****ing round.

He proceeds to roll this spool of cable onto the belt...

It of course rolls right down the belt at lightning speed being that it is more or less a really big ****ing heavy wheel on its side. Everyone jumps out of the way, as death approaches ever faster.

It goes off the end of the belt, rolls about 200 yards and dinks a main gear wheel on another aircraft.

When he finally comes down, we ask him to explain himself. Typical stuff "What the **** man, you could have killed someone" type banter.

All he could say was "I thought it would stay."

Oh, and get this. There are about 1500 Airframe/Powerplant certified mechanics in SDF that work for UPS.

We load up this DC-8, 100% Topside is full, all the bellies are loaded to the door. Then they find out the red beacon light on the belly doesn't work.

So what do these two certified mechanics do? They change out the entire unit. This is of course after I suggested (keep in mind I have no place to really make suggestions, I hold no certifications) that they use a multimeter to check for current before swapping a part.

So it takes like 40 minutes to get the unit from the warehouse, and they set about installing it.

Mean while we've got all the equipment pulled back up to the aircraft ready to unload it, because believe it or not the rotating HEY DUMBASS THE ENGINES ARE PROBABLY RUNNING light is on the minimum equipment list and the thing can't even ferry over to another gateway and have it done there.

So they get the thing installed, and as it would turn out... It doesn't ****ing work. Big surprise.

So we unload the plane, go on to another. An hour later they fix it and we load it up as a hot spare.

These guys don't talk to me anymore, by the way. Must suck to get schooled on something so simple by someone who is only about one semester through his schooling.

A couple of weeks ago, my crew had to go out to a kind of remote part of the forest to finish some line for a prescribed burn. The crew had been there cutting line in May (before I got picked up) and they were shot at by pot growers.

So we go up there with Forest Service law enforcement officers. We park our rigs and ae getting geared up. The LEOs stop a car on the road and start questioning the driver. After a couple of minutes, the guy bolts off into the woods, leaving his car. It was full of food, liqour, porn, and thousands of plastic baggies for the pot growers (it was harvest time, and they were trimming and packing all their pot to get it down the mountain).

He couldn't write more than 32k? And he didn't think something else might be wrong?

Today, we were working up on our fuel break. Two of thw guys on the crew decided to ride bikes from the station up to where we were working instead of riding in our crew buggies.

They were riding their bikes back to the station and we decided that we needed to assualt them from the buggie when we passed them on the way down the hill. We armed ourselves with chunks of spam and water bottles.

When we caught up, we had the passenger window and the four carrier windows open and we bombarded them. It was awesome

The second crew buggie did the same thing: watern sandwiches, fruit, etc. Good times.

Unfortunely , the previous year I was avoid of any human contact. Although allowing me to slack off a lot, it was quite sad. I started to go insane, talking to myself.

The previous year before that I spent building trusses and working in a kitchen, both away from customer contact. I did manage to get everyone screwed out of a $200 bonus from my truss job, though. (Well the victim at least, some kid managed to slice my knee open and we were a week away from a year with no accidents...he almost got beat up it was pretty funny)

Year before that I worked at Home Depot .. and umm.. I'm not telling you about that for legal reasons and things that are simply in my past..

But my job before that which I had for several years... oh man... too many stories to tell.

Most involve a lot of drugs and alcohol. But tons of the typical "I want to kill this customer" stuff
The complaints against my attitute to these people simply shrugged off as "Drunk people on vacation... I wouldn't worry about them" to my bosses

I work for parking enforcement on campus...so it's my job to deal with angry people. No serious incidents yet, but earlier in the year I came upon a guy parked in a lot without a permit.

When I went to give him a ticket he came up in the system as HOT (Habitual Offender Tag) meaning we didn't know who he was and had been unable to bill him for his previous citations, and that he had recieved at least 4 previous citations (totalling I believe around $140 not including the one I was about to give him).
So, I printed out his ticket and called for a boot to be brought up so we could get his information (we boot them, then they come out and have to give us their information in order to get the boot off).

Well, it took a solid 15 minutes for our mobile unit to arrive with the boots, which is a very long time that I'm standing there in a very public place with this vehicle, so I'm starting to get a bad feeling.
Sure enough, this guy walks out and says "What is the problem is?" I'm thinking damn, he's not going to wait around for this. So I tell him that I was about to impound his car but that we didn't need to do that since he showed up, and if I could just get some information from his driver's license and student ID we'd get him on his way.

He says he doesn't have his driver's license. I ask him for his student ID, just trying to get something from him before he gets spooked and starts thinking about driving off. He says he doesn't have that either, they're at his house, and he asks me if he can just go get it and meet me somewhere to give me the information (yeah right). I told him he could go get it but I couldn't let him take his car to do it, so if he could walk or take the bus or get a friend to do it, that'd be best.

He says "I ain't takin' no bus to get my license." I told him we couldn't let him leave without his driver's license to which he responded "You best move, I'm fiddinda leave." I said "Would you like me to call an officer over here to handle this, he'd be interested in your driving without a license?" which may not have been the BEST thing to say. He said "Nah man, do what you want, I'm leaving" and closed the door (or tried to, I was standing behind he door and he caught my arm in it as he was closing it).

I was on the radio at this point with the campus police department dispatch telling them I had an irate customer and asking for some assistance. I pushed the door open to move myself out of the way of his door but I guess he thought I was trying to keep him from closing it or something because that's when he really started hurrying. I was still in the middle of my sentence to dispatch about the irate customer when he backed out of the spot, so I corrected myself "OSU, he's leaving the lot now in a silver malibu, claimed to have no driver's license, georgia plate xxx-xxxx." "Direction of travel?" "Westbound."

The police spotted him a moment later but he slipped away through the lots.

Epilogue: A month later we found him parked in another lot, and thanks to his actions last time, he got another $35 ticket, a boot to hold him for a little bit, a boot release fee of $50 when the tow truck showed up, a tow fee of $50, and the tow truck hauled him off to their impound where he would probably be charged another $100 or so to get his car back. Also, we got his information, so he'd be entered into the system and be charged all his previous tickets that he had yet to answer for.

All because he didn't buy a $50 a year parking permit. Or worse yet, if my suspicions are correct, he wasn't a student but was dating a girl who lived in a building nearby and visited her every few weeks, in which case a visitor's permit linked to her permit would have been FREE.

nothing too amazing but the random stuff i've seen working third shift at a 24 hour grocery store...

i once listened to a very loud arguement between 2 guys about smoked sausages.. i seriously expected one of them to take a swing at the other...

2 different guys having a similarly loud and angry arguement about whether or not to buy steaks

a bunch of drunks started singing (surprisingly well given their drunken state) while waiting in line

countless drunks, stoners, and crackheads showing up at all hours of the night... always good for a laugh

You'd be surprised. I work in Storage Area Network [in part], and we pretty routinely get questions from the SAs [be it Unix, Linux, Sun, or Windows] like:

"So you allocated us this storage we requested. Now how do we [create a volume group, create a dynamic partition, format the disk, mount a drive]?" [Noting that our only visibility/management is at the block level]. Or better yet: "We have a problem. We can't see our H: drive. Can you see our files, we can't."

It hurts us, precious.


Current favorite work story.

One of our logical servers needed cycling for like a database upgrade or something, so we called up dispatch and got hands on site to log in to the management console and bounce it for us. An hour later we we get an angry email from one of our other departments demanding who authorized a reboot of one of their data collection box.. err, nobody, we say.. a bit perplexed.. until we get a call back from our hands on site informing us that he had "just finished power-cycling the rack, just to make sure." It was a fairly light rack and fortunately they were all internal machines instead of customer-facing ones, but we still wound up with several dozen servers rebooted.

Epic fail.