This is why he's upper management



  • One of my clients calls me today. They want me to solve a huge emergency one of the highest ranking managers has encountered while attempting to "spruce up" the webpage. Large sections -- actually, the majority of the site -- have disappeared. I try asking about missing files, stuff like that. No dice. I finally have them send me a copy -- there's no test server I can view it at. I start digging in. And, in main.css, I find the following:

    body {color:#9df; background-color:#9df;}


  • I shouldn't have posted this one until I actually told them the problem and got to find out what the author of that line was thinking... Because it's so, so much funnier than typo or the other usual excuses.

    "Oh, that's to make it easier to have reverse video, I only have to change the foreground color in a property then."



  •  Ok, now I'm waiting for an update too. This should be good.

    Or you could fix it and tell them it was some insanely obscure problem that took you a whole day to deal with. I doubt the site author would come clean on this. 



  • @Wolftaur said:

    "Oh, that's to make it easier to have reverse video, I only have to change the foreground color in a property then."
     

    Someone please translate this to properly structured English for me.



  • @Wolftaur said:

    I shouldn't have posted this one until I actually told them the problem and got to find out what the author of that line was thinking... Because it's so, so much funnier than typo or the other usual excuses.

    "Oh, that's to make it easier to have reverse video, I only have to change the foreground color in a property then."

     

    Aah, the real WTF: "Reverse Video" hasn't been used since the 70's. It really wasn't even used in the old C64 documentation I had lying around.

    Doesn't he know you're supposed to specify both colors at once in real css?



  • @DOA said:

     Ok, now I'm waiting for an update too. This should be good.

    Or you could fix it and tell them it was some insanely obscure problem that took you a whole day to deal with. I doubt the site author would come clean on this. 

    Oh, I'd already fixed it and sent it back. I often give people the benefit of the doubt on certain types of mistakes. There are some non-WTF ways that file could have gotten that way, including an accident copy-pasting colors from a color wheel or things like that. (It's still a WTF that they couldn't figure out the problem, in my opinion, so I posted it.) I'll frequently ask questions of a client to figure out how they actually made the mistake, because then I can offer appropriate helpful advice to try and prevent them from making the same one again.

    I did put an extra $100 on the bill for the guy being that stupid, though. And I told them as much. A semi-gentle reminder that he breaks stuff more than anyone else, by far... He's high up enough to be immune from being tossed or anything, but they should at least consider keeping him out of the computer systems.



  • @dhromed said:

    @Wolftaur said:

    "Oh, that's to make it easier to have reverse video, I only have to change the foreground color in a property then."
     

    Someone please translate this to properly structured English for me.

     

    It already is. Treat "reverse video" as a compound noun.


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