No wooden desk but ...

rudraigh

So this guy needs some changes, just wording changes, made to a few intranet pages. Instead of just sending me the changes and which pages need these changes, like everyone else does, he does a Print Screen, prints out the pages, hand writes his edits (circles and arrows included), scans the pages into a PDF and attaches the PDF to an email to the Help Desk.

Ok, not as crazy as some of the stuff I've seen on TDWTF but, it made me laugh.

DaveK1

@rudraigh said:

his edits (circles and arrows included)

So he at least used proper sub-editing notation?

pjt33

@rudraigh said:

...Instead of just sending me the changes and which pages need these changes, like everyone else does...

One of my colleagues would kill to have a client like yours. His client on one project would send him an enormous Photoshop file, containing every single page in the website in various layers*, and expect my colleague to compare it with the current site and spot that he'd changed a full stop to a comma on one page.

* Well, actually he'd send one copy of the Photoshop file per page, with the only difference between the copies being which layers were visible. I understand that each round of changes consisted of him sending 18GB of files.

bullrider718

@rudraigh said:

attaches the PDF to an email to the Help Desk.

I think he missed a few steps. He was supposed to screenshot the PDF, copy and paste that into a word document, and then attach the word document to the email.

DOA

@rudraigh said:

hand writes his edits (circles and arrows included)

Suddenly I got a grade school flashback.

RTapeLoadingError

@DOA said:

@rudraigh said:
hand writes his edits (circles and arrows included)
Suddenly I got a grade school flashback.

You need to worry when the webpage has "See Me" written on it in red pen

emurphy

@rudraigh said:

circles and arrows included

Did you charge him $25 and make him pick up the printouts?

mike_james

I just printed a PDF on a multifunction printer/scanner, stuck it in the scanner , scanned and emailed the PDF to myself.

This is because a particular PDF failed to import into Inkscape so I did the PDF->print->scan->PDF->Inkscape->png->bmp so I could import pages into our software which overprints a bitmap view of a page with automatically generated fields.

It dates from about 1999 and one part of it consists of VB6 calling a VS2010 DLL which gets over one of the final Microsoft Windows XP "security" updates that makes accessing networked printers crash VB6 library DLLs.... They fixed the problem 2 months later for Vista and Win7 etc. but XP had gone off support by then so MS left it broken.

Tim_G

You don't have PDF software that'll export directly to image without all those steps?

too_many_usernames

@bullrider718 said:

I think he missed a few steps. He was supposed to screenshot the PDF, copy and paste that into a word document, and then attach the word document to the email.

Isn't that a valid strategy to bypass email filtering rules that block PDF but not DOC*?

(Disclaimer: This post only contains 100% processed post-consumer sarcasm products. May contain peanuts.)

(*Seriously, how stupid is it that I've dealt with an email system that has the audacity to open ZIP files and actually block the individual files it deems hazardous, but if you just change the file extension on those files you're home free?)

Someone_You_Know

Our software (among other things) generates and distributes reports in the form of Excel pivot tables. Recently some user had a problem with the data in one of them, and I was having a little trouble following her descriptions of things, so I asked her to "email me the report".

Based on what I got in reply, the user must have:

Configured the pivot table to show the part of the data that was troubling her.
Printed out that portion of the Excel file.
Scanned the printout into a PDF, sideways (i.e., the report had been printed out landscape but the PDF was portrait).
Placed the PDF in a ZIP file.
Sent me an email with two identical copies of that ZIP file attached.

There was also a similar incident with another user at the same client. He only sent me one ZIP file, but it contained a PowerPoint file into which he had pasted a JPEG of a scanned printout.

chikinpotpi

@Someone You Know said:

Our software (among other things) generates and distributes reports in the form of Excel pivot tables. Recently some user had a problem with the data in one of them, and I was having a little trouble following her descriptions of things, so I asked her to "email me the report".
Based on what I got in reply, the user must have:
Configured the pivot table to show the part of the data that was troubling her.
Printed out that portion of the Excel file.
Scanned the printout into a PDF, sideways (i.e., the report had been printed out landscape but the PDF was portrait).
Placed the PDF in a ZIP file.
Sent me an email with two identical copies of that ZIP file attached.>
There was also a similar incident with another user at the same client. He only sent me one ZIP file, but it contained a PowerPoint file into which he had pasted a JPEG of a scanned printout.

that's in case you want to forward it to someone, you will still have one to keep for your records, duh.

the original wtf doesnt shock me so much though. An editor used common editing practices to suggest changes to a web page and then expected the person making the site to have to type it in... gasp!!!

rudraigh

Update:

I've completed the changes but, just to keep in line with the original request, I'm printing out the PDF attachments from the Help Desk ticket, making my own annotations, scanning back to PDF and emailing them back to the guy. He will think it's business as usual but I'm gonna be lmao.