The REAL problem



  • Like most places, we have a slew of disparate systems across windows and linux. For simplicity, the place is set up so that your windows login matches your linux login, which is first initial-last name.

    The new guy that just started is going through the usual pains of getting things set up, connected, compiled and up and running, so I'm helping him. He finally gets to the point where he has to start the app and it just won't start.

    Ok, I test the usual suspects. Is the db url bad? Is the IP/port for the queue bad? The IP/port for the queue manager? Does he have the right environment variables set up? Does he have an entry in the config file that specifies on which server his instance of the app is to run? Hmmm. everything looks right. Then... *facepalm*

    The PC guys created his login (Joe Developer) as JDeveloper. The Linux guys cut-n-pasted it. So now his case sensitive Linux id has two capital letters. I type: whoami -> JDeveloper

    Whoops. All the configs are in lower case, so it doesn't find his entry, which creates a cascading failure...

    Now all his stuff needs to be deleted and re-created (sadly, it's faster than trying to get it corrected).

    In the mean time, I just changed the config to match the actual user name.

    I get that PC SAs live in a case-insensitive world, but Linux SAs should know better.

    Sigh.



  • I know a place which has similar rules. Login / email adress is set up as initial + 3 first letters of lastname. Unfortunately for Edouard Jackman (name slightly changed for anonymity), his emails with "from:ejac@thecompany.com" gets blocked by all spam filter :)



  • @snoofle said:

    JDeveloper

    Not to mention the name collision with Oracle's software's login. ;)



  • @tchize said:

    I know a place which has similar rules. Login / email adress is set up as initial + 3 first letters of lastname. Unfortunately for Edouard Jackman (name slightly changed for anonymity), his emails with "from:ejac@thecompany.com" gets blocked by all sperm filter :)

    FTFY



  • Case-sensitive user names are the real WTF.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Case-sensitive user names are the real WTF.

    Turkey would disagree with you.



  • @MiffTheFox said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    Case-sensitive user names are the real WTF.

    Turkey would disagree with you.

    Who's that? Your pimp?



  • @tchize said:

    Login / email adress is set up as initial + 3 first letters of lastname.
     

    Cue related cartoon...

    Old one...



  • @tchize said:

    I know a place which has similar rules. Login / email adress is set up as initial + 3 first letters of lastname. Unfortunately for Edouard Jackman (name slightly changed for anonymity), his emails with "from:ejac@thecompany.com" gets blocked by all spam filter :)
    Many, many years ago, on alt.humor.best-of-usenet, there was a story about a university or college where the login/e-mail address consisted of the first six letters of the last name of the student, followed by the two initials.

    For Mary Ellen Cummings, that was rather unfortunate.



  • @tchize said:

    I know a place which has similar rules. Login / email adress is set up as initial + 3 first letters of lastname. Unfortunately for Edouard Jackman (name slightly changed for anonymity), his emails with "from:ejac@thecompany.com" gets blocked by all spam filter :)
     

    That's about how Natasha Por felt when she found out that the policy "Last name plus first initial".

     

     



  • One of my colleagues user name works out to feelya. She's been here for a couple of years and I still crack up whever I see it.



  • @snoofle said:

    Like most places, we have a slew of disparate systems across windows and linux. For simplicity, the place is set up so that your windows login matches your linux login, which is first initial-last name.

    The new guy that just started is going through the usual pains of getting things set up, connected, compiled and up and running, so I'm helping him. He finally gets to the point where he has to start the app and it just won't start.

    Ok, I test the usual suspects. Is the db url bad? Is the IP/port for the queue bad? The IP/port for the queue manager? Does he have the right environment variables set up? Does he have an entry in the config file that specifies on which server his instance of the app is to run? Hmmm. everything looks right. Then... facepalm

    The PC guys created his login (Joe Developer) as JDeveloper. The Linux guys cut-n-pasted it. So now his case sensitive Linux id has two capital letters. I type: whoami -> JDeveloper

    Whoops. All the configs are in lower case, so it doesn't find his entry, which creates a cascading failure...

    Now all his stuff needs to be deleted and re-created (sadly, it's faster than trying to get it corrected).

    In the mean time, I just changed the config to match the actual user name.

    I get that PC SAs live in a case-insensitive world, but Linux SAs should know better.

    Sigh.

    I used to have a username and email address with a typo in it because there was a miscommunication about my last name when some IT dude created my account. Notified of the error, he fixed the "Display name" field in Active Directory, nothing else. I did not insist because it was not the worse; a coworker had a "2" at the end of his own username even if there was nobody else with his name in the organization.



  • @DCRoss said:

    That's about how Natasha Por felt when she found out that the policy "Last name plus first initial".

    Kevin Chin, too...

    (yay for p tags containing solely nbsp's? they showed up when I quoted the post...)



  • @ekolis said:

    [quote user="DCRoss"]

    That's about how Natasha Por felt when she found out that the policy "Last name plus first initial".

    Kevin Chin, too...

    (yay for p tags containing solely nbsp's? they showed up when I quoted the post...)[/quote]

    And Rachel Sinne



  •  Genuine one here at work Sven Bender . Pity the user names are lastname+ first initial 


  • ♿ (Parody)

    I used to work with a guy whose user name was hogang (last name Hogan).



  •  Many years ago, the director I reported to had the name Charles Munt (slightly amended). I wrote a full report & presentation about how we should change our username & email address policy to "firstname-initial last 3 letters of surname". I delivered it completely dead-pan and managed to keep it going for about 20 minutes before he went 'So my username would be... WHOAH, hold on just a minute!'



  • One of my clients was Stephanie but her email address was stephane@ due to typo. It took her a long time to get the correct alias, by which time the incorrect spelling remained. My own company is rolling out firstname.lastname@ addresses but since I've been there so long I just have firstname@ - though I started out with firstnamel@ (lastname initial) due to collision, but the other guy left and I eventually got his username. When I started there was 8 workers and 2 sets of collisions. I also have the .com and .com.au domains ending up in the same mailbox but taking different routes: one is actually via pop3 connector due to flaky sbs.

    My box username has to start with a capital since I signed up on iPad, but it didn't auto-capitalise the login screen. Bah!



  • I recently (for some values of recently) worked at a large IT corporation (wonder if it's where Nagesh works? it was based in India!) where email addresses seemed completely random - while some people had sane addresses (like me - edward.kolis@), others, primarily executives, had really short ones like r@, and a few people with common names (common for Indians, that is) had ones like abhishekm36@ - and this poor Abhishek guy didn't even come up in the directory when you searched for him, so you had to know his email already to contact him! (I guess the limit on the number of Abhishek M's in the search results was reached?)



  • @Zadkiel said:

     Many years ago, the director I reported to had the name Charles Munt (slightly amended). I wrote a full report & presentation about how we should change our username & email address policy to "firstname-initial last 3 letters of surname". I delivered it completely dead-pan and managed to keep it going for about 20 minutes before he went 'So my username would be... WHOAH, hold on just a minute!'

    Yeah had the same exact situation. I suggested to use the first letter of the first name and the last 7 letters of last name because it was clearly a common pattern but after giving the speech to the CEO (Bob Hullshit) this was cancelled. Then I suggested to use the second letter of the first name and the middle 3 letters of the last name (which also made sense) but Alan Biark complained.

    If I recall correctly that was the same week when a call to the helpdesk was escalated because a VIP had problem with his "cupholder" (you'll never guess what the cupholder was!). We later found out that the VIP was actually Jimmy Hoffa who was under witness protection, which explained his weird name (Jimmy Hoffa2) and the five bullet holes in his forehead.


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