If you still have your Christmas lights up after January, I think that qualifies you as a redneck:
If you still have your Christmas lights up after January, I think that qualifies you as a redneck:
I found my new Slashdot sig, I believe... maybe even an all-encompassing sig for all websites that I frequent:
Secure multi-mediation is the future of all webbing.
Gary rocks! ROFLMAO!
Figures that it's Florida plates... I lived there for a couple years, and that is one retarded state!
@RaspenJho said:
When is Feburary?
ROFL! Nice catch!
My mother tells a story of getting into a fight with her English teacher when she was in grade school about the spelling of February. My mother insisted to the teacher that it was spelled with two R's, the first one coming right after the 'b', but it wasn't until she showed the teacher the dictionary entry for the word that the teacher finally relented and agreed with my mother's correct spelling of the word. Granted, this was rural Ohio that she grew up in, but still, it was an English teacher!
BTW, anyone else notice the other numerous errors in the two preceding paragraphs as well? "cial" (probably meant civil), and "presently quality" (which in no way fits the sentence)
I'm glad to see my tax dollars going to such worthy causes as employing the unemployable "public relations professional;" a term a use quite loosely in this case.
@Saladin said:
These kinds of cases always involve the person suing for emotional distress because they "couldn't sleep at night" and "suffered detriments to the quality of their personal, social, and professional lives."
In other words, yeah, she's making a huge deal over nothing on purpose because she wants free money. Throw out her case and make her pay the court costs IMO.
IANAL, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night! (That, plus my wife really IS a lawyer): Don't worry, this case won't even make it to court. It'll settle for $500 + lawyer fees, maybe. Emotional distress, contrary to stupid public opinion, is not something easy to prove or win any monetary judgement over except in extreme circumstances, and obviously this is not one of them.
The real WTF is that not only is this woman a friggin' idiot, but she that she was able to find an attorney so unethical that they would even consider suing (if in fact she found a lawyer to take the case on) because any lawyer worth passing a bar exam *should* know that this is borderline unethical since they're probably only doing so to extract money for themselves from the situation, knowing there's little chance they could ever come close to making worth their client's time and money to pursue a lawsuit like this. Again, I'm not a lawyer, but in seeing some of the truly WTF situations my wife describes to me on a weekly basis regarding clients and dumb-ass attorney's, I think it's relatively safe to make the assumptions I did that the lawyer in this case is where the big WTF lies.
Owww! My eyes, my eyes!
Bobby Spiropoulos, huh? Sounds like a Greek to me. There are only two things I hate in this world: people who are intolerant of other people, and the Greeks.
@Sander Marechal said:
Well, I'm back!
All in all I think it went rather well. It's been a nice talk and the senior programmer and HR lead were both really nice people. The job description is slightly different from what they advertised on their website but it sounded really good to me. There was only one question I had trouble answering. At some point they asked me how I was and I responded like "enthousiast, hard-working, flexible, etcetera" and also that sometimes I was a bit stubborn, which is good at times and not so good at other times. They asked me for an example where it had turned out not so good and I couldn't give a decent example. I told them about one time when I disagreed with a certain project implementation. I got overruled but it turns out I was right in the end anyway. They didn't really seem to like that example. The rest went well. I got compliments for doing some research on the company beforehand and apparently I was the first programmer to bring printed code samples :-)
Thanks all!
Well, you could have certainly done better, but it doesn't sound like you bombed interview #1. Next time, try to offer up "ways I've screwed up" with a follow-up example of how you have recognized that screw-up, how you are working or worked to correct it, and how you plan to avoid it happening again in the future. Obviously an example like "well I was right about management's bad decision in the end anyways" demonstrates that you're elitist to the interviewer, not that you are capable of noticing your own mistakes and working them out on your own. Just an interviewing tip from someone who has been through a lot more interviews than you. ;) Good luck!
By the way, be very observant about every little detail about the office they want you to work at, the people you'll be working with, and how they approach the topic of compensation. The less professional any of those details look, sound, smell, or feel to you, it'll make that issue about 10x worse in reality. Trust me, this has been true of the 5 different jobs I've held in the past 8 years, and that's only been in 2 different companies. Pretend that taking on a new job is like getting married. You're prepared for bliss, but you MUST also be prepared for all those little things that look like they might annoy you now to be issues that will annoy you 10x as much once you're hired/married.
For instance, if the HR droid hadn't even read your cover letter but called you so quickly after you answered the ad, chances are that HR will be 10x more harried and less willing to actually read anything you talk to them about once you're hired, AND the business is probably dying to get someone in there now to clean up a mess or finish off a badly lagging project ASAP - so be careful. Granted, this is 100% typical of HR - HR SUCKS! - but notice these kinds of things with the people who you'll be eventually working with or for as you interview. If you get along great with them and things click - that's good; if the discussion is forced and the head programmer glares at you the entire time - that's bad. Just a heads up as you continue on in your interview process.
@chrismcb said:
@fennec said:if(strlen(words)<256)That reminds me... We just had a bug where we weren't cleaning up an array. So my fellow "developer" went in and fixed the bug:count = 0; //count is how many items are in the arrayfor(int i = 0; i<256; i++array[i] = 0; // whatever, clear out this itemI looked at this code, and I asked him "What is 256?" He told me "its the size of the array."Sure enough the array is defined: int array[256];Great, I suggested a slightly better alternative, lets only delete the items we placed in the array.And while we are at it, lets fix the possible buffer over run (the guy filling the array checks to see that we are out of bounds)I gave him some sample code using sizeof(array)...His response: "The array is hardcoded so I don't need to calculate the size."!!!
Guys, seriously, quit making baby coder Jesus cry.
Yes, perhaps QA can get you development experience, but I did QA for a couple years thinking I would get into development and it was my experience both at that job and this one that development generally loathes QA groups. QA is "beneath" their abilities, and I personally never saw anyone migrate from QA to IT Development, only from QA to QA Management, or QA to Business-side jobs like business analyst and such. (like me)
I think your better bet for cracking into the development world would be to just apply directly for the "Jr. Developer" and "Entry level developer" roles. They may not pay great, but if you prove yourself over 2 or so years your resume will all of the sudden become waayyyy more marketable for other 0-2 years of experience type development jobs that do pay decently. Another 3 years and you'll be considered a professional in the field and can start playing around with learning new languages, possibly trying out different types of side jobs like a little dba or network admin type work, or even considering work outside of just IT.
My BS in Comp Eng Tech from DeVry really doesn't matter anymore on my resume. It's all about my experience level in my career field these days.
OK, I know that the job board is probably bringing in a little revenue for this popular site, and so I'm not going to complain about the fact that it exists on this site - some of the jobs HAVE looked like good, quality, non-WTF jobs posted by intelligent companies and/or recruiters familiar with the IT industry. I also LOVE Bose speakers, but seriously, their job postings are hosted by a big WTF company: http://www.getthejob.com/View.aspx?id=4593036&t=-1&cc=2&q=&l=
The site doesn't display AT ALL in Firefox. It's an .aspx page for gods sake! Idiots! If you want to attract talented software developers and software people you need to make sure your job listings are available to all, not just those of us who have Windows IE to view your job listing. Not to mention that this makes me question the WTFery that may be going on behind the scenes at Bose with regards to IT software (regardless of how great their audio engineering department is) and the choice of who to hire as a 3rd party vendor. I can understand designing a page to have extra bells and whistles in IE over Firefox or Opera or Konqueror, and even having it not display quite right in non-IE browsers would be sort of understandable if the reason you were using Microsoft only technologies really benefitted the layout, flow, content, and maintainability of your website, but making it completely invisible to those of us without the latest, greatest IE software is a big WTF to me.
@FraGag said:
@sirhegel said:Note the ingenious fact, that the (global!) Tim variable has to be updated and this method has to be called repeatedly by some other routine to actually see some animation.
Actually, Now is a static (shared in VB (how many times have I seen that in the MSDN Library?)) property, thus the Tim variable is totally useless: replace Me.Tim.Now.Second with Date.Now.Second or DateTime.Now.Second.
Also, I've noticed that the values in the Case statements are not even following a rule: 0, 3, 6, 9, 12, 16, 19, 21, ... and the final 59. If this was wanted, then the modulus solution doesn't work, but I believe these are mistakes.
My guess is that this 'Tim' character actually did some rudimentary testing with his new algorithm and found that the milliseconds of delays in all this case checking in VB added up over the first 12 or so seconds, and actually resulted in a 1 second delay. Therefore, to make it not look f'd up to the end user (because the Me.Tim.Now.Second call wasn't returning 15 and correctly printing "..", but rather it was returning 16 and defaulting to the "else" case statement to print "...") he just padded his case statement with that 1 second delay, adding "16" as the next instance of printing ".." instead of using "15". Same thing occurs again at the value of "59" as you noticed, and then he adjusted the whole thing to at least get it to display correctly.
Granted, the whole thing is needlessly complex, but at least give the guy props for unit testing! ;)
@AbbydonKrafts said:
OMFG!!!
I would say that's front page worthy, except it didn't deal with an inept IT person.. just an old "secretary" being assigned to IT. But still.. that is the most retarded thing I've ever heard of! I've never seen even a user be that friggin' inept. At least the CD-ROM drive does look like a cup holder to those who don't know.. but actually thinking a picture in the background behaves as if it were real?! I wonder what she'd have to say about my dual-screen cosmos picture with all sorts of supernovae and the like. Geez..
I disagree, this is front-page material except for its brevity. My sister-in-law worked for an art supply business where the "IT Department" consisted of the owner's wife who was so incompetent that she made all 60+ employees in the company NOT use custom background images (like the beach image included with Windows XP by default) because my sister-in-law's immediate supervisor had twice given the entire office a nice computer virus outbreak by "changing the desktop background". Yes, there are people this stupid working in positions of power in this world every single day. Needless to say, when I heard my sister-in-law's story, just like this one, I started laughing uncontrollably.
[quote user="Nandurius"]
You're right that vim/emacs are horrible editors to learn (but wonderful to use) and of course knowning the keyboard commands has nothing to do with being a good programmer.
So let's take the cli editors out of the picture. You get to use KEdit/GEdit or whatever the current window-based text editor may be. The console is just an open shell, and you're running X and a desktop environment already. How would you do?
The key, of course, is knowing the build process: editing, compiling, linking, running. For multiple files, writing makefiles. Do you know that, when using math functions defined in math.h, you'll have to link the libmath by adding -lm to the compiler options? Do you know how to specify the class path to run your java class, or how to build a jar file? Can you trhrow together a GUI without using an interface builder? Can you start a new project without relying on a 'Win32 command line application' wizard?
If you don't know the details of the build process, and you have to rely on an IDE to do all the work for you, then you're missing out on some important knowledge that will slow you down as soon as you run into any kind of trouble. Understanding the system is essential for sensible debugging and troubleshooting :)
I think that's the focus of the test, and that's why I like it.
[/quote]
I guess this would be an understandable test for a "programmer", but what if you're interviewing someone who knew all the coding syntax, rules, and standards well enough, but was better at doing the architecture of the system as a whole over the semantics of how to code it to make that architecture work? Constraining such a person to vim and emacs alone along with the command line compiler is like telling a construction foreman that he's only allowed to use a hammer, nails, 2x4 lumber and a plumb line to erect the walls of a house when an auto-nailer, laser sight/level, and various sizes of lumber might make the job much faster, and potentially with higher quality than with the "original" equipment alone.
That just strikes me as an elitist bent of a WTF job rather than the typical moron WTF of most places. Both still contain some level of WTFery.
I can understand where they're coming from. At my old job they had almost the exact same problem... took them months of fiddling to find out that there was one router or something in a wall that didn't really do auto-negotiation on duplex the right way. I think they figured out that it was an older, buggy Cisco router/switch/hub. They eventually fixed it, but tearing apart network closets for a whole 3 users who simply have to set their duplexing statically to 'full', thereby solving the immediate problem while they wait for the new parts to get ordered, approved, requisitioned, etc. etc. is actually not a WTF.
[quote user="CDarklock"][quote user="Alex Papadimoulis"]
While I appreciate your concern, all of the points you’ve made are highly opinionated and have little factual basis.
[/quote]
As a former designer and developer of kiosk-based terminals and POS systems, I can assure you that Diebold's voting machines are a massive WTF that beggars the brillant PaulaBean. Their security and reliability are crap.
My concern undoubtedly mirrors the original poster's. At least one employer on your non-WTF jobs list has at least one project which is a truly mind-blowing WTF. How do we know that the others don't also have such projects? How do we know the position listed isn't on one? Given that you undoubtedly collect a fee from these listings, how can we rely on you to make an accurate determination?
You also have two listings from Artisan Consulting in Washington state. I interviewed for a position through them about eight months ago, and my interviewer was apparently retarded. He wanted Java experience for an ASP project. I asked why, and he said they were writing their ASP pages in Java. I observed that this was not possible, and he said I must not have the kind of experience they needed. I asked if he meant they were writing the ASP in JavaScript - which is possible - and he explained that JavaScript runs in the browser, while Java runs on the server, so I clearly don't know anything about web development. That's a pretty big WTF right there, since you can run both Java and JavaScript on both the client and the server - as anyone who knows anything about web development would know. Not that I expect my manager to know these things, but I expect him to know whether he knows them.
Now, Artisan is a consulting firm, so I'm sure they have multiple clients. It's unlikely that either of the two Artisan positions would be at this same company. But have you in fact made a personal verification of this position's validity? What exactly happens if I apply and get interviewed and get the job, and it turns out to be a WTF? Does that company not get to advertise jobs here anymore?
That's what's really missing here. You've promised us that you'll make sure the jobs on that board are not WTF jobs. But how do you do that, and what if you're wrong? Do you honestly expect me to believe you've verified with Artisan that their client isn't an idiot? How would you even do that? And again, WHAT IF YOU'RE WRONG?
[/quote]
A guy from my last job worked for Diebold on the kiosk ATMs and POS systems as well (not in programmer land... I think he was an industrial engineer or process engineer for them), and he also had nothing but extremely negative things to say about his management chain and the company as a whole. And this was a guy who I know had very strong ethics, a great work attitude for the 2yrs. I worked with him, and was a pretty darned good process engineer.
I agree with you about the Non-WTF job board. It's certainly not functioning as intended. I could care less about the allegations of Diebold "hacking" the election, but I've heard so many negative reports by people who worked at Diebold (and Youngstown/Lima/NE OH in general) at this stage in my career, that I'd have to be homeless to even consider working there.
[quote user="Alex Papadimoulis"]
[quote user="themagni"] The problem is, I work quite fast and perform reasonably well.[/quote]
Deal with it. You've been given sign after sign (impossible tasks, "that's unusual") that no one cares and if you continue down the "I got nothing to do route", you will gain nothing but resentment from your coworkers who do have a lot of stuff to do. And trust me, it could get worse: a friend of mine was on a contract that required him to wait for Government Clearance. He waited eight weeks for this and was unable to do nothing except browse MSDN (he had no internet acccess) and listen to NetCasts.Quit Your Job. I'm sure you're paid well, but job satisfaction is very important. If you want another job, I know a great place to look: http://jobs.thedailywtf.com/1001/browse.aspx
I suspect you'll end up doing the latter. Better move fast before your skills dry up!
[/quote]
Hehe, nice plug, Alex. But seriously, to the original poster: if you've reached that stage the only logical next stage is just what Alex stated in the "Deal with it" section, and that will ultimately lead to some level of depression about your job, then yourself, then life. It's not a good place to be, no matter the money. My alternative to Alex's suggestion: Start looking now for a job during all that spare work time and read up on how to put together a resume, interview, etc. so that when you get an interview somewhere else you'll be all ready to knock their socks off as you say sayanora (sp?) to your current employer.
I'm glad to report that Microsoft continues to boldly go, where only the stupid have gone before (namely, themselves):
So I'm admin'ing this intranet SharePoint site at work in my spare time, and have been asked to create a new view for one of the teams using the site when I ran across this gem in the "Create New View" page:
View Audience:<font size="3"> </font>
|
(Bolded section is my own doing)
So... wtf?! It's my personal view, but if anyone else finds out the URL to it they can do anything they want?! That, is why I do not intend to upgrade to Microsoft Vista. This is SharePoint, interoperating with my Microsoft Office 2003 products, and yet they still believe security through obscurity is a good thing? Granted, it's just an intranet site, but c'mon, how hard is it to restrict users from editing each other's personal views?