I was just prepping to watch Dark City tonight, too.
It’s DEJA VU: Customer forgets to tell us about essential feature AGAIN
Déjà vu. I’ve just walked into the offices of a prospective new client for the first time and everything looks familiar, from the faux marble cladding and chromed door handles in the reception to the roughened white wallpaper and very specific shade of blue carpet tiles on the main floor. The Matrix - Déjà vu For all their …
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Saturday 25th July 2015 07:19 GMT Anonymous Coward
Missed requirements
He tells me the development project launch date has been pushed back again. Apparently, during user acceptability testing, the customer suddenly remembered something jolly important that they’d forgotten to mention at the start of the project, some 18 months ago. As I understand it, the customer was only vaguely apologetic and insisted that the problem be fixed before go live. And it’s the fifth time they have done it.
In our business we call that a variation order. Didn't declare the requirement up front? Sure, get your cheque book out…
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Sunday 26th July 2015 19:41 GMT Shadow Systems
@Stuart Longland, re: Requirements.
Exactly. If they didn't list it in the original goals when the contract was first agreed upon & signed to make it binding, then the additional changes they request after that point are all available for extra money & no penalty to the other party for delivery after the original agreed upon deadline.
"Yes we agreed to have $This & $This & $This ready by $Date, and we had all those ready to go on time. Then you added $This & $This & $This which extended the deadline & increased the price accordingly. Now, if you would care to look at $Section# $Paragraph# $SubSection# where it states in No Uncertain Terms that I get to bend you over a table & violate you with your own cheque register, I'll clear off this table for you & slip on a rubber glove."
*Cackle*
Try not to laugh _Too_ maniacally as you reach up to tickle their eyeballs from the inside, remember the glove only goes to the elbow.
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Saturday 25th July 2015 08:11 GMT Evil Auditor
Déjà vu of a different kind (and a failed Turing test)
Set during software upgrading, trouble-shooting of some sort. Present are the Expert and I.
"Should we try function X?" the Expert asks. - "No, function X is only for model A. We have model B." - "Oh, ok...." with a empty look in his face.
Seventeen minutes and an error message later:
"Should we try function X?" the Expert asks. - "No!? This won't work because it's only for model A." - "Oh"
Twenty-five minutes and two error messages later:
"Maybe we should try to run function X?" - "Erm???? Yes, give it a go!" - .... "Ah no, this is only for model A!" the Expert says with an eureka smile in its face. "Thank god! Finally!!!" I think.
Not so fast, smart-arse, not so fast... An hour or so later, it clicks again on function X to see what happens.
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Saturday 25th July 2015 08:16 GMT Gene Cash
Soiled underwear
Actually, American chocolate, especially Hershey's, tastes like bitter vomit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hershey_bar
"the milk is partially lipolyzed, producing butyric acid, which stabilizes the milk from further fermentation. This compound gives the product a particular sour, "tangy" taste, to which the US public has become accustomed."
And butyric acid is a principal ingredient in vomit.
Thank god for "The British Shoppe" down the road.
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Saturday 25th July 2015 10:29 GMT Tony S
Re: Soiled underwear
I did try Hershey's once; I actually spat it out into a bin.
The product was given to me by a rep; he was trying to persuade me that I should put it on the shelves and sell it. His arguments about it being the best seller in the US cut no ice with me; I wouldn't even order one box, I thought it was so vile.
However, the vendor concerned have managed to persuade a couple of UK supermarket chains to stock Hershey's. Speaking to a former colleague, they have to keep it in stock and order a minimum of something like 5 boxes at a time. That stock will go out of date, usually before they are through the second box. He also indicated that on a number of occasions, people bought the product and then tried to return it as they thought it had gone off.
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Sunday 26th July 2015 22:19 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Soiled underwear
"He also indicated that on a number of occasions, people bought the product and then tried to return it as they thought it had gone off."
I am not surprised to read that. That was my mum's reaction to the Hersheys I brought home after my first visit to the USA.
OTOH, my American wife thinks Cadbury's milk chocolate is a bit weird. This is not parochialism. She's open to eating foods from other cultures, especially Jaffa Cakes.
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Saturday 25th July 2015 12:53 GMT TitterYeNot
Re: Soiled underwear
"Well, now that imports of real British Cadburys have been banned, that may not be the case anymore..."
I'm not sure we have a 'real British Cadburys' any longer, it appears to be more a case of Kraft chocolate that looks a bit like Cadburys used to. I hear they did unspeakable things to the poor Cadbury Creme Egg, nearly causing the collapse of British society as we know it (well, you'd have thought so listening to the subsequent uproar.)
Mind you, I have to say I'm impressed by the typical American efficiency that Hershey are displaying with their chocolate, making it taste the same going down as when it inevitably comes back up again...
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Sunday 26th July 2015 05:49 GMT knightred
Re: Soiled underwear
Ha! You know I can almost always find ghirardelli chips even like the 60% cacao on deep discount sale because they simply don't sell in local supermarkets. I don't eat sweets anymore, but the old lady she won't eat other chocolate. Oh I forgot sometimes we get the macy's bon-bons from an uncle in Seattle, I forget the name.
I'd like to believe Hershey's is on a downward spiral, but Ghirardelli and the Seattle company and numerous small manufactures have made much better chocolates sometimes even longer than Hershey. But the market is saturated, it's like saying Coke (or Pepsi) is the premier cola in the US... you can't base a claim of quality on sales quantities. Hershey chocolate is all made in Mexico now anyway, nothing at all is made in America, they actually repackage some of the Mexican chocolate in Hershey, PA for the "locally produced" standards to apply.
There was a Frontline on PBS about how the company treats foreign students as near slave labor repackaging the candies. Well to be fair it isn't slave labor, but the company houses and feeds you and takes it out of your wages.... You know like they used to run coal mines with payments on company chits that only a company store took as money.
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Sunday 26th July 2015 14:43 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Soiled underwear
"You know like they used to run coal mines with payments on company chits that only a company store took as money."
Hence the song:
You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store
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Saturday 25th July 2015 08:18 GMT Boris the Cockroach
You can probaly blame
my brother, Stephen the Cockroach, as he works in a buildings management company.
You see, the clients give them the money to 'refurbish' the newly aquired offices, and the less money they spend on the job the more profit they make.
And they know exactly where to get those blue carpet squares and everything else for a knock down price...
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Saturday 25th July 2015 08:30 GMT Blofeld's Cat
Flying monkeys...
"... a perky girl with ruby slippers skipping along with a dog and three freaks who look like they work in the advertising department."
Not quite. The perky girl and her dog are from Security - who are putting on their bi-weekly charm-offensive. The tin man with the axe is from HR looking to reduce headcount in his own heartless way. The straw man is a consultant brought in by the CEO, to boost his own views and position. The cowardly lion is from the legal department, ready to roar loudly at any member of the public he believes is infringing the company's IP, while playing the victim when a court tells him to stop being silly.
The important thing is to pay close attention to the man behind the curtain...
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Sunday 26th July 2015 11:39 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Flying monkeys...
"The important thing is to pay close attention to the man behind the curtain.."
Who knows he is unable to actually make anything happen - all just for appearance and ego.
One ex-CEO of a large IT company said that he and the people at the sharp end were generally in agreement about what should be done. The problem was the middle management - which was "like a blancmange - poke it and it just wobbles a bit".
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Saturday 25th July 2015 12:11 GMT Anonymous Coward
Windows
I was reading this and beginning to think it was an extended metaphor for Windows, with the sudden major UI changes from one version to another, control panels moving around and changing appearance, and the blue carpet tiles just a metaphor for the Microsoft corporate colour.
I can't quite make the woman in the lift fit in, though.
The changes to the City have happened in my lifetime. I remember bowler hats. They kept the dirt from the steam trains out of people's hair.
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Sunday 26th July 2015 06:42 GMT Mark 85
Re: "Got the decorators in"
The place I work in is NOT blue, white, or glass... it's known as the pastel corral. There is no blue in the carpet. The corral part because it's a call center and the worker bees are the cattle. The pastel part because every wall is a different color... green, yellow, orange, blue, and then there's the infamous "Barney walls" by the brass offices.. purple. Yes, some are known to hum the Barney song on the way into see manglement.
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Saturday 25th July 2015 17:54 GMT Terry 6
Not just offices
Schools too. And hospitals.
All the new build schools and hospitals seem to have the same bloody architects too.
Enter a far too narrow doorway into this damn great atrium with dazzling white walls and acres of (wasted) floor space. The reception is on or close to the left, ( with the lifts concealed behind if it's a hospital).
Information signs are grey, with white writing facing into the lights. Above your head there's a corridor at dizzying height, and in the middle there may be some uncomfortable seating so that you can soak up the echo.
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Saturday 25th July 2015 19:26 GMT swampdog
Woman in lift..
I shall have to start following you around Mr Dabbs. There will then only be a 50% chance of it happening to me.
There was a "fantom farter" at work: drops one in the lift: vacates. Yours truly rushes in. Very next floor a lone female enters.
Or the time the lift wasn't quite aligning itself with the floor. It was actually out of service but I knew how to make it work. One of those hydraulic ram jobbies. The higher it went the more out of alignment it got. Rush in, drop your keys. By the time you've bent to pick them up a woman has followed you in and pressed "top floor". Oh dear! I have two options:
a) explain the lift was out of order and we'll need to jump up & down for it to align enough with the top floor for the doors to open.
b) just jump up & down when it gets to the top floor.
Not many floors so no time for (a). Fortunately I knew the latter female else I would have been in trouble!
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Sunday 26th July 2015 21:37 GMT Jamie Jones
erecting walls....
erecting walls and routing corridors like in Dark City
Or 'Thir13en Ghosts' - particularly the 'split lawyer' scene! [ Warning: Graphic / gore ]
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Monday 27th July 2015 10:35 GMT Kubla Cant
Office toilets
Architects who design office buildings invariably seem to delegate design of the toilets to a work-experience intern.
Just about every one I've ever used has four cubicles, four urinals, four handbasins and one or two hand driers. Under light usage this isn't a problem, but you don't have to run a Monte Carlo simulation to see that heavy usage is going to cause the room to fill up with people shaking drips off their fingers and drying their hands on their trousers.
It's even worse when the builders have decided to save money by installing Acme Economy brand hand driers, the sort that burn your hands with a feeble stream of hot air, yet never actually dry them.
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Monday 27th July 2015 13:05 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Office toilets
"It's even worse when the builders have decided to save money by installing Acme Economy brand hand driers, the sort that burn your hands with a feeble stream of hot air, yet never actually dry them."
They don't dry your hands because the humidity in the toilets is close to 100%. Evaporating water only works provided dry air is continually introduced. (I remember once encountering someone who wondered why their noncondensing tumble dryer didn't work, after they put it in the basement.)
The answer would be either (a) hand dryers with aircon-type moisture extractors, but they would cost money or (b) forced ventilation, which would mean getting an adequate air supply from somewhere.
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Tuesday 4th August 2015 23:49 GMT 9Rune5
Re: Office toilets
"which would mean getting an adequate air supply from somewhere"
I can't help you there, but if somebody can find a supply of fresh air, then presumably there will be some output air that needs to be dealt with. The obvious choice, as per Mr Dabbs' article, is of course the kitchen next door.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
