New And Improved Rant Thread, now with 50% more profanity!

[Adam]

Dear Development Team That Shall Remain Unnamed,

The point of a service contract is that YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO FUCKING CHANGE IT ALL THE TIME. You should maybe, like, I dunno, decide what your input and output are going to look like BEFORE YOU START WRITING THE FUCKING CODE.

Thank you,
Adem

[Pyrrho]

Originally Posted by Doctor X

But the bronchioles are not green and blue.







What?

--J.D.

Why do you hate Vulcan lungs?

[Sock Puppet]

Errm, yeah. I'm trying to puzzle out a 5-part deal that the counterparty split into 4 separate contracts while we're making do with one, and drafting a convoluted response of "this applies to your contract x and y, this applies to w and z, this applies to all four ..." etc., and the three of you are having an animated conversation about -- I don't even know or care, although I can tell it's not even work related -- so, pretty please with sugar on top, SHUT YOUR PUS SLURPING PIEHOLES, YOU JABBERING MOTHERFUCKING MAGPIES.

Thank you.

[Pyrrho]

Dear Account Team

If I am given another job jacket with 3 sets of scribbled markup, blurry photocopies printed too small to read, with notations in hideous PowerPoint slides reading CREATIVE PUT LIPSTICK ON THIS PIG MAKE IT PRETTY I promise you that I will feed it into the shredding machine and deny that I ever saw it.

[Vivisectus]

Dear Corporate Managers from the US

You make me go on a conference call with all you guys, and you talk about project management, strategic planning and streamlining the processes. Of automating workstreams and synching with higher management. About interfacing with your customers and partners.

What you really mean is "There are problems that we do not know how to fix, but we are all afraid we are the only one who doesn't know what the fuck we are talking about, so we are going to keep beating about the bush talking this barbarous jargon until someone says something I understand."

Process management is NOT sending out a "list of shit we need Vivisectus to figure out" to everyone, and then congratulating each other on a job well done. Project management is NOT "send out the invite for the next meeting, when we will listen to what shit vivisectus has figured out." Following up does NOT mean, "Lets decide that Vivisectus needs to sort some more shit out since he is now the resident expert on Shit-Sorting, send out a new List of Shit Sortable and set up a new conference call"

You are a reprehensible bunch of shallow sandbaggers, yesmen and corporate caricatures. Next time we meet I will throw you into the river with your own mini-suitcase-on-wheels around your neck.

[Pyrrho]

I am exhausted. Thanks for another 60-hour week with 2 days to go, you miserable bastards and bitches.

And, YES, I am grateful to have a job.

Shakin' the bushes here, Boss.

[Doctor X]

Maybe you will be sassing us, Pyrrho.

--J.D.

[Sock Puppet]

Apparently, yesterday was Fertile Ant Hatching Day. At least, I think they're fertile ants. Swarms of them everywhere in the neighborhood, including my GODDAMNED KITCHEN AND LIVING ROOM. They seem to like to congregate around sources of light and warmth, which means this morning they had a board meeting or something around the hall night light.

That wasn't so bad (although I'm still puzzled how so damned many of them got in the house at once), except that the other spot they picked was the inside of the DVR/cable box. Srzly. It still tunes channels, but when I try to play a recorded program, it locks up. It could be coincidence, but I'm leaning toward not. Goddamned formicid motherfucking bastards. Now I hafta take the damned thing to Comcast today and see if they can fix it. Li'l Puppet is going to have a conniption if we lose all 5 million iCarly and Spongebob episodes she has on there.

[vremya]

I HATE ants.

[freemonkey]

Dear husband's crazy 25-years-ago-girlfriend,

Knock it the fuck off.

kind regards,

his wife

[curses]

I dropped my 24-105mm lens yesterday. Fuck. The only glass that broke was the UV filter. Phew! The filter is now bent into the filter ring and I can't get it off. Fuck. There seems to be quite a few removal methods listed online for this. Phew! None of them work. Fuck. The lens still works. Phew! I'm going to have to send it off at the end of the quarter to get it fixed and it's gonna cost! FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU!!

[Demimonde]

Originally Posted by Sock Puppet

Apparently, yesterday was Fertile Ant Hatching Day. At least, I think they're fertile ants. Swarms of them everywhere in the neighborhood, including my GODDAMNED KITCHEN AND LIVING ROOM. They seem to like to congregate around sources of light and warmth, which means this morning they had a board meeting or something around the hall night light.

I use diatomaceaous earth and fill every nook and cranny with it this time a year and the ants are toast. Fall back is peanut butter and 40 mule Borax, which will kill the nest.

But good luck with THEM!

[Dingfod]

Originally Posted by Sock Puppet

Apparently, yesterday was Fertile Ant Hatching Day. At least, I think they're fertile ants. Swarms of them everywhere in the neighborhood, including my GODDAMNED KITCHEN AND LIVING ROOM.

They are more likely to be termites, it's swarming season.

[Sock Puppet]

Could be, but they're awful small for termites, I think. Plus they've slacked off quite a bit now, only a few in the house last night, which also fits with what I know of the ant pattern. I'll ask the wife to pick a day this week to get Terminix in to see about it.

[freemonkey]

Originally Posted by curses

I dropped my 24-105mm lens yesterday. Fuck. The only glass that broke was the UV filter. Phew! The filter is now bent into the filter ring and I can't get it off. Fuck. There seems to be quite a few removal methods listed online for this. Phew! None of them work. Fuck. The lens still works. Phew! I'm going to have to send it off at the end of the quarter to get it fixed and it's gonna cost! FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU!!

I've done that. FUCK! Only the filter was dented and slightly scratched. Phew. It was a brand new $50+ circular polarizer. Fuck.

[Qingdai]

Ants like a mixture of sugar and borax, made into a simple syrup which they then take back to the nest and kill, kill, die.

KILL! KILL!

I also hate sugar ants.

[Ymir's blood]

beans Beans BEANS beans Beans BEANS beans Beans BEANS beans Beans BEANS beans Beans BEANS beans Beans BEANS beans Beans BEANS beans Beans BEANS beans Beans BEANS beans Beans BEANS beans Beans BEANS beans Beans BEANS beans Beans BEANS beans Beans BEANS beans Beans BEANS beans Beans BEANS beans Beans BEANS beans Beans BEANS beans Beans BEANS beans Beans BEANS beans Beans BEANS beans Beans BEANS beans Beans BEANS beans Beans BEANS beans Beans BEANS beans Beans BEANS

[lisarea]

OK SO FOR SOME GODDAMNED REASON, there are a WHOLE LOT of people who think my cell phone number is Matlock's. I basically know the reason, and it was not originally his fault, but what is his fault is not conveying in strong enough terms that this is NOT HIS CELL PHONE SO STOP CALLING POOR OLD LISA PEA WHO BARELY EVEN KNOWS THAT GUY AND JUST WANTS TO BE LEFT ALONE AND ANYWAY, SHE'S NOT GOING TO ANSWER YOU SO STOP IT.

[Pyrrho]

The client has SigmaPlot.

I don't. Our company doesn't believe in such things.

The client sends metafiles of their very detailed statistics graphs. Not the best format to work with, but I can manage.

Why, then, do our people insist upon asking for the data and then expect me to plot Kaplan-Meier charts with hundreds of steps in motherfucking goddamn Excel? No, you motherfuckers, I cannot convert the time points and 0 for survival and 1 for event data into a Kaplan-Meier by "just loading it into Excel." I need the survival ratio for each time point, and even then, I have to play a lot of tricks to get a usable graph out of it, and it's even more fun when there are hundreds of censored points to plot. Not something a person can easily do at 9 pm at night after a 14 hour day. I dimly recall that there are formulae for converting the time point versus 0 or 1 into a survival ratio. I also dimly recall that the client can produce what I need in a fraction of the time it takes me to build the damn worksheets and data queries.

Yes, all you stats freaks out there, I do know that various and sundry add-in programs exist for just such purposes. Our company doesn't believe in those, either.

Prism would be nice. So would a pony. So, for that matter, would a million dollars. I am more likely to get a pony and a million dollars first.

[Ensign Steve]

Originally Posted by Pyrrho

I also dimly recall that the client can produce what I need in a fraction of the time it takes me to build the damn worksheets and data queries.

Sounds like someone doesn't want to do his job. Why so lazy, Pyrrho? Can't you just whip something up in excel just as easy?

[Pyrrho]

Originally Posted by Ensign Steve

Sounds like someone doesn't want to do his job. Why so lazy, Pyrrho? Can't you just whip something up in excel just as easy?

In a word, no. We're talking hundreds of points here, not a couple dozen.

[Qingdai]

Gah! Washer! Why did you die?
On the plus side, I might be able to fix it. On the minus side, I may have also figured out an expensive and hard to fix thing is also wrong with it.

At $119 a visit, I got into the wrong field.

[The Lone Ranger]

Dad-blasted FedEx!


I like my postman. If I get a package that's too big for the mailbox, he leaves it on my doorstep. If it looks like it might rain, he kindly wraps it in a plastic bag. One day, he was off sick and his substitute left a package for me. The next day, there was a note on my door from the regular mailman asking if I'd received my package and if the substitute had put it where it belonged.

Nice.


The UPS guys are nice, too. When I get a package from UPS, again, they leave it right by the door, and they'll take pains to put it someplace where it's a.) clearly visible and b.) sheltered from potential rain.


But not the FedEx guys. Twice now in the past couple of months, I've received packages from them. On both occasions, it has been a pain in the neck.

For whatever reason, they only seem to deliver at about 11:00 a.m. Like most people, I'm not home at 11:00 a.m. on a weekday -- I'm working. But will they leave the package? No.

The first time, I got home to find a note on my door saying that they had a package for me, but couldn't deliver it because I wasn't at home. The note said that they'd make 2 more tries, and then return the package to the sender. Since I knew I wasn't going to be home on either of those occasions, I called the number to tell them that they could just leave the package on my doorstep. I live out in the country and I'm not worried that the package will be stolen before I get home. "I'll even sign a waiver," I told the person on the telephone.

He hemmed and hawed a bit, but finally agreed that this would be acceptable. He told me that he'd have to contact the driver and leave a note to the effect that it was okay to leave the package.

So when I got home the next day, the package was there. There was also a note on the door. On it was a notation that it was okay to leave the package, and the recipient [me] accepted responsibility. The driver (presumably, it was the driver) had written next to that, "Yeah, right."


So at about noon today, I wandered into the living room and noticed a note taped to my front door. It was from FedEx, saying that they'd tried to deliver a package at 11:51 a.m. What? I must have been in the bathroom at the time, but I certainly would have heard if the driver had bothered to knock. And my car was sitting in the driveway, so you'd think he would have at least suspected someone was home.

The note said that they couldn't leave the package, and that they'd make two more attempts to deliver it -- one on Tuesday and one on Wednesday. Well, of course, I'm not going to be home on either of those occasions.

So I called FedEx. And let me tell you, they have the most un-helpful phone tree that I think I've ever encountered. In fact, I got so frustrated trying to get a live person or any kind of a useful response from their 1-800 number that I finally called a local store and talked to a live person. (He, at least, was somewhat helpful.)

I explained that I couldn't possibly be home on the two occasions when they were scheduled to re-attempt delivery, and so asked if I could sign a waiver and have it left for me. The guy told me that under no circumstances would they do that -- they had to have me physically present to sign for the package.

So I asked if they'd simply hold it at the regional office (an hour's drive from where I live), so that I could come get it. He told me that they would make 2 more delivery attempts, and then I could petition to have them hold it for me at the regional office.

"But I know that I won't be home when you make those attempts," I explained to him. "Why waste fuel in a futile attempt at delivery when you could simply hold the package at the regional office for me to pick up?" "That's the way we do it," he replied.

In his defense, he did seem to recognize that it was a foolish and counterproductive way of doing things. Still, the whole incident makes me determined to avoid dealing with FedEx whenever possible in the future.

The USPS and UPS seem to be much more customer-friendly and easier to deal with.

[Dingfod]

That's odd, Fedex leaves packages on my porch all the time. I understand their policy allows that if they can leave it where it is not easily viewable from the street. Since my porch is 700 feet from the road, it qualifies I guess.

[Vivisectus]

Fuck you Siebel! Fuck you, anyone who programs, markets, sells or supports you! I want to find whoever sold this awful awful excuse for a CRM program to our company, tear out his eyeballs and piss in the sockets! I hate you so much I could vomit!

You waste my time, you crash at random intervals, you force me to actually sit there and wait for you while you finish a simple operation - even switching to my email inbox will actually cause you to stop responding! Every time you need to chance a record, I have to wait at least 2 minutes!

I cannot bear it! I cannot even make a simple quote amendment without it turning into a 2 hour saga! I hate you so much!!! Fucking die already!