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Not too long ago, I added my company, Inedo, to the federal government's Central Contractor Registration system. I don't know, I just didn't want to miss out on all the fun every one seems to have with government work. Whenever one signs up for virtually any government thing, a deluge of companies somehow manage to find to out. The CCR is certainly no exception.

Jesse Weisner was a bit disappointed that this item is still out of stock...

Shawn O. was not used to bright lights, smiling faces, or greetings like “hi Shawn, how are you today?” In fact, just about anything that wasn’t specifically intended to bring pain and misery to all had become foreign to him. It was simply par for the course. Shawn, after all, was an Oracle DBA. And not just any Oracle DBA, but one who sat on the company’s Database Code Review Council.

Anton N is not a programmer by trade. Whenever he comes across “questionable” code in his job as an engineer, he always gives the programmer the benefit of the doubt: it might just have to be that complicated to work; maybe he did it to work around some system limitation; or perhaps it’s some optimized routine. It’s only fair. Certainly, he wouldn't want some programmer critiquing his decision to use the modial interaction of magneto-reluctance (rather than a more efficient method, such as capacitive directance) for supplying inverse reactive current in a unilateral phase detractor.

"I got this message while trying to install the Dutch-language version of McAfee's VirusScan 8.5i on my Vista-based laptop," writes Alex van Herwijnen, "the text above reads it is recommended to remove the following products, and beneath do you want to remove these products now."

"I don't know how many times I have to say it — our server room is outdated and we need some money approved for new equipment. Or at least someone to come in and check out the air conditioner. It's making that sound again." Peter was losing count of the times he'd complained about their aging infrastructure.

Sandy Barnabas received a rather odd message when submitting a registration form:

This clbuttic was originally posted by "ezrec"...

Choose Your Own WTF: that this restroom hand dryer can't boot-up, or that this restroom hand dryer needs to boot-up...

First there's Comcast WTF that was originally posted by "cheesy" ... Having not received my bill from Comcast (now Time Warner) one month, I called them up. They said they would send me another copy. This is what showed up a week later.

I'm always amazed at the lengths some people will go to 'enterprise up' there Java apps," Ben writes, "especially those daft Yes/No enums that we've seen here lately."

"Hey, Marcin, do you have a second to talk? Come meet me at my office. No big deal, just when you have a sec." Marcin spun around in his chair, stood up, and walked to his boss's office.

Space Invaders + Contacts Management - Fun = Space Blitz.

First, we've got Those Unstable Databases, originally posted by "tbcpp"

At David’s company, management wasn’t a big fan of the whole check-in/re-compile/re-deploy process. They felt that it had too many steps and took far too long to complete. Their organization needed to adapt to software changes - especially bug fixes - much faster. So, to address this problem, they thoroughly analyzed the development process and carefully tweaked it for efficiency. I’m just kidding. Actually, their solution was to pioneer a new methodology called “SQL Sentences”.

The day after I finished "Final Fantasy VII," I sat down for lunch with some friends who had also completed the game. We all enjoyed it, but felt it wasn't all it could have been. We thought we -- a group of jobless, inexperienced students with no resources -- could do better. I was the only one who had ever flipped through a book on C++, so I became lead developer. Tony, who'd never used a computer for anything except playing "The Oregon Trail," had a knack for drawing and became lead artist. Everyone else (Dan and Tim) was split up between writing (Dan) and marketing (Tim). How hard could it be?

Do you sure? And just how sure do you? Thom P. sure does!

After a few years at a large, soulless corporate conglomerate, "Henry L." needed a change. Since his skills were in high demand, he had no trouble lining up interviews at several other large, soulless corporate conglomerates. He'd grown tired of working at such large companies, though, and started looking into some smaller businesses.

"In C," writes Keith Lucas, "literal floating point number are interpreted as double precision floating point numbers. For example, if you have '0.0' in your code, the compiler will determine the type of '0.0' to be 'double'. In some compilers, such as the Visual C++ 6 compiler that we use, if a literal 'double' is used for a function with a 'float' parameter, a compiler warning is issued because the literal could be less accurate."

Ever since the first Free Sticker Week ended back in February '07, I've been sending out WTF Stickers to anyone that mailed me a SASE or a small Souvenir. Nothing specific, per the instructions page, "anything will do." Well, here goes anything, again! (first one here)

In the world of .NET, the Right Way to include newlines in a string is with the Environment.NewLine constant. Of course, given how easy "\n" is, few developers actually follow this rule.

I was introduced to bug tracking software many years back at my second programming job. And by “introduced”, I mean forced – practically at gunpoint – to use it. And boy, did I hate it. Why do I have to put every stupid thing I do, I remember thinking, whether it’s a stupid bug or not, in some stupid system so some stupid project manager can look at my stupid tasks?

Kendall's friend was awarded this Bachelor of Landscape Architecture with a rather interesting specialization from Polytech.

Originally posted by "snoofle" ...

"When I went to dispute my credit information," Raj K wrote, "I noticed that the company's online form required a complex password. The developer in me was curious as to how the validation was implemented, so I viewed the page source. Shortly thereafter, my palm quickly met my forehead."

Business was booming. Smartypants Software was selling licenses for their fancy new web portal software about as fast as they could generate license keys. Developers were working later and later into the night, and the tech support staff could hardly catch their breath between calls.

"While I can see how the two ladies might have a murky past," Martin Cowen wrote "what can Shaun have been up to?"

Not Too Particular from Ichabod After reading through a stack of dull resumes, this one was a welcome change.

If there's one thing The Internet doesn't have enough of, it's Web Comics. Really, it's almost impossible to find a web-comic these days.

"You'd think that the C++ Boolean would be a welcome addition to the language," writes Jake E. "Not so much for our outsourcing company. This is what's now in our constants.h file."

Originally posted by "marinus"...

This certainly isn't the first time we've seen a larger-than-life error on the strip, but come-on Paris Las Vegas, windows calculator this time!?

Every so often, Bob B. observed that his company's e-commerce site would crash-hard. No one had any clue as to why it happened, but everyone knew how to fix it. Restart both the IIS and SQL Server processes and, voilà, within a minute, the site was up and running again.

"Where I work we keep a lot of data stored in XML files," Ben writes. "They're not your average XML files, though — they're special." His colleague invented the following technique (recommended for senior level XML programmers only).

Two for the price of one today! U R NT QFD was originally posted by "Ben Fulton"...

"Clearly," Alex wrote, "there is more potential for my printer here than just printing..."

1999 was a big year for Harvard Business School Publishing. In the past few years, they had seen their business model – selling books, journals, articles, case studies, and so forth – transform from being entirely catalogue-based to largely web-based, and it had finally come time for a major re-launch of their website.

For some tasks, you're presented an opportunity to do things the easy way or the hard way. When your friend is proudly showing off his work at replacing a light fixture, the switch, and all the wiring, you might wonder why not just replace the dead bulb?

Originally posted by "Publius"...

Say, Patrik M., what have we here?

Originally posted by "snoofle" ...

"At manufacturing companies," Brent Railey wrote, "all you ever hear about is SAFETY, SAFETY, SAFETY. In fact, that was exactly the type of application I was tasked with reviewing: an 'Activity Based Safety Program' application for the corporate offices. It was a Classic ASP application that was 'slightly customized' from another application."