Comment On Intern Turnaround

You see, this is why when you think something is broken you tell someone that knows what the hell they're doing so you don't get the blame.

It's like the programmer that changed a complex physics equation in our program because he thought it was a good idea.

It wasn't.

He no longer is our programmer.

Daddy, what's that metal thing with the handle on the stove?
"It's a pot"
<reaches up to grab it>
"Don't touch it - it's hot"
<reaches up to grab it>
"Don't touch it - it's hot"
<jumps up and pulls pot of boiling water down on head>
*cries*

I prefer to educate my children the opposite way:

"Daddy, what's hot?"

"touch that pot.."

A view into the intern's past:

Daddy, what's that metal thing with the handle on the stove?
"It's a pot"
<reaches up to grab it>
"Don't touch it - it's hot"
<reaches up to grab it>
"Don't touch it - it's hot"
<jumps up and pulls pot of boiling water down on head>
*cries*

This is Daddy's fault. Everyone knows you are supposed to turn the handles away from the edge so kids can't grab them.

Cyrus:

You see, this is why when you think something is broken you tell someone that knows what the hell they're doing so you don't get the blame.

It's like the programmer that changed a complex physics equation in our program because he thought it was a good idea.

It wasn't.

He no longer is our programmer.

Maybe it was a good idea and you just aren't as smart as he is to tell the difference. I'm sure that's what he is telling his current employer.

The servers were under your desk?? WTF?

Used correctly, <I>italics</I> can make your writing clearer and more precise.


Step One
Italicize the titles of books, which may be novels, book-length nonfiction or book-length poems. Generally, the titles of shorter works, such as essays or shorter poems, are not italicized but are set off with quotation marks.

Step Two
Italicize the names of newspapers and periodicals.

Step Three
Italicize the names of television series, but not the names of individual episodes (which are set off with quotation marks).

Step Four
Use italics for the names of movies and plays.

Step Five
Use italics for names of operas and other full-length musical compositions, except for works that are named by their number or key (for example, Symphony No. 2).

Step Six
Italicize the names of ships, planes, automobiles and trains.

Step Seven
Scientific names of plants and animals, such as <I>canis dingo</I> or <I>ailurus fulgens</I>, take italics.

Step Eight
Emphasize a word or short phrase using italics. For example, "You <I>should</I> come to the party." Don't overuse them, however, or they won't have the intended effect.

Step Nine
Italicize foreign-language words that are likely to be unfamiliar to readers. For example, "At the Ristorante di Dante, I ordered <I>cervello</I>, not knowing I would be served brains." Don't, however, italicize proper names, such as Ristorante di Dante.

Tips & Warnings
Use italics for emphasis sparingly. It's almost always better if the emphasis is clear from the structure of the sentence itself.

Or just use <blockquote>

KattMan:

This is Daddy's fault. Everyone knows you are supposed to turn the handles away from the edge so kids can't grab them.

And I suppose I should have that Tree of Knowledge removed from my backyard so my kids don't eat from it despite my warning? Yeah right!

I have dealt with dozens of interns. Most couldnt find thier butts with instructions. I had interns break pc's. Interns delete databases. Interns delete source code. I had one intern working for her masters in CompSci, and she couldnt understand what a struct was. It was amazing.

Matthew:

KattMan:

This is Daddy's fault. Everyone knows you are supposed to turn the handles away from the edge so kids can't grab them.

And I suppose I should have that Tree of Knowledge removed from my backyard so my kids don't eat from it despite my warning? Yeah right!

You have one of those? Feed it to your kids and save on the college education man! Oh and could you possibly tell me what kind of fruit really is on that tree?

KattMan:

Cyrus:

You see, this is why when you think something is broken you tell someone that knows what the hell they're doing so you don't get the blame.

It's like the programmer that changed a complex physics equation in our program because he thought it was a good idea.

It wasn't.

He no longer is our programmer.

Maybe it was a good idea and you just aren't as smart as he is to tell the difference. I'm sure that's what he is telling his current employer.

I'm sure being unable to get a reference for a company you spent > 5 years working for makes you a bit of a suspicious job candidate. :D

On a side note, it wasn't better because everything ceased to work. No one knew why, after code inspection everyone was a little more than angry that unannounced changes had been made.

I have dealt with dozens of interns. Most couldnt find thier butts with instructions. I had interns break pc's. Interns delete databases. Interns delete source code. I had one intern working for her masters in CompSci, and she couldnt understand what a struct was. It was amazing.

We had someone interview once with a Master CompSci degree that couldn't write a singly linked list.

Cyrus:

KattMan:

Cyrus:

You see, this is why when you think something is broken you tell someone that knows what the hell they're doing so you don't get the blame.

It's like the programmer that changed a complex physics equation in our program because he thought it was a good idea.

It wasn't.

He no longer is our programmer.

Maybe it was a good idea and you just aren't as smart as he is to tell the difference. I'm sure that's what he is telling his current employer.

I'm sure being unable to get a reference for a company you spent > 5 years working for makes you a bit of a suspicious job candidate. :D

On a side note, it wasn't better because everything ceased to work. No one knew why, after code inspection everyone was a little more than angry that unannounced changes had been made.

I have dealt with dozens of interns. Most couldnt find thier butts with instructions. I had interns break pc's. Interns delete databases. Interns delete source code. I had one intern working for her masters in CompSci, and she couldnt understand what a struct was. It was amazing.

We had someone interview once with a Master CompSci degree that couldn't write a singly linked list.

Your sarcasm detector is in need of repair.

I had loads of interns. Many like the one from the story, some quite OK, and a few were really great people to work with.

Still I don't get it: where do all these dumpasses come from. I really don't know. I never was an intern, and I don't understand why anyone would like to work for next to no pay and do stupid things if the company would also hire anyone to a "proper" job who only claims that he has seen a computer in a shop window before...

KattMan:

A view into the intern's past:

Daddy, what's that metal thing with the handle on the stove?
"It's a pot"
<reaches up to grab it>
"Don't touch it - it's hot"
<reaches up to grab it>
"Don't touch it - it's hot"
<jumps up and pulls pot of boiling water down on head>
*cries*

This is Daddy's fault. Everyone knows you are supposed to turn the handles away from the edge so kids can't grab them.

The scars on my chin and chest would indicate that not "everyone" knows that...

The degree explains everything. Those who can't do go to school to get a piece of paper so they can pretend that they can.

In a field as rapidly changing as this, often the larger the degree, the smaller the ability.

KattMan:

Matthew:

KattMan:

This is Daddy's fault. Everyone knows you are supposed to turn the handles away from the edge so kids can't grab them.

And I suppose I should have that Tree of Knowledge removed from my backyard so my kids don't eat from it despite my warning? Yeah right!

You have one of those? Feed it to your kids and save on the college education man! Oh and could you possibly tell me what kind of fruit really is on that tree?

If we told you, we'd have to kill you.

Not everyone that gets a degree sucks. School is just like everything else, you get what you put into it. You can get by without learning anything but it's a great way to speed up the learning process if you can get into a good one and you try to learn something. Thinking someone is better just because they didn't get a degree doesn't even make sense. I've seen people with and without degrees that do things that maek you wonder how then manage to find there way to work.
Not everyone that teaches sucks at what they do,either. There are people who are very good at a topic but just like teaching. I can't understand why, but they do.

Gah, everyone knows

Those who can, do
Those who can't, teach
Those who can't teach, consult...

but apparently we need a new saying

Those who sip the bong water, get covered in fire-proof foam.

Captcha: waffles (which is what the guy got for whinning when he wasn't allowed to come back)

That kind of generalizing says a whole lot about your intellect, and not much about people with degrees.

I don't know what's worse; that you quoted that without attribution, that it's from eHow, or that you didn't figure out that it's about italics <I>in sentences</i> and thus irrelevant to quotation formatting.

Italics are less common but not unknown for long quotes or additional material; <a href="http://istpub.berkeley.edu:4201/style/#b360">Berkeley's IST style document</a>, for instance, suggests them for paragraphs of editor's notes or additional material.

Which bears, in fact, some resemblance to their use here.

(Also, did you know that the Rime of the Ancient Mariner can be sung to the tune of the Gilligan's Island theme song? It's true.)

"School is just like everything else, you get what you put into it."
Thank you!

Grant:

The degree explains everything. Those who can't do go to school to get a piece of paper so they can pretend that they can.

In a field as rapidly changing as this, often the larger the degree, the smaller the ability.

Hmm... I have a masters in Comp Sci. and I have had no problem getting work and most of my employers(thats right I cant please everyone) have been very satisfied with my performance.
I realize there are those who could not write a hello world with a CS degree but most of us that graduated from a <i>reputable</i> university do in fact know what we are doing.

I'm a teacher. I do well in my field. I simply want to pass on the passion for my field to others who have the potential. It's sort of like investing a dollar to make more dollars instead of blowing it on a pack of gum.

You missed a bit of that foam, there's some stuck up your nose.

Once, long long ago, working on an intranet site, the fellow who made the graphics gave them to us as .bmp files. So I gave them to the intern, and asked him to convert them to .gif (.png was not yet well supported by browsers). When he sent me the converted files, I was unable to open them, so I strolled over to his desk and asked him how he'd done the conversion.

He opened up Windows Explorer. "I click on the file, like this," he said. "Then I click it again. Then I delete the 'bmp' and type 'gif'. That's all there is to it!"

Pap:

Scientific names of plants and animals, such as <I>canis dingo</I> or <I>ailurus fulgens</I>, take italics.

In the case of scientific names, you need to make sure the Genus is capitalized and the species is lowercase. For example: Quercus rubra (Common name: Red Oak) or Betula nigra (Common name: River Birch)

This is an excellent example of differences in learning styles among different people. A wise man once said:

- Some people learn by reading.
- Some people learn by watching.
- Some people learn by listening.

- Some people don't learn until they actually pee on the electric fence.

This guy was apparently a card-carrying member of the last group.

Eh, I wouldn't trust someone like that with a gif conversion anyway; depending on the image/software used, there's plenty of potential for bad color reductions...

Sigivald:

(Also, did you know that the Rime of the Ancient Mariner can be sung to the tune of the Gilligan's Island theme song? It's true.)

Woah - I heard that from my high school English prof, and didn't know it was that common knowledge. You didn't perhaps go to an odd little school in Hartsville did you? Or hear it from a friend over the phone recently? Or maybe that information really is fairly well known...

Pretty cool either way!

Cyrus:

You see, this is why when you think something is broken you tell someone that knows what the hell they're doing so you don't get the blame.

It's like the programmer that changed a complex physics equation in our program because he thought it was a good idea.

It wasn't.

He no longer is our programmer.

It happens everywhere. The author of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians said that when he read the proofs, he found that the typesetter had changed "Ludwig van Beethoven" to "Ludwig von Beethoven." He sent a note back: "No more spelling corrections from the typesetter, please."

Generic Phil:

Eh, I wouldn't trust someone like that with a gif conversion anyway; depending on the image/software used, there's plenty of potential for bad color reductions...

If the BMPs were already 256-color or less, it wouldn't have been an issue.

Cyrus:

I'm sure being unable to get a reference for a company you spent > 5 years working for makes you a bit of a suspicious job candidate. :D

An employee for over 5 years and then he gets fired for a mistake (a dumb one admittedly, but still a mistake)? I bet you're lovely to work for. SVN/CVS -> Revert changes, job done and a simple warning to him to ask first next time.

Grant:

The degree explains everything. Those who can't do go to school to get a piece of paper so they can pretend that they can.

In a field as rapidly changing as this, often the larger the degree, the smaller the ability.

Those who can, go and get their degree. Those who can't, go around posting on the web saying how stupid and pointless degrees are.

Did someone mention italics?

Racist

A college degree is your while collar union card. It doesn't mean you're better than someone without one. You don't need one to get a job in your choosen field. But it gets your application in the door in lots of places where it wouldn't without.

KattMan:

A view into the intern's past:

Daddy, what's that metal thing with the handle on the stove?
"It's a pot"
<reaches up to grab it>
"Don't touch it - it's hot"
<reaches up to grab it>
"Don't touch it - it's hot"
<jumps up and pulls pot of boiling water down on head>
*cries*

This is Daddy's fault. Everyone knows you are supposed to turn the handles away from the edge so kids can't grab them.

Nah, this is when you give him a swat on the butt. It seems every kid needs to learn the stove=hot lesson, and only mop-head needs to learn it twice.

Franz Kafka:

KattMan:

A view into the intern's past:

Daddy, what's that metal thing with the handle on the stove?
"It's a pot"
<reaches up to grab it>
"Don't touch it - it's hot"
<reaches up to grab it>
"Don't touch it - it's hot"
<jumps up and pulls pot of boiling water down on head>
*cries*

This is Daddy's fault. Everyone knows you are supposed to turn the handles away from the edge so kids can't grab them.

Nah, this is when you give him a swat on the butt. It seems every kid needs to learn the stove=hot lesson, and only mop-head needs to learn it twice.

No need to swat the kids, let him grab it. After telling him "Don't touch" for five time in a row, letting him grab it teaches two things: 1 - Stove=hot and 2 - Listen to daddy, he is right.

Translation, please - what does "human ottoman" mean? Never heard that term before.

It's a footrest.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_(furniture)

Sheesh - do you guys all have DeVry grads as interns, or what??

(runs and ducks)

Keep in mind that, just like every school, DeVry has a short bus.

As an IT intern myself, I have to disagree (in my specific case) about the pay. Compared to many of my peers, I am making a respectable amount of money. Of course, compared to the average IT professional it's chump change, but we're working on it. :D

Hey, what the Hell is up with all the Intern bashing?! This is my second summer interning and I've worked very hard! I completed 8 projects in 12 weeks last summer, and I'm working on a massive project right now at a high profile company trying to produce useful visualizations based on massive amounts of data. I would not consider myself incompetent!

I think anyone who has had a bad intern should qualify that with the fact that they need to learn how to conduct better interviews. True, interviews aren't fool-proof, but if you have a few people interview, and they all agree that it's a good candidate, then you won't have horror stories like this. My interviews for this position were quite challenging.

Ok, I don't get it. First, how the hell did he get hired. Second, why the hell didn't you fire him once you knew he was an idiot?

I like how the automatic fire extinguisher proved potentially able to save everything in the room that might catch fire, except for the servers.

Corey:

KattMan:

A view into the intern's past:

Daddy, what's that metal thing with the handle on the stove?
"It's a pot"
<reaches up to grab it>
"Don't touch it - it's hot"
<reaches up to grab it>
"Don't touch it - it's hot"
<jumps up and pulls pot of boiling water down on head>
*cries*

This is Daddy's fault. Everyone knows you are supposed to turn the handles away from the edge so kids can't grab them.

The scars on my chin and chest would indicate that not "everyone" knows that...

Fuck about whose fault it is. The pain and the burn/scald scars are there forever (unless you do plastic surgery) for your kid. And in that particular situation there is much worse that can happen - think about boiling water in the eyes! That will mess up your child's life for quite some time or forever, depending on your luck of lack of it.

The third word my daughter learned was "hot". She learned when I intentionally let her touch a very hot cup of tea and held her hand against the outside of the cup for five seconds. The next word she learned then was "aua". No permanent harm done but when I tell her that something is hot she will avoid it - no muss or fuss.

So, am I an arsehole or a caring parent ?

iToad:

This is an excellent example of differences in learning styles among different people. A wise man once said:

- Some people learn by reading.
- Some people learn by watching.
- Some people learn by listening.

- Some people don't learn until they actually pee on the electric fence.

This guy was apparently a card-carrying member of the last group.

The guy was their president.

Alcari:

Franz Kafka:

KattMan:

A view into the intern's past:

Daddy, what's that metal thing with the handle on the stove?
"It's a pot"
<reaches up to grab it>
"Don't touch it - it's hot"
<reaches up to grab it>
"Don't touch it - it's hot"
<jumps up and pulls pot of boiling water down on head>
*cries*

This is Daddy's fault. Everyone knows you are supposed to turn the handles away from the edge so kids can't grab them.

Nah, this is when you give him a swat on the butt. It seems every kid needs to learn the stove=hot lesson, and only mop-head needs to learn it twice.

No need to swat the kids, let him grab it. After telling him "Don't touch" for five time in a row, letting him grab it teaches two things: 1 - Stove=hot and 2 - Listen to daddy, he is right.

That's bull. A stove with somthing boiling on it just too fucking hot and dangerous. Too many fucking things can go wrong with that: bad scalds and burns with a toddler are always bad and that means hospitalization in almost every case. Better teach 'em with something less dangerous about "what is hot" and "hot means pain". See my previous post.

First they hire a moron willing to work silly hours for next to nothing, then they complain that he's a moron.

Poetic justice if you ask me.

The real WTF here here is a warning against working for anyone who thinks its ok to have servers under their desk.

KattMan:

This is Daddy's fault. Everyone knows you are supposed to turn the handles away from the edge so kids can't grab them.

Nice in theory, but if you don't turn the handles outward, they'll get hot. It's better if your kid who didn't listen to you burns itself, than that you burn your own hands. Besides, it'll teach the kid a very important lesson, as noted above.