It Could Be Worse
My life could be worse, I could be doing the sysadmin gig for the clueless like Derek. I have had similar things happen while a programmer dealing with mostly clueful but some clueless QA people, and even more so back in the bad old days as a tech support bob. I remember being emailed an MS Word document, containing nothing but a screenshot of a fucking console window with a few lines of text in it (an error or something). I think I emailed back a pdf of a full size png of a word window with a screenshot of a terminal with an image viewer of a desktop screenshot of a terminal with the words "please do not email information in unsuitable formats" or something like that. Somehow I'm really glad I had my QA people instead of Dereks though :)
It's the QA staf that don't read your blog that were the "clueless" ones right Alan.
Ps, remember I know where you live. ;-)
My QA staff was great! :) There was only the one real occasion that a certain someone showed their cluelessness with the whole "word doc with a screenshot of a terminal" thing. You guys rocked!
I love this guys rant!
Exactly how I felt sometimes.
Luser: "The database doesn't work"
Me: "What's the error message"
Luser: "error message??"
Me: "What did it say when it 'stopped working'"
Luser: "I dunno"
Me: "ARRRGGGGGGG!!!!!"