Stupid Bosses

[Warik]

Why does a boss hire a person to do a job he does not know how to do, and then proceed to tell the person how to do his job? It puzzles me how someone with no computer experience other than checking his e-mail could possibly in this universe tell a programmer "no... nothing is wrong with the server even though it crashes for 2-3 hours periodically... your program is wrong!"

What happens to people when they misbehave in Hell? Satan sends them back here to work.

-Warik

 

[Steroid_Virgin]

That happens a lot in IT today... You have people who are IT managers, but can't figure out how to plug a ethernet cable into a nic... Its fucking sad... let alone know what a nic is, or even how to intall an O/S on a server.

 

[bigschweeler]

Why is it when you talk to someone in IT you can't get a fucking straight answer? They are worse than finance. Don't they teach these people English?

 

[WODIN]

Warik you need to optimize your code so that it's not tickling the server so much and crashing it all the damn time!!! He he....

 

[Warik]

Steroid_Virgin,

Damn right. Thankfully I work from home so I don't have to put up with boss shit for 8 hours a day, but I swear, one day they had to reinstall Outlook Express on one of the machines and I had to drive all the way to the office to set up the e-mail accounts. I gave EXPLICIT, 5-YEAR-OLD instructions on how to enter EVERYTHINGg and they couldn't do it. SIGH.

bigschweeler,

All depends on who you speak to. =) I have learned from 2 years working here how to dumb everything down for my boss. I've even drawn little diagrams to show what happens when we change webhosts since the whole concept is too difficult to grasp.

WODIN,

Don't be silly. I've just put together a nice test to shove in my boss's face. I installed the script on another webserver and changed NOTHING except an e-mail address and the database login information. Presto! It works perfectly and even faster than it ever did on our old server. Conclusion? Old server sucks ass.

-Warik

 

[Y_lifter]

You have made the ultimate mistake to bring on the IT Manager's wrath.
Making an Unapproved change to a production server environment...

Outlook "Express" configuation confusion..... Bwahahahaha

 

[WODIN]

WODIN,

Don't be silly. I've just put together a nice test to shove in my boss's face. I installed the script on another webserver and changed NOTHING except an e-mail address and the database login information. Presto! It works perfectly and even faster than it ever did on our old server. Conclusion? Old server sucks ass.

-Warik

While I agree with you buddy, the thing is your boss is basically saying he can't afford to buy a new server do what you can to make the blippy light thingy work right!

 

[TheProject]

You have made the ultimate mistake to bring on the IT Manager's wrath.
Making an Unapproved change to a production server environment...

Outlook "Express" configuation confusion..... Bwahahahaha

Y'know, as an IT Manager, I was actually told in my review that I had to be the good guy this year and he had to be the bad guy because too many people were afraid of me.

I love my job.

 

[Warik]

While I agree with you buddy, the thing is your boss is basically saying he can't afford to buy a new server do what you can to make the blippy light thingy work right!

We don't own a server. We're hosted on this P.O.S. dedicated server that we "rent" from this P.O.S. company called Interland. My suggestion to him (THREE MONTHS AGO) was to switch to a shared hosting account which provided us with MUCH more than we needed for less than HALF what we were paying at the time. He didn't think it was a good idea.

A few website crashes and chronic slowdowns later, he finally agrees with me. Now he's whining because we haven't changed hosts yet. Oh well... maybe if you had listened to me 3 months ago this wouldn't be happening, eh?

-Warik

 

[WODIN]

Well with that bit of info it sounds like you need to take a more proactive role. Just tell him your going to start saving him tons of money...etc.. whatever then just do it! Is that possible?

 

[Warik]

Well with that bit of info it sounds like you need to take a more proactive role. Just tell him your going to start saving him tons of money...etc.. whatever then just do it! Is that possible?

The funny part is that I was the one taking the proactive role. He seems to be more the "reactive" type, which is very bad in the world of business.

6 months ago I told him that we needed to upgrade the database and redesign it to take advantage of new features available in later version (our shit was literally at least a year out of date). He said that no, it wasn't necessary, waste of time & money, etc. Lo and behold, a month later when we started having problems he went ahead and gave me permission to do it.

Then 2 or 3 months ago our webhost was bought out by these Interland pukes. Our site was down for over 72 hours during the migration (was only supposed to be 12 hours). I told him that we should change webhosts, he disagreed. After a month of frequent downtime and lack of technical support, he finally agreed with me. Now we're having more problems with the website due to the old host, and I'm telling him that there is absolutely nothing remotely in the realm of cost-effectiveness that I can do to resolve the problem because the problem is with the webhost and not the script. We're going to be moving in less than a week, why redesign the whole script only to use the old version after all? Sigh! He's complaining that no requests for quotes are getting through... not like they'd do any good anyway. There have been days where we had over 30 requests and not a single sale was made. Funny how every problem always seems to be rooted to the website instead of the people he has working the phones.

-Warik

 

[MattTheSkywalker]

If this guy sucks so bad, why are you still working for him?

Just curious.

 

[Steroid_Virgin]

cant always pick your boss bro....

 

[Warik]

If this guy sucks so bad, why are you still working for him?

Just curious.

Because...

1) I'm wasting my time in school so a 9-5'er is not an option.
2) I can work at home and make my own hours.
3) I'm not part of a team, so I only answer to the boss & his wife.
4) He's normally a nice guy and takes what I say as Gospel unless there's a major crisis.

-Warik

 

[MattTheSkywalker]

Because...

1) I'm wasting my time in school so a 9-5'er is not an option.
2) I can work at home and make my own hours.
3) I'm not part of a team, so I only answer to the boss & his wife.
4) He's normally a nice guy and takes what I say as Gospel unless there's a major crisis.

-Warik

This bprobably brings up more questions thaan it answers, but you do what you gotta do.

 

[HappyScrappy]

does the server crash periodically regardless of whether it runs your code or not?

 

[Warik]

does the server crash periodically regardless of whether it runs your code or not?

Unless someone executes my code at 3am differently than 70 people execute it in the afternoon, the server crashes whenever it feels like doing so.

-Warik

 

[HappyScrappy]

how many people access it at 3am?

is it on a windows box? if so, what kind?

where is it located? temp controlled?

 

[Warik]

how many people access it at 3am?

Few to none.

is it on a windows box? if so, what kind?

No.

where is it located?

Probably a dumpster at Interland Headquarters.

temp controlled?

Yes. The shit in the dumpster keeps it nice and warm.

-Warik

 

[HappyScrappy]

also, does it consistantly crash at a certain time - or more importantly, under certain conditions - OR does it consistently crash a certain amount of time from its last restart?

sounds to me as if junk is building up and then at some point it hits a breaking point and dies.
programs that don't do memory allocation correctly usually have this trait - if you are running only popularly used and stable servers (Apache, mySql, etc), then it isn't likely the case there - and if I recall correctly most of the stuff you did for this guy is PHP stuff - which is really really not likely to kill the machine directly...

if it is colocated somewhere that isn't particularly good at what it does, it could be that as a shift changes, someone changes the temperature and around 3am is when problems arise simply due to temp levels tend to hit critical points around there...
or some dude that is on that shift smokes and leaves a door open out to the humid night and it is near your cage in the colocation...

any number of things could lead to it - but I would agree that unless you are writing C/C++ stuff, it isn't likely your code.

if it is Java, then it would depend on many things - it technically should prevent memory leaks - but some of the servers seem to manage a way around this somehow...

 

[Warik]

There doesn't seem to be any pattern to the crashing since it happens some days and sometimes it doesn't. I can't find any evidence to suggest that it's not a server problem. Fortunately we're moving in less than a week and all this crap will be over with... let the poor souls still stuck with Interland feel the wrath of the crappy hosting.

-Warik