September Notes (in October!)

There have been various complaints about a software package at work crashing and I finally tracked one crash cause down to running reports more than 75 times in one session (oh the fun!  Now you see why my posting has been sparse!).  The call into their tech support was like trying to talk someone to doing their job:

ME: Yes, it will run fine, but then when you run it the 76th time, KABOOM!
THEM: It works fine for me, perhaps you have an install that doesn’t work.
ME: Wha..da…did you even try it?
THEM: Works for me, but I’m on the patched version.
[Later…]
ME: Okay, I patched it and it still blows up.
THEM: Are you sure, maybe you should try it on a different-
ME: F’n Duh!  I tried it with different reports, different combinations of reports, different combinations on different PCs with different configurations.  76 times a pop, do the math!
THEM: So, 76 times…
ME: Yes.  Click ‘Pick List’ then Enter, then ‘Pick List’ then Enter, then ‘Pick List’ then Enter, and so forth until you reach 76, if you can count that high.
[(Much) Later…]
THEM: A bug report has been issued for your trouble ticket [You will be retired before we get around to patching it BTW].

At least they’re American, I suppose.  On my last support call to Microsoft, the (worthless) Indian guy and I had a ‘laugh’ when he remarked that he couldn’t hit our web server to which I said that it would work so long as you were in the U.S or Canada – HA!

As seen from the iPhone: