Although the sysadmins couldn’t use the DST mechanism in Windows, people still wanted the computers’ clocks to match their wall clocks, so we had to actually move the machine’s internal clock.
All this “We don’t do DST” sounded reasonable enough, until this. :-)
Windows (at least 95 and 98) used to do this itself - modify the hardware clock to adjust for DST. That was super irritating in a dual-boot setup with Linux or BSD, where the kernel would expect the hardware clock to be stable.
The data was kept in-DB as giant XML strings. While this sounds ridiculous now, keep in mind that this was before NoSQL, and the organization’s developers had no table structure modification access. This was their way of getting a flexible record structure they can modify on their own.
I can absolutely imagine that happening.
I’ve seen developers do horrifying things because running a SQL migration against a large table was too difficult, and had too much process attached to it.
Due to some additional permission checks and validation, the serialization (converting classes into XML strings) was built in-house.
Reminds me of a client I once had who deserialized in house. The deserializer was written so badly the attributes had to come in a specific order or it would fail. So we had to write our serializer in-house as well.
There’s nothing more permanent than a temporary fix.
I had a dream once that my company I was working at scheduled everything and everyone in UTC. Work schedules, meetings, lunches everything. It was great.
It was one of those times where you’re debugging a problem across datacenters and your dream about work, turns out one of my VMs was throwing everything off because the kick script didn’t set the time to UTC. Thanks brain!
There ain’t a right thing in sight. The employees still need to and do follow dst but they have to adjust their clocks by hand because the company’s software is ass.
All this “We don’t do DST” sounded reasonable enough, until this. :-)
Windows (at least 95 and 98) used to do this itself - modify the hardware clock to adjust for DST. That was super irritating in a dual-boot setup with Linux or BSD, where the kernel would expect the hardware clock to be stable.
There was the classic Windows 95 bug that occurred if you left the computer on when the clocks go back: it got stuck in a time loop :-)
heh, cool. Never ran into that one myself.
Oh, this happened as late as windows vista, the last time I ran a dual-boot setup. It may even still be a thing.
I’m pretty sure it’s still a thing, but you can turn it off in the registry. Makes dual booting very annoying!
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I can absolutely imagine that happening.
I’ve seen developers do horrifying things because running a SQL migration against a large table was too difficult, and had too much process attached to it.
Reminds me of a client I once had who deserialized in house. The deserializer was written so badly the attributes had to come in a specific order or it would fail. So we had to write our serializer in-house as well.
Gonna have to save this one for later.
This is such a good story. It was pleasure to read, thanks for sharing
Every workplace has bugs that people have worked around so long that they come to accept the bug as part of the scenery.
When the new person comes in and points them out, do they say “thanks, it’s on our list” or “that’s the way it is and will be”?
People who have hope can work. People who don’t, won’t.
I know someone who wrote about keeping a WTF notebook, so you don’t share them immediately, and get perceived as a complainer.
I had a dream once that my company I was working at scheduled everything and everyone in UTC. Work schedules, meetings, lunches everything. It was great.
It was one of those times where you’re debugging a problem across datacenters and your dream about work, turns out one of my VMs was throwing everything off because the kick script didn’t set the time to UTC. Thanks brain!
Ah, scheduling and DST. Two tastes that seldom are good together.
One of those rare cases where doing the right thing for the wrong reason is still good!
If only everyone could be so enlightened.
There ain’t a right thing in sight. The employees still need to and do follow dst but they have to adjust their clocks by hand because the company’s software is ass.