Specifically, Oracle coughed up blood Monday morning due to someone attaching an infinitely recursive script to it. Oops. We reacted quickly by slapping a "We're having technical difficulties" page up, with a link to an older version of the software at the bottom. Shortly, we received a fax screaming at us (in very large print) about how we were such evil people for having technical troubles, and how nobody could access the system. Of course, this vitriol was scrawled atop a copy of the technical difficulties page, and conveniently ignored the prominent link at the bottom which pointed to a non-crashing version of the software.
Critical error between keyboard and chair... abort, retry, fail?
We learned from our customer service types that the customers were very anxious to speak directly with us, and that they (the customer service types) were having to be very elaborate in their avoidance of giving out our phone numbers. The phrase "storming the castle with pitchforks" came to mind. Peasant mobs are not a good and happy thing.
Especially as we would have had to pour the boiling hot tar of biting sarcasm on them. A surly programmer is a thing to fear, indeed. I kind of like this job, and losing it because I was unable to avoid the urge to explain precisely *where* a customer can insert their complaint would be rather irritating.
We're much better *now*, of course, but then, we always are. Errors come up, but they're squished quite quickly. Such is the life of a programmer.
Suffice it to say, however, that in these busy times, current events have sort of passed by in the haze of caffeine-induced manic depressive programming. John F. Kennedy, Jr died? Oh.
Who was that again? Didn't he work for Oracle? Cheesy bastards, those Oracle programmers, I'd like to...
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