As you may or may not know, depending on wether you've been paying attention, I work for a real estate kind of dot-com company. So, it's vitally important for our customers for THEIR customers to beable to contact them using our site. With one company in particular, they want to have people looking at listings on our site be redirected to their site for further information.
Herein lies the problem. All the various "contact information" fields are for all intents and purposes optional. Our pages are, of course, rather flexible, and if they didn't enter the proper information for us to do a redirect, we fall back on our customer's email address, or phone number, or...
But we had someone complain to us that the redirect wasn't working, and the contact information wasn't working, and I spent a long morning tracing through Cold Fusion code and SQL stored procedures, none of which I had ever peered at before, finally discovering that what was causing this barf was a complete lack of the proper contact information. Egads, I think, this must be a flaw, causing me to go scurrying around trying to find who was responsible for allowing these fields to stay empty when clearly they were important, essential, even. No, they were always optional. If our customers want to hang themselves, apparently we're quite cheerfully willing to provide them with enough rope to do it.
I'd hate to have to be the customer service person who has to tell the complainer "Yes, it doesn't work, and it's your Own Damn Fault", though.
It's also the longest I've spent verifying that it was a data input error and not a bug. You'd think I'd learn by now. Next time I'll just expect the data to be wrong and go from there.
In other news, a subject of amusement for a significant percentage of those who read this journal - Altiverse(tm). Yes, the Science Fiction Book Club has trademarked the word Altiverse(tm), their label which is used to sell often comic-book related tripe, like the novelization of "Batman: No Man's Land", which hit the stands like an armload of fetid beef only recently, or the More Sandman Than You Can Stand Collection, which consists of a single page ripped from a random Sandman graphic novel. That's all. Just found this amusing.
Those of you who quite understandably have no idea what the point of that last bit was can be amused, instead, by this local news item. There's a plan going around to create a "river walk" sort of thing in the area, like the famous river walk in (a city much larger than Tallahassee). The only problem is that the local paper went out and took a picture of the planned site, revealing it to be a fetid little stream or drainage ditch sort of thing with nondescript roads to either side. Then, beside it, they ran a photo of the Famous River Walk we're trying to rip off. Now, normally government plans are stupid, but the difference between what we're starting with and what we plan to end up with is so striking, so enormous, that I have to wonder what kind of crack is being smoked. To start with, there is not, in any real sense, a river to build a walk alongside. So first we have to create a river. Then we have to build the walk. Then we have to make sure our new pet river keeps flowing properly, otherwise we end up with a fine walk overlooking a fetid trickle of sludge. Which is almost certainly what will happen. If this gets enacted (along with the necessary sales taxes to fund it), someone is clearly insane. It will no doubt be the finest, most expensive trickle of sludge ever funded by the modern taxpayer.
I just know this is how it happened - someone woke up one morning with nothing better to do and remarked "By God, this is the State Capitol. And we need a River Walk, darn it." The fact that there was no actual river available was clearly not sufficient deterrant.
Florida. Your extended sales tax dollars at work.
One final thing of note - bought some vitamins this weekend. They came in a giant bottle. So giant, in fact, that I could stick my entire index finger inside before the tip contacted any pillage. I've heard of generic packaging, but this is just ridiculous.
Rant 'o the day contains no additives, preservatives or alien spores of any kind. Use only as directed. Do not expose to direct sunlight. Do not fold, spindle, multilate or remove identifying tags. Handle with care. Contains less than 3% milk fat by weight, not by volume. Certified 'Syndicate Approved'. Squeeze the lemon. Remember, kids, only users lose drugs.
THIS SPACE FOR RENT