I've roasted this,
About 6 years ago, I worked for a web-design company. Back then, it was one of the few proper web companies here in Dull (oops, typo) and comprised of the boss, the sales guy, 3 programmers, a designer, and a vacuous proj managemer who was as clueless as anti-sherlock. She freely admitted that the only time she used the web was at work to check clients sites and occasionally to look for cheap holidays.

Anyway, they took me on as a programmer. A week later, I arrived on Monday morning to frantic rushing about. Over the weekend, the server went down, which ran NT Server 4.0 (with service packs I assume). Nothing to do with me, I assure you. Pure coincidence. Clients were calling to find out where there site had gone. Not many though, the majority of the clients were 2-bit local companies but I digress.

Now, a year or so before I started, some previous employee had written a little VB 5 utility that was scheduled to load up during the night, back up the data and close again. Why the frig he didn't just configure Backup is beyond me.

Anyway, this utility had more bugs than a tramp's vest and after a couple of months, threw a wobbler which meant nothing was being backed up and the application was being repeatedly spawned and crashing until eventually, after 8 months it went nuclear and wiped a load of data and the server went down.

Now, a lot of the websites were backed up to CDs (of all things), and the final just-before-going-live development files were on another drive, but the live databases were gone for good and 8 months of transactions and so on disappeared.

Clients were called, and told their site would be back up in a week at the most. Clients were prioritised by how much they paid, and some didn't see their site back online for almost 3 months.

To prevent the problem happening again, the boss finally shelled out for an external USB drive off ebay and on a Friday, would go in the server room (which as a working environment was similar to an abandoned allotment shed), plug it in, physically copy the entire live sites across, unplug it and take it home. No upgrading the servers, creating RAID arrays or anything normal.

To help security, he installed AVG on the servers but oddly no firewall. Not even a free one. Apparently, about a year before I started, one of the other programmers was poking about on the servers (all of which were shared to the drive's root) and found a load of movies. Someone had hacked in and set it up as a p2p node.

Also, he'd registered as a Microsoft Partner so he could subscribe to the Action Pack and get XP and Office 2k3 along with Server 2k3 (but to upgrade the systems to that would mean upgrading the hardware).

Notwithstanding that all computers were installed with Dreamweaver and Photoshop and others, all of which could be found with cracks in a folder, 'software' along with another folder 'cracks'.

He got everything off ebay. Computers, the printer, the telephones etc etc. None of the CD-RWs in the PCs worked. When the piss cheap second-hand Epson Stylus 300 failed, he attempted to fix it by taking it apart. He could've replaced it for £50.

Cutting all these corners though did allow him to have a brand-new top-spec Audi TT on the road every year. Bless.

Length? Girth's more important..
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Mon 14 Jun 2010, 13:38, 11 replies)

Click for "as clueless as anti-sherlock" :D
(Fawksie, Mon 14 Jun 2010, 13:49, closed)

I've worked for some shoddy Web companies in my time...
..but this one takes the whole pack of Hobnobs. Click.
( Stevedix http://www.stevedix.de/blog, Mon 14 Jun 2010, 14:48, closed)

I only understood about 50% of all you said there

(TheManWithThePlan cussed your mum on, Mon 14 Jun 2010, 14:50, closed)

I was
close behind you.
(Juan Quar is clinging to her front teeth on, Mon 14 Jun 2010, 14:56, closed)

I may have been exaggerating at 50%

(TheManWithThePlan cussed your mum on, Mon 14 Jun 2010, 15:05, closed)

Ho,ho you techies, you're in a world of your own!
I wish I could be in there, too *sniff*
( Ultimate Cakes & Sweets Why,what are you planning to do - photosynthesize?, Mon 14 Jun 2010, 17:19, closed)

I understood hardly any of that
But it all sounds JOLLY saucy, you lucky blighter!
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Mon 14 Jun 2010, 14:57, closed)

Imagine reading this to someone twenty years ago.

( Digeridude Lord Wellington's Beef Trapeze, Mon 14 Jun 2010, 21:14, closed)

Anti-Sherlock!
I'm going to use that as soon as possible!
( difficultchild, Tue 15 Jun 2010, 0:43, closed)

nt4? nothing wrong in that
we're still using it for our networks, our main project one is running on 15 year old (by our reckoning anyway) domain controllers from viglen, which I believe went out of business some time ago.

but much like your situation, at least our managers got a new jag.
( flapmeister knows where your mum lives, Tue 15 Jun 2010, 12:43, closed)

I think Amstrad
bought Viglen to use as their PC bit, then Alan Shug sold Amstrad to Rupert (Antichrist)(allegedly) Murdoch, but kept Viglen. Viglen still exists but it ain't the same as it was.
( His Popiness the Hole Invaded Poland on, Tue 15 Jun 2010, 22:51, closed)