General discussion
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Topic
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War Stories – Just for fun
LockedI have short timers disease with the upcoming holiday so I thought I would try and start a fun thread of random tech stories…
Story 1
A friend of mine worked as a mechanical engineer for a large auto maker. His job was to break stuff and figure out if it was acceptable or not. One task he had was with a new engine that vibrated at a certain RPM. After weeks of testing it was decided that they needed to refit the chasis with new motor mounts costing the company tons of money. In his area was a guy with a title like Master Mechanic, he couldn’t be an engineer because he didn’t hve a college degree. He read the report and wrote across the front, “switch to a 3/16 inch steel washer.” My friends team tried it and the vibration was gone, no multi million dollar fix needed.Story 2
I had to rewrite some functionality on a Cold Fusion based web site. I make the changes and test it out in dev/test/stage and everything is cool. That night I move the code to production, it doesn’t work. I can’t figure out any reason for it not to work. I end up eventually looking at the production code previous and notice that it has an external file reference. I open the referenced file and there is nothing there, just a empty file. A couple hours later, I include the file knowing that there is no logical reason it should make a difference. Lo and behold the page renders correctly. I never did figure out why including an empty file made a difference. but I did add a comment before and after the include
(cfinclude file name)