I just applied for a cool new remote job!!

J.P. Stinking Morgan Chase does not allow special characters in passwords.

This is stupid.

SO MAD. Hands are shaking after dealing with this awful API for too long. I just sent this to a contact at JP Morgan Chase.

-------------------
Hello [X],
1. I'm having absolutely no luck logging in to this account to check the Order Abstraction service settings. I was able to log in once earlier this morning, but ever since I've received this frustratingly vague "We are currently unable to complete your request" error message (attached). I even switched IP's via a VPN, and was able to get as far as entering the below Identification Code until I got the same message. Has this account been blocked? Password incorrect? What's the issue?

2. I've been researching the Order Abstraction API for hours as well, attempting to defuddle this gem of an API call response:

error=1&message=Authentication+failure....processing+stopped

NOWHERE in the documentation (last updated 14 months ago) is there any reference to this^^ error or any sort of standardized error-handling description whatsoever - unless you count the detailed error codes outlined for the Hosted Payment responses, which this Order Abstraction service completely ignores. Finally, the HTTP response status code from the Abstraction API is "200 OK", signaling that everything is fine and dandy, which is incorrect. The error message indicates there should be a 400-level status code response, such as 401 Unauthorized, 403 Forbidden or at least 400 Bad Request.

Frankly, I am extremely frustrated and tired of working with poorly documented, poorly designed and poorly maintained developer services which fail to follow basic methodology standardized decades ago. Error messages should be clear and descriptive, including HTTP status codes and a parseable response - preferably JSON or XML.
-----

This whole piece of garbage is junk. If you're big enough to own a bank, you're big enough to provide useful error messages to the developers kind enough to attempt to work with you.

So we used to build these awful "promotion" pages for a leading manufacturer in the area. Because the website was old as dirt, there was no CMS and everything was static html using Coldfusion for a few include files like for the nav and such.

Every year we would get a new project to tweak the promotion details a little, and change the year from 2011 to 2012, etc.

My predecessor put the digit "1" in an HTML file called year.html, then included it like:
"valid from January 1 though December 31, 201<cfinclude template="year.html">..."

Why? Just why? And if you're going to use include files, for Pete's sake at least use the proper .cfm file extension!

For some idiotic reason, I ran
UPDATE users
SET email="myname@mycompany.com"; in production.

No where clause. Oh drat.

Adobe Creative Cloud: "Sign In Required".

I don't have Photoshop, XD, or any Adobe product open.

No "close window" button in dialog.

My choices are "Continue" or "Sign In Now".

Errrrrrrgggggghhhh...

In reply of a great discussion @mojoJojo started on Google's advertising ethics...

GOOGLE Already Pays AdBlock Extensions to Unblock Their Ads. This has been going on for years. Most of the large tech conglomerates have no morals and no ethics, if you ask me. To everyone saying "Oh, Google wouldn't do that" - they already do.
http://businessinsider.com/google-m...

Since I started my routine of checking bug logs every morning, I've had 2 instances where a website vulnerability scanner was run against a production website and generated over 2,000 Coldfusion errors.

At the time, I was super nervous about the apparent hack attempt, and hyped that the attackers never actually got in. It's nice to know that despite the various errors indicating vulnerable / breakable code, they were ultimately unsuccessful. I know now that a determined attacker could probably have wrecked our production websites. Since then I've made a ton of security-related updates and I'm actually thankful for the script kiddie getting my attention with that scan.

PS. We're now building a website for a local security company who is going to work with us to pen test the site when it's finished! Gulp.

I keep getting these upvotes on aged rants. @bluenutterfly are you indexing DevRant?

Am I the only developer in existence who's ever dealt with Git on Windows? What a colossal train wreck.

1. Authentication. Since there is no ssh key/git url support on Windows, you have to retype your git credentials Every Stinking Time you push. I thought Git Credential Manager was supposed to save your credentials? And this was impossible over SSH (see below). The previous developer had used an http git URL with his username and password baked in for authentication. I thought that was a horrific idea so I eventually figured out how to use a Bitbucket App password.

2. Permissions errors
In order to commit and push updates, I have to run Git for Windows as Administrator.

3. No SSH for easy git access
Here's where I confess that this is a Windows Server machine running as some form of production. Please don't slaughter me! I am not the server admin.
So, I convinced the server guy to find and install some sort of ssh service for Windows just for the off times we have to make a hot fix in production. (Don't ask, but more common than it should be.)
Sadly, this ssh access is totally useless as the git colors are all messed up, the line wrap length and window size are just weird (seems about 60 characters wide by 25 lines tall) and worse of all I can't commit/push in git via ssh because Permissions. Extremely aggravating.

4. Git on Windows hangs open and locks the index file
Finally, we manage to have Git for Windows hang quite frequently and lock the git index file, meaning that we can't do anything in git (commit, push, pull) without manually quitting these processes from task manager, then browsing to the directory and deleting the .git/index.lock file.

Putting this all together, here's the process for a pull on this production server:
Launch a VNC session to the server. Close multiple popups from different services. Ask Windows to please not "restart to install updates". Launch git for Windows. Run a git pull. If the commits to be pulled involve deleting files, the pull will fail with a permissions error. Realize you forgot to launch as Administrator. Depending on how many files were deleted in the last update, you may need to quit the application and force close the process rather than answer "n" for every "would you like to try again?" file. Relaunch Git as Administrator. Run Git pull. Finally everything works.

At this point, I'd be grateful for any tips, appreciate any sympathy, and understand any hatred. Windows Server is bad. Git on Windows is bad.

Everyone is saying just how terribly awful certain co-workers have been, and I just feel really, really glad for mine right now.

Here's to productive, sane co-workers!

My wallpaper is a little fishy!

I've loved marine life for a long time. I finally downloaded a bunch of oceanic Unsplash photos for my wallpaper. It's awesome.

This is hands-down the worst codebase I've ever touched. 50% laziness, 50% poorly-conceived alterations to business logic. One of those where if it isn't throwing an error, you DON'T TOUCH IT.

Somebody didn't sanitize their meta description!

I stayed at work till 8:30 last night writing tests. It was awesome!

Got home and told Mom: "sorry, got carried away".

Anyone out there building / maintaining their own propietary CMS? Is it worth the hassle, or would switching to an open-source system be better?

This piece of junk is old and built with almost no design in mind. Now that we have to maintain it for 150 websites, it's becoming a huge support and maintenance pain.

So sick of dealing with stupid stuff, I'm just about ready to drop the whole thing and build on WordPress.

If deleting lines of code means I'm deleting potential bugs...

should I delete EVERYTHING? ):)

This year, Lord willing...
* get married
* take a one week honeymoon without a single frantic phone call/email/IM from work or clients. Way way harder than getting married!

Client sends me support email concerning the CMS.

There's not enough details to go on, esp. browser info, so I ask her to fill out a support ticket.

She does, but doesn't enter any browser info, AND mistypes her email address so I have to correct it to reply to the right email.

I send her to whatbrowseramiusing.co and ask her to send the info to our support email address.
She emails support directly with these words: "I am using Google bowser".

I reply: click "Send to my designer" on whatbrowseramiusing.co and I give her exact steps to fill out the three form fields

She replies: "There is no 'Send to my designer', I only get the option to buy the domain."

I'm like "Whut?!" Did you mistype the URL? Why don't you click the link in the email? (Paraphrase)

This time I get an official email from whatbrowseramiusing.co, telling me that the client is using Safari 5.0.5. Which is five years old.

At that point I replied and said we really can't support this older browser, and included a link to the Firefox download page.

This is what happens when NCS club members get bored.

I'm probably going to have to say IE. Microsoft pretended like they fixed everything, then removed conditional comments to "prove" it, except now you have to have five times as much code and eighteen different file formats just to get a stinking video embedded in a web page.

Welcome, Edge. Not a moment too soon.

I called in sick on Monday. Worked 6 hours from home. Took today off for the holiday. Worked 3 hours in the office.

I really need to get a life.

#!/usr/bin/rant
So, we are a web development and marketing agency. That's fine... except now it seems that we are a marketing and web development agency. Where the head marketing guy feels it's his job to head up web development.

This is NOT what I signed up for.

When you offer web services to a client, the one meeting with the client should understand at least basic stuff, and know when to pull in a heavyweight for more questions. Instead, our web team is summarized by a guy who listens to 80's rock music in a shared office (used to be just me in there) and spends his days trying to get 30-year-olds on Facebook to click an ad.

He was on the phone yesterday with some ecommerce / CRM support, trying to tell them that they have an API, that "it's a simple thing, I'm sure you have it", and that's all we need to do business with them. Which is not his call, it's my call, but for some reason he's the one on the phone asking for API info. The last time I took someone else's word on an API, I underquoted the work and eventually found out that their "API" was nothing more than a cron job which places a CSV file on your server via FTP.

Anyway, we now have a full-time marketer and two part-time interns, with another ad out for an AdWords specialist. Meanwhile, I'm senior dev with a server admin / retired senior dev, and if we don't focus on hiring a front-end guy soon we're going to lose business.

Long story short, I'm getting sick of having a guy who does not understand basic web concepts run the show because he's the one who talks to the client.

echo 'echo "Boo!"' >> ~/.bashrc

I'm making a "Halloween Bash".

!rant
After nine months of work, my capstone project is finally coming together.

It's an audio server written in Node.JS and MongoDB. I can run it on a pi plugged into a stereo and remote control it from my phone via the web server.

When a "Hello World" tutorial doesn't print the words "Hello World".