After a hard day of writing code at the Department of Justice, Sabbo settled into his favorite chair to watch the evening news. But instead of his usual glass of iced tea, that night it was a tumbler-full of Johnnie Walker Black on rocks. Though it was a pretty normal day at work, the ride home was ...

Let's say that I have a stupid report that needs constant attention and maintenance because of waffling business requirements.  Rather than buying a fruit bouquet for the server admin because of all the promotes I'd be doing, one solution might be to dynamically fetch the SQL for...

Flash back to the early 90's when Remy P. was working as a system administrator for a major oil and gas company. Getting his hands dirty on a mix of Windows, VaxVMS, Alpha, and Solaris servers, Cisco routers, and even an old Xenix box that everybody prays never crashes, things were never dull, and t...

Justin de Vesine was less than thrilled with his internet service. On a good day, his high-speed would pretend to be dial-up; usually, it seemed that things would just give up loading half-way through. Through some trail and error, he narrowed it down to the brand-name DSL modem that his ISP gave hi...

Back in the day, when computer graphics ranged between non-existent and lousy and system specs called for RAM amounts usually less than 256k, and floppy disks were still...floppy, games that relied mostly upon the user's imagination provided the biggest bang for their software buck. Instead of the u...

Tyson wasn't used to 8:00am meetings, let alone meetings with the not-so-technical-even-though-their-name-implies-it Application Auditors on the dimly lit 32nd floor. Arriving fashionably late at 8:06, he was struck by how many suits were in the meeting with him - and he'd again opted not to shave. ...

Here at work, we use a Lanier Multi-Function Printer/Scanner/Fax/Toaster the size of a small car that does tons of things and does them pretty well. However, back in 1981, Lanier was in the business of selling systems, and if you think that their EZ-1 was simply a word processor, you'd best think ag...

Peter Korsten used to work with a truly brilliant and exceptional individual. Before leaving for greener pastures and better pay, one of his former co-workers left an indelible mark on their system via his rather unique approach to programming. The Great 8 Report One of these artifacts was the "...

This year’s Corporate Technology Expo was no different than the ones for years previous. Various departments gathered in the company’s large, wood-paneled group meeting hall and highlighted their top projects and initiatives that were completed during the past year. There was everything ...