It Was What Sort Of Day?

IBM, I do not love you and I doubt I ever will.

Weirdly IBM is one of those acronyms/initialisms* that hasn't caught on in Deutschland.  People here pronounce BBC exactly like we do in Englisch - so Bee-Bee-See instead of the German Bay-Bay-Say.  IBM is however Eeh-Bay-Emm and not Eye-Bee-Emm.

I think this is because people like the BBC, much in the same way that people here call me Pete and not Payter. 

But there is nowhere near the same affection for IBM. 

The next bit could be tediously dull for those of you who already know that anything to do with the workings of a computer is the Devil's Work, feel free to go and do something else.  It's probably better that you do.

I'll miss you but I understand.  Just skip to the asterisk at the end of this.

Anyway we discovered a problem where one version of a program did one thing but did something completely different when tested with the new compiler.

I logged into the IBM site and recorded the problem.  I even left them a copy of the program (as a simple txt file) so that they could compile it and test it for themselves.

I got an E-Mail back - we cannot read your text file, please send us a tersed file.

I wrote back "what the eff is a tersed file?"

They wrote back "use this bit of code to produce a tersed file, then upload it to the website".

OK.  I used the code to produce the tersed file.  And I uploaded to the IBM website.

They wrote back "We still cannot read your tersed file.  Did you make  binary copy of it?"

I wrote back "You asked for a tersed file.  Nobody said anything about it being a binary copy."

They wrote back "You need to follow the instructions from this web page."

I followed the link to the web page which was all about a tool that we don't have.

So I took a deep breath and wrote back.  Politely. 

And then went for a walk where I could count to a million (in binary, naturally) and calmed down a bit.

Came back to an E-Mail "We need the job logs from another software tool that you don't have."

It was around this point that I realised for the millionth time that I do not have enough German swearwords.

But I persevered.  Happy face on.  I managed to produce something that they can read.  "Read" is perhaps pushing it, it was a lovely drawing with crayons though.  I ripped that up and managed to get some files that I uploaded to IBM and it appears that they can open them.

Obviously they won't be able to read them though.  It's Tuesday and the reading lady doesn't work on Tuesdays....

*Welcome back.  IBM is, I suppose, an Initialism in that you speak every letter. 

Essentially I had a day trying to describe my Blip. 

We know that these are peanuts.  A certain well known computer company spent far too long arguing that these were not peanuts but rather groundnuts in the shell and what they wanted were the legumes from Arachis hypogaea. 

And all I wanted was someone to slap.