Random musings in IT

  I just ventilated some of the frustration about lazy and worthless recruiters in a previous article. To prove a point, today I've received the emblematic call, where the caller committed so many of the annoying mistakes, I was not even annoyed by it, it was amazing! (Sorry about misusing the…

I've recently managed to lock myself out from my own server. My ssh key worked, but I couldn't sudo to administer the server. It happened after changing my expired password, I tried to sudo with my old one and tallied out after 5 attempts. I couldn't unlock it even after the timeout has long…

Reading the post about useful regular expressions,  remembered what my favourite solution is to one of  the questions of the test we give to junior Java developers. The task is to write a method that takes a string as a parameter and returns the acronym of the string in uppercase made up of the…

We are continously looking for Java developers for our company. We've recently received a job application which is even more ridiculous thant the others. Tisztelt HR Manager! Láttam állásajánlatukat, elolvastam a reklámszövegüket weblapon. 6 éve J2SE alkalmazásokat fejlesztek és egy…

This is the English version of a tale I've recently found in my archive mailbox from 2001. Looking at ongoing projects, I think it still has a point. Once upon a time, in a kingdom not far from here, a king summoned two of his advisors for a test. He showed them both a shiny metal box with two slots…

I spent half a day today trying to see why a the web start application created and deployed using a simple build script didn't work after I've created a new certificate as our previous was about to expire. First I suspected it was because I signed the application using SUN JDK 1.6, and it might…

Remember the push-puppets you had when you were a kid? These little puppets collapse instantly when you push the button on the base they stand, providing hours of quality entertainment to kids like myself. Now it has returned from exile and is back grouped up with new technology to provide hours of…

I just came around the Winstone servlet container (related to the Hudson CI server). The project itself is fairly interesting, but it's the naming choice which got me completely amazed.. Winstone is the name of a rather large Jamaican man a friend of mine met one night, while he was out clubbing in…