Stupid custom apps

[SpudBud]

I saw this article http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/20703.html and had to ask. What other stupid industry/compant specific apps have you all seen?

[Papa Smurf]

You will all laugh at this one.
A user on my site where I look after everyones gripes and groans is really paranoid about the time his PC keeps.

Well he wrote this package which goes out and checks the time against 5 different NTP servers in the world then takes the average time from all 5 and it then changes the time on his PC accordingly, This happens once every 3 hours. Dont ask me why he takes an average of 5 atomic clocks cause I cant see them having any difference at all. But whos to know what users think

Anyway

A few weeks back he came to me complaining that the PC time was out by 15 SECONDS. How did he come to this obeservation that 5 atomic clocks [inc the US Naval time clock which controls internet time] were 15 seconds out.......by HIS CHEAP TACKY CASIO WATCH. He asked me to find out why it was running slowly, blamed the PC, The NTP servers, Windows NT. It was Everything but his package he wrote and his tacky watch that was causing the problems. Needless to say I didnt follow this call up much.


Cheers
Papa "I need more time dammit" Smurf

[CinderElmo]

Imagine the amount of company time that guy is pissing away with his obsession over the correct time! <IMG SRC="smilies/eek.gif" border="0">

[Apathy]

His computer is fine, it is just in a temporal distortion. Nothing to worry about. <IMG SRC="smilies/biggrin.gif" border="0">

[Daemon]

my work, since its a government county job, we have alot of custom apps. Will alot of them just dont work or crashes windows lol.

Another thing is there so ugly looks like they got there 3 year old kid and had them draw some icons then they scanned them in lol.

We have alot of number crunching software, we use alot of over sees $5000+ apps that no one heres about.

We just got a new app called PC DOCS its to scan docs into the computer and it sends them to a database.

[http://forums.windrivers.com/cgi-bin/forum1/noncgi]

When I was working at CR, a doctor came in and asked about setting up a new database program. It seems the one they'd been using would break down after 1 year, and it would cost about $1000 to get the "latest version". Not only that, but it used a totally proprietary format, so it was impossible to export the existing database to Access or any normal database program. He didn't look too happy when I told him he had to key in all the patient information by hand....

Then there was the guy who brought in a 286 that he used for only one thing, printing out information from a survey database. Unfortunately, the parallel port had quit working. The machine had a 5-1/4" floppy drive and a 20G MFM hard drive. Transfering his software over was real fun....