this and that

I have been reading the site http://www.thedailywtf.com for some time now. Its tagline is “Curious Perversions in Information Technology,” and it’s true to both its name and tagline: it’s basically a blog with submissions about technology WTFs, strange error messages and interesting “Code Snippets Of the Day,” like this Java gem (sorry, geek alert):


void failIfNull(Object o) throws RuntimeException {
if (o == null)
{
throw new RuntimeException(o.getClass().getName() + " is null!");
}
}


In general, the site is very entertaining, and sometimes the discussion gets educational as people try to “fix” the WTF in creative ways.

Anyway, I mention this because one of today’s posts, ITAPPMONROBOT on the site was the probably the best I have ever read. It details a sysadmin’s ingenuity in maintaining a web server that needs to be restarted very frequently. The story is not exactly a WTF, as the solution is truly remarkable; on the other hand, the circumstances that led to the need for such a solution definitely is. Read the story for yourself.