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Got a call yesterday about the soon-to-expire extended warranty on my 2014 Jeep Cherokee. Weird, since I do in fact own a Cherokee but it's way older. I'm guessing that since Cherokees are so popular they're playing the odds. I just hung up. Probably could have had some fun with that one, too.
Sometimes the true reward for completing a task is not the money, but instead the satisfaction of a job well done. But it's usually the money.
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"Please hold"...horrible holding music (for one minute)..."Sorry, just one more minute"...repeat 
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If I have time, I keep them on the line as long as possible, acting like I'm interested. I play really dumb and ask them to go over the same things many times. I try to get them to the point where they are asking for payment info and then tell them I don't have a credit card or email.
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RandyBuchholz wrote: o go over the same things many times
I get enough of that in meetings in the office, I'm not sure I could do it to someone else... oh wait it is a scammer we are talking about.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
RAH
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Always love to hear a success story.
I will have to try this on head hunters that started calling me on a daily basis a couple of week's ago. I'm 69 and have no intention of going back to work.
Everyone has a photographic memory; some just don't have film. Steven Wright
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We're having provincial elections here next week in Ontario, and reps from all parties have been calling rather frequently to make their pitch.
During the last call I received, I immediately interrupted the (I'm sure otherwise very nice) lady to point out that they'd been calling every single day for the past week (which is absolutely true), and that by now they had already got their point across...and requested they permanently take my name/number (which they obviously have, since they asked for me by name) off their phone list - else the party they represent was automatically losing my vote.
The scam here is that even though there's a do-not-call registry here in Canada, political parties are exempt[*] from it. It sure is nice when you get to make the rules.
[*] And newspapers trying to sell subscriptions. Why? Because the papers in Canada are owned by people with affiliations to a certain political party. Which? Here's a hint: The one that was running the country when the law was made.
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dandy72 wrote: even though there's a do-not-call registry here in Canada
Same here. Pretty much anyone with an affiliation to government is exempt from our Do-Not-Call- Registry. And of course the scammers don't care. Most of them are outside the country.
Sometimes the true reward for completing a task is not the money, but instead the satisfaction of a job well done. But it's usually the money.
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I once played along with a scammer that said I had won some money in Vegas that I had left unclaimed. The kind of money that you had to pay taxes on first before it would be sent to you. It went on for several phone calls over several days until I finally got him to admit that he was a scammer. We actually had an interesting conversation after that -- like apparently a lot people fall for his scam. He even asked me how I thought he could improve his scam to make it more believable. But then he had the audacity to ask if I could give him a list of names and numbers he could try his scam on. Well, I told him that I could send him a list of 100 people, all he had to do was first send me a valid $100 Walmart gift card. 
-NP
Never underestimate the creativity of the end-user
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Sometimes the true reward for completing a task is not the money, but instead the satisfaction of a job well done. But it's usually the money.
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Ravi Bhavnani wrote: Have you used Lenny
No, but I just might!
You made me think of one of my favorite old phone pranksters: Willie P. Richardson[^]. This guy was hysterically funny.
Sometimes the true reward for completing a task is not the money, but instead the satisfaction of a job well done. But it's usually the money.
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I'm working on an extensible code / text editor based on SharpDevelop, and I would normally use WinForms, but I have decided to use WPF for this, mostly to learn how it works.
I also found my SATA to USB adapter cable so I was able to connect my old hard drive and get the source code I needed off of it.
What do you get when you cross a joke with a rhetorical question?
The metaphorical solid rear-end expulsions have impacted the metaphorical motorized bladed rotating air movement mechanism.
Do questions with multiple question marks annoy you???
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I think of WPF more as "twisty little passages"
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For background, I have noticed that in stable systems, most code "fixes" are like 1-2 lines of code. It was an edge condition, or something nuanced somewhere.
For years, while getting new programmers up to speed, I told them that when the majority of their code changes were small changes (naturally), that they could use that as a marker of competency. I would have them track the number of lines of code the changed to fix issues.
I have nothing except 30+ years of experience telling me this is true.
So, I am curious if others experience this same thing? (Early on in a project, fixes require much heavier sets of changes, and as it gets ready to go live, the changes are tiny by comparison)...
Thanks in advance.
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No, because by now, I've overflowed the 64-bit integer, and they haven't invented the 128-bit integer yet.
I suppose I could switch to a decimal type to keep count...
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote: they haven't invented the 128-bit integer yet.
Well, there is BigInteger Structure (System.Numerics)[^]
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Maybe you should resort to floating point numbers. 
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It only seems obvious to me. If you need reams of new code to fix something, then clearly something was not well thought-out if not missed altogether.
I wouldn't necessarily link this with competency, but perhaps experience.
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How exactly are you separating competency from experience in this case?
If experience teaches you to do it one way, I believe that increases competency. And perhaps I simply used the term interchangeably (and I kinda did).
Writing lots of code in the beginning is fine. It's our job. But having to rewrite a lot of code later is the issue I believe reduces later with experience as well as when a product stabilizes.
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Kirk 10389821 wrote: How exactly are you separating competency from experience in this case?
Some people only learn from experience (which can be costly). Others simply have a knack for putting together good code even though they might not necessarily have much (or as much) experience.
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I think you would have to define what you mean by a "fix", because if by "fix" you mean something that takes two lines of code then there is something of a tautology in the definition.
I am currently working on something where the "fix"(and it is a fix as it's a change so that the system models data consistently) is going to probably be a change to the fundamental manner in which a huge piece of software works - so I am hoping that we decide not to fix it.
That said I think I get the gist of what you are saying along the line of - extend don't modify.
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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You have an interesting case. How close are you to release, or how long has this been released for?
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The application has been around for some 12 years and has had layers upon layers of code built within it.
This is why some small changes can be so difficult on the system as each small change can require a lot of investigation first.
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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