our man in QA

[waider]

me: in order to diagnose this problem I need to see the error generated in the httpd’s error log
QA guy: I don’t have access to the httpd error_log. Here’s the output from a completely unrelated file instead.

This is one of the people I certainly WON’T miss.

Update: When we (by which I mean "I") found the problem, it turns out that QA guy had misconfigured his system. His final post on the topic was to ask me to make a note of this for future reference. Since it’s already documented, and a correct sample is included in the files we ship, I’m somewhat at a loss as to where I should note this. Or indeed, what I should note, beyond "QA guy is an idiot" which you may gather from context I’ve already noted well enough.

Comments

[jwgh]

I have these sorts of exchange:

me: I need to see these three pieces of information in order to diagnose the problem.

customer: Here's one of the pieces of information.

me: OK, but I still need to see the other two pieces of information.

customer: Here's one of the other pieces of information.

me: I still need to see piece of information #3.

customer: Here it is.

Actually, it can be a struggle to get people to send in any requested information at all.

[waider.livejournal.com]

The difference in my case being, I guess, that I was already at step three or four of the process, and this is (allegedly) a Priority 1 bug (i.e. it is preventing-system-test-from-starting issue that the user cannot see a logo at the top right of the screen, in particular when it's most likely one of (a) file location problem or (b) file permissions problem). I wish for the times when it only takes me three iterations to get three pieces of information.