We only have one shot...

For the past 1 year and 2.5 months I have worked for a large company and it has been a trying experience for me.  Of the many things that I get annoyed with one tops the charts.  It is the "we only have one shot" type of mentatilty.  I don't mean that there is only one shot and the company will go broke rather we can only ask people to do something that is intensive one time or we only get a six or three month cycle for software and if isn't good then it isn't going to be good but it will be released.  Well I don't know about you but I rarely never get anything semi-complex correct the first time.  Either I work for unrealistic people, unrealistic management, super-stars, my IQ is deficient or ???.  Why can't large companies overall use a process like sprints.  Sure people could say it randomizes them, but you know what?  Getting an email every 2-5 minutes randomizes you too but people love that because it makes them feel important.  I know some groups do sprints and it works well for them.  I also realize it is hard to manage large teams (anything over 12) but there has to be a balancing act that gets fast iterations and still get the main goal done.  

Password Stupidity

I was setting up a WordPress install for a client part of which was setting up a new database. I go into their crappy ass management tool and setup the database, as usual I put in some non-alphanumeric characters for part of the password and I get the following message:

Your password can not contain any of the following characters: question mark, space, caret, single quote, double quote, colon, backslash, dollar sign, ampersand, greater than, less than, tilde, semi-colon, accent.

All I can say is WTF! If that doesn't smell like there is come crappy code I don't know what does. Let alone that it lowers the security of the password, argh! It is like putting a maximum limit of 15 characters for a password, give me a break! At least put in upper limit at something most people wouldn't use like say 100 :). Well before I really get on my soapbox I better get back to working on client stuff.