Back in the day when I did copy/data for Sears.com - EA sent us a doc that broke an upload because someone did a search/replace for "EA" and changed it to "Electronic Arts." In a 3k-line doc for a promotion at SEARS (note spelling). This pushed all the fields outside their character limit. - ThreadSky

cheriepriest.com • 92 days ago

Back in the day when I did copy/data for https://Sears.com - EA sent us a doc that broke an upload because someone did a search/replace for "EA" and changed it to "Electronic Arts." In a 3k-line doc for a promotion at SEARS (note spelling). This pushed all the fields outside their character limit.

Reposted from Don Moynihan

Federal employee with a data role told me that a document was removed from employee access because it had the word "inclusion" in it.

As in, "inclusion of data in our estimates."

Comments

madbastard-v2.bsky.social•92 days ago

There was a D&D book where they decided to change the name of "mage" to "wizard", so they just did a bulk replace.

Which is why that book has "dawizard" instead of "damage".

cheriepriest.com•92 days ago

Somebody at EA threw a fit and called my boss to yell about it. He gave them the rundown and when he reached the punchline he said (and I shall never forget) in the driest, most droll voice I've heard unto this day: "I laughed, I cried, it was better than CATS."

cheriepriest.com•92 days ago

I've told this story on here before, so it's not new to some of you. But it's just such a *perfect* example of this sort of dumbassery. Practically a parable about it. And BlueSky is a whole lot busier now than it used to be, so there you go.

jlizhill.bsky.social•92 days ago

I saw meeting minutes that had clearly been done with initials and then someone had later done a find/replace to change it to full names. The problem was that one of our people’s initials were DD. Now think of every common word with DD in it. Such a disaster. I was glad I didn’t have to fix it.

geekelite.geekerific.com•92 days ago

There's an old story from TSR I heard while working at WotC many years ago about a D&D editor in the mid-90's, after TSR had changed "mage" to "wizard", who did a global find-and-replace in a sourcebook, resulting in multiple instances of the words "iwizard" and "dawizard".😂

zairenzu.bsky.social•92 days ago

I heard about something similar where they replaced the word ass with butt. So assassinate became buttbuttinate.

masinger.bsky.social•92 days ago

I sometimes see this on a small, non-vital scale, in manuscripts. if, for instance, a character is named "Mark" in one draft and "Steve" in a later draft, I might run across a sentence like, "He was just Steveing time."

cheriepriest.com•92 days ago

oh yeah, I've been there and done that, and I ain't proud 😅

masinger.bsky.social•92 days ago

I knew an author who never gave characters real names until final draft. in early drafts, characters were all tagged with things like XXZZ and PPVW. Once names were settled, search and replace got them all right.

cheriepriest.com•92 days ago

yeah I am not that kind of organized, lol

zevonprice.bsky.social•92 days ago

Having flashbacks to the time I changed a character’s name from Alan to Marc and then, months later, tried to figure out what the hell “bmarcing” was when all the context clues showed I’d meant “balancing”.

cheriepriest.com•92 days ago

whomst among us

forbeck.com•92 days ago

The classic gaming example of this is the D&D book in which they decided to find/replace "mage" with "wizard," which wound up having weapons do something like 1d8 dawizard.

callalily57.bsky.social•92 days ago

I saw one where there original name was Chris, and the book had a Christmas scene.

cheriepriest.com•92 days ago

noooooo

masinger.bsky.social•92 days ago

oh ow ow ow

spamps.bsky.social•92 days ago

that is so beautiful

cheriepriest.com•92 days ago

It really WAS. It was also beautiful that my boss, a big cornfed white guy who was ret. military and something of a Good Old Boy in the positive southern sense... went to bat for me every single time, when I had any conflict with any vendor. Regardless of their size or fury.

scramblefox.bsky.social•92 days ago

And this is why you would usually want to find-and-replace " EA " instead of "EA". 🤣

oosieben.bsky.social•92 days ago

Reminds me of Bush/Cheney administration when the fundamentalist Christians tried to clean up the internet: XXX was associated with hard core porn. Super Bowl 30 (XXX) was eliminated from all searches. It was funny back then!

formicadinette.bsky.social•92 days ago

This perfectly demonstrates that "move fast and break things" isn't a new concept. It's been around for a long time, but some of us know how poorly it tends to work out.

cheriepriest.com•92 days ago

yup.

mightybattlecat.bsky.social•92 days ago

Ah, the clbuttic mistake.

cheriepriest.com•92 days ago

😅

incantrix.bsky.social•92 days ago

Completely unrelated, but your username is incredible

katherinevillyard.com•92 days ago

Back in the oughts, I worked webdev. My boss did a global search and replace for “TM” to “trademark.”

Every page on the site broke because of the tag at the top:

Which sounds like an easy fix, but that’s not the only word with tm in it. “Treatrademarkent.”

Also all links.

cheriepriest.com•92 days ago

I once had a (different) boss "fix" my product titles so "they're in order now" for a bunch of control cables and conversion cords. (The names begin with numbers - and lemme tell you, you can NOT arbitrarily reverse them, just because "it looks nice in a column.")

katherinevillyard.com•92 days ago

🤦‍♀️

syzara.bsky.social•92 days ago

i feel this in my very soul

*oof*

/did some editing and document conversions back in the day myself

cheriepriest.com•92 days ago

when I realized what had happened I sat there like... "noooooo they did nooooooot" and then I just cracked tf up

bardenp.bsky.social•92 days ago

We keep getting told that the "Super Genius" Musk only found the best coders for this dismantling of our government programs and then you hear about stuff like this.

This is one of those experience matters issues.

They are kids that might be good at coding.

This is Musk so we honestly don't know.

skiriki.bsky.social•92 days ago

While I normally hate to acknowledge RegExp in any way...

git gud with RegExp, ya adult fetuses in thrall of Musk.

I need a shower, I feel filthy.

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