Fri, 18 Aug 2006
Paper Work
I was fixing an UTF-8 related bug in our printing system - the bug report was from some person from the study department. The bugs was too hard to fix (it lead to these two bug reports, BTW), so after few days, they sent an urgency. After resolving the problem, I have re-read the urgency again:
They needed to print the list of students with their personal data, in order to give it to the account department people, who in turn would send payment requests to the students. Apparently they make a dead-tree version of the data, give it to the people in the next door, who then type the same data back to the computer.
When I wondered what was the reason of this unusual workflow, the answer was that it is needed for the inspection authorities. WTF?