Death March.com / We're All Gonna Get Rich!	$5 Purchase
By: Lawrence Mark Proman     Published: March, 2003    Pages: 147 Death March.com takes the reader to a new and very funny place. Never before has an author captured the essence of software development in a technically competent and funny way. Software engineer and database consultant Lawrence Mark Proman draws upon 25 years of software development experience to create a time warp where he solves a Holmes-type technical mystery. Death March.com's characters are based on people you will recognize from the cubicle next door. Here you will find the good, the gorgeous, and the nasty. And let’s not forget the management team, and how they played the employees, the customers, and the investors. Dilbert is fiction. This is real-life in real-time.	Purchase For $5 US
Introduction Death March.com brings together two former software engineers amidst the pressure to deliver for the investors and venture capitalists. This story brings us in contact with the "pool room gang," a malicious self-replicating virus that takes over the TJB Inc. network and systems, slackers, and an Oracle DBA, who has been institutionalized. TJB Inc. is on their third product rewrite. Two teams have been fired and laid off, and there is the need to hit a home run. Mark has become the man of the hour. The play is in thirteen scenes. Here is an extended excerpt from Scene 3.	Purchase For $5 US
CHARLES Yes, I've enjoyed what I've heard so far. This guy seems to know what he is talking about.   STEVE Great! Group therapy feel-goods at lunch. Jennifer, maybe you can write an article for HR Magazine on how we at TJB do group interviewing? Michael, is this a benefit that we have the option to accept or to reject at signup?   The room is overcome by an apprehensive air and each character reflects uncertainty as to what will happen next.   MICHAEL Steve, there are always many options in this world.   STEVE Sure are. Charles, whenever you're ready, drop by; we have serious work to do and very few days left to meet another deadline. Deadlines are for dead people, but we're all gonna get rich, right! Everybody, join in! What are we saying, we're all gonna get rich! Come on! Come on!   Everybody, except Mark, erupts from their seat and joins in with Steve's enthusiastic call to arms. PAUL gets on the table and begins to chant the slogan. TIM joins PAUL on the table chanting the slogan.   MICHAEL Okay Paul, okay Tim! Steve, I'll bring Mark over to your office in an hour.   CHARLES Michael, can I leave now?   MICHAEL Sure, if you have no other questions to ask Mark.   STEVE and CHARLES exit the lunchroom. The remainder of the group begins to throw away their lunch trash.   TIM Hey Jennifer, did you email this week's extra curriculum schedule to the teams?   JENNIFER No, I have been busy chasing weird bugs. Code that worked just the other day and wasn't changed doesn't work today. I'll be damned! Seems like we take three steps backward for each step we take forward.   FRANK It's like Raphael would say; "we need to just take baby steps."   MICHAEL Frank, as you mentioned Raphael, it brought to mind; did you record all the patch levels of software and maintain the service packs?   FRANK Was I supposed to do that too?   MICHAEL I sent you an email. Didn't you receive it?	Purchase For $5 US
FRANK Michael, many emails seem to be sent around here, and nobody gets them, or people receive them differently than they were written. People chase ghosts around here after midnight, ask Raphael!   MICHAEL Frank, enough! Raphael hopefully will be all right soon.   STEVE busts into the lunchroom with CHARLES in tow. STEVE takes a seat at the picnic table, clicks his black painted fingernails then raises his voice loudly in a defiant manner.   STEVE Michael, who has been on my machines? Nobody touches my machines- you all know that!   MICHAEL Steve, please sit down! And calm down!   STEVE I'm not going to calm down! I have my life on those machines, my games, my thoughts, and my writings. I don't just allow anybody into my life! It would have been better if you had sent me off with the last wave of slackers, rather than start sifting my machines! Do you know what it's like?   MICHAEL I was going to announce this tomorrow at our team meeting after I got more evidence from Tim and Mark, but instead I'll tell all of you now. They have discovered what has been happening to our environment. Tim, maybe you can tell everyone briefly what the two of you found this morning.   TIM Michael, if it's okay with Mark, maybe he can tell you. Then again, he has been documenting everything about the Bladerunner virus we found on all our Windows machines. So why doesn't he briefly tell you, and then send everybody a copy of the doc via email?   MICHAEL Tim, that sounds fine. Mark?   MARK Tim was telling me about weird things happening on your systems, and then I started doing some research with some sniffers I have in my briefcase. I discovered a client-server application on your machines, which has the ability to control the CPU and do anything that the remote client requests. Maybe one day some files are deleted, and then the next day they re-appear; or maybe you set the Oracle database parameters to one value, but later they are changed online, or in the parameter file before the next database startup. Then Tim told me that some people have been hearing sounds?   The room is silent, then CHARLES grins, Frank rubs his head, and Jennifer chuckles, while rocking side to side.	Purchase For $5 US
MARK Anyone ever watch their CD-ROM tray open and close repeatedly, or maybe programs begin running all by themselves?   PAUL Damn! Rafael wasn't nuts at all!   FRANK Nor were the guys who had Source Safe failures.   STEVE I don't know if I'd go that far.   MICHAEL Mark, will you please continue?   MARK This virus has many forms. I have already found four other Trojan horses on your systems; and we haven't looked at all the machines yet.   FRANK What about the UNIX servers are they infected too?   MARK We need to spend some more time on them, but for now you seem to be okay there.   MICHAEL Mark, what do you recommend?   MARK Michael, I would say that with three weeks to get a stable product out the door, perhaps you should reload all the machines and bring over a new baseline that has been disinfected.   STEVE Reload all the machines? What are you kidding me! What about running anti-virus software on the machines, and just going from there?   MARK You could do that. But based on some of the stuff I saw, and documented, especially registry entries and wild hidden files, it would be safer to just reload and quarantine the network, file servers, and all the client machines. You should also evaluate all source code and come up with a baseline that makes sense; and then go forward.   TIM Mark, how should we deal with the database?	Purchase For $5 US
MARK I would reload that also, and then examine lookup table data, cause I have seen corrupted database data that made engineers chase application code problems.   MICHAEL And they weren't application problems at all. They were all data related, and the applications crashed. Sound familiar Jennifer?   STEVE Reload all the reference tables too? Mark, you have to be kidding me!   JENNIFER Michael, you can't imagine how many times I would look at the table data! Then when we ran the application the data would change a few times and then each morning it would transform back to the baseline, as if no testing was performed.   MARK A script probably truncated the table and then re-imported it each morning.   JENNIFER Think so?   TIM That's what it sounds like to me. Hey Jennifer, remember what we were hunting down the other day? Processes were dying, then they would run automatically, and then die again. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason as to why processes were kicking off and aborting.   FRANK Who the hell would do this? Poor Rafael got so mad at the end. Whoever did this to Raphael is one malicious bastard. Michael, do you remember the last day Rafael worked here? He began chanting to appease spirits who were supposedly visiting him audibly?   MICHAEL Yes Frank. Let's talk about what we need to do to go forward. I'll take care of calling Rafael and letting him know what we have discovered. Maybe I'll talk to the administrator at Baldpate Inn first, and then they can have a doctor there for a conference call, or something. I'm not sure yet. Jennifer, do you have any experience in dealing with things like that?   JENNIFER No. We need a real HR director, somebody who knows how to deal with these kind of issues, especially when this company gets bigger.   STEVE Jennifer, aren't you a real HR director?	Purchase For $5 US
Hey, if you've read this far, take out your credit card now and buy the complete play, all 147 pages, for $5.00 in pdf format. Many Thanks and Have a Great Laugh!	Purchase For $5 US

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