One of the sites I read every morning is The Daily WTF, which highlights very bad code reported to be in use in production systems. Just as FuckedCompany reveals some of the rot and deception behind the shiny lies, The Daily WTF is more informative and useful for a working programmer (or technical manager) than many sites about how to do it the right way. I mention this because today's post was a bit special. Here's an excerpt. Note that the lines beginning with apostrophes are comments allegedly made by the original programmer himself.

' This code will calculate order total, mask it, and send it to
' the ThankYou.asp page, where it will then be unmasked to reveal
' its true beauty, just like the poor Phantom of the Opera.
Randomize
amount = oTotal
maskerLeft = Int((999999 - 100000 + 1) * Rnd + 100000)
maskerRight = Int((999999 - 100000 + 1) * Rnd + 100000)

A large part of the value of the Daily WTF is the commentary on the awful code by other people. This excerpt and comment is choice:

' takes order total and jumbles it mathematically
maskerAmount = ((((oTotal + 22) * 7 )) - 12) * 620

The power of mathematics compels you!
The power of mathematics compels you!

*** projectile vomit pea soup ***