This time from IIS, aka Microsoft’s web server, aka one of the many portals to the Elder Gods I’ve had to deal with. This time, we had the server deciding that it was going to completely ignore our carefully configured defaults and just drop a “sorry, no can do” on anyone who didn’t ask for the right page.

We fixed it after some google-fu and experimentation, but still. We don’t actually know why the system decided to do this overnight, much less why removing all the possible default pages except one should stop this happening.

I guess it’s another example of something I observed long ago: any sufficiently complex software will either:

• Open a portal to the nether realms of the Elder Gods
• Summon one or more Elder Gods
• Drive programmers and testers to gibbering madness
• All of the above and more.

It’s a good thing I passed beyond gibbering into the calm place that looks like sanity but is orthogonal to it a long time ago. I can deal with tentacles emerging from my monitor without breaking stride or making a typo.