Monday morning, went to the local grocery store to get myself some croissants and 2 bottles of wine.

Cashier: "Already at it in the morning, you sure about that?"

Me: "Long story short, I've got a Wi-Fi driver from Intel to debug and rewrite, and it's a fucking piece of shit.. can't go at it without hitting or preferably exceeding the Ballmer Peak... Also I'm awake since yesterday evening already."

Why even ask? Yeah I'm a fucking alcoholic, and guess why that is.. stupid nontechnical fucks, certified enganeers like that motherfucker at Intel who wrote this pile of garbage called ipw2200, and technology that can't be arsed to work properly on its own unless I build the fucking thing myself, just to name a few reasons.

You know what, fucking piece of shit from Intel, whoever it is? How about I let you choke on my dick while fucking hanging you with a sharp metal wire that's carrying 2kVAC from a microwave transformer, just to see whether I'd nut first, or you either choke, get electrocuted, or get your fucking throat slit first. Certificates aren't an excuse for committing this fucking pile of shit and calling it a fucking product!!

Now, it's time to dive into this giant stinking fucking turd I guess.. first glass of wine to get myself prepared for the shitstorm that's a giant 20k LoC C file with barely any comments, to look what the fuck causes this fucking pile of shit to disconnect and ask for WPA credentials after a while, despite having them stored.. and not reconnect after that, because why the fuck would you?!

I don't always listen to music while coding, but when I do, it's because things are absolutely unmitigably fucked and it's going to take some herculean effort to unfuck it.

I have this thing I've done for more years than my kids have been alive when shit really hits the fan and I need to show the staff the old lady can still lay waste.

Step 1: put on "the playlist," which consists of only the most aggressive 90s marilyn manson songs.*
Step 2: put on the headphones, which are noise cancelling and super bassy
Step 3: pound a monster (blue, obv)
Step 4: get super manic
Step 5: get in the zone and destroy several features or a flotilla of bugs in a single night
Step N: make absolute fucking magic
Step N+1: call in sick the next day and sleep til noon

What's your hero process?

*Content has less to do with it than the headspace I've come to associate with it and the fact I can't get drowsy with the constant aggression.

It was around 14:55, I had no energy, and was ready to call it a day, but then I messaged my boss on slack, "Ballmer Peak". He comes back 5 mins later and my desk looked like it this.

This was a fun thing that just happened:

I was sent a timed questionnaire by a potential employer for a software engineer job. I'm like okay, I will do it on Monday (today) because that is when I will have a free minute.

Well I sit down to do the thing and I had had a few beers, because the Ballmer Peak is real to me when I have to answer bullshit programming quizzes.

Well F me right in the A, it is a 38 question true or false logic quiz. And I am no longer a college kid trying to get into grad school so I have no patience for that crap, and apparently less with a little beer in me. Long story short, there was no comment section for me to rant in so I decided to go on YouTube and watch cat videos instead.

Two words: ballmer peak

Me: "I should try to waste less money this month"
Also me: "I wonder what 1000 euro whiskey tastes like..."

(Please describe in comments, I don't actually have 1000 euros for whiskey.)

The Ballmer Peak applies to gaming too. Poured myself a glass of gin&tonic, then started playing csgo and drank after each time I died. For science.

Holy shit I'm good at this game.

Still my favorite comic

I'm at work coding at 21:00 on a Friday cause money, no life ya know, but then it hit me. I could be at home on coding on a Friday night and still I would have no money and no life but o would have ALCOHOL! Ballmer peak here I come!

Ps I haven't drank in 6 days and I don't drink to excess (often). I just find it enjoyable

Fucking Ballmer peak and blowing by it 9 times out of 10. But that every once in a while when you hit it. Oh it’s real. So real. Focus and problem solving rolled into one.

New coffee machines at work. Real beans! What's the equivalent of the Ballmer Peak for Caffeine? Posting this at 4.04am, lying awake in bed and not coding, I'm probably past it.. sleep not found

Ok this is a weird story.

So myself and two friends were working on a chrome extension several years ago, probably late high school/early college years.

So before any of us had seen the ballmer peak xkcd, I had discovered it on my own. I was telling my friend that we should start drinking because a)it's Saturday night, and b) I code better buzzed. So he decided to push the limits. He poured my drink super heavy, then another, then didn't finish his and insisted I did. He ended up getting me super drunk. I started going off on how they were doing it wrong, then took over the keyboard. What I wrote cannot even be considered code. I went on an incoherent rant, puked in a trash can, and then woke up in the bathroom with a towel as a pillow.

And that's the story of why my friends are convinced the ballmer peak is definitely not a thing.

//I find a couple beers after hours relaxes the mind enough to work through the problem. aka The Ballmer Peak.

while(stuck == true) {
if(time < endDay) {
console.log("Keep working");
} else if(time > endDay && beers < 2) {
beers ++;
} else if(time > endDay && beers >= 2) {
stuck = false;
}
}

Don't you hate it when you hit your Ballmer Peak, start coding an app to calculate out you Ballmer Peak, then you tip over onto the right side of it and get bored.

usually the worst drunk coding problem i have is leaving nasty comments in the code about the previous maintainers. Or ranting more vehemently on here than is really warranted... ;)

In other words it doesnt affect my coding, it just affects my social skills.... lol...

I force myself to start and in preparation I've made sure to have at least one case of beer in the fridge.
Then just try to stay on the infamous Balmer peak until I fall asleep or run out of beer 😅

Approximating my personal ballmer peak

When you have a coding issue you can't fix after numerous searching and debugging you give up and talk to somebody about it to see if they'd know what the cause is.

*40 mins later* the conversation is about security habits, cryptography coding and the ballmer peak.

Sit back down after the detailed conversation and realise I forgot to get assistance on the code issue.

Whelp! Maybe I'll look at refactoring now and perhaps start from scratch if I cant fix it. FML

Me: Let's try the ballmer peak

One Beer
Other Beers
One Cuba Libre
Two Cuba Libres

Me: I think I'm ready let me take the test
Result: 93/100

mmm Interesting, let me try more.