I am so sick and tired of hearing "I'm not good with computers" from these god damn secretaries I have to work with.

Fuck you! I mean, seriously, FUCK YOU! That God damn piece of shit Windows XP door stop has been on your desk for at LEAST a decade (shit, I think that was the same PC my highschool had, and I'm in my mid thirties)!

What in the FUCK do you mean you don't know the difference between files and folder? How? HOW can you stare at that damn screen every fucking work day off your life and not grasp simple concepts!

And FUCK THE ADMINISTRATION for hiring these volunteerily ignorant babies who refuse to bother figuring out more than just where the power button is (and, fuck me, even THAT took years).

Fuck me if, after spending 40 God damn minutes of my time trying to guide some secretary, who's been working twice as long as I have and making probably twice as much, on how to copy a file from one folder to another, I have to listen to some fucking pity speech "I just don't get this high tech computer stuff. I'm just too old"

And FUCK society for allowing this fucking behavior! I don't know any other piece of technology where people are happy being so blindly ignorant to even the basics! I don't know Jack shit about the internal working of a car, but I know where and how to use my steering wheel and peddles and that I need to take the thing for an oil change. Hell, I even know when my tires look bad... If I can do that, you can fucking learn how to copy a god damn file without needing me to help you... FOR A FUCKING HOUR!

FUUUUCK!

*Takes a deep breath*
So... How was your day?

An incident which made a Security Researcher cry
--------------------------------------------------------
I was working on my laptop finishing up my code while waiting for the flight which was late . Meanwhile two guys (I'm gonna call them Fellas) in black suit and shades came to me

Fella : Sir you have to come with us .
Me : *goes along with them*
Fella : Sir please proceed *points towards the door . The room has a round table with some guys discussing something *
Fella 1 : Your passport please
Me : *Hands over the passport*
Fella 1 : Where are you traveling to sir?
Me : India
Fella 1 : Put your laptop in the desk sir.
Me : Sure thing
Fella 2 : What were you doing there? *Taps the power button*
Me : Just finishing up my work .
Fella 1 : Or hacking our systems?
Me : Seriously?
Fella 2 : The password please .
Me : Here you go
*5 minutes have passed and​ he still can't figure out how to use the machine*
Fella 2 : Which Windows is this?
Me : It's Linux
Fella 1 : So you are a hacker .
Me : Nope
Fella 1 : You are using Linux
Me : Does it matters?
Fella 1 : Where do you work?
Me : *I won't mention here but I told him*
Fella 2 : So what do you do there?
Me : I'm a Security Researcher
Fella 1 : What's your work?
Me : I find security holes in their systems .
Fella 1 : That means you are a hacker .
Me : Not at all .
Fella 2 : But they do the same and they use Linux .
Me : You can call me one .
*After 15 minutes of doo-laa-baa-dee-doo-ra-ba-doo amongst them I dunno what they were talking , they shutdown the computer and handed over it to me*
Fella 2 - So you are somewhat like a hacker .
Me - *A bit frustrated* Yes.

##And now the glorious question appeared like an angel from river ##

Can you hack Facebook?
Me - 😭😭😭

If I had these I would forget what color is the sun 😂

Any of you want one of these ...

A desk that ... Is a computer

This is Why I give IT support so much respect.

Friend: my computer stopped working can you help?
Me: (porn...again) fine I'll help.
Friend: come over when your ready
Me: Be there tomorrow bro

Next day.....

Me: where is your desktop
Friend: upstairs, I tried everything man
Me: look at the monitor... look at the hp piece of shit.. see green light on... look back at the monitor...no light... look at my friend.
Friend: 😕
Me:😪
Friend:😳
Me: look behind the desk...
Friend: 😰
Me: 😪your monitor is unplugged
Friend: 😅
Me: fuck you lose my number

6pm - arrive home from work, log into my computer and start working on side projects.

4am - Finally go to sleep after staying up all night setting up arch in a vm.

7am - Start drive to work in the snow and ice.

7:20am - car runs out of wiper fluid.

7:30am - round corner so that I’m driving towards the sun, windshield is covered in mud and I have 2% visibility.

7:35am - take off ramp towards gas station so I can buy fluid and wash window.

7:36am - Car mysteriously parked in center of off ramp, nearly smash it but have a narrow miss.

7:40am - can’t find the freaking pully in new car to pop hood

7:41am - found it.

7:50am - drove the back way to work because it cuts out traffic, but includes many steep hills that I forgot existed, come to a skid at bottom of one and am pushed out into the main road, luckily nobody is coming and I’m able to continue on my merry way.

8:01am - sit down in desk, lead staff person comes over evoking Lumbergh from Office Space and lets me know I need to be on time to work and that the snow doesn’t give me an excuse. I agree and smile and suck up and he leaves.

8:02am - pull out phone to write down notes about personal project that I thought of on drive here, phone dies. I forgot to plug it in last night.

8:04am - found power bank charger thing in desk but it uses a micro-b type usb and I only have usb type c on me.

8:10am - borrow usb from old headset in office surplus.

8:11am - writing notes. Have sudden realization that I didn’t shut down my vm and that when my computer went to sleep and subsequently locked it probably halted virtualbox and everything would be lost for the second time.

8:12am - got on devRant.

Someones keyboard just stopped working in my job.
They called the helpdesk and i told them to unplug the keyboard from the back of the PC and try a different usb port before i send them down a new keyboard.
Their reply?

‘How am i meant to do that? I mean... *laughs* I didn’t go to college for this kind of stuff. I know you did but you need to explain it in English for me instead of using technical terms.’

....

So i had to describe what a USB looks like, and tell her how to follow the (only) skinny black cable she has on her desk, down the back of the desk and into the PC. She got overwhelmed by this cable being the same colour as the thicker VGA cable, so ended up unplugging everything!
Its fine though, as when she plugged them all back in, everything was back working.
She finished the call by saying:

“Like, i know how to use a computer but I just don’t understand all this technical mumbo jumbo, like USB’s and stuff? How should i know about that?”

...

I sincerely think interviews need to have just 5 minutes dedicated to the person showing that they know what a bloody USB is!!, can turn on/off a PC, open outlook, and follow basic instructions.

Ugh I work with idiots 😢

I’m kind of pissy, so let’s get into this.
My apologies though: it’s kind of scattered.

Family support?
For @Root? Fucking never.

Maybe if I wanted to be a business major my mother might have cared. Maybe the other one (whom I call Dick because fuck him, and because it’s accurate) would have cared if I suddenly wanted to become a mechanic. But in both cases, I really doubt it. I’d probably just have been berated for not being perfect, or better at their respective fields than they were at 3x my age.

Anyway.
Support being a dev?
Not even a little.

I had hand-me-down computers that were outmoded when they originally bought them: cutting-edge discount resale tech like Win95, 33/66mhz, 404mb hd. It wouldn’t even play an MP3 without stuttering.

(The only time I had a decent one is when I built one for myself while in high school. They couldn’t believe I spent so much money on what they saw as a silly toy.)

Using a computer for anything other than email or “real world” work was bad in their eyes. Whenever I was on the computer, they accused me of playing games, and constantly yelled at me for wasting my time, for rotting in my room, etc. We moved so often I never had any friends, and they were simply awful to be around, so what was my alternative? I also got into trouble for reading too much (seriously), and with computers I could at least make things.

If they got mad at me for any (real or imagined) reason (which happened almost every other day) they would steal my things, throw them out, or get mad and destroy them. Desk, books, decorations, posters, jewelry, perfume, containers, my chair, etc. Sometimes they would just steal my power cables or network cables. If they left the house, they would sometimes unplug the internet altogether, and claim they didn’t know why it was down. (Stealing/unplugging cables continued until I was 16.) If they found my game CDs, those would disappear, too. They would go through my room, my backpack and its notes/binders/folders/assignments, my closet, my drawers, my journals (of course my journals), and my computer, too. And if they found anything at all they didn’t like, they would confront me about it, and often would bring it up for months telling me how wrong/bad I was. Related: I got all A’s and a B one year in high school, and didn’t hear the end of it for the entire summer vacation.

It got to the point that I invented my own language with its own vocabulary, grammar, and alphabet just so I could have just a little bit of privacy. (I’m still fluent in it.) I would only store everything important from my computer on my only Zip disk so that I could take it to school with me every day and keep it out of their hands. I was terrified of losing all of my work, and carrying a Zip disk around in my backpack (with no backups) was safer than leaving it at home.

I continued to experiment and learn whatever I could about computers and programming, and also started taking CS classes when I reached high school. Amusingly, I didn’t even like computers despite all of this — they were simply an escape.

Around the same time (freshman in high school) I was a decent enough dev to actually write useful software, and made a little bit of money doing that. I also made some for my parents, both for personal use and for their businesses. They never trusted it, and continually trashtalked it. They would only begrudgingly use the business software because the alternatives were many thousands of dollars. And, despite never ever having a problem with any of it, they insisted I accompany them every time, and these were often at 3am. Instead of being thankful, they would be sarcastically amazed when nothing went wrong for the nth time. Two of the larger projects I made for them were: an inventory management system that interfaced with hand scanners (VB), and another inventory management system for government facility audits (Access). Several websites, too. I actually got paid for the Access application thanks to a contract!

To put this into perspective, I was selected to work on a government software project about a year later, while still in high school. That didn’t impress them, either.

They continued to see computers as a useless waste of time, and kept telling me that I would be unemployable, and end up alone.

When they learned I was dating someone long-distance, and that it was a she, they simply took my computer and didn’t let me use it again for six months. Really freaking hard to do senior projects without a computer. They begrudgingly allowed me to use theirs for schoolwork, but it had a fraction of the specs — and some projects required Flash, which the computer could barely run.

Between the constant insults, yelling, abuse (not mentioned here), total lack of privacy, and the theft, destruction, etc. I still managed to teach myself about computers and programming.

In short, I am a dev despite my parents’ best efforts to the contrary.

I haven't told anyone I know yet but yesterday I got a call from a user and she asked me if I could come down and take a look at some software I support. I did and fixed the issue.
She then asked if I could take a look at her computer because help desk and PC team had tried to fix and couldn't.

5 minutes later I fixed it (every site she went to gave cert error in both chrome and ie). I stood up and there was a couple seconds of me and her just facing each other not saying anything. She was smiling ear to ear the whole time. (This issue was weeks old I think). Then she walks towards me......

And hugs me.

Electronics store clerk: "Can I help you?"

Me: "Good afternoon sir. I'm a developer and lifelong PC gamer. I received a second hand PS4, and might buy a next gen console at the end of the year. People tell me that in front of this soft wide desk chair people call a "couch", you need some sort of large computer monitor to enjoy console gaming"

Clerk: "Yeah, we sell TVs. What TV do you have now?"

Me: "I don't own a TV. I just want a huge 4K computer display with a good response time, excellent refresh rate, and great contrast"

Clerk: "OK so this is an entry level 55" smart TV. It's 120hz, QLED, has full array local dimming. It's great for gaming. It's €1000. We also have this LG OLED smart TV for €1200, which is a step up in terms of contrast and response time..."

Me: "Wait... Smart TV? No, I don't want a TV with an operating system. I want a computer display."

Clerk: "There aren't a lot of big computer displays. We have this ASUS ROG 55" computer monitor. It's also 120hz. Very similar response time, but the brightness and contrast aren't as great, it's edge-lit"

Me, trying really hard to make out the contrast differences under ugly fluorescent lights of the store: "So it's a worse big couch display, without smart OS. How much is it?"

Clerk: "€3500"

Me: "So what you're saying is that while the displays are similar or even better, the operating system on all these TVs is so incredibly bad, you have to give €2500 discount for people to even buy it?"

This actually happened today

Colleague: Hey man I think there's a problem with my computer.

Me: Alright, I'll check it out.

(I go to his desk and find that his screen was turned off)

Colleague: It just suddenly turned off.

Me: (presses a random key on his keyboard)

(Screen lights up)

So I'm working on a computer vision project that grabs video from my webcam and detects faces in each frame. Earlier yesterday morning I was capping out at 30 frames per second, which is what I believe to be the max for my webcam. As the day became night and I was wrapping up my work on a portion of the project, I noticed that my newly compiled version was only getting around 8 frames per second. Confused, I looked into my frame grabbing + face detection code.

"Maybe I can only detect faces in a certain region of the image, based on where the face was in the previous image?" No, still 8fps. Hmm.

"How about I lower the resolution of the image, that would definitely help!" I tried that, but no speed boost came either. What??

I start to dig deeper. Maybe I'm not linking my libraries correctly, and it's using an older library I compiled. So I recompile that. Nothing.

"Am I low on resources?" I close out of all my other apps. Nothing.
Okay, wtf. Now I just comment out the face detection code entirely, and only grab webcam frames.

8fps. ?????

Suddenly, I get an idea. I get out of my desk, walk over to the doorway of my room, and flip the light on. I sit back down, and run my code.

30fps.

The stupid webcam switches to "night mode" when it detects low light, which restricts its ability to output frames at high speed and caps at 8fps. Damn, I felt like a fool 😂

We moved to a new office floor and got a brand new set up. My new extension monitor died just after 4 hours of use, it was showing a black screen a with couple of colourful lines running down the screen.

Got the IT guy to come and replace it. He says he must test it with a display cable even though the screen was dead without any input source. (Ok fine cbf arguing with you, just do it.)

*Magicarp used splash, nothing happened*

Realising I was right, he gave the ok for another guy to replace my monitor.

Second guy comes to my desk and realised he forgot the electric screwdriver. (Sigh, how long must I wait...) After he finally finished installing​ the new monitor he plugged the display cable into a random display port without looking.

*Magicarp used splash, nothing happened*

Since the monitor wasn't displaying anything, he jumped into asking me to restart my computer. I gave him "the wtf are you stupid face" and just said "NO". I looked over to where he plugged the cable and asked why he plugged into the "dp out" port.

I plugged the cable to the correct port and monitor was working.

Felt like I can do their job better without any experience in IT support.

PS. Don't play the "please restart your computer" card on me. I also work in technology.

I have a telephone headset with a "confusing" mute button. Sometimes it works normally, but quite often it will "double-toggle" (toggle twice as though I pressed it twice, which essentially has no effect) - so I'm either left muted or left un-muted, the same as before I pressed the button at all - so I have to press it again, sometimes several times, for it to actuary work.

While I'm at my desk, I have a visual indicator of mute status (a light that turns green for un-muted or red for muted), so I can easily tell if my mic is hot or not. My old headset had a nice audible beep reminder if I was muted, but the new headset? Nope, not-so-much.

I work from home, while my wife works at an office; so each morning she leaves, but I stay in the home office. I almost always see her off one way or another, usually doing or saying something funny as she heads out.

So, one day, I'm on a large conference call with a number of cross-team managers, and my wife is about to head out the door. With the meeting droning on in my headset, I was in the kitchen with her for a while helping finish clean up after breakfast and getting her ready to go.

She needed to pack an ice-pack for some reason, and for the random humor of it, I start screaming something to the effect of "GIMMIE YO ICE PACKS - GIMMIE ALLLL YO ICE PACKS - YEAH! YEAH! IMMA PUT MY BAAAAAAAAALLLLLS ON IT - WHOOOOOOOOO!"

During which time I am jumping around like a crazy person, including actually grabbing one of the ice packs, putting it down the front of my pants and screaming. Loudly.

It was after my own screaming I overheard more than one person yelling on the bridge line "YOU'RE NOT MUTED! YOU'RE NOT MUTED!"

I have seldom felt such raw, unadulterated panic.

I rushed back to my home office - yes, the green light is on my desk - my mic is hot. When I pressed mute at some point earlier in the call, it double-toggled, leaving me un-muted, and I never knew.

Even more embarrassing was the chat session I saw on my computer screen. It was from my manager (one of the managers on the call) - he had pinged me several times while I was in the kitchen.

It read something like:

hey, you there?
is that your phone
I think your phone isn't muted
mute
dude, mute
is that you?
MUTE!
did you just say balls?

I've had many, but this is one of my favorite "OK, I'm getting fired for this" moments.

A new team in charge of source control and development standards came up with a 20 page work-instruction document for the new TFS source control structure.
The source control kingpin came from semi-large military contract company where taking a piss was probably outlined somewhere.

Maybe twice, I merged down from a release branch when I should have merged down from a dev branch, which "messed up" the flow of code that one team was working on.
Each time I was 'coached' and reminded on page 13, paragraph 5, sub-section C ... "When merging down from release, you must verify no other teams are working
on branches...blah blah blah..and if they have pending changes, use a shelfset and document the changes using Document A234-B..."

A fellow dev overheard the kingpin and the department manager in the breakroom saying if I messed up TFS one more time, I was gone.

Wasn't two days later I needed to merge up some new files to Main, and 'something' happened in TFS and a couple of files didn't get merged up. No errors, nothing.
Another team was waiting on me, so I simply added the files directly into Main. Unknown to me, the kingpin had a specific alert in TFS to notify him when someone added
files directly into Main, and I get a visit.

KP: "Did you add a couple of files directly into Main?"
Me:"Yes, I don't what happened, but the files never made it from my branch, to dev, to the review shelfset, and then to Main. I never got an error, but since
they were new files and adding a new feature, they never broke a build. Adding the files directly allowed the Web team to finish their project and deploy the
site this morning."
KP: "That is in direct violation of the standard. Didn't you read the documentation?"
Me: "Uh...well...um..yes, but that is an oddly specific case. I didn't think I hurt any.."
KP: "Ha ha...hurt? That's why we have standards. The document clearly states on page 18, paragraph 9, no files may ever be created in Main."
Me: "Really? I don't remember reading that."
<I navigate to the document, page 18, paragraph 9>
Me: "Um...no, it doesn't say that. The document only talks about merging process from a lower branch to Main."
KP: "Exactly. It is forbidden to create files directly in Main."
Me: "No, doesn't say that anywhere."
KP: "That is the spirit of the document. You violated the spirit of what we're trying to accomplish here."
Me: "You gotta be fracking kidding me."

KP grumbles something, goes back to his desk. Maybe a minute later he leaves the IS office, and the department manager leaves his office.

It was after 5:00PM, they never came back, so I headed home worried if I had a job in the morning.

I decided to come in a little early to snoop around, I knew where HR kept their terminated employee documents, and my badge wouldn't let me in the building.

Oh crap.

It was a shift change, so was able to walk in with the warehouse workers in another part of the building (many knew me, so nothing seemed that odd), and to my desk.

I tried to log into my computer...account locked. Oh crap..this was it. I'm done. I fill my computer backpack with as much personal items as I could, and started down the hallway when I meet one of our FS accountants.

L: "Hey, did your card let you in the building this morning? Mine didn't work. I had to walk around to the warehouse entrance and my computer account is locked. None of us can get into the system."

*whew!* is an understatement. Found out later the user account server crashed, which locked out everybody.

Never found out what kingpin and the dev manager left to talk about, but I at least still had a job.

So... I still go to school.
My English teacher (I'm from Germany) wanted to watch a video with us. There was one Problem. The sound didnt work. My teacher asked for computer Freaks in class. All pointed to me. I went to the desk where the computer was standing.

They plugged the audio output cable for the speakers into the audio input of the computer (that pink microphone input)... 😥 it made some nice sounds haha

Funny thing: other teachers didnt solve the problem before me

Root rents an office.

Among very few other things, the company I'm renting an office from (Regus) provides wifi, but it isn't even bloody secured. There's a captive portal with a lovely (not.) privacy policy saying they're free to monitor your traffic, but they didn't even bother using WEP, which ofc means everyone else out to the fucking parking lot four floors down can monitor my traffic, too.

Good thing I don't work for a company that handles sensitive data! /s But at least I don't have access to it, or any creds that matter.

So, I've been running my phone's connection through a tor vpn and sharing that with my lappy. It works, provides a little bit of security, but it's slow as crap. GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER, REGUS.

AND WHILE YOU'RE AT IT, CLEAN THE SHIT OUT OF THE FUCKING BATHROOM FFS.

Ugh. $12/day to work in a freaking wind tunnel (thanks, a/c; you're loud as fuck and barely work), hear other people's phone conversations through two freaking walls, pee in a bathroom that perpetually smells like diarrhea, and allow anyone and everyone within a 50+ meter radius to listen to everything my computer says.

Oh, they also 'forgot' to furnish my office, like they promised. Three freaking times. At least I have a table and chair. 🙄

Desk? What desk?
Fucking hell.

Hey devRant. What the fuck is up?

I'm new and just wanted to say hi or whatever. I don't even work in any computer science related job. I'm a fucking welder.

I have aspirations one day to be just like you nerds. I fall asleep at my desk almost every night taking random online programming classes which I lose interest halfway through to some OTHER class and redo the same shit.

Is this what it's like to be smart?

I’m so mad I’m fighting back anger tears. This is a long rant and I apologize but I’m so freaking mad.

So a few weeks ago I was asked by my lead staff person to do a data analysis project for the director of our dept. It was a pretty big project, spanning thousands of users. I was excited because I love this sort of thing and I really don’t have anything else to do. Well I don’t have access to the dataset, so I had to get it from my lead and he said he’d do it when he had a chance. Three days later he hadn’t given it to me yet. I approach him and he follows me to my desk, gives me his login and password to login to the secure freaking database, then has me clone it and put it on my computer.

So, I start working on it. It took me about six hours to clean the database, 2 to set up the parameters and plan of attack, and two or three to visualize the data. I realized about halfway through that my lead wasn’t sure about the parameters of the analysis, and I mentioned to him that the director had asked for more information than what he was having me do. He tells me he will speak with director.

So, our director is never there, so I give my lead about a week to speak with her, in the mean time I finish the project to the specifications that the director gave. I even included notes about information that I would need to make more accurate predictions, to draw conclusions, etc. It was really well documented.

Finally, exasperated, and with the project finished but just sitting on my computer for a week, I approached my director on a Saturday when I was working overtime. She confirmed that I needed to what she said in the project specs (duh), and also mentioned she needed a bigger data set than what I was working with if we had one. She told me to speak to my lead on Monday about this, but said that my work looked great.

Monday came and my lead wasn’t there so I spoke with my supervisor and she said that what I was using was the entire dataset, and that my work looked great and I could just send it off. So, at this point 2/3 of my bosses have seen the project, reviewed it, told me it was great, and confirmed that I was doing the right thing.

I sent it off to the director to disseminate to the appropriate people. Again, she looked at it and said it was great.

A week later (today) one of the people that the project was sent to approaches me and tells me that i did a great job and thank you so much for blah blah blah. She then asks me if the dataset I used included blahblah, and I said no, that I used what was given to me but that I’d be happy to go in and fix it if given the necessary data.

She tells me, “yeah the director was under the impression that these numbers were all about blahblah, so I think there was some kind of misunderstanding.” And then implied that I would not be the one fixing the mistake.

I’m being taken off of the project for two reasons: 1. it took to long to get the project out in the first place,
2. It didn’t even answer the questions that they needed answered.

I fucking told them in the notes and ALL THROUGH THE VISUALIZATIONS that I needed additional data to compare these things I’m so fucking mad. I’m so mad.

So my ethernet randomly stopped working on Arch.

At first I thought it had to do with a conflict between it and my tethered phone, so I tried removing all my connections. Still wasn't working.

Next I tried to test the driver itself and make sure it loaded on boot. It loaded, but was disconnected.

Next I decided "fuck it, I know I was just using the internet on Windows, but I'll check the ethernet cable is still plugged in anyway". It was, and it was returning the right MAC address, but still no connection.

So I try debugging the driver further. Everything seemed fine, except it would time out trying to establish a dhcp connection.

Finally I figured, maybe Microsoft tried to troll me and lock out the ethernet waking on boot. So I restart my computer, load into windows and check my ethernet driver, it seems fine. I go to disable the shutdown of the card on OS shutdown. Turns out this driver no longer has that capability.

Wait a minute!? Windows is also having connection issues!?

I look to my left.

Fuck my life...

My router was off... I must of kicked the powerboard under my desk..........

This is my first post on devRant!
Story time:
It was on my first job as a developer, learning a lot but getting paid less than 50% of the minimum monthly wage of my country.
It was settled in the interview that as I gained more experience, I could handle more projects and earn more money.
At the time, I was living with my parents and didn't have to pay rent and some stuff, so I was like "Well, I'm gonna learn a lot and, if I put a lot of effort into it, soon I'll be making more money".
We agreed that I'll only develop, but 4 months into the job, I was already going to clients
and started coding there (having the client on my back every minute, not being able to work properly) and fixing some computer/network issues they had,
because my boss said I should do it.
Things at home started to go south, and suddenly I needed more money, so I kept doing the work and getting paid a little bit more
A year goes by, devs came and go beacuse of the work/payment situation, and I was still there.
From my first "paycheck" to the last day I never got paid on time, and that was the same for everybody else
The last month I was there, I had a job offer with a better salary and weekends free, so I wanted to take it (I worked saturdays there).
We were working at our biggest clients place at the time (a hospital, working in the server room, desk and chair were a total crap),
so I wanted to have a good conversation with my boss and tell him whats up, after all, I was really grateful for the job despite all things.
We headed outside and started talking. He basically begged me to stay, said that he will pay me on time and offered me more money (less than the other company was offering me),
and that he needed me to finish the implementation and "minor issues" with the app.
I thought about it for a couple of days, and decided to stay. I politely rejected the job offer, and even recommended someone else.
As the days passed, regret was building fast inside of me, until the day that I was supposed to get paid.
He never showed up to the client, told me in a call that he will be there sometime in the morning, that he had the money for me.
So I stayed until my day ended, and still no sign of him. I had no money on me, needed some for gas so I could go, and I called him 5 times.
He picked up the last time, talks to me like nothing is happening and I started to shout at him like I never shouted to anybody before,
got all the things of my chest, and when I was done, he said that he will send the money to my account right away.
This happened on a Saturday, so I quit the following Monday, and lost the other job offer.

My dad used to be a Marketing Manager. He used to make a lot of presentations et al for his meetings. We got our first computer in our house when I was around 7 years old. It was first Windows 95, but I wasn't fortunate enough to even touch the machine. My dad was very protective about the machine. He himself would not use it unless he had to complete some work overnight. For me, it was an absolute wonder as to how and what that thing in the bedroom sitting on the desk next to my parents bedside was. I used to hide and peek around the door sill when my dad was working on it. He became a bit more lenient with the Windows 98 and let me and my sibling play DOS games under his supervision for a limited time.

Over time, I managed to look over his shoulder for the passwords - both BIOS and OS user passwords and started logging in myself. By now, my dad would let me sit on the bed near him when I looked curiously as he worked. Then I had to figure how to connect to the internet and surf the web. And there folks is how my journey with computers began.

Lord forgive me for laughing too hard at this person/situation... I kid you NOT!

So today while everything was going well, we suddenly had network issues at work. We worked to get everything back up online asap and then sent out an email for those affected to either restart their machines or refresh their desktops but we recommend restarting... After some few client calls, this special call came in..

Riiing, riiiiiing, ring....
Me: hi, how can help you?

Client: *laughing.. This is probably a stupid question but I forgot how to "refresh" my desk top..the thing is, I have Febreeze but I don't think that's for desk tops.

Me: Wait, what? 🤔 Febreeze for what?😕

Client: You guys sent an email to refresh our desk tops and I said I have Febreeze so how will that get my things in the computer back to show again?

Me: Ohhh, no no. We meant your computer desktop. You don't need Febreeze. Right click anywhere on your computer in the screen and select refresh from the pop up menu. We meant your computer "desktop" not your actual "desk top".

Client: *starts laughing...I told you it was a stupid question

Me: don't worry.. It wasn't stupid.

After I hang up, some of my team members asked me why someone is asking about Febreeze...I told them and they all started laughing hysterically

I was still trying to digest the conversation I had just have on the phone. 😂😂😂

Better slam my mouse on my desk very hard to get my computer booted up more quickly.

I used to think the magnetic power cord on the mac was a great idea...until we got a kitten. One of his greatest joys is to play havoc with the cords under the computer desk...but his favourite is the mac powercord - which he rips out without me noticing ... until the mac runs out of power and shuts down...

Well, some time in the future, i will have to sit a computer science exam with C#. It can't be that bad, right?

Wrong.

To start off, Visual Studio 2013. Why the fuck someone would use this pile of garbage in 2018. I have no fucking clue why any semi-competent IT department would decide to skip TWO fucking releases of the software and decide, that it's okay to just roll with it. It's okay to not have any updates. It's okay to just no care at all.

I literally brought in my laptop with a VM installed since Visual Studio 2017 is really superior to the crap from 5 years ago just to do my coursework most lessons.

-------

Second issue, you know thoes desks where the monitor is literally under the desk and you get a small little window to see the monitor? Yeah, well I will have to take my proper exam in one of these all over the fucking room. Pic related.

Today we had a mini mock - - it went something like this:
- There was glare from the glsss on the desk because of the lights in the room and literally the monitor itself.
- The glass was beyond fucking pig filthy.
- There was neck pain from my back because i was constantly looking down and bending over the see the screen.
- There was eye strain because the document given to us was a tiny piece of paper with tiny writing and the monitor was far away and the paper was close i couldn't focus my eyes.
- Literally every desk was as bad as the next.
- I did fuck all work because i just couldn't focus because of the things above.
You can tell how great that felt.

If i was in a room with a man (or if it was a woman, let's just pretend she has balls), who was the creator of the room i just described, Hitler, my College's IT staff and other really bad people while having infinite ammo, i would continuously shoot the creator in the balls while not giving a shit about anything else.

Forever.

Until heat death.

Thanks for reading.

A Monday morning poem

I enter the bureau, feeling all relaxed and well,
my colleague looks up:
"Abandon all hope, welcome to hell."

This indeed, he doesn't say,
his face only twists a little in dismay:
"I need that schematic, did you finish it yet?
And there also some tests I'd like to get -
how was your week-end by the way?"
I start my computer, don't remember what I say ...

I grab some coffee, half a day is gone,
the PM pressures: "I want that asap done!"
I am cluttered in tasks and bullshit, too:
"Go fuck you right now - yes, I meant you!"

I don't say what I like to, I mentally punch a wall,
I crank some more code out and git-commit it all.
Some devRant on the lunch-break, some shallow talk,
I leave the building and take a short walk.

My mind rotates, I cannot enjoy the scenery now,
I return to my desk, and figure out what to handle and how.
But my plans are crashed by a colleague dashing in:
"I need you to do a test setup! I need to begin -"

I do the setup, I do some other stuff,
At the end of the day I feel totally rough,
Work is piling up even more -
"Tomorrow", I think and close the door.

At home, I just flop on on my bed -
I should be learning instead ... -
with some pizza and chill.
I think about sleeping, I hope that I will.

...

It is now Friday,
my brain is fried, too.
I am finished with this poem - how about you? :)

*peacefully coding*
Family: can you help me connect to WiFi?
*5 mins later*
Friend: help, how do I download this program?
*5 mins later*
Family: fix my computer, it’s really slow!!

When did I go from programmer to IT help desk?

What's the difference between a wasp and single loose hair?
Apparently none till the wasp stings :/

Yesterday I thought I had a loose hair on my neck.. ok, I shrug it off.. later again the creepy feeling.. shrugs off..

I continue to work, sumberged in code, wanting to find the fucker (bug, not the wasp/hair).. lean in to the monitor... 10 cents away from the screen... Ok, maybe that's it! Feels the hair on my back, near shoulderblades again... shrugging again more violently to get it further down to fall out.. nothing.. ok, got the bug, threw myslef back in the chair with substential force & BAAAAM!!! Motherfucking hair bit me!! O.o

I scream in horror & on top of the lungs (it was late, after work hours so I didn't expect anyone else still at the office) PROKLETA PRASICA (roughly translated to goddamn female swine).. I previously saw some green bug flying around the office and I thought that nasty thing bit me (didn't know they bite soo, much more horror for me).. O.o

Anyhow, I jump up from the computer and see my coworker looking at me all baffled.. I proceed to franticly take of my headphones and hoodie..thinking about wtf should I do now, I cannot get undressed in front of him (not for my sake, bra is the same as top of the bathing suit for me, but still..I don't want anyone suing me for impropper behaviour of undreasing in front of coworkers..), how the fuck should I get to the toilet?! O.o

C: Are you ok?!
M: Um.. sth bit me..wtf?!
C: There was a wasp flying around somewhere some time ago.. are you alergic?!
M: um..not sure, I don't think so..we'll see soon..

I proceed to the WC, to take off tshirt & check/kill off the fucker.. on my way there (walking funny to not press the hair to my body again) I got another surprise, another coworker was working late..

C2: Are you ok?! O.o
M: yeah, sth bit me, probably a wasp..

Ok, finally on the loo..ok, do not lock self in in case it escapes and you need help.. don't even shut the door. Check.. standing between the doors I contemplate on how the fuck should I take my tshirt off without angering the fucker even more and getting bitten again.. O.O

I lifted the tshirt up my back to let it out.. nope, not there..the creepy felling of buzzing around between my shoulder blades continues.. crap.. what to do?!

I stood there & contemplated the task.. ok, roll up the tshirt to the shoulder blades, not against the body (duh) to prevent further stings..tighten the fabric, so it cannot escape, quickly remove the band from the body.. done..reversed the tshirt and straightened it.. bzzz... Fucker fell somewhere.. Dafaq?! Was it really just a wasp?! If yes, no problem...but what if coworker was wrong and I got bitten by that nasty green whateveritsname bug?! Eeeeewwww! Is it poisonous? Gotta find it & kill it for good.. waited a bit, than saw a goddamn wasp crawl from under the toilet.. wasp!! Yess!! Stopm stomp fucker!!

I get dressed & go back to my desk..

C: Did you terminate it?!
M: Yup, fucker went on a toilet paper trip down the drain!!

I sit down, starting to get my headphones back on and proceed to work.., but before I could, one last gem:

C: CTO would say, thank god it didn't sting you in your finger cuz you wouldn't be able to type anymore..

M: O.O so true hahhahahaaa

Disclaimer - I like animals, but I freakking hate wasps..especially if they get under my tshirt to sting.. :/

I've been working exclusively from home for over 2 years now. I've been seeing several posts from people talking about adjusting to working from home, so I figured I would compile a list of tips I've learned over the years to help make the adjustment easier for some people.

1) Limit as many distractions as possible. WFH makes it much easier to get distracted. If you have roommates/family members at home, ask them politely to leave you alone while you're working. Make sure the TV is turned off, put your phone on silent, etc.

2) Take regular breaks. I find it easier to accidentally go hours without taking a real break from work. Try working in half hour intervals, and then taking 5-10 minute breaks. Read an article, watch a youtube video, grab some coffee/tea, etc.

3) When you eat lunch, eat it away from your computer. I often find myself eating lunch trying to wrap up fixing a bug, which makes it feel like I never really "took a lunch." Lately I've been trying to step away and do something else completely unrelated to work.

4) Get ready for work like you normally would. It's very easy to wake up, throw on your favorite pair of sweats and sit at the computer with messy hair half awake "ready" to start the day. Instead try doing your normal morning routine before sitting at your computer. It will help your mind and body go into "it's time to work" mode.

5) Keep your work area clean. I find it very difficult to work when my workspace is cluttered. Studies have shown working in a messy place tend to make us less efficient.

6) Keep your work area work related. Try to only have the things you need for work in your workspace. If you're working from your personal computer this can be difficult. I always end up with camera/music equipment left over from the previous night's photo editing/jam sessions. So try to clean off your desk when you're done for the night so it's ready for work in the morning.

7) Prepare for meetings. I have alarms set 10 minutes in advance so I can go from programming mode to meeting mode. During this time I'll go to the bathroom, grab a snack, water, mute all my email notifications, close any non essential programs, get my code ready if I need to present it.

Stuff is hard & stressful right now, but hopefully these tips will make it a bit easier. If anyone else has any good tips please share them.

I got a new desk!! I am now ready to program!

So my first job is also my current one. I am a computer science student and for my course we had to do a project for an actual client. The client was a consultancy company and after working my ass off, their software development partner decided to hire me and a classmate.

The company is pretty small (we are now with the 6 of us) and the general attitude is very nice. I've only been working there for a few weeks and I feel very welcome. The work isn't too hard (mainly web development with geographic features/data).
In rough lines the stack always consists of a Java Rest API and an Angular frontend that retrieved the data from the API.
So far I have learned a ton and I am really happy that I have this opportunity. Lunch is provided and we always eat together, we crack jokes, have fun, play games in the break. Coffee machine next to my desk. I'd love to work here all my life :d

Since I'm still in school I can't go to the office every day. Instead I am at the office every Monday and on other days I try to work from school or home.

I once worked Tech Support for a point of sale software package. There was really no internal help desk, so we got all of those questions as well.

One day our front receptionist that her computer is being really weird and she can't type - it keeps inserting 3s in the middle of what she is typing.

I take the short walk down the hall to her desk and see that, indeed, a never ending string of 3s is being input to her screen.

"I can't figure out what's wrong." she says.

Then I reach over and remove the edge of an open binder whose edge was resting on the 3 key and enter key on the num pad.

"That should fix it."

Walked back to my desk.

I’m the embodiment of lazy...

I had turned on the TV in the living room earlier and put on sesame st. for my daughter to watch.

Some time passes, I’m trying to work in the back bedroom, have daughter in my arms and she’s falling asleep. I forgot to turn off the TV in the front room.

Didn’t want to get up from my desk so I just wrote up a powershell script to connect to the computer plugged into the TV and kill chrome. (The Computer sleeps after 10 minutes, and the TV shuts off after 10 more minutes of no display signal).

Script was successful as I heard Elmo laughing, then suddenly all was quiet 🤫

What an absolute fucking disaster of a day. Strap in, folks; it's time for a bumpy ride!

I got a whole hour of work done today. The first hour of my morning because I went to work a bit early. Then people started complaining about Jenkins jobs failing on that one Jenkins server our team has been wanting to decom for two years but management won't let us force people to move to new servers. It's a single server with over four thousand projects, some of which run massive data processing jobs that last DAYS. The server was originally set up by people who have since quit, of course, and left it behind for my team to adopt with zero documentation.

Anyway, the 500GB disk is 100% full. The memory (all 64GB of it) is fully consumed by stuck jobs. We can't track down large old files to delete because du chokes on the workspace folder with thousands of subfolders with no Ram to spare. We decide to basically take a hacksaw to it, deleting the workspace for every job not currently in progress. This of course fucked up some really poorly-designed pipelines that relied on workspaces persisting between jobs, so we had to deal with complaints about that as well.

So we get the Jenkins server up and running again just in time for AWS to have a major incident affecting EC2 instance provisioning in our primary region. People keep bugging me to fix it, I keep telling them that it's Amazon's problem to solve, they wait a few minutes and ask me to fix it again. Emails flying back and forth until that was done.

Lunch time already. But the fun isn't over yet!

I get back to my desk to find out that new hires or people who got new Mac laptops recently can't even install our toolchain, because management has started handing out M1 Macs without telling us and all our tools are compiled solely for x86_64. That took some troubleshooting to even figure out what the problem was because the only error people got from homebrew was that the formula was empty when it clearly wasn't.

After figuring out that problem (but not fully solving it yet), one team starts complaining to us about a Github problem because we manage the github org. Except it's not a github problem and I already knew this because they are a Problem Team that uses some technical authoring software with Git integration but they only have even the barest understanding of what Git actually does. Turns out it's a Git problem. An update for Git was pushed out recently that patches a big bad vulnerability and the way it was patched causes problems because they're using Git wrong (multiple users accessing the same local repo on a samba share). It's a huge vulnerability so my entire conversation with them went sort of like:

"Please don't."
"We have to."
"Fine, here's a workaround, this will allow arbitrary code execution by anyone with physical or virtual access to this computer that you have sitting in an unlocked office somewhere."
"How do I run a Git command I don't use Git."

So that dealt with, I start taking a look at our toolchain, trying to figure out if I can easily just cross-compile it to arm64 for the M1 macbooks or if it will be a more involved fix. And I find all kinds of horrendous shit left behind by the people who wrote the tools that, naturally, they left for us to adopt when they quit over a year ago. I'm talking entire functions in a tool used by hundreds of people that were put in as a joke, poorly documented functions I am still trying to puzzle out, and exactly zero comments in the code and abbreviated function names like "gars", "snh", and "jgajawwawstai".

While I'm looking into that, the person from our team who is responsible for incident communication finally gets the AWS EC2 provisioning issue reported to IT Operations, who sent out an alert to affected users that should have gone out hours earlier.

Meanwhile, according to the health dashboard in AWS, the issue had already been resolved three hours before the communication went out and the ticket remains open at this moment, as far as I know.

My work laptop (windows) updated yesterday. Today my monitors keep flickering, hanging, and going black for a few seconds then come back with an error that my display drivers crashed. Since I have basically zero access to anything admin on this machine, I put in a help desk ticket with all the details, the error message, even screen shots which took forever to get because of all the crashes.

They finally respond after about an hour, and tell me that my computer does not support 3 screens so I will have to use 2, and that is what is causing the crash. Well I have been using 3 screens with this computer since I started there in 2014, and it has worked perfectly until the update, so I asked if they could revert the update.

He told me that they could not revert it, and not only that, but I couldn't have been using 3 monitors before because the computer doesn't support it and never has. REALLY??? I just freaking told you I have been doing that for over 3 years so obviously it does support it you deaf, stupid retard. Try using your brain for 2 seconds and work on a solution instead of calling me a liar and dismissing my issue without thought.

After going back and forth for about 5 minutes I gave up and hung up. Finally I fixed it by switching out my docking station with another one I found laying around. Not sure why that worked, but I'm back to working on all 3 monitors. I called the guy back to tell him it's working and sent a picture of my setup, his response: "Well I don't know why that works because your laptop is too old to support that."

Useless...

TLDR; My 2TB HDD got wiped in one fell swoop by a 9-year old child.

You know... I've never been too great about keeping backups. Even to this day, I only keep one or two local backups and nothing on the "cloud".

So this was about 5 years ago. At the time, I was living together with my girlfriend - who would later become my wife. She had a son from a previous relationship, who at the time was 9 years old.

I had a small desk in the living room of our one-bedroom apartment, that I used for my computer, which has been a laptop for a long time now. One unfortunate thing about the layout of the apartment was that the wall plug near my desk was attached to a light switch.

I had a 2TB external hard drive - with its own power cable - plugged into my laptop. Then, things started to move in slow motion... The GF's son comes inside from playing, my GF asks him to turn off the light. He reaches over, and shuts off power to my laptop - and the external hard drive.

He must have hit that switch at JUST the right fucking time. The laptop ran on battery, no big deal. The hard drive, when I powered it back up - was wiped clean. I tried data recovery on it, but the HDD was encrypted, which makes things more complicated.

Needless to say, I was not happy. I never got that data back, but I did learn not to expose my hard drives to 9 year olds. Very dangerous little creatures.

You want to know the best part? He destroyed another hard drive of mine, a few years later. Should I tell that story?

Story of onboarding in the age of Corona!

Monday:
Office is big but almost empty, people are working from home. Guy welcoming me says he is not the one supposed to help me(he is sick I'm told) and the rest of the team is not there. The man I'm talking to is this other guys boss. It's OK I think it will work out.

Turns out this guy helping me is actually the CTO so he does not have that much time on his hands. He shows me were to get my computer and desk and hands me documentation to setup some software.

I spend the time before lunch installing linux, setting up git and some other software. CTO checks up on me once.

Then after lunch nothing...I look for him but he is in some meeting. I find some videos by myself labled "onboarding" on the company website. They are OK. I ask my deskmate if he heard what team I will be in. He doesn't know. I sneak out a little early since I have nothing left to do.

Tuesday:
The CTO is now also sick I see in an email when I arrive at the office. Still don't know what team I am in.

I spend the morning reading coding blogs and websites. After lunch I have a meeting. The only one in my calendar. It's about the product software architecture for all new employees. It's good but still no news about what team. I aimlessly read up on some software architecture untill I go home.

Wednesday:
I arrive at the office first, only the receptionist is there. I listen to podcasts until a few more people show up. I ask another guy if he knows what team I'm supposed to be in. He doesn't but laughs and says it was the same when he started last year.

I send out messages on slack looking for anyone that knows...still no one knows. I guess Im in limbo now. Perhaps i should just start making coffee for people or something...

I just overheard that someone tried to clean up their computer by going into the C drive, selecting all folders, and pressing delete.

They called the help desk because it was taking a long time

Finally I could get the correct computer :)

Just missing the raised arm for the screens instead of desk stands

(ok,my real desk is not transparent but it was to cool to not take ;) )

It's long, but trust me you won't get bored. So today, I went to work, even on a Sunday. My supervisor had given the task to finish off my custom module by this week.
There were only the 2 of us in the office. Everyone else enjoyed the holiday.
I got stuck somewhere in the code and approached his desk. We could never see what he was doing on his computer.
Suddenly, I could find him uneasy as I approached and he started jolting St those "ctrl+w" and "alt+f4s" and clutched his mouse to minimize. I said, "Uh sorry, sir but this taxonomy doesn't work in this code, help me out?"
He said, "Oh sure, sit. And he opened chrome trying to act cool. Guess what? Chrome played it like a boss, "Google Chrome didn't shut down correctly. Restore the following pages.
[] Shocking! 99 year old couple have s3x
[] xxx tiny teen shows her.... (i don't remember exactly.)"
The quickest possible glance I ever had. And the most sweaty face I ever saw of his.
He granted me a leave today and extended my deadline for the next week as well. I thought I was screwed :P

That moment when you get called by an 'Microsoft help desk' telling you have a problem with your computer...

I run on Ubuntu 16.04... Server....

After a nightmare weekend where moving my 80 year old desk caused the wood to completely split and almost broke my computer and screens in the process..... I felt physically sick.....

Somehow I became a carpenter for the day and rebuilt and resized my desk to make it better then ever.....

Couldn't be happier with the final result tbh!

So at work with the Macs we use, we have some guy come in after hours to service the Macs, and that means the security risk of leaving our passwords on our desks.

Not being a fan of this I tell my boss, he knows it's a risk and despite that he doesn't want this guy coming in while we're here.

Though my main problem is the Mac guy Steve is arrogant and thinks he's a know it all, and with the software I have on the Mac may end up deleting something important, I have git repo and all but I feel off just letting someone touch my computer without me being there.

I tell my boss about the software and stuff he just says contact Steve and tell him about it, to ignore the software and such, I say alright, I write up an email telling him not to touch the software listed and the folders of software documents (again it's all backed up).

No reply, I tell my boss and he says call him, I call him and he hangs up on me on the second ring!

Not sure if he's busy, but I left him a message, asking if he got my email, no reply and it's coming close to the end of the day (going to service Macs in the weekend)

I'm just not going to leave my info because if this guy can't check emails or even get back to someone why should I bother with this bullshit of risking my work.

From all the info I hear about him and my previous rants he's an arrogant prick who loves Macs.

Can't wait to leave this company, pretty sure leaving my password on my desk is a breach of our own security policy, and since 8-9 people are doing it, it's a major risk.

But he's friends with the CEO so apparently it's fuck our own security policy.

So in the 2nd grade of middle school.our classes had computers with projectors and teachers would present on them. At that time I was still a beginner in programming and knew some basic cmd commands, so before our teacher had come to class I went to the computer desk, opened cmd and then executed this command “shutdown -s -t 36000” which basically shutdowns the pc after 36000 milliseconds and then the teacher came to class and started explaining us a new lesson on a power point and half way through the power point the pc suddenly shutdowns and the class got wild. and no one admitted who did it so all the teacher did is to say” who ever did it pls don’t do it again”. Like wow...😂😂😂

Story when I worked as a 1st line technician:

Customer: "Yes hello, I'm trying to install Windows as instructed, but the installer is not starting"

Me: "Ok, have you tried pressing [button] at the bootscreen?"

C: "Yes, over and over, still nothing happens"

This was actually one of my first calls, so my co-worker stepped in to help while I listened.

Co-worker: "okay, so when you rebooted the computer, press [button] and tell me what happens"

C: "....okay, I think it's starting"

Co-w: "Great! I'll just wait until it's running"

A minute goes by, installer seems to be running, but then we hear a loud BEEP. It's so loud another coworker hears it from his desk, through our headsets. A moment goes by, and it BEEPS again. Then the sound begins again, but doesn't stop. It's like an air horn at full blow. We ask the customer what he's doing, but he cannot hear us over the constant beep. We're brainstorming what it could be, when he finally says something:

"CAN.. LET.. OF.."

Co-w: "WHAT???"

"CAN I LET GO OF THE BUTTON??"

-----
I think we laughed the whole day

My second computer was a large tower (486DX). When my Mom saw it first time under my desk she asked me: "Is that a mini fridge under your desk?" Me: "No Ma. Its actually a "smart" heater..."

So... After reading up on the theoretical stuff earlier, I decided to make a real AI that can identify handguns and decide whether it's a revolver or a semiautomatic with 95 percent accuracy...

Well, basically, I been browsing my local gun store's online store for four hours for training data, killed a Mac mini while first training the system and I think I ended on the domestic terrorism watch list... Was that black sedan always there?

Anyway... It's working fairly accurate, my monkey wrench is a revolver by the way.

Isn't AI development a wonderful excuse for all kinds of shit?

"why do you have 5000 pictures of guns on your computer?" - "AI development"

"why did you wave around a gun in front of your web cam" - "AI development"

"why is there a 50 gram bag in your desk?" - "AI development"

Hmm... yeah well... I think it might work. I could have picked a less weird testing project, but... No.

When your code works perfectly fine, and you go to dinner and return and the same code starts crashing.
And I'm like.....
.... Is my computer doing things on its own while I'm away from my desk?..... :/

I am so mentally drained from having to deal with the intern who I have to literally spoon-feed every single thing. My previous posts illustrate the situation...

The language and cultural barriers are too much, and I am too afraid to open my mouth because of the sensitive nature of my country's history and I'll get labelled as some horrible person.

I told my manager today that I'll stick it out until end of January (thankfully I am on vacation for most of December and January), but I cannot work with her. She was supposed to move to the data team end of December, but my manager told me if she can't even properly grasp this HTML and CSS stuff, then she will not be able to do the other tasks they have for her.

This was a disaster of an experiment and I'm somewhat traumatised ( I am sure the intern is too) and I never want another intern again, nor do I want to manage people. I never said I want to be a people manager, I just want to quietly code at my desk.

This company sells MBTI psychometric assessments and they damn well know my preference, so I'm seriously annoyed that they threw this horrendous surprise on me and kept ignoring my requests for revisiting this intern's role, because I noticed a long time ago that she was struggling with basic concepts and all they did was make her do Udemy courses.

I told them multiple times that she seriously needs computer literacy training because she will not survive in this industry if she still struggles to understand how files and folders work. Other employers would have fired her a long time ago.

She's just too slow for this job. I feel sorry for her, but I do not have the capacity to do this anymore. I'm tired, it's been a long year.

In my unenlightened youth, when programming was a module in my college diploma that didn't seem to be taking me where I wanted to go, I had a couple of guys guy in my class that could arguably be the weird ones.

Jonny, although he asserted that he was to be called "Jonhty", whatever, we never did. He was pretty much top of the high school food chain and for some reason elected to study computer science, none of us was prepared to put up with his shit. He was always boasting about some fanciful claim or another, famously entering the classroom and exclaiming he'd "fucked an absolute milf" and seemed somewhat evasive about the answer, turns out he was 17 and she was 35, the age difference was greater than his own age. We burst out laughing. He would also turn up late and state the college bus was late (it wasn't I got the free bus every day, he'd just not got out his wanking chariot early enough).

One valentine's day we got him a card from a mysterious stranger which was accompanied by a package containing a cucumber and Vaseline, the inside of the card read "to assist you in the following request: please go fuck yourself".

Before you think we were being unduly harsh, we had a centre table where we'd be taught from with computers around the outer rim of the room. He'd come up behind people while at the centre desk, quietly press ctrl+P and slowly walk back to the printer. I saw him do it to my machine and I got to the printer first, to which he shouted "that's MY work" which was amusing because unbeknownst to him I had put headers on all my documents so he really didn't have an answer for why my name was at the top of every page.

To top it all off he had dead eyes, there didn't appear to be much going on but the rent, there was no spark of intelligent life, and while I thought it, I never said it out loud, but other students did and I had to agree. He was just copying his way to graduation. However, he ultimately didn't graduate when people refused to allow him to copy.

Another guy, Richard I believe his name was, which is just as well because he was a right dick. In the UK our word for white trash is "chav" (that's a very naïve explanation for it but that's another rant best left for "socialsciencerant") and he was an complete idiot who was gifted with more brain cells than he ever needed to use. He actually studied hard and got reasonable grades, probably on par with me, but he boasted about smoking weed all the time, he was forever playing dark side of the moon via his loud mp3 player. I kinda left him alone generally until he was high in class one time and while we we're watching a documentary he'd shake my chair and make a weird noise in my ear every few minutes, the first couple of times startled me, the remaining multi-dozen times pissed me off.

It all came to a head with this guy when I'd been hearing about his uninteresting bs on drugs, music and how best to spend my time ("you need to lighten up man, come round my house, take a joint and relax man", that sorta thing), well this guy walked like he was mid way through shitting himself so I personally think that perhaps he is too chilled. Anyway he's arguing with me and after the exchange of him making his point, me disagreeing and expecting the end of it, he made the mistake of saying two words to me:

"Listen, mate..."

And I had him in check mate.

"Listen, I ain't your fucking mate , I don't even like you, you're a disruptive annoying twat that thinks he knows it all, we're all 17, none of us know anything, so shut the fuck up, sit the fuck down and stop boring me with your drugs, I ain't interested, and for the record I think pink Floyd ruined prog rock!"

He looked at me with sad puppy dog eyes, and started with the "but, why?", However I was interrupted and had to leave the class for unrelated reasons, I returned to be told he'd put safety pins up right on my chair so I'd sit on them, and mutual friends who TD me I'd been cruel and that he doesn't was hurt, so I should apologize, he overheard and said he was sorry for bring a bit of a dick.

However, you just know when you don't get on with someone? Yeah, that. So I said I wasn't sorry for what I said, for while it was harsh, I am not his mate, nor did I want to be his mate and that was all I had to say on the subject, and that if he wants to take offensive to a nobody not liking him then he's in for a very rough time in life.

Unsurprisingly I don't keep in touch with anyone from college!

Reasons why I hate the hospital I work for...

1. NO fucking budget, for fuck sakes our telecom system is still running Merlin Magix. (I’ve been working on getting the trunk and everything to at least push FreePBX out... Configuration configuration.) but, that requires a decent server to host said system... But guess what? We’ve still got a few servers online that are running server 2012 r2. NO FUCKING BUDGET.

2. Training. They don’t have the budget to send me to training, but the doctors here are rolling in Mercedes... Must be fucking nice.

3. I have 5 f-I-v-e job descriptions. I’m a bio medical technician, network admin, system admin, programmer, and help desk... I fucked up allowing them to know I program.

4. On call 365 days a year. That’s nice and all, but when I’ve got shit to do and the nearest Walmart is an hour away I don’t want a call from Louis “oh the printer has a jam” FUCK OFF LOUIS! Get the paper out, we’ve been over this, I believe in you!

5. Some of the FUCKING (l)users.... You wouldn’t imagine some of the calls I receive, some of my favorite being late late “Hey *anonyops* I know it’s late but we’re needing a chair moved from one room to the other.” FUCK YOU YOU CHEEKY FUCKING CUNT.

The only reason I’m still here is my direct supervisor and a hand full of people that I’ve grown to love. Also, because any computer related job here is either outsourced or filled by a YouTubing god. - reason 1 why I started my own business. Supply and demand.

Rural Kansas Hospitals = shit, inb4 thanks —insert president to blame—

Ooh yeeaah. It was 2020 and I was in a final exam. Algebra and Analytical Geometry; 1st year of Engineering class, if you care.

I had a camera pointing at me, my desk and my computer.
The submission was through Google Drive.
So I use my phone to scan my test into a PDF, upload it, and when I tried to submit it...

My recent documents were full of nudes of Belle Delphine.
I had forgotten a friend sent that while we were on Discord having some laughs earlier and I clicked it to check.

I selected my exam, submitted it, and went on with it.
I don't know if anyone noticed, but I think it was kind of obvious, even if it was a screen in a camera... the previews were kinda big on my big screen.

Cheap computer, Broken AC, Fresh coat of off-white/grey paint, Torn chair with ciggy burns in it, non-adjustable cubicle desk that is wayyyy too high, people from unrelated departments popping by every 15mins to give me an update I didn’t ask for on their inconsequential lives or their opinion on whatever the fuck is the biggest trending hashtag right now.

May I never go back into the office again.

#thoughtsandprayers

Not myself but friend of mine. Early 2000s working at a large university. Top notch office PCs for the time, best internet connection in the country.

He discovers this "Bittorrent" program. Meh, just another file sharing thing... but who cares, it's 2003-ish so everyone downloads shit from the internet.

Installs it on his office PC, because its university so no one cares.

Friday afternoon, he starts download of his favourite music album (some hard to get live version or something), then goes off into the weekend, computer is left running as always.

Download is finished after an hour or so, then his Bittorrent client starts seeding. Lots of people want this album. Bittorrent adapts to bandwith and when your connection is good you get upvoted in the network and everyone is connecting to you.

Monday comes, my friend arrives back at his desk, bit late because he slept in and its university so no one cares.

Suddenly realises many missed calls on his desk phone. Calls back, it's from the IT department.

Friend: "You have called me? What can I do for you?"
IT Guy (screaming): "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING??? YOUR PC IS CAUSING 50% OF THE UNIVERSITY'S INTERNET TRAFFIC.!!!!"
Friend: "Whops."
IT Guy (hysterical): "WHATEVER YOU ARE RUNNING STOP IT NOW!!!!"

Friend: *stops Bittorrend client, enjoys his favourite album*

Lucky him, it's a university, so in the end no one cared.

I just got a phone call from "Microsoft" because there are Trojans on my pc. The broken English (and the content of the call) told me that it was scam, but I wanted to have my fun, so I continued the call.

After I told them that I am on my Computer, I was forwarded to an "expert", and now the funny part starts 😁

Scammer: you have your keyboard in front of you??
Me: yes
S: you see the strg, control ctrl button on the bottom left
M: yes *rly?*
S: what button. Is next to it?
M: fn
S: ...
M: ... *XD*
S: and next to it?
M: that's the windows button
S: ok, press that button along with 'r'
M: ok
S: what do you see?
M: *telling him what I see on my GERMAN pc*
S: ok, type 'eventvwr' *spelling it like hell*
I did so. Just while this spelling I could have hit my head on the desk... It was hilarious

He navigates me to the error and warnings and tells me that those are Trojans 😂 and that this is the reason some programs (especially my antivirus software) aren't running properly.

Well I told him that those aren't Trojans and that all my programs are running properly. I don't know if that was the reason, he stopped the call, but I wasn't able to connect to their 'headserver'.

In the end I am sad that I wasn't able to f*ck him up more. Maybe I would have been able to get some more information about their company to kick their *****.

Next time I will be (more) prepared

Just because I know how to program doesn't mean I know how to fix your goddamn computer. We have an IT support team. Call them!

Don't come to my desk asking about a computer problem, then stand there with a vacant stare when I say I can't help you. I've given you the support team's contact info several times already. I assure you, they specifically get paid to configure your emails, install printers, setup your VPN, etc. Now where the hell was I at...

!rant

This morning, I thought I'd give devRantron a try, and man, I'm not disappointed.
Since I'm always at my computer, I rarely check my phone and now that we have a proper desktop client, I can finally shitpost while sitting at my desk. :v
No seriously though, this app is awesome.

Props to Tahnik and the other guys who worked on it.

SPECS:

- Dooge X5 max (worst phone ever, can't reccomend, randomly shuts off, displays advertizement, gets super hot)
- Bottle of coke light (so I don't get fat)
- Auna Mic 900-b (I used to do videos on youtube, though they were so bad i've deleted them lol)
- Two HP 24es screens (one of them broke when I let it fall while switching overheating cables)
- Mech keyboard with MX - Red
- Razer Naga 2014 (I regret buying that already)
- Wacom intuos small (I wanted to become a designer for a game with @Qcat)
- Computer with
CPU: ryzen i1600. 3.8ghz, 4ghz with boost, 12threads 6 cortes
RAM: 16 gig
Storage: 250gb SSD, 1tb hdd
Stickers: Generously donated by @gelomyrtol
Cooler: alpenföhn brocken
GPU: ATI 560 (something like that. I took the cheapest as I needed to fit a gpu into the budget, ryzen doesnt have integrated graphics units)

OS: fedora GNU/Linux with KDE as de (though i'm not sure wether i'll stay with it. I recently used cinnamon but it was too slow.

If i'm not on my desk, i'm either doing music studies, sleeping or i'm at school.

When on my deskj, I do
1) programming
2) Reading
3) watch nicob's danganronpa let's plays
4) programming.

My current projects:
clinl.org
github.com/wittmaxi/zeneural

So last week I really fucked up

I had this new implementation that was supposedly to be integrating smoothly into the rest of the service. It depended on a serialized model made by a data scientist. I test it in local, in QA environment: no problem.

So, Friday, 4pm, I decide to deploy to production. I check once from the app: the service throw an error. Panic attack, my chief is at my desk, we triy to understand what went wrong. I make calls with cUrls: no problem. Everything seems fine. I recheck from the app again: no problem.
We dedice to let it in prod, as the feature work. I go get some beers with the guys, to celebrate the deploy.

Fast-forward the next morning, 11am, my phone ring: it's a colleague of my chief. "Please check Slack, a client is trying to use the feature, it's broken"

FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!

Panic attack again. I go to the computer, check the errors: two types of errors. One I can fix, the other from a missing package on the machine that the data guy used.

Needless to say, I had a fairly good weekend.

Lessons learned:
- make sure Dev, QA and Prod are exactly the same (use Ansible or Container)
- never deploy on a Friday afternoon if you don't have a quick way to revert

Why the fuck are you making me put in my email to look at a computer desk? I saw an ad and was curious about it and the price, so I clicked the ad. I don't give a shit and don't actually plan to buy anything, just let me look asshats.

Shit like this is why you have an email inbox with 650,087 emails about a fucking privacy policy update.

Hey devs, really need some help here. This is driving me crazy...

We're currently taking issues from the company via mail. We've got a group mail that goes to the three of us at the IT department. Problem is, colleagues just forward customers emails without event trying to help, which means that we get stupid issues like "I can't sign in", and no further information. We're currently using Jira, and I was thinking perhaps we can set up a Jira Service Desk? Then we could have an internal help desk where issues could be submitted, and require some important fields, and perhaps add a checklist. Have you had any experience with Service Desk? Do you think it would be a good idea to have a "normal" person have an account there as well to filter out the normal "Have you tried restarting your computer" stuff? Is it suited for non-developers?

Any other ideas?

Yeay, messy question, but I'm fucking desperate...

- a split keyboard with a touchpad in the middle that will let you control all gestures on a computer

- a set of desk/monitors that adjusts perfectly for ergo for anyone

- a vertical laptop dock that is modular so you can add extra memory/video processing power and only using your laptop as a CPU/secondary graphics card

- a set of kitchenware and plates that would be so easy to clean and would never get stained

-an insect home alarm system that tells you where the fucking insect is so it doesn't take you by surprise/you can call someone to remove it

- a clothing brand that has a buy one gift one operation mechanic, where you buy a shirt and an article is donated to a local charity

- a restaurant

- a simple, yet robust database option that walks users through creating good databases that is super user friendly

- an app that takes tattoo designs in any format, converts them, allows for editing, and then can hook up to a special printer that gives you the transfer you will use on the client

Fucking shit for brains authors that think the digital world is a fantasy realm where everything can happen just to aid their story. Out of boredom i watched "scorpion" today, a tv series about a group of geniusses which are a special case task force.
They got a visitor from the government saying the servers from the federal reserve bank were encrypted with ransomware. I already twitched when they said the economic system would collapse if the servers were left inoperational for a few days. Then one guy got to his desk and "hacked" the fed network to check... he then tried to remove the malware but "it changed itself when observed". But they got the magical fingerprint of the device that uploaded it. In the end some non-programmers created the malware, but it is super fast and dangerous because it runs on a quantum computer which makes it hyper fast and dangerous. They got to the quantum computer which was a glowing cube inside another cube with lasers going into it and they had to use mirrors to divert the lasers to slow down that quantum thingy. And be careful with that, otherwise it explodes. In the end the anti-malware battled the malware and won, all in a matter of minutes.

This is a multimillion hollywood production. How can a movie this abusive to computer science even air on television? Shit like this is the reason people still think the cyberworld is some instable thing that can explode any second. It's not, it's an instable thing that can break down any second. I remember "ghost in the wires" and people had surreal imaginations about the internet already. Shit like this is why people stay dumb and think everything can be done in seconds. If i ever should encounter one of these idiots i tell him i have an app that can publish his browser history by taking a picture of his phone and watch his reaction.
Time to shuw down the tv and learn vim again.

First thing that I do when I come back to desk finding my computer unlocked:

tail ~/.bash_history

Sat at my desk this morning, computer incredibly slow, lots of error windows saying files could not be found.

I decide to reboot. Post is slow. And that's a HDD failure. I lost half of my storage. Luckily, almost everything is for projects so it's all in the git repo.

Today was my 3rd day on the job and half way through it (right after my new laptop landed on my desk) I was fired. I tried to work for two days without a computer. All I could do was hover over the one other developer whose been there 3 weeks and who didn't meet the launch deadline. The founder had a meltdown over it this morning.

I just had a nightmare I spilled my gin inside my computer. Might be putting that back under my desk... And not leaving drinks on my case with an open top...

FML I am an idiot.. might end up in a rant here (well deserved!!) //if you are here reading this I'm so sorry again!!

I wrote to our support I need DP/HDMI cable.. they asked me to take a pic of the cable I'm currently using.. WTF?! Don't you know how connectors look?! Just get me the damn cable.. :/
Ok.. Took a picture.. sent it back.. At that time I still didn't see the problem with what I wrote/demanded..
Got back reply this is not HDMI connector... FML, I was so convinced computer had HDMI ports so even when I took the pic I wasn't paying attention.. Fuck.

And before when I was switching cables behind the computer below desk I was just blindly feeling around, it didn't even occurr to me to actually check what connectors are used..just knew both monitors had the same connector (and not aure why I thought HDMI :/)...so yeah, I'm the idiot who is not paying attention to stuff.. Fuck.. Was on a scavanger hunt for a wrong type of cable the whole time.. Sorry again!! And please don't kill me next time you see me.. o.O

So I'm working our remote build/testing server, and all of a sudden my computer just turns off. No crash message, no error, just turned off. My co-worker tries to help troubleshoot the problem.

Nothing.

I take the computer downstairs to the hardware department. They plug it in and it starts no problems.

After it finishes updating, I take it back upstairs and plug it back in.

Nothing.

I suggest that it is the power cable, and my co-worker looks under his desk. Turns out he had kicked the switch on the surge protector. 😑

What kind of pranks have you had in your office when people leave their desk without locking their computer?

In an office where I used to work, we would send an email from the offender's account to the extended org about how he/she loves bacon.

One guy would start sending messages to every personal IM contact: "you suck." Over and over.

Of course, I just swiped the wrong way on my fucking laptop trackpad and list everything I just typed. FUCKING MARVELOUS.

TL;DR: Teacher stopped me from being productive. Principal almost called cops on me. Nearly threw chair at librarian.

So I'm at school yesterday, and we have a presenter in 2nd hour, so naturally, I'm gonna be on my computer doing things for other classes at the same time. Efficiency. Teacher doesn't like it, I refuse to put the computer away telling her that I'll be more productive and still pay attention, which HAS BEEN PROVEN MIND YOU, but she ends up calling security on me and I get sent down to the principal's office.

I talk to him, and he says 'Yeah, I know it's in the way, but you have to follow the directive given by the teachers.' Fine, fuck it. Won't go to her class for third hour. (I have her twice in a row for two different classes.) Next day.

I walk in, asking her if she's gonna do the same thing she did yesterday, hoping that she realized her error and will fix it, but no. She says I STILL can't have the computer out. I'm sorry, do you not realize I have 6 other fucking classes, most of which are required to graduate, unlike YOURS, as well as a FUCKING COLLEGE CLASS TONIGHT?! She gives the ultimatum. 'Obey or leave.' Fine, I'll leave. I go to the principal's office again, he must have a stick up his ass or something today because he's not budging. We argue for a while and he gives a WORSE ultimatum: 'Obey, Go to the Library, In House Suspension, or I'll call the police.' What the actual FUCK MAN?! You're gonna call the POLICE on a NONVIOLENT STUDENT?! Are you fucking MAD? I keep trying to tell him that there's an easy solution to this, but as he's getting up to call the cops, I say 'Fine! I'll go to the library!' He follows me over to make sure I don't kill anyone on the way.

I slam the door to the library open, and when I walk in, the librarian is there at her computer, and she asks 'Where are you coming from?' 'Principal!' 'I need a pass-' 'Well, I'm sorry, I can't exactly get anything for you right now, I was just sent down here.' She says 'Either way, I need some kind of note or pas-' 'Listen, I'm not in the mood for any of this right now. Please, just leave me be.' She then tries to say something, but I cut her off quickly, 'Just back off and leave me alone right now. The more you push it, the more you're gonna make me want to throw this chair!' Imagine the volume just gradually getting louder on that last one. She quickly runs out and talks to the security desk or something, which is right outside the library door, but she's the only one who comes in, thankfully. I was expecting to be fucking dragged out for no good reason. I'm loud, not violent. I have no history of violence.

So yeah. Here I am in the school library, angrily tapping away at my keyboard, trying not to throw the entire table to the fucking moon. All because this broken-ass public school system has no idea how to deviate from the norm when it's actually productive and efficient to do so. And now, the obligatory:

FUCKING PIECES OF SHIT WHY DON'T YOU REALIZE THAT YOU ARE COMPLETELY WRONG IN EVERY SINGLE THING YOU ARE DOING YOU IDIOTIC SCUM-FILLED MEAT SACKS OF NO FORSEEABLE VALUE! FUCK!

Last week I wired up my home network (including custom modem and routers) myself, because the stuff my ISP wanted me to use was garbage.
Luckily Germany has "router-freedom" so ISPs are not allowed to force us to use their device to dial into the network.
I did everything myself, because the 'technicians' they kept sending me were just idiots who didn't know anything, considering the highly paid job they are doing. Usually they told me, to get the device from my ISP, because my "Router" (actually a business grade, standalone Modem by Cisco, to feed my Router) didn't even have WiFi ( lol ). Also all Technicians didn't arrive at the agreed date but at some other time. I wasn't able to wait any longer.
So I did it myself.

Consider me something more like a student of theoretical computer science. Not actually supposed to be experienced with hardware stuff.

The ISP is serving me with a DOCSIS 3.0 Network based on the television cable network in my city. For some reason they are providing the internet-access to only one socket in the apartment, which has a rather uncommon "WICLIC" connector. After having trouble getting an adapter for WICLIC to common coaxial F-Connectors (used by every DOCSIS-Modem), I made one myself.

After setting up everything (not that hard, once the connectors fit) my modem told me, that, while I'm perfectly connected to the ISPs internal Network, I still can't access the internet.

So I called the ISP...
After getting ranted at, about that what I'm doing is illegal and only certified employees are allowed to do this and I will break more, than actually do good and that I can't just connect my own "Router" (again I needed to correct her: Modem) I hang up the phone.
Also she accused me of hacking their devices because I'm not supposed to see my IP address... (My Modem told me on its web interface. I didn't even need telnet for that.)
I went to the ISPs head office, told the first desk as many technical terms as I could remember and got forwarded to something like the main technician.

He was a really nice guy. The only sane and qualified person I dealt with at this company. He asked me for my Address and Device Model, I told him my MAC and last internal IP, I had seen and he activated my internet access within a minute.
We talked a while about the stupid connector that ISP is using in the homes and he gifted me some nicer adapters to connect my modem to the wall.

Why do ISPs hate their customers that much?

Today I got to work and could not find my computer anymore.

A little background: I am studying IT half of the time, the other half I work at a small software company. Today I came back from three months of University and wanted to start working again.

On the desk I worked the last six months is a laptop. I used a tower. So I asked where my PC went, but literally no one can tell my where it is. Some people think the admin gave it to some other person but saved the HDD somewhere, but he does not answer the phone and he is not in the office for another two days.

TL;DR I am sitting here, writing a rant and drinking coffee. I should have waited some days before showing up...

Desk inventory(not counting computer hardware):

-Three interlocking polished high density particle board squares, cut by an industrial-grade 3d printer at the office of an architect friend. I use them as coasters.
-A roll of toilet paper, as I have a deviated septum and blow my nose so often that proper facial tissue would be wasteful.
-A landline phone, for work. I'm thinking about getting rid of it though, as I can do the majority of my work phone calls through Google Hangouts and our company's webrtc client, and because it costs me about $7 a month for the service, through ooma.

What's on your desk? No computer hardware, please. Also, please try to use your words, because it's a lot of fun to imagine the layout rather than see it.

I was returning something at MicroCenter the other day. The guy in front of me was picking up a laptop be brought in to have fixed. They had replaced the motherboard, and put all his old data on an external drive.

"So what's this?"

"This is an external hard drive. We copied all the data from your laptop onto it and put a fresh install on it."

"So .. how do I get to it?"

"You just plug it in, over USB."

"So how ... how does that work."

This goes on for a while. Shop owner has to start his computer. Plug in the drive. There was a lot of, "So everything that was on here, is now on here?"

The guy had no basic understanding of external hard drives, USB, copying files ... thankfully while the files were copying from the hard drive to his desktop, he said he needed a longer cable to the router so he could put it on the other side of the room. It took the guy behind the desk an unreasonable amount of time to direct him to the isle with the Ethernet cables, but once he did, I was finally able to return my item.

I'm glad I no longer work in desktop support.

Well it’s Sunday so last day to leave my thoughts on probably the only topic that’s current to me.

I think you should pay teachers a competitive salary.
The problem with teaching CS at high school level especially (in university there are grants, actually competitive salaries between unis and other perks) is if a person is versed in programming/cs theory why would they settle for a $40k job? When the alternative is finding a job in the field where salaries are around $80k+ (this figure came from my head, can’t remember the source) it’s hard to justify going into teaching even if you would enjoy it more than a desk job.

If the salary difference was smaller then one could maybe justify liking work over pay but here it’s basically double difference... Kinda makes you understand why some comp sci teachers seem incompetent in even using their own computer. Yes there will always be that odd person out who will teach (or go to a private school and negotiate a workable salary) but until education becomes a priority for government salaries there will be very limited progress, if any.

You can do anything to the syllabus, make it more verbose, make it appeal to the lowest common denominator, but if you can’t find people to teach it (and know it themselves) you are really screwed.

When people (mostly girls) ask me what I study in college and immediately answer themselves with "oh it's IT or something like that, right?" a part of me just dies. They literally think I'm studying how to work at help desk or fix printers. I'm not even exaggerating, a girl once told me she actually thought that. I'm not sure if she's just dumb as fuck or if most people actually think that about computer science, hopefully it's the former...

currently working at making our orders electronic. told my 70 years old, not a computer having boss.
"I want to see that on my desk tomorrow"

When the new head of the Computer Science program at our university comes to our help desk and needs help getting a Kali Linux box to connect to wifi... we have lost all hope (back story this guy is only head because he was the only one to take the job. he is a total tard... it's scary)

Hello, world!

Okay, guys and gals... I need your creative minds. I need a concept for sort of a property manager for my game.. I have an idea of my own, feel free to tear it apart or throw it out the window.

So basically.. You'll no longer have one Computer System (and you wont instantly hit the login screen for that System on startup) Instead, you'll have a lot of things. They will probably only be represented using text and menu's (likely no 3D or 2D environments or anything.. Though, a setup like News Tycoon would be epic, but I think that would be too much for this game.) You'll basically start off with a small space (probably a basement) with x amount of free space. In that space, you'll need to add things like a desk, chair, and a laptop, or tower + monitor. You can also buy things like server rigs with a ton of space, but those are pricy and bulky. Each item costs X amount and takes up X amount of space. Also, you'll need a desk for a monitor (or multiples..) and other things.. (Like your rubber duck collection ;P JK) You can also rent and manage servers. (renting is more exspensive in the long run, but things on your server are not on your property. But, if you own a server on your property you can rent space to to NPCs) As well as manage your devices, properties, stocks, etc..

Also, there will be in-game time. Depending on how "comfortable" you are will determine how long you can stay up in a day. In-game events will take place later on at specific times so staying up (or not..) will need to be managed well. Especially if you're being targeted by a rival (NPC) hacker.

I just wanted to develop a cool webapp-controlled lighting for my bar.

Next things I know, there is electronics scattered everywhere, 2 multimeters to find what the fck is wrong with a PSU not outputting 1/100 of the current it's supposed to, said PSU opened on my desk, and I'm trying to find a capacitor online because there isn't any fcking electronics store selling spare parts anymore in my city.

Context:
- PSU means Power Supply Unit, in this case a computer one.
- PSU was given by a friend and is out of warranty
- the total consumption for all LEDs is 24A @ 5V consumption. A refurbished PSU is ideal for that
- that PSU is rated 2A @ 5V on the stand-by, which is perfect to power a Raspberry Pi. The issue is that there is a sharp voltage drop as soon as you try to use more than 20mA.

Had my dev job described as a "computer, desk job" in a condescending tone yesterday by a guy trying to convince me to join his pyramid scheme....
// TODO: come up with awesome rant about this so I can look badass

That moment when you've been to a colleagues desk, and just at the moment you sit down at yours, your computer goes to sleep...

Why every time I tell someone I work in software engineering they start asking me how to fix their computer. I'm not an help desk person.

How do you deal with low motivation and procrastination caused by burnouts? I've worked on a project almost non-stop for 3 weeks, now I can't think of touching a computer nor going to the gym. All I do is sleeping.

Not directly related but also I have uni entrance exam in the next June but I didn't start studying yet, despite the fact that how much this projects kills me, I can't convince myself to get on that desk and open some books. I've never been in love with school or even things slightly related to school. I know how much I need a CompSci degree but I just can't get my mind straight and do what I need to do for achieving what I want.

Friend (civil engineer) : bro do you have windows cd?
Me : no but why?
F: I want to format my pc.
M : then buy genuine copy.
F : don't want to waste money in that.
M : then don't cry for lagging windows 😂😂😂
F : do you have any cost efficient way?
M : yes ,but tell me one thing ,why do you need a computer?
F : browser , office , Dropbox ( cad installed in his desk which have genuine windows)

*After 10 minutes of conversation*

F: I will bring laptop , install Ubuntu in it

> 9h05 AM
> Sit at my desk, time to work bitches, tomorrow's a vacation day!
> "Fuck Drupal, anyway where was I yesterday?"
> "Right, I needed to fix this load of crap"
> "Let's see what happens when I do this"
> Computer starts to overract
> Computer (Windows) is updating while running Virtualbox while handling a cancer mutated Drupal project
> Even the mouse is lagging like there is no tomorrow
> Manage somehow to make Windows reboot and update so he'll stop do shit

Currently posting this while said Windows is doing its thing

Me: "I think I'd like to try out the new Ubuntu version. I really liked Gnome before, maybe the OS is better now?"

A couple days later...

"Man, it's really nice not having to emulate bash. I'm so much more productive now with Linux tooling! Wait, why did everything freeze?"

A week after install...

"What do you mean 'I need to recompile wireless adapter drivers'? Why isn't that included or updated through 'apt'!? Who's the person sitting at their desk saying 'yup, that's a reasonable solution?'"

Two weeks after install...

Me: "Oh, so it's not Chrome eating up system resources, there's a memory leak in gnome-shell.... WHAT!? WHY!? How do I switch back to Unity?"

One month after install...

Me: "Yeah, so I tried it out, but then I threw my computer in a river and I'm *so much* better off now."

I've kept training to those dumbfucks how this damn app works... Now they ask for a MANUAL, a fu****g PICTURE BOOK... INCLUDING PICTURES on how to confirm a fu*** email!!! How do you even live without brain at all?! Should i put a picture of a computer in it so these dumbfucks dont type on empty desk... JESUS!!!

PM comes into my office: "Hey, if <client> asks about his edits, just tell him they're scheduled for this week."
me: "I thought they were scheduled for this week, I thought that you were currently in a meeting to get final specs so you could tell me what needed changed."
PM: "Yeah, he wants to take the plugin from 5 steps down to 3, we told him it wouldn't be a problem and we would have it done this week."
me: "Ok, there are limitations as far as what I can cut out of the process, his tag line when he started as a client was '5 easy steps' and I built something that did what he wanted in 5 steps. Changing things this late in the game is not simple, I'm talking a minimum 6 hours of work."
PM: "Well I tried to make sure that what he wanted was possible but I didn't have a developer in the meeting. It shouldn't change anything that much."

He ended up scheduling a meeting with me and the designer to go over the edits Thursday afternoon. So I will have the new specifications which I said would be a minimum 6 hours of work and I will be given ~10 hours in which to do it. I sure hope nothing unexpected pops up while I'm working on this.

I'm also the only developer this week (and technically speaking I'm junior) since our senior dev wrecked his car over the weekend and isn't planning on being in all week. I'm the only computer literate person in the office of 50 or so, which means that if there is any kind of tech issue I'm ripped away from my desk for 'emergency help'. I have two other sites to get ready for client approval meetings by Friday afternoon and if the clients approve I will be launching their sites that afternoon as well.

The sign on my door currently says "Error 500: unable to handle your request" I need something to throw at these people.

Interned at a company where i was developing desktop applications and also taking care of user support (general user support, nothing to do with the software i was developing).

Do you know how frustrating it is to get off your desk and leave an unfinished line of code just to go and find out that the 'my computer froze' issue was simply an improperly plugged in mouse. 😠😠

Fart on you user

Back when I was a freshman in high school a friend of mine put an emulator on the shared drive, so we could play NES games while in the computer lab. Didn't know better/didn't care. One day I get pulled out of class and walked into the computer guys office. In there is also the principal of the school and the Chief of police.

The computer guy tells me there was an issue last week that caused the school server to crash and it caused damage. I asked what happened and the he said one of the emulators we were playing had a script that crashed the server and caused damage. I asked how much damage and they informed me it was over 3 thousand dollars. At this point I'm very skeptical that the damage was worth about the cost of a new workstation (the old one sitting on his desk, buried in boxes), and afterwards none of the faculty knew of any kind of an outage. I asked for him to show me what broke and what had to be done to fix/replace the damaged equipment but all I got was a simple, "I'm sorry. I can't show you that at this time."

They threatened legal action for a felony of damaging a school property. Myself and the other tech savvy kids talked about it over the next couple of days wondering what would happen. They threatened expulsion for myself and a couple of other kids, but ultimately just got a talking to about keeping personal information safe.

What I got out of it was if they think I'm good with computers I must be doing something right. Now I'm in IT. This is where it went wrong.

I am getting my first apartment next Saturday, and it's awesome. And I was thinking of buying a great desktop computer because my laptop is getting old and I want a real desk with a real modern computer, also as a symbol of my new life coming. It would have costs me around 1300€, but guess what, I just spent that yesterday to pay the real estate agency, the deposit, and the first rent for that apartment 😭 I guess I'll have to wait again for that new pc...

!dev , im just a sysadmin down in the mud...

But users!

"We dont want to put the webcam [of our choosing] in the powerful computer so we run the videoconference on the old crappy laptop we brought"

At it is laggy, bad audio etc.

But that is less scary than plugging in a cable? On a machine dedicated for videoconf, stands openly on a desk. And this is a technical university. Applied technical.

Depends on which desk we're talking about...

Office desk: an empty can, a tophat well as a demo and some Russian paracetamol I found from a pocket of my winter coat.

Home Office #1 desk: the keyboard for another computer, a plant, a bunch of magazines and newspapers belonging to someone else, a roll of kitchen paper, someone else's meds, a cup of cookies, another cup of small tomatoes, a Swiss army knife, a bike computer and a tablet.

Home Office #2 desk: wife's laptop, a bunch of chargers for a myriad of devices, a Kindle, some envelopes full of stickers, others with bills, a lot of random crap, and usually when I'm at the desk, one or two purring felines

Some long thoughts about state of desktop operating systems.

I always hated window management on desktop. There is basically no difference in usability between mobile and desktop in terms of application management. There is still finite amount of apps you can have in focus and you need to switch between them so they’re left from your screen.

What you end up is finite amount of screens you can connect into your computer or pounding switch context shortcut every other second.

We pushed computing so far and screen resolutions doubled from 1024x768 but the active desktop size is still the same.

For me adding additional display to laptop is not an option. What I love with remote work is that I can lay in my bed or on sofa or wherever I want to and write some code. My point is I don’t want to be stuck to my desk if I want to write / debug something.

Back to the desktop I think there is missing part of our state of desktop right now. The most we have are virtual desktops we can switch between but we can’t get parts of two desktops on same screen.

What I would love to test / develop is smooth infinite desktop with pinch and zoom - drag and drop navigation between my apps.

The problematic thing is determination of where user want’s to focus - is it fullscreen app or multiple apps on same screen and how to handle partially visible windows.

But I would love to test it. Maybe one day I switch to linux desktop just to try to implement the infinite desktop as an alternative to virtual desktops.

Maybe some rich frustrated kid would make it someday while I’m stuck at working my shit ass to pay for being able to have a decent life on this fucking planet…
I wish I can retire to focus on such things.

Have you ever considered switching to IT support/help desk?
I mean, sometimes I try to analyze my own situation from a 3rd person perspective and I realize I could have a pretty much stressless job with still enough money to live a normal life.
I have a BSc and MSc(soon to have) in CS, with focus on AI/ML. I've always been a geek with a problem solving attitude, that's why I got into computers in the first place. And now I'm pondering if I should just try an IT Support position, it's the kind of things I used to do as a teenager when a classmate had a network/computer problem, it doesn't even feel like a job to me. I could call it a day, get home at 5/6pm, and spend time on my personal projects (software, infosec) with a fresh mind, going to bed (and sleep) knowing that the next day would be a nice one. No clients wanting a new feature that you gotta implement and push on a production server friday afternoon because your ceo(who is also a pseudo proj manager) just said:"Yes, we can", while you watch the technical debt rising like amazon's stocks.
Maybe this is just the burnout talking, I don't know. Maybe I should just try being a software engineer outside of Uni in the first place, and only then start pondering.
Maybe a sysadmin position...
Have a nice day

@dfox
first, avatars are a great idea!

BUT I dont eant to wait until i have "n ++" to change the what computer (mac/non mac) is on my avatar/profile image. [the thing with the desk and watch is ok, but i think unnessesary. I wear a moto 360 every day so why schiuld i have none or another one that dose bot look like the one i am wearing on my profile picture]

COULD "BADGES" BE A SOLUTION ?

Favorite item on my desk? my computer

I have 4 pencils 1 black pen a sharpie marker an 14 year old book on web dev because its the only one my school library had an really shitty school iPad which is my only computer that i somehow managed to teach myself multiple programming language's with an developed my love for code using nothing but an online IDE and whatever i could find online i also have two marines recruiting pan-flits and a business card for the local Air Force
recruiting office an old worn out deck of cards an the antenna from an old baofeng uv-5r ham radio that i had modified which my mom decided to throw away because "it looked like trash" a few months ago even tho it still worked perfectly ...............
Pretty boring desk

I've been wanting to play with and do some development on Linux again. However, my only spare computer is an old Asus netbook. Has anyone loaded Linux on any of those $150 to $200 mini PCs you can find on Amazon? Do they work well and have driver support? I was thinking it would make a good little machine to just have on my desk.

The following piece of advice will be for those aspiring for an IT service desk position:

When companies are looking to hire service desk agents, they're primarily looking for socially skilled people with strong communicative skills, rather than primarily technically skilled people. When I first joined the IT world, I went on different interviews for that position and across all of them there was one truth: all the interviewers were eyeballs-focused on my social and communication skills and a mere thin layer of technical skills was required (depending on how technical the service desk). In fact, I immediately got aggressively dismissed twice for two of those when I filled in a Myers-Briggs personality test according to my Sheldon-type personality (selfish, condescending etc). Conversely, when I applied for a new position and I faked that test into answering everything focused positively on the social aspect, I was an immediate top candidate.

Here's a definition from the ITIL Foundation course, chapter Service Management: Because of how lateral the function of the service desk has become today (not only used to solve technical issues, but also company-wide issues), the most important and valued skills when hiring a service desk agent are fully focused on empathy and soft skills and none of those are technical skills. This is because the service desk has people that are the front window of your company and thus you can't make social mistakes as to protect your company's reputation. That risk has to be minimized and you need the ideal people. The people who in fact solve the technical problems are behind a back-office and they are contacted by the service desk agents.

In the beginning, when I did my first service desk job, I also thought: "Oh, I'm going to have to convince them I'm this technical wizard". In the end I got hired for being able to explain technology in human language and because in the interview I successfully communicated and explained ideas to both the team manager and the CEO, not because I knew what goes on inside a computer. This is a very important distinction.
My friends have also been in service desk positions and ironically they were the most successful when they were empathetic slimeballs (saying: "of course, anything for you" while not meaning it, constantly making jokes), rather than people with integrity (those got fired for telling the customer they were wrong while being unfriendly).

I hope this helps.