Linux sucks.

Now now, chill. I'm using it as my main OS for a few years now. I know what I'm talking and this title is a bit click-baity, but this just has to go out there:

1. It's usable as a Windows replacement just fine - FALSE. XFCE4 is years old and buggy as hell especially on multi-monitor set-up, Gnome3 gets stuck more often than my Windows 98 machine used to, KDE is like a rich kid on meth. Plug in Bluetooth headphones? Well no, sorry, you have to research that online, since you'll probably need to install some packages for it to work. Did I say "work"? Well no, because after more research you realize that Debian on Gnome3 on gdm3 launches pulseaudio on its own, so you have 2 instances of pulseaudio, and one of them is stealing your headphones sometimes and you either have no sound or shitty sound. How do I know that you ask? The same way I know everything else - every time you try to do something new on any Linux, it involves a ton of research. Exciting research, don't get me wrong, but at this point it looks more like a toy than a reliable desktop computer operating system.

2. And why am I using pulseaudio? Why not alsa? years ago people were discussing on forums that pulseaudio is old and dead, yet here we are with new LTS release of Ubuntu still shining with Pulseaudio. How about several different service management systems being deprecated by new ones, each having different configurations and calling methods? Apparently systemd is old and lame now. It's a mix of 10 year old software that works badly, with a 5 year old replacement that works worse, somehow trying to live under the same roof. Does it work? Ask my headphones who sound like a fucking dial-up modem.

3. Let's talk about displays, shall we? xorg is old and deprecated, right? We got Wayland that's mostly stable. Don't know what that is? That's just basic knowledge for Linux. And when you try to install network-manager, it also tries to install Mir toolkits. Because why the fuck not install 3 display managers when you want a network manager, of which one is old and dying, one is young and stupid, and another is an infant that died of cancer?

4. Want to integrate with Google Drive? Yeah, there's a tool that mounts the drive as a local directory. Yeah only for Ubuntu. Want it on Debian? You need to compile it. Oh wait, it's on Ocaml, because fuck mainstream languages, we're hipsters. How do you compile Ocaml? Well you need to have Ocaml on your system, dummy. How do you do that? Well you need to compile Ocaml. Ok, how do I do that? Well, git clone, download and install some dependencies, configure, make... oh sorry, you're using libssl1.0.2g when you need libssl1.0.1f, nope, sorry, won't work. Want to install libssl1.0.1f? Why? You already have the "g", stupid! Want to remove libssl1.0.2g? Bye-bye literally everything that you have on your PC. But at least you got the "f". Does it work now? Well no, because you need libssl1.0.2g for another dependency to work.
And all I ever wanted was to get a fucking document from google drive (not nudes, I promise).

5. Want to watch a movie? Let me tear that screen in half and make the bottom half late by a couple of frames, because who needs vertical sync, right? Oh you do? Well install the native drivers maybe. Oh you have? Welcome to eternal Boot to Recovery mode, motherfucka!

---------------------------------

Yeah, most of the times things work just fine. But the reason I know what those things are and how they work is not curiosity. The reason that I know the inner workings of Linux much better than the inner workings of Windows, is because in those few years that I've been using it full time, it has caused me 10 times more headache than I have ever experienced with other systems. And it's not the usual annoyances like "OMG it rebooted when I didn't ask it to", but more like "Oh, it won't work and I need 2 days to find out why" kind of stuff, because even if you experience the same thing again, it's always caused by some new shit and the old solution won't work any more.

I still love it, and will continue to use it. I don't know why really. Maybe because I'm not afraid of fucking it up any more? Maybe because I can do what I want in it and recovering will be easier than on Windows?
It's a toy for me, after all these years. And I also use it for professional reasons.

But whenever someone presents it as a better alternative to Windows, I just want to puke.

I wrote a Student Information system for my midterm project back in 94 written in Clipper and runs on MS-DOS.

I demoed & explained to the panel of professors how it tracks enrollments, payments, class schedules, grades and attendance of each and every student. Has user authentication, auditing and reporting functionalities.
It has a lite version also written in Clipper that can be installed on a Professor's laptop so that he/she can update records even at home, and would be able to sync with the db at school via a BBS. Telix for DOS (self-taught) was my choice for the BBS as it was shareware, has built-in Zmodem support and comes with it's own programming language called SALT (Script Application Language for Telix) that can be used for automating tasks. The lite version of my project would dump the updates on an ASCII file, compress the file using PKZIP, use the laptop's modem to dial-up the number to the school's BBS and send the file across using Zmodem protocol.
The main version would then download the file(s) from the BBS and proceed to do a sync.

After the doing the demo and answering all their questions the panel asked me to wait outside the room, called me back in after 15mins and told me that I don't have to attend that class for the remainder of the term. The happiness as the my classmates outside of the room gawked at me felt like King Midas himself gave my balls his golden touch.

Then in 97, 2yrs after I graduated, I accompanied my cousins to a different campus of the same school for their enrollment and right there on the bottom of the screen were my initials on a very very familiar UI! They actually used, and were still using, my school project. Needless to say my cousins didn't believe that it was written by me.

Family reaction story to me being a dev?

- My dad still refers to my profession as 'something in computers'.
- My older sister goes to her weirdo friends for technical advice because she thinks all I do is fill paper in printers (that's a long TL;DR story about a phone upgrade)
- My brother, a car mechanical genius thinks what I do is near God-like. He also races cars and can blabber on about the physics, aero-dynamics, weight ratios, etc and says "Oh, no way. I'm too stupid to do what you do." Then I'm like, "Dude, shut up, I can barely change my oil and you could replace an engine blindfolded", then he just laughs "Yea, probably."
- Baby sister just wants me to fix her phone. "Can you make <insert some random app> do <insert a random behavior the app was never designed to do>?". I'm like "Uh no, I didn't write Instagram", then she's like "I thought you went to school for computers?".
- My mom passed way (long battle with cancer). I'm sure she'd be proud, but still asking me to how to switch the channel so she could watch a movie on the VCR.
I can clearly see having this conversation with my mom.
Me: "Mom, why are you still using a VCR? I bought you a subscription to Netflix"
Mom: "Net what? Do I turn the dial to channel 2 or 3?"
Me: "No, its the Netflix button on the remote."
Mom: "Can't you come over and do this? I just want to watch my shows. Didn't you go to school to learn these things?"
Me: "No mom, that's not...um...never mind. I'll be right over."

Worst meeting... Way back in 2008 at my first web development job, our VP of sales kept referring to a client that was "jewing us down."

I'm far from Jewish, but I didn't like this guy whatsoever so I began breathing heavy and furling my eyebrows in the meeting.

He asked what was wrong, and without hesitation, my coworker next to me yelled at the VP and said, "you anti-semite piece of shit. Can't you see that Lee is Jewish? Wow. Way to go dipshit. Now he's going to sue the company and we'll all be out of a job!"

VP began profusely apologizing to me while I turned my nose up and refused to acknowledge his existence. Then we hear a click followed by a dial tone.

It was the actual customer. None of us realized that our other coworker had already dialed the conference line with our table speaker phone and had been quietly waiting to start the meeting while our theatrics played out for the entire room to hear.

What my parents would have said back in the day if I told them I was a dev: "You listen to that annoying sound for a living?"

A fanfic based on devRant-chan. The character was created by @caramelCase and a drawing by @ichijou.

This is freestyle. I'll think of an image of a scene and go with the flow. I won't remove my fingers from the keyboard and I won't edit or change anything. That's how I come up with my best ideas.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Notes:

B/N = Boss' name (I was too lazy to think of one.)

Anything in between astericks is in italics.
Ex.) *this is in italics.*

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was an early January morning when devRant-chan was situated in her desk, typing away on her laptop. She was working on a Python script for her barbaric client when she could've been out with friends. Oddly enough, her Sunday was surged with tranquility.

Normally, Sunday is when her irksome boss barks orders at her on the phone.

"This is wrong!"

"What is this?"

"Change it!"

devRant-chan resented her boss but loved her job. After all, "you can't force yourself to like everyone," was something her elder brother would tell her.

She released a slight chuckle, the one she would only display at the thought of her brother.

Her musings were interrupted when a concerning thought crawled into her mind like an undesirable intruder.

Why hasn't her boss called to complain yet? It's not that she enjoyed his complaining, which she didn't. She simply found it odd, since he's done this every Sunday morning, since she was a junior developer.

Unless he found someone else to complain to? In that case, good riddance!

But still, it wasn't a euphoric feeling to be replaced. She was already accustomed to his Sunday morning calls that it feels almost lonely not to receive them.

She should call him... Just in case some situation—or—problem—has emerged.

She dialed his number, waiting patiently for a reply.

"Hello," said her boss.

"Ah, hello," said devRant-chan. "I called, wondering—"

"You've reached the voicemail of B/N, please leave a message after the beep."

"Damn..." mumbled devRant-chan with a sharp exhale. "I always fall for that."

Why didn't her boss answer the phone? It was odd of him, considering he's always answered her calls.

She was about to dial her coworker when she received an email, which stimulated her attention. The subject of the email read:

*Important. Please read.*

She opened the email. It was her boss. The email read:

*Hello.*

*In case you aren't aware, I had quit my job, due to the stress. I've left the manager in charge. Starting tomorrow, he will be your new boss.*

*-B/N*

Before she could rejoice in excitement, she detected a strange change of voice, emitting from the email. Did her boss really write this?

That's when she spotted something. The word "tomorrow."

Her boss didn't write this.

He would never use words such as "tomorrow," or "today." He would use time instead. If this was her boss, he would say "in 24 hours."

She checked the IP of the email. Oddly enough, it was her boss' IP.

Still, the pieces didn't fit the puzzle. Her boss didn't complain, answer her call, or use his style of speaking in the email.

Something happened to him and she knows it. Whatever it is, has something to do with the manager, and she was determined to figure it out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This was just a quick random fanfic, and I'm not sure if I'll continue it. As I said, I didn't plan anything, since it's freestyle. I might or might not continue it, so I'll think it over.

ANTI VIRUSES AREN'T ALWAYS YOUR FRIEND!

So I'm under a little pressure to get an assignment done so I came home an was planning on working on it but Windows had other plans and decided to finish its update which I suspect copied my hard drive and uploaded it to the NSA at dial up speed because it it forever!!

But anyway back to the text in caps lock... I started working on it then when I hit compile I got an "access denied" error in the console and didn't know what the f*** was going on. So I decided to copy my filed to another directory and tried again... amazingly this worked so I carried on and after about 2 hours I get the same error -_- So instead of messing around and loosing my work I decided to commit it... but I cant... again "access denied" error.

After threatening my computer with a trip out the window, I finally decided to reboot it... cause "have you tried turning it off and on again" kept on rattling in my head.

After logging in I tried again and still the same error... Then I opened up my anti virus dashboard and went through the logs and found the screen shot attached.....

Client : can you add a calling feature to our android app?
Me : Ok.

*** after updating the app ****

Client : what is this **** dialog (calling permission request for android)!
Users are complaining about it and refuse to use the app!!! Don't you know I can get into legal problems with this???
Me :But you just asked for this feature?
Client : I want this feature but remove the dialog.
Me : you can't that's not how google works.
Client : I don't care do something remove the dialog or edit it but keep the feature.
Me : 😑😑😑😑 nvm I'll figure out something.

Ended up with copying the number to the dial screen instead of direct call from the app.

I die, go to hell and my punishment is to write software for hell network that is having power problems due to light source disruptions and is running on Windows 95 on FAT32 without any service pack.

Network speed is trough 300bps dial up modem. Protocol is over IPX/SPX.

My task is to write interactive websites that are replacement of modern websites but in VBScript, ActiveX, IE 4.0.

I have 10 managers that tell me what to do and scream when I miss deadline that is set everyday without my knowledge at random times.

They send me an email and 5 minutes later they arrive at my desk to ask me about it.

I must work 16 hours a day before I can leave the place and if I won’t show up police beats me and escorts me to the office.
If I’m late a second I don’t get payment.
I can’t afford to rent a place so I sleep in the sleeping bag.

It doesn’t matter much cause as soon as I fall asleep phone rings until I wake up and my manager screams about the problems he have for about an hour.

Working from home. That time you spend commuting is spent on working. That random guy showing up at your desk breaking your concentration doesn't exist. If there's a bullshit meeting you have to go to, you can dial in, put yourself on mute and continue to work while listening and just unmute as needed.

Seriously so much more productive.

when you wake up saturday noon just to see your phone having 10 missed calls from the same unrecognized number, dial back and find it to be a mad client,
complaining about some graphic issues on a site you have nothing to do with.

checking the site; there is nothing wrong so you tell him to clear his browser cache.

he gets mad shouting a silly programmer shall not tell him what to do with his computer and its the site, not his browser.

i ask him if there is the same issue with another browser or computer..
he giggles a little then turn silent..

2mins or so later, he says: i'm gonna let your boss know about this then hangs up..

Me: The phone rings but when I pick up there's nothing there.

Indian call center: Okay sir can you tell me if the landline is plugged into the modem

Me: It's ringing. Yes, it's plugged in.

Indian call center: Okay we'll reset the modem.

Me: I already did that. Twice. Just to be able to speak to you because the robot made me.

Indian call center: Okay so we'll reset your modem again.

*resets*

Indian call center: Do you get a dial tone now?

Me: Yes. I have this entire time. No one can call me.

Indian call center: Sir that is not possible.

Me: Call it and see for yourself.

Indian call center: *calls, phone hangs up for them the second I answer*

Why did you hang up on me, sir?

Me: *internal screaming*

It was the year 2000, when IE was considered awesome. The internet then was slow and expensive and I had a quota about half an hour a day for dial up.

I discovered that I could view the source code of any page and while it looked rather cryptic I slowly started to understand how it worked. After months of tinkering in Notepad, I was able to write some html and JavaScript. No books, no online tutorials, just pure act of curiosity and a sense of adventure.

How to write JavaScript properly had to wait for another decade after an engineering degree, a dozen other languages, and new browser. But those tinkering days were what got me into coding.

My ISP decided to send me back to the dial-up era today....

God is cruel.

TMobile: You have exceeded your 4GB data capacity for this month, you will now get unlimited data at dial-up speeds.

I just moved into my apartment but there no internet for my PC... 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔

💡USB cable + phone = unlimited, unstable dialup!!

Hm...

Can't upload picture... Also Google wouldn't load on my PC...

So the amount of data we use these days is actually insane...

Phew! I'm so happy that I can use dial-up Internet connection just by connecting my laptop to this telephone! Who would have imagined I was going to be using such advanced technology in a 4* hotel in Germany! Such an improvement from the amazing 450kb/s on the free WiFi.

who remembers the dial up internet time? When i was little i use to dial a lot to surf the web. How about you?

I hate such sites. Such developers will be condemned to live with a 128Kbps dial-up connection forever. Assholes.

I remember the days of dial-up...

Ever fuckinn "townhall meeting" at previous workplace. It was such an utter waste of time that even after leaving that place I still rage when thinking about it.

Every 4-6 months they would setup this useless crap of a meeting that drags on for over 1-1.5 hours of execs talking themselves up and trying to convince how great they are. And since they were cheapskates they would send out an email asking everyone to not join from their desks but congregate in the conference rooms to save on the dial-in. The conference rooms didn't have adequate chairs, vantilation or good enough aircon to handle twice/thrice the capacity of people standing in the room.

The marketing exec would go on and on about how great the media visibility is, how many views/likes they had on a linkedin post last month. The sales exec would blabber on about how their team is great and that the customers themselves are lining up and there is no competitor. Straight after the CFO would lecture on how the year is still difficult financially (in disguise justifying the peanuts of pay). The last exec, no matter who that is would specifically raise a point that the previous speakers didn't mention his/her team while thanking others.

This is also not a small company, the total headcount was just over 900 and roughly 500-700 people would be attending these townhalls. Imagine the amount of man hours wasted on that shitshow.

Just purchased a new house and was looking for a new ISP. Found a local ISP that is still offering dial up services and "Professional Website Design". Their website was obviously pre-web 2.0 all static nested tables and sliced images.

“3mb JavaScript over dialup” - Before I knew how to write proper JavaScript I once wrote a calendar scheduling app in php that generated all of the functions for all of the buttons for all of the times for all of the days currently being displayed... the result was a 3mb JavaScript file... in the days of dial up modems...

Originally, somebody had the phone number 8.

Unfortunately, he kept getting calls from interns who would simply give him weather updates.

"It's sunny out" *hangs up*

"Quite bright outside today!" *hangs up*

"Very warm today, with blue skies!" *hangs up*

Eventually the man was forced to change his number, but it was his fault, really. He should have known that when it gets bright out your pupils dial 8.

Oh, gather 'round fellow wizards of the code realm! 🧙✨ Let me regale you with the epic tale of software sorcery and the comical misadventures that come with it! 🤪🎉

So there we are, facing the dreaded Internet Explorer dragon 🐉 - an ancient, stubborn beast from the era of dial-up connections and clipart-laden websites. It breathes fire on our carefully crafted layouts, turning them into a pixelated disaster! 🔥😱

And then, the grand quest of cross-browser testing begins! 🚀🌍 One moment, your website is a shining knight in Chrome's armor, and the next, it's a jester in Safari's court. A circus of compatibility struggles! 🎪🤹

CSS, the arcane art of cascading style sheets, is our magic wand. But oh, the incantations can be treacherous! A slight misstep and your buttons start disco dancing, and your text transforms into a microscopic mystery! 🕺👀

But fear not, brave developers! We wield the enchanted sword of Stack Overflow and the shield of Git version control. We shall slay bugs and refactor with valor! ⚔️🐞

In this enchanted land, documentation is the mystical parchment, often written in the cryptic dialect of ancient monks. "This function doeth stuff, thou knoweth what I meaneth." 📜😅

And meetings, oh the meetings! 🗣️🤯 It's like a conference of babbling brooks in the forest of Jargon. "Let us discuss the velocity of the backlog!" 🌿🐇

But amidst the chaos, we code on! Armed with our emojis and a bubbling cauldron of coffee, we persist. For we are the wizards and witches of the digital age, conjuring spells in Python and brewing potions in Java. 🐍☕

Onward, magical beings of code! 🚀 May your bugs be few, and your merges conflict-free! 🙌🎩

We code hard in these cubicles

My style’s nerd-chic, I’m a programmin’ freak

We code hard in these cubicles

Only two hours to your deadline?

Don’t sweat my technique.

Sippin’ morning coffee with that JAVA swirl.

Born to code; my first words were “Hello World”

Since 95, been JAVA codin’ stayin’ proud

Started on floppy disks, now we take it to the cloud.

On my desktop, JAVA’s what’s bobbin’ and weavin’

We got another winning app before I get to OddEven.

Blazin’ code like a forest fire, climbin’ a tree

Setting standards like I Triple E….
Boot it on up, I use the force like Luke,

Got so much love for my homeboy Duke.

GNU Public Licensed, it’s open source,

Stop by my desk when you need a crash course

Written once and my script runs anywhere,

Straight thuggin’, mean muggin’ in my Aeron chair.

All the best lines of code, you know I wrote ‘em

I’ll run you out of town on your dial-up modem.

Cause…
We code hard in these cubicles

Me and my crew code hyphy hardcore

We code hard in these cubicles

It’s been more than 10 years since I’ve seen the 404.

Inheriting a project can make me go beeee-serk

Ain’t got four hours to transfer their Framework.

The cleaners killed the lights, Man, that ain’t nice,

Gonna knock this program out, just like Kimbo Slice

I program all night, just like a champ,

Look alive under this IKEA lamp.

I code HARDER in the midnight hour,

E7 on the vending machine fuels my power.

Ps3 to Smartphones, our code use never ends,

JAVA’s there when I beat you in “Words with Friends”.

My developing skills are so fresh please discuss,

You better step your game up on that C++.

We know better than to use Dot N-E-T,

Even Dan Brown can’t code as hard as me.

You know JAVA’s gettin’ bigger, that’s a promise not a threat,

Let me code it on your brain

We code hard in these cubicles,

it’s the core component…of what we implement.

We code hard in these cubicles,
Straight to your JAVA Runtime Environment.

We code hard in these cubicles,
Keep the syntax light and the algorithm tight.

We code hard in these cubicles,

Gotta use JAVA if it’s gonna run right.

We code hard in these cubicles

JAVA keeps adapting, you know it’s built to last.

We code hard in these cubicles,

Robust and secure, so our swag’s on blast

CODE HARD

I started a short term contract job that requires access to company online resources. Only problem is the office I'm working in has really bad internet. The connection speed at best is comparable to dial up and at worse just non-existent. I tried tethering to my phone but this wasn't working either due to low signal. I mention this as an issue early on the week to the boss. Later in the week the boss asks how things are going at the same time that the network is down. I tell him the same problem. He then tells me his computer is fast and he has internet, so I show him the 2 computers I have access to and how they are too slow/no internet. He then tells me a bad workman blames his tools and he's not happy with me for having problems.

Don't even know what to say to that. I just told him this role wasn't working for me and clocked out.

Age 8 - Gets first computer and struggles with dial up Internet and my parents yelling at that they ended to use the phone

Ages 12 to 18 - Gets first laptop, starts messing around and interested in websites, gets involved with SMF, and open source message board system written in Php, and starts helping people out, eventually getting paid work for setting up websites etc.. which lead onto learning html/CSS and picking up bits and pieces of Php (and also Photoshop/Illustrator etc..)

Age 18 - Goes to college to study Multimedia, refreshes knowledge of HTML/CSS, learns a bit of Actionscript and some PHP

Age 20 - finishes Multimedia degree, ends up working as an IT consultant for a small business, which leads me to pick up a bit of bash scripting, small hit more PHP. Leaves this after 3months and decides to do a small Software Dev course. Get my first taste of Java and Visual Basic there

21 - Enter into a Software Dev degree. Dive deep into Java and a small bit of Javascript.

23 - After 2nd year of college get taken on an internship with a large multinational where I learn and get hands on experience with Angular, JS, Coffeescript and C#

Present Day - currently coming up to the end of my degree and can switch between Java, C#, Python, Coffeescript/Javascript (front-end or Node) , C and Golang, C and Python introductions from college modules which I kept playing with in my spare time, Golang I just heard of and decided to write a few things in it because why not, I've picked up various frameworks (spring, echo, express etc.) at some point. I basically learn by doing, if something interests me and I enjoy it, I seem to pick it up quickly by diving in and trying to use it.

Have you ever heard a CPU run? Because I have, I can hear my phone's cpu and it sounds dope af

I have multiple contenders ;)

Contender one:

A program used to sort emails.

We was in the process of moving from lotus notes to exchange and needed a way route emails to the right server internally.

Solution, a qmail to receive all emails, a script running by cron every minute to read the emails, check the recipient name to a list and resending to the right server. The script was written in php :P since that was the only way we at the time had to read an email into an object, it was run just like any other shell script :D

Contender two:

A multi threaded mail sender that fetch email addresses and content from a database and posted them through qmail using background execution and pipes to get the result back and then update the database, written in bash script.

Contender three:

A c program used in a similar way as in one but this time using dial up and uucp to fetch email and then drop these either into lotus notes or into a bbs for our customers to give them an email address. This was around 1993, so not to many isp’s offered email and not to many had internet anyway, dial up bbs was much more common.

A recent post by someone else regarding dial-up made me wonder: Why did it have that specific, trademark noise when connecting?? What was the purpose of that? It's not like it was useful or anything, right?

ChaseBank is getting up my nose. Twice in four business days my account was flagged and I had to change my password for 'security' purposes. I spent the better part of 90 minutes in a futile attempt to find out why, when there's been no suspicious activity on my account, I'm being flagged. My father contacted a branch manager near him who told him to dial the priolrity customer service number and key in the letters (I shit you not) HO HO. I called the number. It's the same damn number I'd been calling. I called the branch. They told me I'd definitely receive a call back last Friday by 1800. No call. So, yesterday I called the manager of that branch, verified its location, told the manager he was supposed to call me by 1800 last Friday, and Chase Corporate would be in touch with him soon to explain that when you tell a customer you'll call them, you'll fucking call them.

ARE YOU F*CKING KIDDING ME, WINDOWS?

I finally give in and install your stupid ass update, and what happens? let's just skip the part where i sit around for 30 minutes because apparently it takes 30 fucking minutes to install 300MB - by stallman's underpants, that's 150KB per second!
and when windows FINALLY feels like it has finished fondling it's binary-balls, what is waiting for me?

about 10 stupid-ass data-consent notices straight from satans anus, more weird yes-or-maybe settings for cortana (bill gates' ex or whatever that is) which i don't even USE, my browser speed dial has been complemented by about 7 links to SHOPPING SITES and once i sort that mess out i get a notification that the german language pack has successfully been installed.
SUCK MY FUCKING D*CK MICROSOFT, the ONLY thing i want to do with that language pack is SHOVE IT UP YOUR ASS. i can't even uninstall that moronic piece of shit. FUCK YOU.

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?

Them: “EQ is the number #1 predicator of success in any industry nowadays and it is essential for everyone to practice”

Oh nice - tell me this though: How have you measured your progress developing your EQ corresponding to your success?

Them: *dial up sounds*

Programming is a passion I’ve had since I was a kid and I saw my brother’s books on Basic and Pascal. YouTube didn’t exist back then... Stack Overflow didn’t exist and yahoo was my search engine after having to listen to the dial-up sounds. Once I found the right tools to learn on my own, after my first hello world program, I didn’t stop.
The fact that I’m still making time to write even a few lines of code every day, go through courses and dive into documentations makes me hope that one day I’ll be good enough!

Fuck! WiFi issues are nerve-wracking!

We're nearly in 2022 and I have to still deal with outages. I want my dial-up modem back. 😐

So this happened some years ago:

The phone rings and as soon as I pick it up some fast talking sales rep begins his spiel.

"Good afternoon my name is [don't remember, calling him 'jigglybum'] and we have a device that you plug into your phone line and it will allow you to make free international calls over the internet. It's real easy to set up and you can have it on us for the first three months absolutely free, if you could just confirm your address..."

"Don't want it."

"I'm sorry sir but I think you're throwing away a massive opportunity here we're offering you free international calls."

"No you're not. You're offering me a free trial of some sort of VoIP hardware."

"We yes, but it's free for the first three months and..."

"We also don't make international calls."

"That maybe true sir but with this box you could."

"I'm really not interested in your product."

"I don't think you fully understand all the benefits..."

*there's a clicking noise followed by a dial tone for a second and a new voice*

"Hi, I'm the supervisor for 'jigglybum' and I think perhaps he is having difficulty explaining what it is that we are trying to give you here..."

"Listen to me, from what I have understood you are offering to send us a VOIP hardware device that directly connects to our broadband and facilitates international calls, and presumably any calls for that matter on a three month trial which after will presumably have a subscription fee, have I had any difficulty understanding the nature of the device and terms of use?"

"Well, no sir, that's a very accurate description, so if you could just confirm your address for me..."

"NO! As you have just admitted there was no misunderstanding about what your product is or what it does. There seems to be a real misunderstanding on your part on the concept of 'no'. We don't want this product, we don't need the product and if we want to make VOIP calls, we have Skype!"

"Ok sir, goodbye."

This is, to my knowledge the only and only time that a supervisor in a call centre has wanted to talk to ME.

Brainfog.

The state of wanting to practice coding, work on side project, or just try to understand github. However, your brain is running at dial-up speed and it feels like it takes too much effort to do so.

(As my mother says: ka-chunk........ka-chunk)

2016, First World country, the best cabled internet connection that you can get in my town is still a dial-up. 4/5 years ago that was still the only option.

Oh my dear internet,

FUCK THIS FUCKING SHIT
I AM SICK AND TIRED OF IT, WHO BUILT THIS HACKED TOGETHER ORWELLIAN SWAMP PIT?

Fuck the same fucking Envato template on every content page with 70 layers of sidebars, inline ads, popups, cookies and content shifting as if I was playing CATCH UP WITH YOUR FUCKING CONTENT.

FUCK the same fucking annual upselling 'plans' on every 7-day trial overengineered scam app that requires me to sign up for 1 fucking, falsely advertised task where my fucking password generator doesn't even recognize the input as a password field so I have to cmd+, to my FUCKING BABYLONIAN PASSWORD ARCHIVES PROMPTING ME FOR THE MASTER PASSWORD.
Thank god I can at least CREATE A BURNER CREDIT CARD THAT FREEZES ITSELF BECAUSE I CANNOT BE BOTHERED TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM YOUR FUCKING STEAMING CRAP.

FUCK every fucking step I take being recorded by our CYBERPUNK OVERLORDS REQUIRING ME to sign up for 5 different fucking privacy protection tools' annual plan or duct tape some open source shit onto my browser just for some BASIC PRIVACY WHILE TRYING TO NAVIGATE ALL THE OTHER 5000 annuals plan naval mines like A FUCKING FRENCH SUBMARINE IN 1940 GERMAN WATERS.

FUCK my walled garden scam ecosystem not being compatible with your walled garden scam ecosystem prompting me to reactivate my old SATANIC GOOGLE DON'T BE EVIL ACCOUNT from 2012 sending me on a DANTE ALIGHIERI STYLE ODYSSEY THROUGH THE 9 LAYERS OF PASSWORD RESET QUESTIONS, UNEXPECTED ERROR, 2FA MY PHONE DIED HELL to come out on the other side as a broken man.

Thank GOD I have your useless SUPPORT PAGE to aid with my signup problems that is actually just an FAQ with a hidden EASTER EGG HUNT for your support form CRISP AI BOT THAT IS ALSO 'currently experiencing high demand due to COVID' which is peculiar since that has been 3 years ago, but fortunately for you enabled you to fire ALL YOUR SUPPORT STAFF AND REPLACE IT WITH THIS BANNER.

I might as well just SCRAPE your fucking content, it'd be faster.

And although it is quite funny, FUCK THIS PAGE TOO for having me create another of 10.000 accounts to write this shit, where my browser firmly placed a newly created burner email into the PASSWORD FIELD.

I do not know how we managed to create something that is even more unwieldy than 56k DIAL-UPS, but I know that if this shit continues I'll have to train my own AGI to proudly interact with of all this STUPID SHIT on my behalf or I'll have to move into THE FUCKING MOUNTAINS AND LIVE WITH THE DEER.

I was 4 I think. Managed to reconfigure the IP and DNS settings and got the internet working again (it was a dial-up, in 2002). My entire family thought I was a prodigy of sorts (I am not).

Now all I do is restart the wifi if it's not working.

On call with customer

Cstmr: What version is this?
Me: Can I see the build number plz?
Cstmr: Yeah
Me: *checks against internal doc*
Me: It's version X
Cstmr: Are you sure?
Me: Um...I'm pretty sure
Cstmr: I'm gonna check
Cstmr: *mutes me and spends 10mins finding public version of the doc*
Cstmr: Ah, it's update X
Me: *................* yes

Long day in the office and go out for bottomless pizza except that the restaurant is slower than old dial up Internet

Squeeeeeeee badang badang Squeeeeeeee. I miss dial-up.

Today I had a full-day job interview for a junior data scientist position.

First I met the team which was only like half of everyone because apparently everyone was gone on Fridays. However the few there were really nice.

First task is to do some basic data analysis stuff even though I already spent a week on the coding challenge and sent them all my code/tasks. I log into my machine and create a new virtual environment but can't for the life of me figure out how to use the command line in windows to install packages. Turns out there is some problem with their proxy and they have to log me in on that. Then I am struggling on the keyboard because it's for a language different that my mother tongue and it takes me 3x as long to so the most simple things. All my shortcuts are out the window. Haven't a hard time typing parentheses and brackets. Start freaking out and have a panic attack mid task. I'm sweating bullets. I didn't even make it to the simple visualization tasks much less the models at the end. Time gets called and we all go to lunch and I'm freaking out on the inside the entire time. Angry at myself because I know I am better and just couldn't think.

After lunch I present my code and results from a coding challenge I did weeks prior. People from other teams get invited and I end up getting grilled for 2 hours by 15 people. Questions are flying in from all sides. They ask me almost everything I know about machine learning and some more. Under stress I forgot the name of the optimizer I used and couldn't answer some easy stuff because my mind was racing.

Right now I am on the train home and my body physically hurts. I am disappointed with myself and wish I could have shown up better. Never really froze up like this before.

Stepped into a government facility and what do I hear in the background? Dial up. No wonder it's taking forever to have a single number called.

So I started my current job 7 months ago

I like the company and feel like I fit in with the people. The work though....

So the project I'm on has an Apache Wicket front end.... Pretty sure this thing was written around the same time I was learning to wipe my own ass. The senior dev is unreliable af and even when he is here, he sounds like a dial up connection.

Today is my last day with this turd. He's leaving at the end of the month and I'm on leave the coming week. So I'll be coming back to having this project basically to myself... Mixed feelings... One the one hand, I'm glad to be rid of this guy... On the other, this is a legacy project and I still don't know the half of it

I remember that when I was about 8 years old, my dad brought a desktop computer home one day.

I don’t remember any specs, but it had a huge ass CRT monitor, a very loud clicky keyboard, a mouse with a real ball inside, and a CPU that uses floppy discs and CDs. Nope, CDs, not DVDs. And on that computer, it ran Windows 95. There’s was no internet most of the time (it was still quite expensive and unnecessary and dial up was troublesome to set up back then).

I remembered playing bootlegged games sold in CDs that my dad bought during his trips to China back then. Duke nukem, Command and Conquer Red Alert 2, Microsoft solitaire and GTA 3. Those were the games I played.

As a kid, it was glorious, looking through a box on a table, seeing and interacting with so many different worlds, stories, characters and games. I really miss those simpler times.

These days, every time I open my laptop, and I see that new mail that need to be dealt with, that homework that’s about to be due and a reminder of my next class in 15 min. Well shit.

Ideas I've had over the years that could pan out and be useful:

SMS-DB: Stands for SMS-Data Burst. Used to allow those with low cell signal or no data plan to transfer data between a phone and some client via the standard SMS text space. Would be slow, but would act kinda like dial-up over SMS (as mobile lines are compressed on all service levels, even LTE, so traditional dial-up wouldn't work!) I have a general idea on how packets would be laid out, but that's about it so far...

everything2PNG: Allows one to transpose any file's data into a PNG with a 3 byte per pixel (full color RGB), which allows for a "compression" of sorts (about 91, 93% on preliminary tests) AND allowing further, more efficient compression of the resulting file. (Plus... it's just kinda cool to see files transposed as PNGs.) I actually have a simple transposer to go to PNG, but can't yet go back. Large files (around 600MB) use upwards of 4GB with efficient paging and other optimizations via NumPy so far, so it's not *viable* yet, but it's coming along nicely.

RPi-GPIO Interconnection Bus: A master/slave or round robin method to allow for Raspberry Pis to communicate using GPIO, which can help free up network bandwidth in RPi cloud computing clusters. At most, this'd allow for 4 bits used for pushing to the GPIO "bus", and 4 bits used for pulling from the "bus". 8 pins total are usually unused minimum, so either 3 or 4 pins for upload, 3 or 4 for download, and potentially 1 or 2 for commands, general non-data communication, etc. I made a version of this concept using Round Robin for a client, but it was horribly slow. (I also don't have distribution rights for the code, so i'm working from scratch.) Definitely doable.

Client: I put a signed copy of my contract on my website, like someone told me to do, so that people can click a button, download it and sign it. I'm having the problem of people changing the contract before they send it back to me. Can you fix that?

Me: Yes. Take your contact off of your website.

Client: ok, my next question is: can you make it so that I can use the phone and the internet at the same time? Someone told me that I couldn't. I have cable internet I think. (She was remembering dial-up)

Every topic began with "someone told me ..."

This client is going to be .... interesting.

At first, I didn't understand computers or internet or why is that dial up modem making noise. And then one day, I was playing with my dad's PC with games he bought and interactive CD quizzes for my studies. Something about teaching me about a Bill named Bill who sat on the steps to some court house singing how a bill becomes legal or something.

Then a few months after that I discovered internet and then a friend of mine introduced torrents, neopets and anime. Heck yeah!

Back in 2004-2005 when I was 2-3 years old, (I guess that, from this statement, the fact that I'm 15 rn can be inferred), I would sit on my dad's dinosaur computer. I don't remember brands and stuff, just Windows XP, Dial-up internet and the heap of CD-ROMs I had my parents buy me. They had all kinds of games, software, etc. It was a time when sharing that kind of stuff over the internet was, to say the least, impractical. It kind of makes me feel older than I am, looking at the cases full of those CDs, remnants of a past era. But what I consider my first actual exposure was in 2007, when I got my first laptop (netbook) and started diving in, exploring. It was the computer through which I learnt programming (My first lang was cpp), and the one that got me interested to dive deeper into the matter.

GoDaddy be all like: yo... you tryin to backup an old product?

me: yeah

GoDaddy: sweet. here's some mother fucking dial up speeds so you can do you, bitch.

me: ¯\(ツ)/¯

How Microsoft expect anyone to develop using any technology they introduce with so many limitations.
Moi a Microsoft dumb enthusiast said to myself : hey dude you are a developer stop whining about the app gap bust a move create decent array of apps and release them, went into a full project management mode wrote requirements did sketches and some prototypes, time to execute.
1. first app: image files organizer, viewer , with some light editor capabilities and album creator after some work i came to discover that you don't have a proper file system APIs to show a folder tree view in my app "WTF" there are work arounds and dirty solutions but seriously? i can only access the stupid media folders created by Microsoft and that's it.
so i ditched the apps until uwp become a development tools with target audience other than kids who eat crayons, and while using "Edge" i thought to my self : "you know what dude extensions are cool and if you do something like a speed dial it would be awesome"
fire up my text editor started writing my extension to discover that:
"you cannot use localStorage from local HTML files".
moral of the story
MS is failing with consumers not because people hate MS but rather MS hates itself like no engineer over there said to him self this is fking stupid ?
other limitations :
no proper system tray access
no registry access what so ever
and i have started 2 days ago.
yeah Ms this is the main app gap problem the uwp sucks big time. compared to android Java which has a great access to every aspect of the device even apple provide better APIs for their systems.
if uwp is MS future then rip MS.
please i stand corrected if anyone knows better.

I got really interested in computers from gaming. Starting back with dial up Doom games with my friends to Team Fortress Classic clan matches. I recently downloaded Diablo 2 to replay it. The C++ class I took in High School solidified my fascination with coding. I quickly moved on to learning web coding and creating my own websites. Now it's a job I love.

I was probably 5 or so.
This was during the time when i heard that dial up modem sound from my dad's "computer room" every night when i went to bed.

The computer had a huge CRT monitor which made that annoying high pitch noise but i loved playing with it so much i didn't mind.

My dad installed a Croatian knock off version of Super Mario from a floppy disk he got from a magazine (i still have it lol).
Every time you died you'd have to start the game again by typing "mario" in CMD. Me and my sister played it so much we became pros.
He also tried explaining how he codes in Turbo C but i guess i was too young to understand it.

My first close encounter with a computer was with a came called "Skunny: Save our pizzas" in I think 1996 or 1997" and it used to run in dos.

And then next one that I remember was in 98/99 with my uncle ordering groceries on a PC. With a dial up modem.

I got my first machine in 2005 and the first game that I installed was Skunny: Save our pizzas.

Who amongst you remembers Ultima Online?

At one point probably one of the best games ever made. Even wrote the record for most players online and got in the Guinness Book of records for it. This was during the dial-up days. You kids these days have no idea how slow internet was or how cool it was to hear those three special words, You've Got Mail.

Everquest and WOW dont have shit on this game even if it never really went 3D. There was a sorta blocky 3d but it sucked which is why it failed. Everyone was content with 2d because the blocky 3d was trash in most circumstances.

With Ultima it made you feel like a kinda second life. And it wasn't a chore like Life Is Feudal or many of the other grundy games of today.

My 80 year old grandfather played it all day everyday. That's how fucking good the game was.

I would still be playing the official servers a decade plus, later if they would stop adding unnecessary dlc and they wouldn't have added a pay store.

It seriously pisses me off that I spent years collecting and hoarding rare items that I actually fucking earned and the assholes add a pay store that lets these new players buy the item I fought a boss four hours to get.

It ain't fucking right. It literally makes the rares worthless and my efforts pointless.

EA also rushed Ultima IX so it was buggy as hell and technically unbeatable unless you edited the game to let you cheat. Richard Garriott made the game and bugs and all is a masterpiece. His new game Shroud of The Avatar, not so much but that's a different rant.

I honestly wish EA would go out of business. They have ruined enough of my favorite titles with their incompetent bullshit and greedy cash grabs. If they would just make UO the way it was around the second age or Lord Blackthorn I'd guess a lot of us old-school vets would come back.

But as it is our only real option is to build our own servers or play someone else's which is what I do. Fuck EA!