Worst meeting I’ve been in?

Transitioning from an old system, the CEO said “We will transition on June 30th of next year or … heads … will … roll.”

Everyone knew what ‘heads will roll’ meant.

I wasn’t particularly worried because 90% of my work would be completed by December, the rest would be completed by the users (data transfers, etc.). Realistically, no reason we couldn’t transition by April or May.

June 15th comes around – CEO calls a meeting (managers, VPs, kind of a big deal) because we’re nowhere close to turning on the new system. Needless to say, I was a bit nervous, but my part had been done since November. I worked late nights, weekends, early mornings…I killed myself making sure the system was 100% ready.
CEO starts asking the different managers about what is taking so long…
Mgr-1: ”Well, we aren’t easily able to map our old customer records into the new system. The new system is too hard to use and taking a long time.”
Mgr-2: “We can’t reconcile until the customer records are in the database.”
Mgr-3: “We can’t proof the purchase orders until the customer accounts are reconciled.”
The ‘waiting on him/her’ excuse went around the room.
At this point, couple of the VPs look over at me …I felt like I just turned white …oh crap…I’m going to get fired because all these –bleep-holes just threw me under the bus.
CEO listens…nods…looks at my boss..
CEO: “OK, move the due date out 6 more months. Have your team help out in any way they can. I want this new system working correctly no matter how long it takes. If we need to move the date again, we just do.”

Part of me was relieved, other part was looking for a flame thrower. I worked myself to the bone, risked my marriage (in hindsight, I was not a nice person to her during that time), probably had an ulcer, and these sorry excuse for human beings dragged their asses for months and there was zero accountability.

That meeting was over 15 years ago and it bothered me so much I still remember the CEO was wearing a green button up shirt, khaki pants, and drinking coffee from a Break Time coffee cup.

Upside? Over the next couple of years, every one of those managers either quit or got fired.

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?

"We care about your privacy [...]"

That's why we make it ultra inconvenient to turn off all of our advertising trackers and give you a broken list of on/off sliders that are slow as fuck. Also, why not just press the 'accept all' at the top of the page? See that big green button? Yeah green is good let's just press it and get this over with right?

Oh and that 'deny all' button? Yeah, a shame nobody actually put some programming into that thing, why not just press the green button next to it? You're only making it harder for yourself y'know...

I know a lot of you already know/do this, but to those of you who don't - I know it has saved me more than once:

If you use SSMS (SQL Server Management Studio) - when connecting to a server, before you hit the "connect" button, under options, choose a color to represent which server you are connecting to. I personally use stoplight colors: red = prod, yellow = QA, green = dev....this way, it helps you realize what server you are connected to, minimizing our dreaded "oh shit" moments....lol

Hopefully this helps someone ☺

Does it confuse anyone else that the ++ button turns red? I feel like it should be green...

Ooh man, I'm so fucking pissed with these shit MBA fucks who think they know everything about everything about everything but can't even tell the difference between pastry and shit until they dig their mouth into it.

Dick heads want to micromanage me to a point where I don't even have to think.

*Make the button green.*
But that does not follow any design principles.
*We have business research which says so*
What.

Such bullshit, I don't even wanna argue anymore. But man, it's so tough to make something which goes against every principle of what you have ever learnt. I mean, I'm coding it, and my brain refuses to help because the idea is soo bad. God I'm soo frustrated.

Shitty-Clent-side: Onclick of submit button, send request to server
Server: Responds with a 500 error.
Shitty-Client-Side: change "Submit" to "Submitted" and backgroumd color to green(because UX is important and error handling can go to hell)

It's sad. When developers create the application and ONLY know how to lunch it by clicking that green button in the IDE, having no clue how to package and launch it properly...

it makes me sad.

Now I'm supposed to dockerize an application no one knows how to launch outside the IDE.

People caught using emojis in code should be driven into the sea.

Otherwise one day its gonna just be straight magic, without reason or understanding.

You're gonna type a bunch of moon runes into a glowing floaty interface, pour the blood of a chicken into a collector tray (totally not a pentagram) and "shit just happens" (tm).

And "scholars" (neckbeards) will spend all their time shape-in-wrong-hole idiocracy-style button mashing their mystical ouija board IDEs in the grim dark future, looking for combinations that do something useful.

Every time it glows red? Compile error.

Every time it glows green? Christmas is near, congrats it compiled.

Every time it sets off a mystical air siren (henceforth known as "fusrohdah"), runtime error. And probably explosions.

In the grim dark future of Apple 40k. A.D, there is only war, warp demons, and pending VSCode updates.

Um, why is it reversed? (The green start button is in the top-right)

"Can you make a green button that can do everything?"

mmmmm let me think...🤔

In-laws are vacationing in London right now (wife's parents and aunt/uncle), so to keep in touch with the kids, I installed+configured Skype on their phones (these are folks in their 70s, no where close to tech savvy), I think they are good to go.

Last night we try to connect (I 'see' them online)...nothing, so we call.

Me: "Did you see or hear the skype notification?"
Grandma: "Was that you? My phone made a weird sound I never heard before and I saw your picture. I wasn't sure what to do so pressed the red button."
Me: "Its the same sound and picture I showed you before you guys left, remember? That's OK, the kids want to see you and say hi. Hang up and when you hear the sound and see my picture, click the green accept button"

I try again...ring..ring...nothing. About a second later we receive a text "Grandpa hit something and your picture went away. What do I do now?"

So, I try again...ring..ring...they finally pick up (we can only hear them)

Grandma: "Hello...hello? I don't hear or see anything, damn it Fred, what did you hit?"
Grandpa: "Nothing Betty, you aren't holding it right, turn it sideways .."
Wife: "Guys..we can hear you, can you see us?"
Grandpa: "Press this button with the line crossed through it .."
Wife: "Dad.."
Grandpa: "Hey!..See Betty, you had the phone turned wrong. Can you see us?"
Me: "No, you may have hit the video button..it looks like a little video camera, press it."
Grandma: "We did...nothing happened."
Me: "Are you sure? Try it again. The image may be grey or a little darkened, I don't remember."

Then we lose the sound.
Wife: "Oh good Lord they muted us. We're going to have to forget Skype and call them..."

All of a sudden we get video and sound. Cheers all around.

Then I hear in the background..

Uncle: "I thought 'PaperTrail' knew what he was doing? Apparently not."

I heard that and FU you, you old bastard. If you weren't a millionaire and paid for their London trip, I'd take 'knew what he was doing' and shove it up your ass when I see you.

TLDR; WINE+me=system binaries gone. (HOWTHEFUCKDIDIDOTHAT) Kernel panic. Core program files gone. I'll never have it fixed right. Will backup, then install fedora tomorrow.

I really like games and I'm sure there are many of you who can relate. Imagine my perpetual pain, being on the job hunt, no money, and only my Linux laptop for games. (It's only Linux because of a stupid accident and a missing windows installation disk, partly explained in a previous rant). My stack of games my dad and I have played over the years, going back to populous and before, looked light enough for my laptop to run them smoothly. I wanted to see if I could get one to work. My eyes settled on simcity 4 and Sid Meier's railroad tycoon, 13 and 10 years old, respectively. Simcity didn't work as many times as I tried following online instructions. Disk 1 went fine. Disk 2 showed up as Disk 1. Didn't think much of it, so long as the computer could read the contents. I downloaded playonlinux as that could apparently do the complex stuff for me. Didn't work. I gave up with it after an hour and a half.

Next was railroads. Put the disk in aaaand it says SimCity disk 1 is in the tray. Fuck right off, thank you very much. Eject, put back, reject, eject, fiddle in wineconfig, eject, more of this, and voilà it read as railroads :) Ran autoplay.exe with wine, followed instructions, installed it, and it worked! Chose single player, then the map and setting, pressed play, and all the models of the buildings and track were floating in the air over a green plane, the UI is weird and the map doesn't represent anything but trains. All the fkin land is gone, laying track is gonna be a ballache.

I quit it and decided bedtime.
Ctrl+alt+t
sudo shutdown -h now
shutdown not found.
sudo reboot
reboot not found
Que?
Nope, I don't like this.
Force choked my laptop by the power button. Turned it on again.
Lines of text appear.
Saw a phrase I've only ever seen on Mr Robot.
Kernel panic.
Nooooo thanks, not today, this is fiction.
I turned it off and on. Same thing. I read the logs and some init files couldn't be found. I got the memory stick I used to install mint in the first place and booted from that. I checked the difference between my stick's bin and sbin and the laptop's, and it was indeed missing binaries. Fuck knows what else has happened, I only wanted to play games but now I don't know what is or isn't in my computer. How can I trust what's on it now?
I go downstairs and tell my dad. He says something about rpm, but this is Linux so it won't work. I learn that binaries can be copied over, so maybe I can fix it.
Go upstairs again, decide not to fix it. Fedora is light, has a good rep for security, and is even more difficult to get games on, which is my vice. There are more reasons, but the overriding one is that I'm spooked by the fact that something I did went into and removed system binaries, maybe even altered others, so I want something I'm less likely to do that with. Also my fellow cs students used to hate on it but my dad uses and recommended it so I want to try it.

Also, seriously, fuck wine/PlayOnLinux/my inability to follow instructions(?)/whatever demons haunt me. Take your pick, at least one if not more is to blame and I can't tell which, but it's prooooobably the third one.

It's going to be 16 hours before I touch my laptop again, comments before I backup then install fedora are welcome, especially if they persuade me to do differently.

P.S thanks for reading this mind dump of a post, I'm writing while it's fresh but I'm tired AF.

Task: blinking light.

Boomers: One lightbulb, one bimetallic strip.

Zoomers: LED (D13), Atmega328P, Atmega328, 5V, 16MHz, 2KB SRAM, 32KB flash, 1KB EEPROM, FT232RL, 19.0mm x 43.18mm, 16 analog pins, 14 digital I/O pins, 6 PWM pins, 2 resettable fuses, 8MHz external crystal, 16MHz external crystal, 12MHz crystal, 0.5mm pitch, 0.1 inch headers, 1.27mm pitch headers, mini-USB, 3.3V regulator, 5V regulator, 16MHz ceramic resonator, 1N5819 Schottky diode, 47uF capacitor, 100uF capacitor, 10uF capacitor, 100nF capacitor, 0.1uF capacitor, 22pF capacitor, 1N4007 diode, 10K resistor, 4.7K resistor, 330 ohm resistor, 10uH inductor, 27 ohm resistor, 2x3 ICSP header, reset button, LED (D13), green LED, red LED, yellow LED, 6-pin header, 8-pin header, 28-pin DIP socket, 6-pin FTDI header, ceramic resonator, USB mini-B socket, 16MHz oscillator, M7 diode, LDO voltage regulator, 3.3V regulator, 5V voltage regulator, polyfuse, 22pF capacitors, 100nF capacitors, 10uF capacitors, 47uF capacitors, 100uF capacitors, 1N4007 diode, 1N5819 Schottky diode, 16MHz resonator, 0.1uF capacitor, 330 ohm resistors, 27 ohm resistors, 4.7K resistor, 10K resistor, 10uH inductor, 22pF capacitor, mini-USB connector, 8-pin header, 6-pin header, 2x3 ICSP header, reset button, ceramic resonator.

!rant, more of an incredulous/cruelly amused "you had ONE job..."

so: biggest IT/PC/electronics store in my (and neighboring) country. their webpage, of course with the function to buy online, because of course.

the big green "Buy" button does nothing. doesn't work. doesn't react. I keep clicking it multiple times, shorter, longer, etc, because maybe their JS scripts are just shit so they slow.

nope.
okay. open devtools, JS console.
hover over the button: "Error: isMobile is not a function".
click the button: "Error: isMobile is not a function"

WAT.
search for isMobile in the script.
173 occurences.
fuck this.
console: isMobile = function(){return false;}
because I'm not on my phone.

click the "Buy" button.
works flawlessly.

...HOW?
THE WHOLE PAGE IS AN ESHOP YOU COMIC RELIEF INCOMPETENTS! =D

173 uses of non-existing function that blocks business-critical feature, THE ONLY CORE FEATURE FOR WHICH YOUR SITE EVEN EXISTS, and NOBODY, not the dev who fucked it up, NOT EVEN QA, noticed it??? =D =D

if I was the boss of the devs, or even boss of the whole company...
git blame
...and then i'd go the whole chain from the dev who caused the bug, through all of the QA people who "tested" that version before deploy, and I would personally, on the spot, fire each and every single one of them.

mainly because of who knows how much money this stupid not even a proper bug lost them.
but secondarily, because clearly none of those people give a single shit (n)or have an idea how to do their jobs.

=D =D

yeah but I was a good guy, filed a bug report in the "Complaints" section of their Contact form.
it goes to some call-center-like peon, so it starts with a sentence "forward this to your site's dev people outright to file as a bug, thank you".

but... HOW.... =D
HOW can you let something like this through? =D
the bottleneck of your whole user interaction, which forms first of the three steps OF THE MAIN AND MOST IMPORTANT FUNCTION of your whole business... =D
...I...
...does not compute =D

...BUT THEY USING ANGULAR, SO THEY ALL MODERN AND HIGH-TECH AND EVERYTHING'S FINE!!! =D =D