Girlfriend: "My computer is so slow!"

Me: "Have you tried turning it off and then on again?"

Girlfriend: "That's not funny, I actually need help."

Me: "Okay babe, I know you think I'm being an ass right now or tying to be funny, but honest to god half of what pays rent here and buys you so many flowers is me telling people to turn something of and then on again. Just try it."

Girlfriend: *Restarts computer*... "You were right..."

Project manager: I thought you said you made sure it was live today! I'm going to have to explain that you're the main issue with why it isn't live to management!

Me: have you cleared your cache?.... (long silence)

I swear it's the new "have you tried turning it off and then on again".

No, I don't know why your keyboard isn't working. I'm a web developer. Have you tried turning it off and on again?

*Friend's phone isn't sending messages*
Me: "Have you tried turning it off and back on again?"
Friend: "Oh fuck off"
Me: "Well have you? just do it."
*restarts phone, it works*
Me: "funny how that happens"

"Have you cleared your cache?" is Internet for "Have you tried turning it off and on again?"

Some companies have images of their tech support personnel in their websites.

They show you Steve and Michael......but in reality you get Rajhit and Pakalu

Holy shit, "The IT Crowd" is awesome

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.....

"Have you cleared your cache?"... Is my version of: "have you tried turning it off and on again?"

>Hello IT, how can I help you?
>Random problem...
>Have you tried turning it off and on again?
>Random excuse...
>Could you check if it is plugged in?
>Thank you!

Windows troubleshooting:
- Works on my system, therefore it's not an issue.
- Must be a hardware error.
- Obviously it's just cheap hardware.
- Have you tried turning it off and on again?
- Here's some obscure error code that leads nowhere.
- Have you tried "sfc /scannow"?
AS IF SFC IS A FUCKING SILVER BULLET!!!
- Our Indian support chap from answers.microsoft.com will help you.

RRRREEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!
Solution: quietly weep and reinstall your system.

Linux troubleshooting:
- There are good quality log files.
- You can run the program from the command-line and read both stdout and stderr from it.
- You can usually run the program with high verbosity options to help you track down the error.
- Even daemons can have their commands spawned from a dedicated shell, to see why they failed.
- Usually it's a configuration error and you can easily edit the configuration file.
- More often than not, the program will tell you why it failed.

Solution: usually easy to find.

I fucking love Windows. Because you know, it's so easy to troubleshoot and the support is so great!!!

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

I'm coming off a lengthy staff augmentation assignment awful enough that I feel like I need to be rehabilitated to convince myself that I even want to be a software developer.

They needed someone who does .NET. It turns out what they meant was someone to copy and paste massive amounts of code that their EA calls a "framework." Just copy and paste this entire repo, make a whole ton of tweaks that for whatever reason never make their way back into the "template," and then make a few edits for some specific functionality. And then repeat. And repeat. Over a dozen times.

The code is unbelievable. Everything is stacked into giant classes that inherit from each other. There's no dependency inversion. The classes have default constructors with a comment "for unit testing" and then the "real" code uses a different one.

It's full of projects, classes, and methods with weird names that don't do anything. The class and method names sound like they mean something but don't. So after a dozen times I tried to refactor, and the EA threw a hissy fit. Deleting dead code, reducing three levels of inheritance to a simple class, and renaming stuff to indicate what it does are all violations of "standards." I had to go back to the template and start over.

This guy actually recorded a video of himself giving developers instructions on how to copy and paste his awful code.

Then he randomly invents new "standards." A class that reads messages from a queue and processes them shouldn't process them anymore. It should read them and put them in another queue, and then we add more complication by reading from that queue. The reason? We might want to use the original queue for something else one day. I'm pretty sure rewriting working code to meet requirements no one has is as close as you can get to the opposite of Agile.

I fixed some major bugs during my refactor, and missed one the second time after I started over. So stuff actually broke in production because I took points off the board and "fixed" what worked to add back in dead code, variables that aren't used, etc.

In the process, I asked the EA how he wanted me to do this stuff, because I know that he makes up "standards" on the fly and whatever I do may or may not be what he was imagining. We had a tight deadline and I didn't really have time to guess, read his mind, get it wrong, and start over. So we scheduled an hour for him to show me what he wanted.

He said it would take fifteen minutes. He used the first fifteen insisting that he would not explain what he wanted, and besides he didn't remember how all of the code he wrote worked anyway so I would just have to spend more time studying his masterpiece and stepping through it in the debugger.

Being accountable to my team, I insisted that we needed to spend the scheduled hour on him actually explaining what he wanted. He started yelling and hung up. I had to explain to management that I could figure out how to make his "framework" work, but it would take longer and there was no guarantee that when it was done it would magically converge on whatever he was imagining. We totally blew that deadline.

When the .NET work was done, I got sucked into another part of the same project where they were writing massive 500 line SQL stored procedures that no one could understand. They would write a dozen before sending any to QA, then find out that there was a scenario or two not accounted for, and rewrite them all. And repeat. And repeat. Eventually it consisted of, one again, copying and pasting existing procedures into new ones.

At one point one dev asked me to help him test his procedure. I said sure, tell me the scenarios for which I needed to test. He didn't know. My question was the equivalent of asking, "Tell me what you think your code does," and he couldn't answer it. If the guy who wrote it doesn't know what it does right after he wrote it and you certainly can't tell by reading it, and there's dozens of these procedures, all the same but slightly different, how is anyone ever going to read them in a month or a year? What happens when someone needs to change them? What happens when someone finds another defect, and there are going to be a ton of them?

It's a nightmare. Why interview me with all sorts of questions about my dev skills if the plan is to have me copy and paste stuff and carefully avoid applying anything that I know?

The people are all nice except for their evil XEB (Xenophobe Expert Beginner) EA who has no business writing a line of code, ever, and certainly shouldn't be reviewing it.

I've tried to keep my sanity by answering stackoverflow questions once in a while and sometimes turning evil things I was forced to do into constructive blog posts to which I cannot link to preserve my anonymity. I feel like I've taken a six-month detour from software development to shovel crap. Never again. Lesson learned. Next time they're not interviewing me. I'm interviewing them. I'm a professional.

Internet is fluctuating in our office.
The network team sent out an email of unscheduled outage.
I thought of replying back,
"Have you tried turning it off and on again".

Client: Hi I'm having trouble with my computer.

IT Guy: Have you tried turning it off and on again?

Recently I disassembled this Remington beard trimmer that I have, right. Thinking that I probably just depleted the battery or something like that, and that that's why the fucking thing would turn off after 10 seconds, with a miserable motor speed that could only be caused by what.. 2.5V or something like that? So I kept up with it for a while, and then a few days ago, I finally disassembled the fucking thing.

New 4.2V LiPo battery of my own attached, wicked! The thing has a 2Ah capacity and is fully charged, so fuck all in a big ship, I'ma shave my fucking hair without protection, who cares with 2Ah anyway, given that motors at 4.2V consume only 800-ish mA, right. So I shaved my head, and figured.. holy shit mate, I fucking beat this fucking cunt, fuck you Remington! Planned obsolescence my ass!!!

Just now @xewl sent me a request that made me reconsider this shaver. Some PS3 controller, should be easy enough to fix. But I referenced my shaver so I figured that I might actually check it beforehand.

The original fucking battery has 4V left on it. 4 fucking volts! That ain't gonna trip shit for an overdischarge protection circuit!!! WHY THE FUCK REMINGTON, WHY THE FUCK DID IT (IF ANYTHING) TRIP?! And more importantly, why did you make the motor turn for only 10-ish seconds after charging, 1 year after purchase, despite the fucking cell having 4 fucking volts in it, which is more than plenty to get the thing turning for at least a 60% charge?! Planned obsolescence perhaps, hmm?

But let's say that it was bad contacts or something like that. After all, my probing was a bit intermittent, showing 1.5V (if it's shorting, shouldn't it be in the mV range?) and then 4V at times, until I separated the nickel connectors from the 16500 cell. Why the fuck should that thing short, considering that it's unprotected?! The fucking cell is unprotected, and you Remington are going to let it short? What kind of fucking engineering is that, you fucking braindead morons?!!!

And why do you use a 16500 cell which isn't very standard over a 18650 cell, which is? Again, planned obsolescence? Fucking vile pieces of shit.

Now what's more.. I tried to power on the shaver for a picture for this fucking rant, using a LiPo cell of my own that I used to shave my hair with the other day, to get a nice picture of my little hack. But the fucking thing, despite having 3.89V left in it after that fucking shave, which is more than plenty for a lithium cell, the fucking unit doesn't power on. WHAT THE FUCK REMINGTON?!! That's planned obsolescence at its best, init?!! You vile fucking pieces of shit.

So I guess that this rant is no more one of "I beat these Remington cunts". It is one of "you can bet your fucking ass that planned obsolescence is a thing!!"

Me: have you tried turning it off and on again?

Customer: oh come on, is that the best you can do!

M:ok how about we
clear all active memory,
Reset the firmware parameters
run system diagnostics and
reinitialise the basic input output system?

C: Wow .. yeah how do we do that?

M: turn it off and on again!

The only documented case that “have you tried turning it off and in again” is confirmed not to work

My busdriver today must have had thorough training in trobleshooting it-systems.. nothing on the bus was working, Doors, card reader, and it baerly moved forward. So trying to solve this problem he stoped at every busstop, turned the engine off and by this powered off all systems. Felt like the Classic solution people tell others, "have you tried turning it off and then on". So all other passengers were pissed because the bus was running late, and I felt kind of sorry for him..

Really fed up with my colleague and possibly my job. Am starting to doubt am cut out to be a developer

Am a junior java dev , been working working for this company for about 2 years now. Although they hired me to be a java dev, they pretty much exclusively had me working on JavaScript crap because none of the other more senior devs wanted to do even so much as poke JS with a long stick....

Oh and the salary was crap but i figured since i had barely 3 years of exp i thought i would stick with it for a while

But a few months ago after seeing other opportunities I got fed up and threatened to quit , already started interviewing etc
Got an offer, not exactly what i wanted but better than where i was. Went to quit but they freaked out and started throwing money at me. They matched and exceed the other salary and promised to addressed the issues that made me want to leave. Ie get me to work more on the java side of the project and have me work with someone more senior who could sort of mentor me, i had been working semi solo on the js shit till then...

The problem is that my supposed mentor is selfish prick... he is the sort of guy who comes in real early, basically he goes to early morning prayer then come in at some ungodly hour and fuckoff home around 3pm

He does all his work early morning then spends the rest of the day with his headphones on stealthily watching youtube, amazon, watching cricket, reading about Palestine , how oppressed muslims are or building a website for some mosque.

I asked him to let me sit with him so that I could just learn how this or that part of the sys worked , he agreed then the very next day comes in and does all the work before i get in at 9 , i asked him how he did it and he tells me oh just read the code.

Its not as simple as that, out codebase is an old pile of non standard legacy dog shit. Nothing works as it should, i tried to go through documentation online for the various stuff we use , but invariably get stuck when i try the usual approach because it turns out the original devs had essentially done a lot of custom hacks and cowboy coding to get stuff working, they screwed around with some of the framework jars & edited libraries to get stuff to work, resulting in some really weird OSGI errors.

My point is that i cant really just "read the code" or google ...
I gotta know a bit more what was actually modified and a lot of this knowledge isn't fucking documented, theres a lot of " ohhh that weird bug yeah yeah that happens cuz x did this hack some years ago to fix this issue and we kinda built on it, yeah we weren't supposed to do that but heyyy what u gonna do, just do this or that instead"

I was asked to set up a web service to export something, since thats his area of expertise and he is suppose to be teaching me the ropes, i asked him to explain where i should start and what would the general workflow be, his response is to tell me to just copy the IMPORT service and rename it to export then "just do it um change it or something" very helpful indeed (building enterprise application here nothing complex at all!!)

He sits right next to me so i can see how much works he actually does, i know when he just idly sitting there so thats when i ask him questions, he always has his earphones on so each time i gotta find a way to get his attention with a poke or a wave, he will give a heavy sigh and a weary look as he removes his headphones, listen to my question then give me the shortest answer possible before IMMEDIATELY turning away and putting his headphones on as fast as possible regardless of whether I actually understood or even heard what he said. If i ask another question ( am talking like an immediate follow up question for a clarification or something) he will
Do the whole sigh + tired look routing to make me know yeah you are disturbing me. ( god was so happy the day he accidentally sat on and broke them)

Yesterday i caught a glance at his screen as i was sitting down and i think he and another dev were talking about me
That am slow with my work and take forever to get into gear.

Starting to have doubts about my own ability n wether am really cut out to be a developer. I know i can work hard but its impossible to do so when you have no clue where to start and unable to look it up since all the custom hacks doesn't really allow any frame of reference.
Feels like am being handicapped and mocked, yesterday i just picked up my gear n left the office.

I never talk ill about my colleagues, whenever i have a 121 with my mgr i always all is fine, x n y are really helpful etc
I tried to indirectly tell my other colleague about this guy, he told me that guy had kinda mentally checked out of this job and was just going through on auto pilot and just laughed it off (they have been working together for almost a decade and a buddies) my other colleague is pretty nice but he usually swamped with work so i feel bad to trouble him.

Am really Fed up with it all

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

Call between Me and IT Assistant Guy working @ the Ministry of Education in my Country:

Me: Hi! I'm wondering why my account has been disabled. Can you tell me something?

IT guy: Have you tried turning off and on your computer?

Ministry.Of.Education.

lately my IT mantra in the vein of "have you tried turning it off and back on again" has become "did you check the logs for error output"😡

NOTE to all developers of any level: if you want help do your due diligence! Check the logs, try to step debug and at the very least please at least pretend to perform a cursory search

Solution for all the problems... Even global warming

Have you tried turning it off and on again...!?? 😌

Have you tried turning it off and on again

(Seriously though, don't ask someone for help until you've turned it off and on again)

So I get home from work, sit down infront of my computer and start browsing a few sites.

The loading times was not as fast as they should so I checked out my network setup. I had been auto connected to my ISP provided modems WiFi, which happens every now and then, so I reconnect to my faster and better WiFi AP.

Invalid password. What? Ok.. Let me just type in the same password, slowly..
Invalid password. MF..... Same password, looking down at my keyboard.
Invalid password. GDMF...

Browse to my AP config site, type in username and password.
Invalid password. Oh no you fucking did not just deny me entry as well.
Ok. Something is up and I'm going to get to the bottom of this!

Boot up Kali, fires loads of crap at the WiFi and the site. Still no damn luck! WTH!
I go upstairs to my AP, turn it off and on again.

I can now login on both my AP WiFi and config page.
It had frozen.
Thats two hours of troubleshooting for a "have you tried turning it off and on again" solution.
I feel great about my competence after this.

just realised that "have you tried to `rm -rf node_modules/ && npm i` is the js adaptation of "have you tried turning it off and on again".

Frustration Rant!

Because old hardware means learning the hard way sometimes, I've had to purchase more goodies.

On my last update, I installed the rs232 shield which may have inadvertently been wired backwards for Tx/Rx from what im used to. I assume it is backwards to most db9 serial ports because most Arduino or other projects you would do with a pi have serial "in" connections like old routers and devices that would be "controlled" rather than the other way around. Anyway, according to a video on youtube showing a guy turning an old machine into an IRC client via raspberry pi, this shield may be swapped. That means that instead of interfacing with the old machine via a null modem crossover cable, I need a straight cable with male db9 on both ends. I unfortunately tried using the null modem crossover cable which was reversing the reversed pins all over again. I hope these next few days are more fruitful now that I've bought a straight cable and db9/25 adapter.

The good thing is that I managed to get the pi to recognize its new serial port. I also dusted off my DOS skills and my serial card in the 5150 seems to work.

I literally banged my head after nothing worked. Im hoping that the tx/ Rx is solved soon.

Oh and that AT to PS/2 adapter will allow me to use by IBM original Model M Keyboarf rather than the fun model F.

Dev, boss and guy who know logic is looking at the server.
Problem: it's not responding
Boss: we need this running now! Otherwise the sales won't go through
Dev: give me a chance, I just got here
Guy: have you tried turning it off and on again?
They did so and at works.
Boss: guess we don't need to hire another dev, this guy knows what he is talking about, he is some kind of server expert..
Really.........

C# has become shit.

I work since 2013 with C# (and the whole .NET stack) and I was so happy with it.
Compared to Java it was much lean, compared to all shitty new edge framework that looked like a unfinished midschool project, it was solid and mature.

It had his problems,. but compared to everything else that I tried, it was the quickes and most robust solution.

All went in a downhill leading to a rotten shit lake when all this javascript frenzy began to pop up and everyone wanted to get on the trendy bandwagon.

First they introduced MVC, then .NET Core, now .NET 5-6-7-8.

Now I'm literally engulfed with all these tiny bits of terror javascript provoked and they've implemented in all the parts of their framework.

Everything has to be null checked at compilation time, everything pops up errors "this might be nulll heyyyyy it's important put a ! or a ? you silly!!!" everywhere.

There are JS-ish constructs and syntax shit everywhere.

It's unbearable.
I avoid js like a plague whenever I can (and you know it's not a luxury you get often in the current state of a developer life) and they're slowly turning in some shit js hybrid deformed creature

I miss 2013-2018, when it wass all up to me to decide what to do with code and I did some big projects for big companies (200-300k lines of code without unit tests and yes for me it's a lot) without all this hassle.

I literally feel the need c# had to have some compiler rule you can quickly switch called "Senior developer mode" that doesn't trigger alarms and bells for every little stupid thing.

I'm sure you can' turn on/off these craps by some hidden settings somewhere, but heck I feel the need to be an option, so whoever keeps it on should see a big red label on top of the IDE saying "YOU HAVE RETARDED DEV MODE ON"

So they get a reminder that if they use it they are either some fresh junior dev or they are mentally challenged.

Have you tried turning it off and on again??

"have you tried deleting node_modules" sounds like "have you tried turning it off and on again"

"Have you tried turning it off and on again?"

Have you tried turning it on and off?

Have you tried turning it off and turning it on again?

Have you tried turning it on and off again? ;)

How often does this happen to you?

Just updated our continuous integration and for some reason the BuildAgents, who update independently, just kept failing to update.

Tried every trick in the book, debugged everything.
Kept complaining about being unable to delete files, frigging Windows file system being an idiot as always...
Was about to give up and migrate everything to a fresh system until I realized...

*reboot*
Ah, it works now!

... Why does it always take me so long to realize that's an option!?

"Have you tried turning it off and back on again?"

There are days I miss being able to power cycle the load balancer, rather than tearing it down and re-creating it.

i can see a very thin line between me remaining the same good natured person as i am right now, and me turning into completely chaotic no remorse psychopath , in upcoming future.

the universe follows the rules. planets revolve in a pre defined manner, day and night comes as expected. however being a human for last 24 years, i have come to experience 2 different phenomenons : being rule bounded and being random.

randomness is fun. randomness is guilt free, randomness is a wonderful feeling for someone . but at the same time its worse for everyone else. try slapping a random kid in park or eating food at a restaurant amd running away, assuming there will be no consequences against you whatsoever. such a nice evil feeling

at the same time, rules are boring , unrewarding, guilt filled words of hope.
- "do not eat pizzas or you will get fat" :boring + guilt
- "go to gym, you will become appealing and get a good sex " : boring + hope
- "if you perform well, you will get appraisal and you will earn enough to afford your family a home" : hope + guilt

see how these rules are full of hope/guilt/boredom for you while being good+rewarding for others? that's how you are categorised as being civil , as being part of a society of semi evolved apes.

and as if those rules weren't enough , there came this unnecessary concept of faith, religion and spirituality.l, with its own set of rules and hopes.

and it seems like such a great capitalist idea , since the hopes provided via these are not even realistic : keep on doing good stuff, following the rules and you will get a better afterlive/next birth!

i have tried being a good person for my whole life. my parents are religious and i try to be one, I don't drink , smoke, eat other animals, or randomly start slapping kids in the park. i have been a boring personality, i studied , ran in various races od educational life, failed most of them, landed in a decent paying job , and now trying to even gain back a decent body to look respectful and worthy of a future family. feels like i did so much for so many hopes and am still doing it. we all do , no?

but i have seen companies laying off people and leaving them in turmoil, marriages getting ruined, and some person never getting the love, respect and rewards they deserve for all these shitty rules they kept up with

my life book is somewhat even-steven. i did get a few rewards and respect for some of my hard work, but my overall portfolio is negetive : a lot of investment on just the hopes of a better return

let's see if i can keep up with my sanity for next 50-60 years before i am dust again.

=====
ps : try playing bitlife : life simulator mobile game ( download the cracked version from the web though, original one is full of ads) . it just have a single big button and shows text about how an imaginary child(you) os growing every year on click. so far i tried to play the life of kid like a criminal, a heavily educated person, a politician and a job worker. almost all of them recieved "miserable" and "unsuccessful" as the final result. very fun game to play without being evil

Apparently on demand tech support expecially when their wifi is down or computer is being 'bad'