The Orange Juice Saga ....

I've just come off one of the stupidest calls ever.

Firstly, I am not in tech support, I'm a software developer - read the below with this in mind.

My client called up to say the system I created as been compromised. When he attempts to login, he is logged off his Windows machine.

He'd also apparently taken his PC to ***insert large UK computer superstore here***, who took £100 plus to look at the machine and conclude his needs to buy a new PC.

I remoted into his computer to see WTF was going on.

As he described, visiting my login form did log you out. In fact, whenever you pressed the "L" key you were logged out. Press the "M" key, all windows were minimized. Basically, all Windows hotkeys appeared to be active, without the need to press the Windows key.

Whilst connected to his PC I spent a good 30 minutes checking keyboard settings and came up short.

After asking all the normal questions (has anything changed on your PC, have you installed stuff lately etc.) without any useful answers I got nothing.

I then came across an article stating several presses of the Windows in quick succession will solve the issue.

I got the client to try this, pressed the "L" key (which would have logged me off previously) and the issue was resolved.

Basically, the Windows key was "stuck", which oddly makes your PC kind of useless.

I asked the client if they'd split anything on the keyword whilst working. His exact word were simply lol:

"Oh yer, yesterday, I was trying to drink a glass of orange quickly and split some in the corner of keyboard. I did clean it up quickly though".

Yep, the issue was due to the client spilling orange juice on their keyboard , which in turn made the Windows key stick.

Disaster averted.

A call that started with the client stating I made a system that was easily compromised (i.e. my fault), morphed into a sorry saga of cold drinks.

The client did ask why the ***superstore name*** charged him money for that and recommended a new machine. That is a good question and demonstrated some the questionable tech support practices we see nowadays, even at very large stores.

To be fair to the client, he told me to bill him for half a days work as it was his own fault.

When I'm able to stop myself involuntarily face palming, I'm off for a swim to unwind :)

So, I'm using a new MacBook Air (running Sierra), and while I'm still getting used to it (especially the different Sublime hotkeys), overall it really is quite wonderful. I particularly love the magic touchpad and ease of scrolling/swiping between desktops.

However, I ran into an issue this morning that gave me pause: apparent file caching.

My webpack setup auto-compiles my project when files change, and I noticed something was causing errors -- not really surprising since I was in the middle of fixing the project last night. However, the error it displayed wasn't something I was expecting, and referenced a line I was positive I had removed several hours before calling it a night. Whatever, I was probably mistaken, so I went to remove it.

... It wasn't there.

I double checked that I was looking at the right file. Yep, src/styles/header.scss -- that's the correct file. Figuring webpack was acting up, I killed and restarted it.

Same error.

So whatever, maybe Sublime cached it. Rather unexpected, but possible, and I am on a mac now... so maybe. So, I closed the file and reopened it. The line wasn't there. I did this twice more. It STILL wasn't there. Maybe I'm going crazy...? I checked the file with cat. The line was there. I checked with vim. The line was still there.

OKAY. I've seen a lot of people with beef with Sublime, and I often defended it. but maybe they're actually right. maybe Sublime really isn't the way to go. :( So, I killed and reopened Sublime, and I checked the file again.

The line STILL ISN'T THERE.

Maybe I'm going crazy? I double, triple, quadruple checked the path. all correct.
Alright; let's try again and make sure I do it properly. I closed everything I had open in sublime (two projects), and quit. I reopened Sublime, navigated to the correct path, and reopened the file...

The offending line STILL wasn't there.

I'm angry at this point and just mash the keyboard. I save the resulting garbage, and cat the file again. No visible changes.

KAJSFLK STUPID PIECE OF <redacted>

okay, whatever. Reboots fix everything, right? So I reboot, and keep the option to re-open everything again ticked.

The terminal comes back up, along with half(?) my browsers, but Sublime doesn't. grrrrrrr.

so I cat the damn thing.

GUESS WHAT.
THE GARBAGE IS THERE.

Sublime was doing its job. BUT EVERYTHING ELSE FAILED.

(Oh Sublime, why did I ever question you? 💚)

... but seriously, what the fuck could have caused that? Was the OS caching the file for some programs, but not others? Now I'm questioning the macbook...

Finally installed Visual Studio 2019

AND IT FUCKED UP MY CUSTOM HOTKEYS!

What are your favorite hotkeys? Some of mine:

Super+x: opens xterm(by far my most used hotkey)
Alt+space: opens mutate launcher prompt
Super+Alt+c: opens selectable clipboard history
Super+Alt+d: toggles window decoration
Shift+Alt+4: enables draggable selection rectangle for screenshots(like on a Mac)
Alt+keypad_minus: switch to next virtual desktop
Super+tab: opens rofi for keyboard filterable selection of open applications

I hate when different IDE's and actually softwares have different hotkeys. I need to set up every single one of them so they can mach everywhere. There should be some kind of rule for hotkeys. 😡

When your CTO asks whether or not its CMD + or CMD - to make things "bigger" 😂

My standing desk (yes with a button became a standing desk) with a usb pedal that I scripted on Linux to move the mouse cursor.
There are also papers top of the monitor to help me to remember new hotkeys of Vim or other software.
My "clean" desk with a lot of fidgets that right now is quite clean.

Learnt a lesson today:

Never try out new hotkeys in a SQL query editor window.

Or if you do, at least make sure it's not connected to anything important :)

I was trying out new hotkeys and accidentally executed a SQL deploy script to rename something in multiple stored procedures in a large system.

Thankfully - so I saw after my heart stopped - it was only our QA db so not too bad, just a couple of devs set back.

Who woulda thought ctrl-l would execute :O

Using some tools - do you learn all their default keybindings (hotkeys), or do you customize them? [do you re-customize them with every new installation/workstation?]

Like vim, ide, SQL client, etc.

[thinking about IntelliJ's CTRL+F4.. It feels off]

I for one prefer defaults.

Vim + Tmux = Heaven. I love it.
I'm also getting better at the hotkeys (and there are A LOT of them) so it's a really nice experience when you can do things faster than using a IDE. I only missed the auto complete, so it's very very hard sometimes (DB connection for example).
I may look crazy for going back on time using it but it's so good i can't stop.

Devs with gaming mice.
What hotkeys / macros do you use?

For years I've been using gaming gear with additional buttons to map various hotkeys and macros to speed up my work flow.

Let's share the use cases here.

A game engine library so new nobody has ever written working hotkeys for it lol

Despite being in fervent development like 4 years now and fancy 3d shaders and such

Do I contribute by publishing a hotkey library. I kinda don't wanna. Sounds like a pain.

It also baffles me rust examples are far and few in between on the internet. I remember learning older languages and there was always so many examples, pet blogs, and projects you'd find all over you could learn from. I wonder if times have just changed somehow?

Working on a feature on my pair partner's machine with a completely different hotkey layout = instant disorientation and usually a persistent stream of "shit!", "no!", and "wtf why do you use this layout??"

Holy shit, finally had the time to look into tmux and also accidentally discovered you can resize the panes via ctrl+b then hold ctrl+[arrow-key] to resize it to any side, but I can't find any use for it all myself yet, since I just use some terminal emulator that has tabs or use the inbuilt virtual-desktop, still an exciting and cool thing to have played with, though I would def. change most of the hotkeys to something less capslock heavy, since it's rather awkward to first press ctrl+b then shift+2 etc.

Dvorak users, how do you manage your shortcuts, like in vim?
I can't quit it anymore! 😜

I am too scared to remap everything.

Why can't Eclipse save non-project-specific customisations somewhere centrally? Why do I have to customise my editor fonts, colours and hotkeys again every time I open up a new work space? Why would they think I could want different editor fonts, colours and hotkeys on every different project I work on?
I so hate Eclipse!
I so hate IDEs!

Flipping SMPlayer - I opened a video on other monitor (TV) and was trying to lower default volume (by keys) to not wake up family. But the SMPlayer decided to show some window about donations which blocked all hotkeys for a player. Good job, now that I probably woke my family I am sure I won't donate you.