After a couple years as a developer I've learned that all those banking sites and cool online stores and apps are held together with old chewed gum, duck tape and that guys who has been in the office 48h straight and whose wife thinks he's dead.

I don't understand this. How is that Facebook is one of the biggest company in the world and have the worst fucking mobile apps ever created. I just use messenger to talk with my mom and it's utter rubbish.

When a call arrives, there's no way to silence that call apart from setting the phone to mute. All the other apps shut up when you either click power button or volume button. But this fucking messenger piece of Satan's anus won't respond to any fucking button when I have a call.

Not only that, once you have received the call, there's no way you can rotate the app without ending the call, turning on auto rotate and call again. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? how the fuck is it that you're so fucking big but you don't have this simple features in your fucking app?

And yeah, most of the time, when I receive a call in mobile, it doesn't appear on the desktop website. If it does and I receive the call from there, the mobile app still keeps shouting. AND GUESS WHAT, at that point, if I reject the call from the mobile, it will end the call that I accepted from the desktop. HAHA, WHAT A FUCKING SURPRISE.

Facebook, please stop being a piece of shite. Put your goddamn money to good use. If you can't make a good app, maybe outsource it to other companies. They will do a better job than you.

Online ads....

I think the problem is that in the age of "AI" and "machine learning" etc etc - the reality is that targeted or personalised advertising is absolutely shite.

All I see when I browse around are ads for things that I bought. It's like - I FUCKING BOUGHT THIS WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO SELL IT TO ME??!

I think anyone worried about the machine uprising enslaving humanity can relax and not worry about it, at least until amazon can understand when it has sold you something or you just looked at something.

Absolutely hate these "moving up", "stairs of success", "we are so diverse!" stock photos all over the internet.

You feel like you are being subtle, fuck no. Unless your target audience is stupid as as fuck, this photos looks dumb and over the top. And what is up with this "diversity" all over the place? don't get me wrong, I am all for diversity. But learn how to apply it properly.

"Looks like we need a picture of a student. Oh no, we need to be diverse. Add 15 kids of 15 different ethincity in the same picture to make sure we looks diverse. Phew!"

And the animations. Holy fucking shite. Why is it that a cheap website immediatly means that your website needs to have 100 different animation in the front page.

Seriously, picture rolling from here and there. Text coming out of nowhere.Everything being squeezed and rotated. God damn it!

This is another reason I fucking hate these 1 click websites and shite like that. This fucking website was created with WiX and my God, it's a fucking nightmare.

Good news is client is recreating the website.

So I had to use office and image editing tools on Linux today.
Holy mother fucking god are these things awful. Gimp, pinta, gnome paint, libre office, open office... they seem like a project some guy threw together a weekend in his bedroom. The UX is shite and makes 0 sense. They crash and lag all over the place. For fuck sake!
Also... Gimp, libre office and open office. If you want to make an alternative to a well known product (Photoshop and MS Office in this example) then just fucking copy the god damn UI as much as you can. No-one is going to go learn your fucking half ass product, people only use this shit because it's free and available on Linux.
I swear, I seriously considered sending the images to my phone and just fucking edit them there because it would have been so much easier than using this pile of shit.
Fuck!!!

"four million dollars"

TL;DR. Seriously, It's way too long.

That's all the management really cares about, apparently.

It all started when there were heated, war faced discussions with a major client this weekend (coonts, I tell ye) and it was decided that a stupid, out of context customisation POC had that was hacked together by the "customisation and delivery " (they know to do neither) team needed to be merged with the product (a hot, lumpy cluster fuck, made in a technology so old that even the great creators (namely Goo-fucking-gle) decided that it was their worst mistake ever and stopped supporting it (or even considering its existence at this point)).

Today morning, I my manager calls me and announces that I'm the lucky fuck who gets to do this shit.

Now being the defacto got admin to our team (after the last lead left, I was the only one with adequate experience), I suggested to my manager "boss, here's a light bulb. Why don't we just create a new branch for the fuckers and ask them to merge their shite with our shite and then all we'll have to do it build the mixed up shite to create an even smellier pile of shite and feed it to the customer".

"I agree with you mahaDev (when haven't you said that, coont), but the thing is <insert random manger talk here> so we're the ones who'll have to do it (again, when haven't you said that, coont)"

I said fine. Send me the details. He forwarded me a mail, which contained context not amounting to half a syllable of the word "context". I pinged the guy who developed the hack. He gave me nothing but a link to his code repo. I said give me details. He simply said "I've sent the repo details, what else do you require?"

1st motherfucker.

Dafuq? Dude, gimme some spice. Dafuq you done? Dafuq libraries you used? Dafuq APIs you used? Where Dafuq did you get this old ass checkout on which you've made these changes? AND DAFUQ IS THIS TOOL SUPPOSED TO DO AND HOW DOES IT AFFECT MY PRODUCT?

Anyway, since I didn't get a lot of info, I set about trying to just merge the code blindly and fix all conflicts, assuming that no new libraries/APIs have been used and the code is compatible with our master code base.

Enter delivery head. 2nd motherfucker.

This coont neither has technical knowledge nor the common sense to ask someone who knows his shit to help out with the technical stuff.

I find out that this was the half assed moron who agreed to a 3 day timeline (and our build takes around 13 hours to complete, end to end). Because fuck testing. They validated the their tool, we've tested our product. There's no way it can fail when we make a hybrid cocktail that will make the elephants foot look like a frikkin mojito!

Anywho, he comes by every half-mother fucking-hour and asks whether the build has been triggered.

Bitch. I have no clue what is going on and your people apparently don't have the time to give a fuck. How in the world do you expect me to finish this in 5 minutes?

Anyway, after I compile for the first time after merging, I see enough compilations to last a frikkin life time. I kid you not, I scrolled for a complete minute before reaching the last one.

Again, my assumption was that there are no library or dependency changes, neither did I know the fact that the dude implemented using completely different libraries altogether in some places.

Now I know it's my fault for not checking myself, but I was already having a bad day.

I then proceeded to have a little tantrum. In the middle of the floor, because I DIDN'T HAVE A CLUE WHAT CHANGES WERE MADE AND NOBODY CARED ENOUGH TO GIVE A FUCKING FUCK ABOUT THE DAMN FUCK.

Lo and behold, everyone's at my service now. I get all things clarified, takes around an hour and a half of my time (could have been done in 20 minutes had someone given me the complete info) to find out all I need to know and proceed to remove all compilation problems.

Hurrah. In my frustration, I forgot to push some changes, and because of some weird shit in our build framework, the build failed in Jenkins. Multiple times. Even though the exact same code was working on my local setup (cliche, I know).

In any case, it was sometime during sorting out this mess did I come to know that the reason why the 2nd motherfucker accepted the 3 day deadline was because the total bill being slapped to the customer is four fucking million USD.

Greed. Wow. The fucker just sacrificed everyone's day and night (his team and the next) for 4mil. And my manager and director agreed. Four fucking million dollars. I don't get to see a penny of it, I work for peanut shells, for 15 hours, you'll get bonuses and commissions, the fucking junior Dev earns more than me, but my manager says I'm the MVP of the team, all I get is a thanks and a bad rating for this hike cycle.

4mil usd, I learnt today, is enough to make you lick the smelly, hairy balls of a Neanderthal even though the money isn't truly yours.

Oh Lord give me the strength and the brainpower to step a way from freelancing or at least overcome the humongous pile of shite tied to the aforementioned barely lucrative activity.
AMEN !!

Recently got a client. We had an agreement on requirements, deadlines and on pricing. It's a job that can be done in a week if all the resources are at hand.
He reaches back a couple of days later and says :

Him: Listen I am on an intermediate...
Me: Mmhmm.
Him: I had a talk with the actual owner and he can only pay you in June.
Me: I see, but that I can't do. That means if the website is live by the 15th I'll have to wait for 2 weeks at least before getting paid.
You'll have to come up with something that makes more sense.

fml.

!rant

Pretty excited today! A buddy of mine wants to try getting into linux, he's mostly done Windows IT Helpdesk and some light Windows SysAdmin work but the company he works for is garbage and he wants/needs a change of pace. He's grabbing himself a raspberry pi 4 model B to use as his learning test bed. I'm grabbing one today or tomorrow so I can help him however I can to try and help get him comfortable with Linux so he can try to escape the hellhole that is his workplace. (I used to work there too, so you can trust me when I say it's fucking shite!)

Gonna start slow and easy and have him get comfortable with the terminal and ssh-ing in using keypairs.

Fuck yeah!!! I'm so excited for him.

He's wanted to get into linux for the last year or so but something at work would always happen to make him comfortable with his job again, like fuckface mcgee would finally get fired. And my dude would be like, "Okay, it's not all bad here, I'll stick it out a bit longer." Then they would just teplace fuckface mcgee with dipshit cockmouth and he'd fall back into a depression about working there. They finally put the final nail in the coffin recently and I think he's really motivated to do whatever he can to GTFO of there this time.

Gonna rant about graphic design 'cos it's where I started this journey.
The hardest people to design for are creative people, photographers, musicians, artists etc.. because they think graphic design is just a small extension to their existing skills. Please Fuck Off! Also same goes for developers, graphic design is a discipline you have to study and takes years to perfect the art. I find it examples of non designed 'design' every day and it sickens me. Just look around at all the shite van livery, bad logos, shit menus, fucking junk mail etc... sometimes it can be torture....

But I don't think coding is easy, I respect the art and learn constantly, it amazes me how typing some shit can make awesome things happen. Devs rock!

I'm a tiny bit happy today.
Recently I've been noticing that I'm developing a tolerance for deeply crowded spaces. I don't know if the AC/DC concert was an effective shock therapy or something.

I'm not at the point where I can comfortably head outside into town by myself yet, but I have a feeling that it's not going to be too long until I can.
Maybe I can even find some joy in "being under people".

Maybe make some contacts, friends, whatever.
The biggest challenge will probably be getting over my, I guess "crippling" isn't the right word, but close-ish to it, self-conscious.
The worst thing is that as of yet, I have no idea why I'm still like that.
I think I know the root cause, but that's not something relevant right now.

Hell, I go out with friends, guys and girls, and eventually it goes like:
>"How come you are not dating someone?"
>"Can't really. Can't go out and fine someone, also I think I'm not good-looking enough."
>"Bullshit, you look awesome."

That's coming from close friends, hence why I don't believe it's just some "oh, he'll feel better if I compliment him" shite.
I somehow am unable to gain self worth from compliments.

[...]

In other news, I got a certificate at the FernUni Hagen for a course in IT project management.
Also, my programming and solution finding/problem solving skills are improving noticeable. I think.
I'm not in Uni or anything, but I feel like I'm getting more competent/professional in my development activities at work.

Contrary to what I stated above, I can gain self worth from good work done.
...which worries me, because I am afraid that eventually I'll only be able to feel good after having worked myself to the metaphorical bone.

In job college, I talk to my classmates.
Turns out, everybody is mostly sitting on their ass doing fuck all at work. They are telling me that I'm a workaholic.
I think that I'm either going mad, or that they are lazy fuckers.

From Wednesday to Thursday evening, three colleagues and I went to the CAS Partner Preview Day & CAS Customer Centricity Forum in Karlsruhe. Lots of talks (mostly boasting about themselves), some workshops and a lot of "networking opportunities".
Stuff which I mostly consider bullshit, but I never would've figured how effective it is to put on a smile and feign interest in things.
Some of that feigned interest turned into actual interest and we "networked" for hours.
It was a good training for social interactions outside my direct comfort zone.

Thank you for reading the ramdump of my mind.
$./felix
Segmentation Fault
Core dumped

Absolutely anything by Microsoft.

So I have purchased the domain studioentropy.com. It's taken me all afternoon but I've set up and configured aws s3 buckets and route 53 zone an entries and my shite asse site is now online, hooray... My question is with regards to https. Given that ny site is really only going to be a single page site with relatively static content, no eccomerce of any kind, no passing of sensative information is required, is it really worth going through the pain of configuring cloudfront so the site uses https instead of http?

So I am redeveloping a website I made for work when I first started all this a year and a half ago. Part of the project was integrating with a marketing automation suite through an OAuth2 authenticated API - compounded by the fact that no one has heard of the thing, so there aren't plugins (wordpress last time, Drupal this time) or the ones that are there are woefully out of date/have no functionality.

Anyway, I've been dreading doing it. Last time it took me over a week (maybe two), and the solution was a total cludge fest - I had to do a load of stuff manually and it constantly broke anyway.

This time? Took me half a day, maybe less. All the user has to do is click a button and give the webpage permission in the automation suite (as you'd expect) and everything else is automated. It doesn't break, it doesn't fall over and it works very nicely.

It's the first time, apples to apples, I can see how far I have come, and I love it.

Now if only the API itself i am connecting to wasn't shite!