After the recent CIA leak...
BRB soldiering a tinfoil hat on my head 😨

!personal

So, I was diagnosed with congenital nystagmus at an early fucking age. This is complicated for people who've never heard of it before to comprehend, until they notice the eyes of the person in question. Think of it this way: I lack the biological form of optical image stabilization. Because of nystagmus, I can't fucking drive.

Now, let me tell you, it really fucking sucks. I've never had a girlfriend, never been able to get a job, basically never been able to do the type of shit most of you can already fucking do. Pile that on with college, where I don't really fucking know anybody, and it's really fucking easy to see why I've had depression and nearly fucked my GPA over last semester (2.08, yeah it's embarrassing but fuck it).

That out of the way, nystagmus is rare. So rare that any surgeries to fix it aren't guaranteed to fix the problem, and are only marginally better. I have strong skepticism for any optometrist who acts like they perform this surgery every day, because the numbers simply don't back them up. If there's so few who have this issue, then the amount of operations and opportunities to do them are fucking slim.

Today, my mom came over to Indiana from Ohio, and took me to the local Cheddar's (do other countries have those??). We sit down, and she wanted to re-hash this surgery idea. I have made the statement before that these are the only two eyes that I will ever have, and there's no guaranteed ROI on any procedures, and is probably going to fuck me over if shit hits the fan.

Then she tells me there's this doctor in Maryland. I might be geographically challenged (lol), but I'm pretty sure that's over on the east coast. It's forever from here, we'd probably have to take an airliner.

This doctor made some pretty bold fucking claims. Not only was it possible he could fix the nystagmus, but he could help me use a special form of glasses that would enable me to learn to drive. Knowing that R&D on nystagmus was sketchy because of the aforementioned conditions, I had to tell her that I still don't know how I feel about it. Also, if this doctor moves from Maryland to any of the other states, would he still be allowed to do these things?

I told her I don't know how I feel about it. I'm not sure it's worth the money if we follow through and come to find out it's not enough, and I still can't drive. She acts like this stuff is dead simple. I don't think it is. You have perceived benefits, but there have to be caveats. This would be a major change, and I don't know how I feel about following through with it.

To be honest I forgot completely about the ducks and was kind of disappointed to see them, don't understand me wrong, its a great addition to the shop (especially to support devrant more when buying them and I will probably do too) and trogus (wow it's pronounced t-rogus) deserves a lot of respect for going through the very hard process of developing it, getting somebody to do a decent quality result etc. but I was hoping for the new site that got hyped up some time ago or some update to the app that fixes design issues on phones that have 2k resolution and no statusbar and more. ("just open a github issue" - I don't have one right now and it didn't get much attention anyway, since I am in the niche of people with those kind of setups, most people it seems have phones that can even barely run the app lol). The login still pops up each time you visit the site (basically just click it away, but it's rather annoying to have it pop up), it's nowhere near to the original app (although the native app is written in some sort of wrapper anyway?) - especially what comes to options, customizing, deactivating things, posting into categories (newest feature), getting notifications etc

There is some community builds that try to recreate a better desktop experience, but sadly fail to do so (sorry to devrantron and others, but what the fuck were you thinking when you rounded only the top right and left corner?) - since they always have something that is just thrown out to "be there" or design fails (which devrant just lacks and looks good across the board), that makes me rather cautious if that program doesn't send my credentials to some african prince. ("just look at the sourcecode", yes I have better things to do, thanks)

I could just create my own build, having to reverse engineer the whole website and app (granted, most of it are just api calls), but I simply lack the time (so I understand why my mentioned problems aren't getting really any attention or can't be implemented that fast, yet still its somewhat bugging)

I have listened to the Q&A and I know you guys are working full time at for example adobe (amazing that you both have time to be putting it towards devrant), so its not as much of a rant, just wanted to get out my disappointment about the event I felt personally. Still nice to have seen you and talk with the community a bit (although the time I feel was picked more towards your US audience rather than EU?).

grrrr

last week my laptop died out of nowhere. it stopped recognizing the one drive in it. I lost a bunch of files, code. evidently ssds fail out of nowhere unlike hdds which slow down and error all the time before ultimate failure

my warranty for this 4k$ laptop expires in 12 months and this was month 13. nice. I don't like warranties anyway, and the site said they would replace things with "comparable hardware, sometimes refurbished" wtf no thanks

so I found some guides of people upgrading the drive in this laptop. seemed easy enough, unlike older laptops from back when I was in school where you had to take out 12 things first to get to anything
unfortunately I needed a specific screwdriver. I walked several miles to the nearby hardware store thinking they would have said screwdriver. the old guy in the basement said there was a kit where it started from t4 (I needed t5), but he had just sold out his last one. I checked their online store with a friend for a while on my way back home and we kept finding torx screws but the wrong sizes. fuck.
he said screwdrivers this small are only used for electronics, asked if there's any other hardware stores and there aren't near me
however it occurred to me this strip mall has a lot of suspicious computer stores on it. so I walked back up the street looking for one.
found one with a suspicious poster, saying it was an internet cafe but the last point on their poster said they do repairs. walked in. nobody is in there, suspiciously 2 desks with old computers all empty, then you go forward in this dark cave, with plastic wrapped implements on the walls, you finally find a glass shield and behind it was a meek Asian man that took me a moment to notice
I asked him if he had t5
he handed me a plastic baggy full of tiny screwdrivers, for me to take one
I asked if they're t5
the shape looked right, but I can't tell the size
I took one out and tried to find size marking, but nothing
he didn't seem to know what I was asking when I asked about its size
he said if it's wrong I can come back and trade what I took for another. lol
I asked him if I can buy it, since that wasn't evident to me due to how sus this random bag of screws is being thwarted on me lmao
he said 5$ cash
I gave him a fiver
this sus shop literally avoiding taxes lmao

walked back home, ate food cuz starving, tried the screw and FUCK, it's too big. put laptop in a bag and hauled ass fast, checked on maps the store I got this from closes in a few minutes so I really wanted to make it there because what if the receptionist changes and they don't know I took this screw. I got no receipt

got there right before closing, put my laptop down, said it was too big. he used a few screws until he found one that fit, said I could try it and I did (so scam aware!). bingo bango. now I got a screwdriver that fits the laptop.

walked home, sat down and took apart the laptop. been a few years since I did so. the hardware inside looks entirely unrecognizable to me. started cycling through YouTube videos of laptops of the same name as mine, but their insides don't look like mine. is this ram? is this the NVMe? what the fuck is anything?
finally found a video guide where the guy was quite informative. not the same laptop but he's informative enough I figure it out. ram and drives are so different and weird now. took parts out, put them back in, rebuilt laptop, tried to boot, same problem. jiggling parts like this works with desktops often, guess not with a failed NVMe

so I'm screwed. get on Newegg and bought a new NVMe. should arrive in 3 days via Purolator

yesterday was day 3. it was at a sort facility near me, then out on delivery, but nobody ever came. then it went back to sorting. now it's out on delivery again. I'm sitting here thinking that's a little weird, wasn't Purolator the delivery company that had me go 2 hours outside of town to pick up a 15lb desktop case once?

... and then I looked up Reddit comments... then reviews on the purolator facility it's at... I am screwed. last time iirc they were out for delivery for 3 days, never tried delivery, then on the last day at the end of day they stated they attempted delivery but no go. that was bullshit. then it ended up at that facility. which takes 2 hours to fucking reach.
the reviews are so bad... the facility has 1.2 star reviews with thousands of them. they won't leave even a stub, then seem to not know where your package is at the facility, or they deny you have the right to pick it up despite ample IDs, or someone ELSE picks it up and it's not there. they also ship your package back after 5 days, so if they don't leave a note and you miss it tough luck...

fucking hell
also rumours that they just hire "contractors" in normal cars to drop off packages? wat? lol
AND EVERY REVIEW HAS A BOT COMMENT. THEIR SUPPORT IS JUST A CHATBOT

I thought this was just a small hiccup
I think I might not have a drive for weeks now
fucking hell
now I'm sitting on my porch

so which job pays for improving an existing thing and not being a tool for your boss's whims? I guess the answer is a house-helper cause devs for sure aren't paid for clearing a shitty codebase.

i recently made a commit because i was do angry at the issue . this was the message "fixing a stupid bug from previous owner". it got squashed but i still felt better lol.
there are a few classes in our codebase that are so infuriating that i want to run a bulldozer on them and build from the ground up. multiple bugs ate caused from them, but we simply ignore because we know that our monkey iq QA won't be able to replicate them and we won't be answerable.
I hate to be in this position. the mgmt won't be giving me time to fix this shit but rather want us to add 2k more features to this Frankensteins monster.

adding to this, I can't get my satisfaction creating some hobby project and solving issues in that coz A) it won't be as massive as my company proj and B I won't be interested in building a dimmy project for a longer time, which does not attract any actual users :/