!(short rant)

Look I understand online privacy is a concern and we should really be very much aware about what data we are giving to whom. But when does it turn from being aware to just being paranoid and a maniac about it.? I mean okay, I know facebook has access to your data including your whatsapp chat (presumably), google listens to your conversations and snoops on your mail and shit, amazon advertises that you must have their spy system (read alexa) install in your homes and numerous other cases. But in the end it really boils down to "everyone wants your data but who do you trust your data with?"

For me, facebook and the so-called social media sites are a strict no-no but I use whatsapp as my primary chating application. I like to use google for my searches because yaa it gives me more accurate search results as compared to ddg because it has my search history. I use gmail as my primary as well as work email because it is convinient and an adv here and there doesnt bother me. Their spam filters, the easy accessibility options, the storage they offer everything is much more convinient for me. I use linux for my work related stuff (obviously) but I play my games on windows. Alexa and such type of products are again a big no-no for me but I regularly shop from amazon and unless I am searching for some weird ass shit (which if you want to, do it in some incognito mode) I am fine with coming across some advs about things I searched for. Sometimes it reminds me of things I need to buy which I might have put off and later on forgot. I have an amazon prime account because prime video has some good shows in there. My primary web browser is chrome because I simply love its developer tools and I now have gotten used to it. So unless chrome is very much hogging on my ram, in which case I switch over to firefox for some of my tabs, I am okay with using chrome. I have a motorola phone with stock android which means all google apps pre-installed. I use hangouts, google keep, google map(cannot live without it now), heck even google photos, but I also deny certain accesses to apps which I find fishy like if you are a game, you should not have access to my gps. I live in India where we have aadhar cards(like the social securtiy number in the USA) where the government has our fingerprints and all our data because every damn thing now needs to be linked with your aadhar otherwise your service will be terminated. Like your mobile number, your investment policies, your income tax, heck even your marraige certificates need to be linked with your aadhar card. Here, I dont have any option but to give in because somehow "its in the interest of the nation". Not surprisingly, this thing recently came to light where you can get your hands on anyone's aadhar details including their fingerprints for just ₹50($1). Fuck that shit.

tl;dr
There are and should be always exceptions when it comes to privacy because when you give the other person your data, it sometimes makes your life much easier. On the other hand, people/services asking for your data with the sole purpose of infilterating into your private life and not providing any usefulness should just be boycotted. It all boils down to till what extent you wish to share your data(ranging from literally installing a spying device in your house to them knowing that I want to understand how spring security works) and how much do you trust the service with your data. Example being, I just shared most of my private data in this rant with a group of unknown people and I am okay with it, because I know I can trust dev rant with my posts(unlike facebook).

Really upbeat quirky music on full blast. That really gets me pumped up.

*Story Time*
In my previous company, I had the best co-workers both technically and personally. So this one time we had a product launch scheduled and there was a shit load of tasks that had to be done before the launch. The entire team used to work for 18 hours straight almost daily to meet the deadline. Sometimes stress used to get the better of us, so to help ourselves relax, we used to play pranks on each other. Like this one time one of my friends had left his email logged in. Obviously we shot out a mail to the entire company group that I have become a dad. The funny part about this was he wasnt even married. So things like these used to keep us going and there was always laughter and fun going around.

Shortest friendship story-

I randomly posted on a group- "Hey can someone lend me Udemy Account if you have bought The Web Developer Bootcamp by Colt Steele, I am a student and really wish to do the course"

Next minute, I got a pm- "Give me your e-mail id pal, I will gift you the course"

This man in his 50s was so generous. We talked about tech, country and exchanged social handles.

By the way the course is really worth it.

When a client discovers your Dev team mail group.

!rant && rant

I've been doing random HTML/CSS/JS crap since I was 11 (I'm 20 now). And worked with NodeJS/Swift/Java/Typescript for the past 4 years. For some reason, I've always been interested in public transit and the combination between public transit and Development seemed magical to me. I've tried making Departure time apps and trip planners for a few years now. And for that you need open data, for which we have a national data source and a Google Group for support with that.

I quit my study two years ago after a year doing nothing and I was on the edge of getting into depression because I didn't do anything useful for two years. Didn't see myself do anything useful in the next few years apart from some random dev crap (still public transit related).

About half a year ago I ranted on that Google Group about shit being not efficient (weird standards, weird documentation but mostly lack thereof).

For some reason a business saw that rant and sent me an email about two months ago and told me they 'potentially' had 'some' work for me. So I had some really informal conversations with that business but I still was very insecure about myself (had some shitty experience with tons of unfinished projects) and I was worried that they had higher expectations for me than what I could give them.

A week later I received an e-mail with a proposal for an actual, full-time job as a back-end developer and obviously took the opportunity.

I started a month ago with a month-long probation period and after three weeks told me I had passed the probation period.

I'm a super happy boy right now. I got a job, being super insecure, without any certifications, without finishing school (Everyone in the Netherlands tells you you NEED a diploma to get a job), more than double minimum wage (minimum wage is quite high in the Netherlands), and most important, at a business that does a lot of public transit stuff.

Apparently ranting about stuff, not finishing your school and being depressed gives you a well-paid job. :)

Background: Since last 3-4 months, was working with a senior engineer remotely on a project.
Present: Currently, I am Out of Office and yesterday late night, I opened my official mail and after sometime I got an email with subject: GOODBYE!

It was from him. The same senior engineer with whom I was working. I thought it was a joke. But people don't joke when they send such emails to a huge group of people.

I never knew he was going to leave so soon. I wanted to learn so many things working with him. I used to ask him the silliest doubts ever.
I still wonder why he left the company. I have so many questions to ask him.
I am sad. I am feeling left alone.

It's awkward that today, this very moment, I can't ping him anymore forever.

It's obvious to be more professional and such things are normal.
But, I am fresher and my first project was with him. So, it's kind of tough for me too.

I know this will help me to grow up stronger and teach me that time isn't constant and we need to always be ready and use the right time preciously and deal with the "constant change".

And also, wherever he goes, my best wishes to him and I hope I will meet him some day.

Shit, again a long rant...

It all started 9 months ago.
We had a meeting with our group staff (5 people). Back the we discussed, if we should only work online or still send files around with mail.

Sure I suggested to run everything on a root server, would be the best performance/cost choice.

The president and the accounted refused, they said it's still working, why change. Payment will only be trough banktransfer and everybody keeps files local.

Back then I told them, that they will have sooner or later a problem. Files will be missing and bills not payd.

Last week we had a new meeting:
- Some of the group missed files.
- Some bills were unpaid

So now I have time until march to find and finish a groupware/collaboration tool.

I need to run member administration and payment online, this should be finished in October 2018. It should also do accounting.
Im really planing to use WooCommerce for this, I'm really crazy, I know! But I dont have time for that shit!

I work fulltime beside this and almost have no time to code something like that.

Well this week I demanded a memberlist, so I can plan a CRM database.

I received a word file as memberlist.
I asked them if this is a joke, right?!
They said no, thats the list. All the Data was mixed and some user details missing.

I HAD 3 HOURS TO GET IT DOWN IN EXCEL. WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS??? I REALLY WANNA PUNCH YOU ALL IN YOUR FACE!

When I sended it, I didn't receive a response or thanks.

The joke, I'm doing this stuff for free. I volontered, to make something big...

Im really going to shit Lego Bricks next...

Hey devs, really need some help here. This is driving me crazy...

We're currently taking issues from the company via mail. We've got a group mail that goes to the three of us at the IT department. Problem is, colleagues just forward customers emails without event trying to help, which means that we get stupid issues like "I can't sign in", and no further information. We're currently using Jira, and I was thinking perhaps we can set up a Jira Service Desk? Then we could have an internal help desk where issues could be submitted, and require some important fields, and perhaps add a checklist. Have you had any experience with Service Desk? Do you think it would be a good idea to have a "normal" person have an account there as well to filter out the normal "Have you tried restarting your computer" stuff? Is it suited for non-developers?

Any other ideas?

Yeay, messy question, but I'm fucking desperate...

HELP, ITS A MESS!!

Here is a thing : 30 hours ago, i was completely free nd useless .Had a lot of reminders to open source & learn new techs for upcoming summer vacations .

But day before yesterday my friend called me to say that he got a 6 month internship in web from some (not so big) startup and they were looking for some Android dev too, so he gave my name and wanted me to mail him my resume.

I did, and within half an hour he called, discussed about the work and wanted to test me.(as i said i didn't had plans for internship , leave alone a sudden test, but the company was work from home so i didn't denied ) The test was a big one but easy, he wanted me to design 15 UI activities for an app by looking at the wireframe. I asked for next 6 hours, did it in 4.5 and submitted him the repo...

THE TROUBLE STARTS NOW...
1) He seemed impressed i guess, coz the next day when he saw my message, he Created a group of 5 people within a few minutes and started assigning tasks(?!) And in the personal chat what he said was just weird : "You are the lead for this project" (WTF??!?)

2)I had already mentioned him that i currently had exams so won't be doing any much of practical work but after every few grp messages, he was trying to assign me some task and a deadline. Weirdly, the test was actually a wireframe based on the project idea from some of their client , and just to show my skills, i have designed layouts of 15 of their activities of their app.

3) The negetive part comes like this: THERE IS NO MONEY AND ITS A 6 MONTH INTERNSHIP !! Fed up of this continues indirect deadlines, i asked him What's my responsibilities as a team dev, what will be my tenure and what will be the pay to which he replies that:

"there is no stipend for this, we have multiple projects lined up in which you can contribute and your internship period is 6 months which could be increased/decreased on the basis of your performance. You will get a PPO, Internship certificate , mentor support and intellectual code rights (which i am guessing means my 2 word name in the about pages of the apps i develop for them ) .And as a lead , you will be getting an experience in leadership skills "

I am really confused. Work from home seems like a relaxing thing , and being a team lead for the first time definitely would make me a little more confident. But why does it feel to be kind of fraud plan? Plus there is no pay and i would be ignoring my creativity ideas for this (not completely but i am sure anyone giving a job would expect some work from me eceryday ).

WHAT SHOULD I DO???

My coolest project is my Facebook - to - email adapter 😜
An interface that takes emails from an inbox (mailing list) and posts it to a Facebook group, if it is a new mail. If it is an answer, it finds the original post and posts the new mail as a comment.
Once every hour it checks Facebook for comments on the posts it made, creates a list and sends it the the mailling list 😀

Can we just for a moment recognize how absolutely fucked Windows update is?

I have done everything, EVERYTHING, outside of booting from a live Linux OS and permanently deleting the windows update executables. All this to stop windows from force updating and rebooting my system while it's locked.

I've killed services, schedules, edited the registry, changed group policy. I even set my wireless connection as metered. Fun fact about that, if MS deems the update to be "priority" they'll download it anyway and reboot, so fuck your data-cap.

I wouldn't have a problem with it IF they would put everything back the way it was before, but those fucking cucks can't even be bothered with doing that. But you bet your fucking sassy ass they start up all the bullshit services I disabled last update are all running.

I don't even know WHY I even try.

Doesn't matter anyway, in a few months I won't even be able to use half the tools I use on Windows for work due to licensing issues 🤷‍♂️

At that point I will give a big fucking finger to Windows 🖕 and use a VM for all the fucking work related bullshit.

Fuck you Microsoft, I would say it's been fun but you're a god damned disaster. I wish that I could send a message to the entire MS board on how much they have failed, but unfortunately I rather like my freedom and it's frowned upon sending rotting roadkill in the mail.

The fog of war over all that happened with my change of team is starting to dissipate.
3 people were involved and there were 4 different versions of the whole situtations, but from what I've been able to collect it looks like the company is expanding and one of the mail KPI for the current team leaders is how good they are at creating a NEW generation of team leaders, to take care of the new entries.
My previous team leader told me about all these new growth perspectives and the junior entries I could manage, knowing very well of the desire I have previously expressed of being a senior dev with my small group of juniors to teach.

I declined the offer, stating that this whole year has been exhausting. Every single time I've tried anything (using modules for new components on our old web client, tsdoc to document our types, suggesting technologies like ANYTHING BUT ANGULAR AND MONGO, telling how removing down migrations was a retarded move) my suggestions were either shrugged off or flat out refused. Let alone how every time I was proven right, except for angular but give it time and that will bite their tail as well.
Don't get me wrong: they are well withing their right when they take all those decisions, and more. But I DO NOT PLAN on selling a plethora of bad decisions to a new stack of devs as if they were the gold standard.
"I understand your reasons; you, as a company, need a well coordinated team all running towards a goal; loose cannons are harmful.
But now I need you to understand me: I do not agree with your technical direction. I never lied before and I will not start now. Promotions don't matter nearly as much as my integrity, and integrity in my world means speaking up about problems. Your position is perfectly valid, but mine is as well and they can't be reconciled. If I were you I'd make myself a favor and make sure IHateForALiving doesn't become a team leader; given your direction, I'm not the man you want right now".

As mentioned, one of the KPI for team leaders is how succesfull they are in finding new team leaders, and trying to turn me into one didn't end well; I love sharing knowledge, but being honest to myself is far more important to me. So this meant my previous team leader failed in a very big task, and thus was demoted? At the same time, I've been there for 2 years now so they're not really eager to replace me, but I'm under strict examination too as of now.

Best debug ever?

Some years ago we had to do a web project as group. It was a cinema like website with backend and front-end.

So in the end we arrived at the presentation and while scrolling the code I found commented out some authentication controls 😅😆 (probably for debug reason lol)
Whatever, meanwhile, while I was talking with the professor two of my mates were whispering... Turns out they found what he mail service wasn't working. And what's best than fix it, push it to the Heroku server and restart all? XD
The professor noticed some little lag in a button and asked "what's happening?"
"oh, nothing we just restarted the server "

I am put to the task of creating a Chat Robot in ChatFuel.

Cool, I thought at first.

Cool is not what I would call it at this point..one week later.

The size is a factor at play, for sure, it needs to point to 27 cities and give individual information, handle e-mails, phone, automate e-mails.. a bunch of stuff.

Now, I am located in Sweden.
{{city}} as a set user attribute acknowledges Gothenburg and geolocation thusly worked fine for my boss. But not for me, and won't work for any other city.

So..Global AI calling for static blocks it is... 27 blocks...

For two languages.. 54 blocks...
Static pointing to the first answer for every individual block multiplies this by a factor of two. 108 static blocks. Fine.

I have since realized that my ChatFuel-Luddite ways were limiting the expected performance of the end result and learned that most other set attributes in ChatFuel work fine. Yay.

So we set up everything the last 54 blocks need to do with user attributes and to my surprise it works, really well at that. The answer from a user that is a correct city puts you into a block that is a series of questions using user attributes, both {{first_name}} and {{last_name}}, asks for e-mail and phone, displays an image and stuff like that.

Now.. as I attempt to copy these blocks..

THEY JUST POOP OUT CHUNKS OF THE ORIGINAL BLOCK. IT'S INCONSISTENCY IS STAGGERING. IT NEVER REALLY COMPLETES THE DUPLICATION, NO ERROR MESSAGE OR ANYTHING.

Which then reminded me of when my boss asked why everything was botched earlier in the project, at that point I copied the entire bot as a fallback and worked with my change in the copy first for safety reasons, didn't work, copy wasn't entire.

Wasted fucking hours on this.
I'm glad my boss is cool, and the job is easily worth it. I actually think that the design aspect of ChatFuel is nice, and the people behind it are kind in the facebook group and all. I don't think they're trying to be mean. But holy shit.

This has been a mental anguish that levels pissing bleach filled with fire ants.

" You could've easily solved this with APIs and third-party geofencing services ", yeah, but their services won't stack for the customer, nice attempt though.

Deep breaths.

So.. i have been doing internship with a good startup for last 2 months. It was supposed to be a 3 month internship and then maybe a job offer. I accepted this , but with a disclaimer that i will be taking leaves for exams.

They looked like they didn't liked this condition, saying "we won't be giving pay for those days" , "you will need your manager's approval", etc, but later i took 5-6 continuous leaves for my papers and my manager( aka the ceo) wouldn't even read my approval mail ( i did got deductions for those leaves tho, but i was fine with it )

Now the situation is that my final end term exams are coming up. They are supposed to go on for 15 days somewhere in December beginning, but i also need an extra 10-15 days to cover the syllabus for it. Apart from those, there are other college stuff like Second Sessionals, internal practicals ,minor project report submission , etc are also coming up, that are supposed to take anywhere from 1 to 5-6 continuous days in the first weeks of November.

So i asked my company for 2 months of leave to handle my college environment. The tasks assigned to me are incomplete , but i am well versed in those and might complete it if i had more time. I gave them an option that i will resume my work from January and complete my 3 months of internship ( i currently am about to complete 2 months , November would have been the 3rd) , but they said that they are "freeing me" in the October only ( i guess this means that my internship is being terminated and am off from company's payroll). They also asked me to contact company once all exam stuff is over, but yesterday i got suddenly removed from the company's slack group. I am not sure how to look at this.

They have also asked me to prepare a report on what i have done. Now i can send them a report like what i would have given to my college : containing more useless info and a few points on my work . Or i could provide them with a deep report on what i did each day, what are the bugs , what are the resources that i found , what are the things that need to be enhanced, links to important groups and people... Etc . I have so much of information that i fear they might hire someone else to complete all stuff that i have started and my material would give him a kickstart.
But on the other hand , it was their office that i worked in, their ideas that i built upon, so i feel a moral obligation to provide all assistance to my replacement.

What should i do?

(tldr : company asking for a report on work you did during internship that was supposed to be converted to job . wwyd?)

Yeah, sure.. I'll configure your DNS & mail server.. while I'm at it, I'll also optimise your db settings & configure backups..and don't forget LDAP & group policies!! Sure, no probs!! :/

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