1. Humans perform best if they have ownership over a slice of responsibility. Find roles and positions within the company which give you energy. Being "just another intern/junior" is unacceptable, you must strive to be head of photography, chief of data security, master of updating packages, whatever makes you want to jump out of bed in the morning. Management has only one metric to perform on, only one right to exist: Coaching people to find their optimal role. Productivity and growth will inevitably emerge if you do what you love. — Boss at current company

2. Don't jump to the newest technology just because it's popular or shiny. Don't cling to old technology just because it's proven. — Team lead at the Arianespace contractor I worked for.

4. "Developing a product you wouldn't like to use as an end user, is unsustainable. You can try to convince yourself and others that cancer is great for weight loss, but you're still gonna die if you don't try to cure it. You can keep ignoring the disease here to fill your wallet for a while, but it's worse for your health than smoking a pack of cigs a day." — my team supervisor, heavy smoker, and possibly the only sane person at Microsoft.

5. Never trust documentation, never trust comments, never trust untested code, never trust tests, never trust commit messages, never trust bug reports, never trust numbered lists or graphs without clearly labeled axes. You never know what is missing from them, what was redacted away. — Coworker at current company.

I was very troubled as a teenager. I had some pretty intense family issues that led me to smoking cigarettes at 12, marijuana at 13, and drinking everyday at 15. By 17, I was using other "party favors", as we called them, on an every day basis. I left high school at the beginning of my final year, about a week before I turned 18, moved out of my family's home and started working three different part time jobs.
This was the lowest point of my life. I've never felt so much like a fuck-up and loser than back in those days. I hated myself, hated what I had become, hated everything I did. Hate hate hate. I spent a year like this, pitying myself, seeking sympathy from people when I shouldnt have been, basically seeking out someone who would tell me that I wasnt so awful.
That never happened. I only deepened the hole that I had dug for myself.

Then I got angry. I thought it wasn't fair that everyone else was enjoying life except for me. I wanted to find a passion. I wanted to find excitement again. I wanted to look forward to something else besides going back to bed.
When I turned 19, I decided that I was going to take control of my life because I was so angry with my position at the time.
I put myelf into college. I made myself stay awake and focus on schoolwork and internal improvement. I started facing my flaws and defects head-on and conquering them rather than letting them eat me from the inside out.

Now, I am only a couple months away from turning 21.
I rarely drink now. I quit smoking cigarettes after almost 9 years.
I graduate this December, and enroll into my next degree program in January.
Today, I signed employment paperwork with the company I interned at over the summer. I am now a full-time DevOps Engineer with salary, bonuses, 401k, and full health coverage.
My boyfriend and I just moved into our own house that we are renting together. No more needing shitty roommates.
I have most of the debt that my mother left in my name paid off.

A couple of years ago, I couldn't have cared less about my life or how I turned out. I truly expected to get arrested, wind up homeless, or just flat-out end up dead.
I never thought I would see myself where I am today.
I am extremely proud of myself for turning my future around. I know some of you may read this and think I'm an idiot, or that this seems trivial because I am so young. Thats okay.
I have learned that hard work always pays off, and that sometimes you must sacrifice what is expedient to gain what is meaningful.

So I just had this job interview with a "startup" (side note: who the fuck still calls limping companies "startups" in 2024? That is sooooo 2010s).

There was this tattooed and very pale girl (you just know the vibe), the mandatory Norse bearded tall guy and the balding, "I'm-in-my-fifties-but-I-am-not-a-square, maaan" sleasy-looking white guy in a button up shirt but no suit jacket. The whole stereotypes gang came looking for their missing nerdy Indian.

The sleasy bloke goes on and on on a looong tirade on how they're "a tech innovation academy", how they "move fast and break things" and they "run smoking hot", so that "long nights are to be expected".
So, they usual red-flagging shit.

Then they all went on a "but we're not like all those companies that look exactly like us" word salad about "sustainability and a healthy work life balance", with their "highest value" being "the utmost respect at all times". I'm nodding my head at the meaningless splurge until they fart out the sentence "for example, cussing while talking with colleagues is a fireable offence".

If some hustling enterprise rather prefers a posh working environment, one can adapt to such circumstances. Provided, of course, that said enterprise adheres to the administrative coherence expected from a culturally refined institution. Mostly by compliance, from the leadership, to a rigidly predictable working schedule.

Now, if the bloody curs want coder dogs that work assfucking hours with a shit eating grin, they better swallow our fucking sailor mouths. Fuck, I've done twenty hour shifts getting my ass kicked in dark startup fisting/rush rooms. If unable to yell at any blabbering cocksucker to go stick his fucking opinions up the bitch who crapped him, then I ain't gonna bloody be there.

TL;DR they can either have a "utmost respect" working environment XOR a "fast and hot" daily hustle.

After they crapped out that oxymoron I could barely hold myself to avoid saying "sorry, I do not partake in any of the psychedelics you must be on".
On to the next interviews!

In my unenlightened youth, when programming was a module in my college diploma that didn't seem to be taking me where I wanted to go, I had a couple of guys guy in my class that could arguably be the weird ones.

Jonny, although he asserted that he was to be called "Jonhty", whatever, we never did. He was pretty much top of the high school food chain and for some reason elected to study computer science, none of us was prepared to put up with his shit. He was always boasting about some fanciful claim or another, famously entering the classroom and exclaiming he'd "fucked an absolute milf" and seemed somewhat evasive about the answer, turns out he was 17 and she was 35, the age difference was greater than his own age. We burst out laughing. He would also turn up late and state the college bus was late (it wasn't I got the free bus every day, he'd just not got out his wanking chariot early enough).

One valentine's day we got him a card from a mysterious stranger which was accompanied by a package containing a cucumber and Vaseline, the inside of the card read "to assist you in the following request: please go fuck yourself".

Before you think we were being unduly harsh, we had a centre table where we'd be taught from with computers around the outer rim of the room. He'd come up behind people while at the centre desk, quietly press ctrl+P and slowly walk back to the printer. I saw him do it to my machine and I got to the printer first, to which he shouted "that's MY work" which was amusing because unbeknownst to him I had put headers on all my documents so he really didn't have an answer for why my name was at the top of every page.

To top it all off he had dead eyes, there didn't appear to be much going on but the rent, there was no spark of intelligent life, and while I thought it, I never said it out loud, but other students did and I had to agree. He was just copying his way to graduation. However, he ultimately didn't graduate when people refused to allow him to copy.

Another guy, Richard I believe his name was, which is just as well because he was a right dick. In the UK our word for white trash is "chav" (that's a very naïve explanation for it but that's another rant best left for "socialsciencerant") and he was an complete idiot who was gifted with more brain cells than he ever needed to use. He actually studied hard and got reasonable grades, probably on par with me, but he boasted about smoking weed all the time, he was forever playing dark side of the moon via his loud mp3 player. I kinda left him alone generally until he was high in class one time and while we we're watching a documentary he'd shake my chair and make a weird noise in my ear every few minutes, the first couple of times startled me, the remaining multi-dozen times pissed me off.

It all came to a head with this guy when I'd been hearing about his uninteresting bs on drugs, music and how best to spend my time ("you need to lighten up man, come round my house, take a joint and relax man", that sorta thing), well this guy walked like he was mid way through shitting himself so I personally think that perhaps he is too chilled. Anyway he's arguing with me and after the exchange of him making his point, me disagreeing and expecting the end of it, he made the mistake of saying two words to me:

"Listen, mate..."

And I had him in check mate.

"Listen, I ain't your fucking mate , I don't even like you, you're a disruptive annoying twat that thinks he knows it all, we're all 17, none of us know anything, so shut the fuck up, sit the fuck down and stop boring me with your drugs, I ain't interested, and for the record I think pink Floyd ruined prog rock!"

He looked at me with sad puppy dog eyes, and started with the "but, why?", However I was interrupted and had to leave the class for unrelated reasons, I returned to be told he'd put safety pins up right on my chair so I'd sit on them, and mutual friends who TD me I'd been cruel and that he doesn't was hurt, so I should apologize, he overheard and said he was sorry for bring a bit of a dick.

However, you just know when you don't get on with someone? Yeah, that. So I said I wasn't sorry for what I said, for while it was harsh, I am not his mate, nor did I want to be his mate and that was all I had to say on the subject, and that if he wants to take offensive to a nobody not liking him then he's in for a very rough time in life.

Unsurprisingly I don't keep in touch with anyone from college!

I JUST HAD ONE OF THOSE DAYS THAT MAKES ONE WANT TO BANG TWO BRICKS ON HEAD SND END THE PAIN THE STORY STARTS YESTETDAY WITH ISSUES AFTER A MIGRSTION AND THEY ASK ME TO HELP TROUBLESHOOT EVEN THOUGH I'M A DEV DBA AND THE ISSUE IS IN QA/SAT AND I HELP ANYWAY AND THEY CAN'T FIND A VIEW AND SO I LOOK EVERYWHERE AND CAN'T DOING IT EITHER AND IT DIDN'T EXIST IN PROD OR DEV SO I TELL THEM IT'S NOT THERE, AND THEY ARE LIKE, CAN YOU RETRIEVE IT FOR US AND I'M LIKE FROM WHERE? I DON'T KEEP VIEWS IN MY BUTT AND YOU GUYS ARE SMOKING CRACK AND THE GIVE ME THEIR QUERY WHICH CONTAIN THE VIEE ANYWAY AND THEY SAY CAN YOU RUN IT AND IT RUNS AND WORKS AND THEY CAN'T MAKE IT WORK AND IT WORKS BECAUSE IT DOESN'T CALL THE VIEW THEY HAVE ME SO NO PROBLEM THERE SO I FINALLY ASK THEM ARE YOU POINTING TO THE CORRECT DATABASE AND THEY'RE LIKE OH MAN WE TOLD YOU THE WRONG DATABASE AND SO I LOOK AT THE RIGHT DATABASE AND FIND THAT THE GRANTS ARE MISSING AND YEAH THANK YOU FOR TAKING EIGHT HOURS OF MY LIFE BECAUSE WE WERE IN THE WRONG DB YOU GAVE ME AND I HOPE THE FLAG OF A THOUSAND CAMELS INVEST YOUR ARMPITS AND THE CHIGGERS OF A THOUSAND SOUTHERN LAWNS INGEST YOUR SOCKS AND UNDERWEAR. YAAAAAA!!!!

Vape bloggers be telling people that it's impossible to quit vaping salt nicotine but I quit successfully. Here's how it went:
1. I took my addiction to the point when I vaped three cartridges a day (that's a lot). I remembered that feeling and recalled that dizziness and urge to vomit instead of "pleasure" when I wanted to vape again
2. It's hard to quit on your own. Instead of nicorette and other shit that doesn't work (because it's also nicotine), I took Cytisine. It removed that URGE and the only thing left to tackle was a psychological addiction
3. Vaping and smoking in my head was tied to a cool moments that I experienced, like smoking with the boys after a hackaton, etc. I analyzed them and realized that they're cool not because of the fact of smoking, they are cool per se. So smoking was not necessary

In my last days of cytisine therapy I not only forgot that I vaped, I sometimes forgot to take cytisine. That means the therapy was successful. My average running distance already improved from 1.5 to 3 km.

There is a research that quitting consuming nicotine can help cure depression. I'll check on that

!rant // deprecated but who cares

I just wanted to write down something i realized. I realized that that I stopped growing as an individual a while ago.

Being a student put me in constant stress situations. I had to do things quickly. Lern things fast, drop things I don't understand immediately, move on, and repeat. I think this corrupted me, turning learning into something that it's not supposed to be. Even making me reject other people's opinions sometimes, which disgusts me every time I think back to it.

When I started programming I'd always try to read the code, until i completely understood what exactly this code was doing. Something I stopped doing a while ago because of the mentioned time constraints.

But today I got the hit by the consequences (German: Ich hab Retourkutsche abbekommen)

I was implementing an algorithm today, while my partner was writing the main program, which acted as indirect test cases. And the errors were discovered one after another because of my misinterpretation. Or Simply put, my lack of knowledge. Because it was already late, we stopped soon afterwards but I wanted to solve this problem by tomorrow. I really wanted to get my head around this algorithm, so that i could solve it with confidence. After getting my head smoking I felt something I haven't in a while: the feeling of achieving something. Making me finally realize not only how the algorithm was actually meant to work but it also made me again realize what learning is about.

Use your damn head.
Don't look away from the problem, solve it! Learning is about challenging yourself!

Sorry for stealing away so much of your time. Like i said, i just wanted to write this down. Maybe to burn this into my mind, to keep me on the right track from now on. But I also hope that i could deliver my message to someone that needed it as well.

Also it's late and i should have gone to sleep long time ago. 😴😵
I just hope my grammar didn't suffer because I'd that

Work is still going great, but I'm killing myself with general anxiety about other things...

Covid, laptop is gone for now, phone is acting up, I don't have any backup device, I'm running out of money, need to fix my teeth soon enough, health-wise I'm pre-diabetic and almost obese, (not look-wise, rather weight-wise) as well I will need to check for hormones because I'm growing body hair more than I should and still am losing head hair more than I should, and I should quit smoking.

... but I still love the work I do, so what does life and gods have against me? :|

I have been taking deep breaths more often to just not lose my shit these days. Like, unless I end up in a great situation next, this all is so unfair.