This story is 100% true.

I got hired onto a team of construction workers to build a house. We set up a meeting with Management to find out what kind of house they wanted us to build, where’s the floor plan, what it’s going to be used for, who it’s for, etc. Management said that they didn’t know all that, we should just get started. They told us that we were going to use “Agile” which means that we just work on small deliverables and build the thing incrementally.

The developer team lead argued that we at least need to know how big the thing is going to be so that we can get started pouring the foundation, but Management told him they just don’t know. “What we do know,” Management said, “is that the house is going to have a bathroom. Just start there, and we’ll know more when it’s done. You have two weeks.”

So we just bought a port-a-potty, and screwed around on the internet for two weeks. Management was outraged. “You call this a house? This is the worst house ever! It doesn’t even have a tv!”

So we bought a tv and put it in the port-a-potty, attached to an outdoor generator. We were going to buy a a dvd player and get it hooked up to cable, but Management rejected the expense request, saying that they didn’t know if we needed it, and we’d come back to that later.

Management decided that we definitely need storage space, so we bought a boxcar and duct-taped the port-a-potty to it. Then to our horror they set up some desks and put a few miserable business interns in there. It went on like this…

After a few years the boxcar grew into a huge, ramshackle complex. It floods, leaks, it’s frozen in the winter and an oven in the summer. You have to get around in a strange maze of cardboard tubes, ladders and slides. There are two equally horrible separate buildings. We’re still using just the one outdoor generator for all power, so electricity is tightly rationed.

Communication between the buildings was a problem. For one of them, we use a complex series of flag signals. For the other we write notes on paper, crumple the paper up, and toss it over. Both of these methods were suggested as jokes, but Management really liked them for some reason. The buildings mostly talk to each other but they have to talk through us, so most of what we do is pass messages on.

It was suggested that we use paper airplanes instead of crumpled up balls, but the fat, awkward fingers of the Business Majors who inevitably take those jobs couldn’t be trained to make them. I built an awesome automatic paper airplane folder, but once again they couldn’t be trained to use it, so they just went back to crumpling the notes up in balls.

The worst part of all this is that it’s working. Everyone is miserable, but the business is making money. The bright side is that this nightmare complex is done so now we know what kind of building they actually needed in the first place, so we can start work on it. Obviously we can’t tell Management anything about what we’re doing until it’s finished. They noticed the gigantic hole in the ground where the foundation is coming in, but we told them that it’s a cache reset, and they mostly ignore it except when the occasional customer falls in.

I’ll probably be out of here before the new building gets finished. I could get a 50% raise by switching jobs, but Management still doesn’t think I should get a raise because I missed a couple sprints.

So they were having trouble with the server always being slow and maxed to 100%, so the boss told me when wait times were hitting 5+mins due to server trying to catch up, he complained at me, said if I could get the wait time to 30sec to instant he would raise my pay to 90k a year, then walked away after I agreed, I was quite serious but I don't think he thought I was, so I decided to look over the system, IDK who but they put all the calculations and processing server-side for the CA's on floor then sent the completed view to the CA, so I spent months recreating the entire system except the server only pulled the data needed then the new client would do all the processing on their computer since they weren't doing anything anyways, I did a practice run today as its one of our peak days, wait times went to barely 5secs or "instant" according to CA's, I walked into the office, slapped that hourly report down after just two hours and showed the massive increase in employees production times.

That look on his face...
That look on my face...
That look on my next check...

Bliss

My most awkward recruiter interaction?

Just graduated college and got 'suckered' by an programming position ad that turned out to be a recruiting company. It was fine since they charge the company for their services and not me.
After a couple of weeks of waiting (they initially promised I would/could have at least 3 interviews a week, which hadn't happened.) I decided to start looking again on my own, found a position, and I was hired.

About two months later I get a phone call:

<skipping the pleasantries>
R: "I see you are working for D, congratulations. I've started the paperwork for our reimbursement."
Me: "Reimburse for what? I found that job on my own."
R: "D is one of the companies we work with and when we submitted your resume, they told us you were already hired."
Me: "And?"
R: "And you signed a contract and now its time to pay. The fees only start at $500"
Me: "Not me. I have the contract, it states, in the second paragraph, I am not responsible for any hiring fees."
<couple of seconds of silence>
R: "Yes, but that is only if we negotiated the contact. Since you went behind our back, we couldn't start the process"
Me: "And?"
R: "And its a breach of contract."
Me: "I'm not a lawyer, I don't understand what you're saying. It says right here on the contract I signed, I don't pay any fees. No where does it say I'm not allowed to look for a job on my own. Right?"
R: "Um..yea..right..right...but you were hired by one of our contracted companies."
Me: "No way I would have known that. Maybe you should have set up an interview long before now."
<R is getting pretty angry at this point>
R: "I'm sure we gave you list of companies we work with. Contacting those companies is a breach of contract. Unless you want our lawyers to get involved, the fee is only $500. Failing to honor your side of the agreement and we'll be forced to contact your employer and begin garnishing your wage until the fee is paid. You don't want that, do you?"
Me: "There was no list and I am allowed to find a job on my own. Again, I'm not responsible for you not setting up an interview so do whatever you think you can do. Have a good night"
<I hang up>

About a week later..

Boss: "Got a phone call from XYZ Recruiting requesting a wage garnishment. Do you know anything about that?"
<I explain the situation>
Boss: "Oh good grief. We've worked with them a couple of times and we contact them on an individual basis for new hires. You're fine"
Me: "You're not going to garnish my paycheck?"
Boss: "No no no, that's not how this works. He was probably trying to scare you into paying their crazy fees."
Me: "What if they get their lawyers involved? I don't want to cause any trouble"
Boss: "Ha ha...XYZ Recruiting is a couple of guys in an office and we have lawyers on the 3rd floor who eat and breath this shit. They know that and you won't hearing from them again."

New Guy Day 2: He has deleted the git repo on the project he was assigned to 4 times, written a recursion formula that crashed a server, & knocked my coffee cup onto the floor.

I messaged my boss telling him I am going to hide the body in his trunk.

Sorry if I make a typo, my hands a still a little shaky, just had to stop myself from crying.

This morning I came in, opened my email, saw an automated response from Jira saying .... saying ..... saying the backend team provided details about their new endpoint.

After a year of screaming, they finally did it. It was so beautiful I fell to the floor and wept like a baby.

Thank you all for your support through this difficult time. Together we can accomplish anything!!!

My first job: The Mystery of The Powered-Down Server

I paid my way through college by working every-other-semester in the Cooperative-Education Program my school provided. My first job was with a small company (now defunct) which made some of the very first optical-storage robotic storage systems. I honestly forgot what I was "officially" hired for at first, but I quickly moved up into the kernel device-driver team and was quite happy there.

It was primarily a Solaris shop, with a smattering of IBM AIX RS/6000. It was one of these ill-fated RS/6000 machines which (by no fault of its own) plays a major role in this story.

One day, I came to work to find my team-leader in quite a tizzy -- cursing and ranting about our VAR selling us bad equipment; about how IBM just doesn't make good hardware like they did in the good old days; about how back when _he_ was in charge of buying equipment this wouldn't happen, and on and on and on.

Our primary AIX dev server was powered off when he arrived. He booted it up, checked logs and was running self-diagnostics, but absolutely nothing so far indicated why the machine had shut down. We blew a couple of hours trying to figure out what happened, to no avail. Eventually, with other deadlines looming, we just chalked it up be something we'll look into more later.

Several days went by, with the usual day-to-day comings and goings; no surprises.

Then, next week, it happened again.

My team-leader was LIVID. The same server was hard-down again when he came in; no explanation. He opened a ticket with IBM and put in a call to our VAR rep, demanding answers -- how could they sell us bad equipment -- why isn't there any indication of what's failing -- someone must come out here and fix this NOW, and on and on and on.

(As a quick aside, in case it's not clearly coming through between-the-lines, our team leader was always a little bit "over to top" for me. He was the kind of person who "got things done," and as long as you stayed on his good side, you could just watch the fireworks most days - but it became pretty exhausting sometimes).

Back our story -
An IBM CE comes out and does a full on-site hardware diagnostic -- tears the whole server down, runs through everything one part a time. Absolutely. Nothing. Wrong.

I recall, at some point of all this, making the comment "It's almost like someone just pulls the plug on it -- like the power just, poof, goes away."

My team-leader demands the CE replace the power supply, even though it appeared to be operating normally. He does, at our cost, of course.

Another weeks goes by and all is forgotten in the swamp of work we have to do.

Until one day, the next week... Yes, you guessed it... It happens again. The server is down. Heads are exploding (will at least one head we all know by now). With all the screaming going on, the entire office staff should have comped some Advil.

My team-leader demands the facilities team do a full diagnostic on the UPS system and assure we aren't getting drop-outs on the power system. They do the diagnostic. They also review the logs for the power/load distribution to the entire lab and office spaces. Nothing is amiss.

This would also be a good time draw the picture of where this server is -- this particular server is not in the actual server room, it's out in the office area. That's on purpose, since it is connected to a demo robotics cabinet we use for testing and POC work. And customer demos. This will date me, but these were the days when robotic storage was new and VERY exciting to watch...

So, this is basically a couple of big boxes out on the office floor, with power cables running into a special power-drop near the middle of the room. That information might seem superfluous now, but will come into play shortly in our story.

So, we still have no answer to what's causing the server problems, but we all have work to do, so we keep plugging away, hoping for the best.

The team leader is insisting the VAR swap in a new server.

One night, we (the device-driver team) are working late, burning the midnight oil, right there in the office, and we bear witness to something I will never forget.

The cleaning staff came in.

Anxious for a brief distraction from our marathon of debugging, we stopped to watch them set up and start cleaning the office for a bit.

Then, friends, I Am Not Making This Up(tm)... I watched one of the cleaning staff walk right over to that beautiful RS/6000 dev server, dwarfed in shadow beside that huge robotic disc enclosure... and yank the server power cable right out of the dedicated power drop. And plug in their vacuum cleaner. And vacuum the floor.

We each looked at one-another, slowly, in bewilderment... and then went home, after a brief discussion on the way out the door.

You see, our team-leader wasn't with us that night; so before we left, we all agreed to come in late the next day. Very late indeed.

Story time.

Not sure it counts as data loss, more temporary corruption (and in my own brain).

> be me.
> be clinically depressed
> be recently out of an awful breakup
> recently nearly committed suicide by train
> be bored and lonely one night
> take lsd
> feel fine
> go to McDonald’s
> feel fine
> while eating question the nature of reality
> become convinced I’m an observer of a cosmic story and cannot die
> go outside in only jeans
> run in traffic at 1AM to prove my point
> don’t die
> run around the streets more sure of my new reality than I’d ever been of anything
> feel free and no longer sad
> walk around observing the world
> sit on wall and wonder why the story had the structure I was observing
> fall off wall into grass and mud
> follow cute guy into apartment building
> follow into lift
> ask what everything means
> spend better part of couple hours in lift pressing emergency button asking for help
> get no response
> scare poor Russian lady that gets into lift and finds an overweight topless man on the floor babbling incoherently
> ride to top floor
> get out
> sit on leather chair in corridor
> feelsnice.tiff
> decide I’m actualising my desires and reality
> don’t realise this is just the trip wearing off and consciousness exerting more control
> walk into random apartment (door is unlocked because why wouldn’t it be for the god that I believe I am at this point)
> explore
> gorgeous apartment
> realise it’s a family apartment from clothes in hallway and items
> find bathroom
> decide I want a bubble bath
> run bubble bath
> can’t work out how to drain water. Bath now full of twigs and mud #sorry
> decide that I’d like to go home, or onto my next adventure. Hopefully the seaside as I’m now realising I have more control.
> open bathroom door
> not the seaside. Ah well. Try to walk home
> walk home wrapped in fluffy towel from nice family’s apartment
> get home
> realise what had happened
> throw remaining drugs away
> sit and rock in utter paranoia and guilt for hours until flatmate wakes up.

MFW first bad trip ever.
MFW I wonder whether that family knew I was there and were scared / discovered the mess in the bathroom the next morning and not knowing which is worse.

MFW I still have the towel because it’s fluffy AF.

The moral of the story kids, is that when it comes to the OS rattling around in your brain, installing a virus that is sensitive to what apps you have running is a bad idea when those apps make the virus go to fucking town.

Terrible analogy I know, but fuck it.

Excuse the profuse amount of profanity below.

Fuck this fucking fucked up motherfucker of a fucking director. Money does not make you a fucking decent person, and you come in here and tell me that you pay my fucking measly salary so I must be fucking grateful.

Starts off with a boardroom meeting this morning. Wireless connection on my laptop takes two minutes to connect, I get told that I am wasting company time and that the salary of everyone in the meeting is quite a lot ("with me being the highest"- cuntface director) so stop wasting time. Fuck you man, it's a fucking wireless connection. I am building your motherfucking company applications and doing web design and for what, so I can earn fuckall and be told that I am fucking wasting time. I am presenting your fucking site you wanted, so give me a fucking minute extra to start up the fucking wireless connection.

The fucking mails are taking long to send, great, let's come down and fucking scream at the dev who regrettably said he would try and assist IT (by calling the provider). I literally just got told that I am the following. 1) Fucking stupid 2) He is going to close the dept down because I apparently fuck up (yet again cuntface, your fucking mailserver is NOT MY FUCKING PROBLEM) 3) He is going to contact an external company to come and check my work. 4) I am fucking useless. 5) I telling him lies (yeah fuckface, I worked as a sys admin, I know what a motherfucking DNS server is and what it does. you don't - so don't fucking tell me that I am lying when I tell you there is a DNS fucking issue, because you don't know what the fuck you are talking about - to top that off motherfucker, I FUCKING BUILT YOUR FUCKING SERVER AND YOUR FUCKING NETWORK. I FUCKING KNOW HOW IT WORKS AND WHAT THE FUCK I AM TALKING ABOUT).

On top of that, I got pushed out of the way of my own PC, my code got some fucked up gibberish in it (because he was trying to minimise my editor and he typed some in it, and now I have to fucking roll-back. He told me I am wasting company time and he will take my shit away from me if I download something again. It is an open network. I downloaded JAVA and fucking updated Sublime. Jesus man. What the fucking fuck.

"why is your gmail open?!?!" because I was testing your emails from an external network. "DON'T FEED ME BULLSHIT" (even though the top mail states "test"). It's the whole fucking "my money determines my dick size" mentality.

That being said, I got told that I need to work overtime, without pay, to resolve IT's issue, even if I have to on the weekend.

That being said,my new Dell that I had just bought (my own) got thrown on the floor and he fucked out of my office. Stupid motherfucker. I fucking earn nothing but cannot leave. I will find another job, and when I do - you can go and fuck yourself and your fucking degrading opinions. I am not fucking stupid, so fuck you.Fuck your company and fuck you. Cunt.

We moved to a new office floor and got a brand new set up. My new extension monitor died just after 4 hours of use, it was showing a black screen a with couple of colourful lines running down the screen.

Got the IT guy to come and replace it. He says he must test it with a display cable even though the screen was dead without any input source. (Ok fine cbf arguing with you, just do it.)

*Magicarp used splash, nothing happened*

Realising I was right, he gave the ok for another guy to replace my monitor.

Second guy comes to my desk and realised he forgot the electric screwdriver. (Sigh, how long must I wait...) After he finally finished installing​ the new monitor he plugged the display cable into a random display port without looking.

*Magicarp used splash, nothing happened*

Since the monitor wasn't displaying anything, he jumped into asking me to restart my computer. I gave him "the wtf are you stupid face" and just said "NO". I looked over to where he plugged the cable and asked why he plugged into the "dp out" port.

I plugged the cable to the correct port and monitor was working.

Felt like I can do their job better without any experience in IT support.

PS. Don't play the "please restart your computer" card on me. I also work in technology.

Dells XPS are made of magic. [long story, major fuckup, 10k+ damages]

It all started in December. One morning I was late to work, drove there as fast as possible. (I live like 3 minutes away so me being late really meant *late*) Parked my car in a secluded car park, grabbed my backpack and ran to work. The car park is like 100 meters away from work so I took my feet into my hands and ran. Next thing I know my heels loose all grip while I go down a small slope and I drop on my back full force. On a sharp edged stone. With only my 1700$ XPS in it. Fuck.

I paniced, but got up and ran to work. I checked on the notebook, praying it would boot. It booted! Holy shit. I flipped the notebook and saw two small dents in the aluminum shell. I was thorougly impressed. I later discovered that it left a small shadow on the display, but given what a hit that was (I am not exactly a lightweight), impressive would be a massive understatement.

Fast forward to February, I am weighing my options to get the screen replaced maybe, as damage on my hardware (even if neglectable) triggers some sort of OCD and makes me feel bad 24/7. Also my laptop tends to shut off from time to time, looked into the Event Viewer and saw kernel panic. I figured that the battery probably still took a hit and that it drops voltage from time to time and the kernel assumes a critical situation, thus shutting off.

It stayed quite snowy in Austria up until March, so occasional snowing wasn't rare. Got out of work one day, saw it snowed a bit. Whatever. I had my moms car at the time, so I tried if it would slide a bit if I donut on the now (5pm) empty parking space. Nothing. Drove done a small hill, ABS triangle lit up red (board computer can't outbalance the snow). I drove out to the main street where everything was salted and drove along towards my house. Took a turn into my street, accelerated for a bit and then went off the gas so the car would smoothly drive along with the speed slowly degrading. So I went off the gas and noticed I was a bit to the right, no wonder, centrifugal forces.

*steers left*
"Huh seems like I need a bit more"
*car still doesnt move much*
"What the- go to the left!"
*steers left hard*
"Fuck that wall is coming closer"
*Breaks*
*car doesnt break*
"FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!!!"

Everything got quiet in seconds, me waking up to an open airbag, ripped pants, a hurting wrist, the radio somewhere on the ground and fumes that smellt like burning wires. I grabbed my backpack that was now somewhere on the floor instead of on the seat and ran outside, tears in my eyes and the phone on my ear calling my mom. I walked inside as she walked outside, hearing a weeping scream that I haven't heard from her since I am alive. While walking inside I noticed my backpack was wet on the bottom, my 2 litre water jug shattered when my backpack hit the dashboard. I tried to stay calm and act rational, knowing that every second counts when It comes to water damage. I hastely searched for some rice and a bag to put my laptop into, stuffed the bag with both and went outside. The car was totaled, my mom pissed and crying. And I was in shock, sad, angry and hurting.

I kept the laptop on my heater for a few days, bagged in rice. I dared to try a boot after a while and you wont believe me, it fucking booted. Even the keyboard backlight worked, just the screen was obviously broken in the back (no color distortion or bad pixel rows though!!) and the aluminum shell had a dent on the front. I talked with Dell Support a few days later, asking if it would be ok to open the XPS up so I could drain all of the water. She said yes thats fine, as long as I dont touch anything or screw around with it.

She said I can send it in and get it checked, but the pickup and analysis will cost 150$ and I can go from there.

I sent it in and estimated that, because battery, screen and other things probably needed changing, it will be around 900$.

Got a call a few weeks later:

"Hello beggarboy, the repair team reported back to us and said that they will have to replace everything, which will be 1700$."

"Fuck... Buying a new one is cheaper.."

"Yeah I know I am sorry about that, I can offer you a voucher so you can buy a new one for 250$ off if you would prefer that"

"Sorry but I will need some time to consider"

"I understand."

The agent clearly noticed I was bummed about it.

After going back and forth what to do I got another call a few days later.

"Hello beggarboy, we talked a few days ago. I have good news"

"Hello, yes, speak up?"

"I was able to get a special offer for you after putting in a few words..."

The next thing she said seemed unreal to me.

She was able to cut 600$ (!!!), making the new offer 1100$, instead of 1700$ or a new one for 1500$. I figured the reason she probably did that was because I am always very polite with support members. Always.

My XPS is back and healty again.
Thank you for taking the time to read this.
Dells XPS are made of magic.

OH MY GOD

WHO NAMES A CONFERENCE ROOM AFTER AN -ADDRESS-??

At my new job, we had all day training on Friday. It was emphasized many times that we should not be late. I look at the meeting invite many times, and it says [123 Fake], with Fake being a Very Well Known Street, and I see on Google Maps that there's an office building there. Great, we must have an off-site training facility to help our clients become certified in our product. It doesn't say which floor, but I assume the small space we have in that large office building will become evident once I check in with lobby security.

Friday morning comes, I get to the office building 20 minutes early, and try to check in. They've never heard of my company. Maybe there's a computer lab we rent out? No, they don't know anything about that. I don't have work email or slack set up on my phone yet, so who do I call? I try reception, no one answers. Eventually I call our customer support line.

I shouldn't be at 123 Fake St. I should be at the office. Because that's the name of the conference room!

YOU HAD ONE JOB, ROOM NAMER!

Last night my boyfriend and I tried to think of worse names for conference rooms. The only ones I could think of were "meeting canceled" (but with that, at least I would be in the correct fucking building!) or just naming every conference room "conference room". Here's the thing: there's not just one 123 Fake St room! There's two of them right next to each other! So you can easily show up and think, I remember I was supposed to be in this room, but which one?

And I'm not even the first person to make this mistake. CLIENTS have gone to the wrong building before because they get included on meeting invitations that include conference room names! WTF!

It's pretty common to have Chicago conference rooms named after neighborhoods, or iconic buildings, etc. But nobody is going to think, "meeting in Bucktown? I'll just wander around the neighborhood until I find people with laptops". It's obviously a conference room. BUT A FUCKING ADDRESS OF A NEARBY OFFICE BUILDING? It's not even an iconic of a building!

Names matter. I care a lot about names in code. I never realized it could apply to the physical world as well. So now I am on a mission to change the names of these Goddamm conference rooms so I'm the last person to be directed to the wrong fucking building.

OH, and I'm out $9 for a taxi ride and a pair of gloves that got lost in the taxi so that's GREAT.

Worst disturbance while working?

Some of my faves:
- Mgr flying his new $400 drone around the office (hitting walls, ceiling, etc). I mentioned the price because he crashed it a week later (un-repairable kind of crash), so I didn't feel too sorry for his loss.
- Mgr trying out his new blowgun and blowing darts at a cardboard box down/bewtween the cube hallway (where anyone could walk out of at any time). We would hear the "pfffft" and a loud 'Yea!'.
- Mgr would walk by a cube entry-way, fart, and walk away laughing.
- Mgr called me into area and his desk+the floor area around his desk was covered in peanut shells.
Me: "Wow, you got a mess here."
Mgr: "Yea, got tired of trying to hit the trash can. Maintenance will vacuum the office this weekend."
The mess was one thing, but what disturbed me the most was this asshole thinks Maintenance-Jim has nothing better to do than clean up after this so-called adult.

Karma kicked in and an hour later the owner's wife (we're still a family owned company, so he+his wife are on friendly basis with everyone) stopped by to say hi and walked in on the mess.
June: "What do we have here!?"
Mgr: "Oh...um...uh..I was eating a few peanuts and putting the shells in the trash can and accidentally knocked it over. I was on my way to get the vacuum cleaner."
June: "Hmmm...this looks like more than a few. *You* clean it up right now and *never* let me see this again!"
Mgr: "Yes..yes ma'am...right now.."

Whole office heard the exchange and it was frickin' awesome.

A few years ago:

In the process of transferring MySQL data to a new disk, I accidentally rm'ed the actual MySQL directory, instead of the symlink that I had previously set up for it.

My guts felt like dropping through to the floor.

In a panic, I asked my colleague: "What did those databases contain?"

C: "Raw data of load tests that were made last week."

Me: "Oh.. does that mean that they aren't needed anymore?"

C: "They already got the results, but might need to refer to the raw data later... why?"

Me: "Uh, I accidentally deleted all the MySQL files... I'm in Big Trouble, aren't I?"

C: "Hmm... with any luck, they might forget that the data even exists. I got your back on this one, just in case."

Luck was indeed on my side, as nobody ever asked about the data again.

Probably isn't a righteous rant... But there's a new guy who shakes his leg... All day... Makes my screen wobble... All day... Trying to think about about my code... But thoughts being shaken to the floor... All. Goddamn. Day.
*sigh*

First day on new job. Hardware guy comes to my office, says "Hi, here is your computer" (no eye contact) and leaves a pile of boxes on the floor.

A few hours later I finished building the computer from scratch lol.
Not sure if it was some kind of test or just him being weird 😂

Root has standup.

Root: I had no ticket yesterday morning, so I followed up on <TicketA> with <PersonA> and updated it in Jira and linked its related tickets; talked with <PersonB> about <TicketB>, and reviewed code review comments on <TicketC>, and thought about those while looking into the CI spec failure on <TicketD>. I collapsed for 3 hours before fixing it. Halfway through the collapse, I talked with <PersonC> on <TicketC> CR comments and the spec issue in <TicketD>, then went to lay down again. Afterward, I solved the spec issue in <TicketD>, and started on the new ticket <TicketE> before calling it a day. Plans today are to <…>.

Manager, in private: I need you to proactively let me know if you’re taking long breaks and aren’t working as this impacts business flow.

—————

Yeah.

My update was four times longer than the others’ despite her not giving me a ticket to work on. I responded to slack while I was collapsed on the floor and discussed tickets. And, after I recovered, I went back to work to finish my 8h shift. But this isn’t good enough? And I need to let her know in advance when I’m going to collapse and be a bloody mental zombie for hours? It would be amazing if I knew. I barely have a few minutes notice, and that’s only if I’m really paying attention and looking for signs.

And (conjecture) she probably still thinks I’m not performing well enough. “Affecting our business flow” probably means she’s angry I didn’t talk to other people about low-priority <TicketE> yesterday while I was laying on the damned floor.

Goddamn I hate her.

Yesterday, after six months of work, a small side project ran to completion, a search engine written in django.

It's a thing of beauty, which took many trials, including discovering utf8 in mysql isn't the full utf8 spec, dealing with files that have wrong date metadata, or even none at all, a new it backup policy that stores backups along side real data.

Nevertheless, it is a pretty complete product. Beaming with pride I began to get myself a drink, and collapsed onto the floor, this caused me to accidentally hibernate my computer, which interrupted the network connection, which in turn caused an OSError exception in one of my threads, which caused a critical part of code not to run, which left a thread suspended, doing nothing.

From the floor I looked at my error and realised my hubris and meditated on my assumptions that in theory nothing should interrupt a specific block of code, but in reality something might, like someone falling over...

I decided to start a new web project tonight. I'm a serial starter-never-finisher, but I thought, "No @AnonymousGuy, you'll work on that android game that's genuinely almost releasable aside from the shitty makeshift UI you gave it while learning Unity."

Fuck yeah. Motivated, I picked up my laptop and put it on my lap. I grabbed my phone, opened DevRant, spent 2 hours reading rants, commenting, +1'ing, and looked down at my laptop. Put it back on the floor. I'm too tired now.

Fuck me and my total lack of self-discipline. 😑

My older brother just moved out today. For 18 years I've shared a room with him, and now he's gone. I have a ~30x10 foot room all to myself (it's the entire second floor of my house).

I do love that now I'm able to play music anytime, and with his stuff gone, it'll be less space taken up in general, that type of thing.

I've been in this room with him for over 8 years now, after my oldest brother moved out, and I've always had this feeling that one portion of the room was mine and the other portion was his. Now it's just...weird. I have both portions now. I have this whole big room to maintain myself. I don't have to worry about my stuff conflicting with his for whatever reason.

The past few weeks, when he's talked about moving out, I've always told him that I was looking forward to it, to having the whole room to myself. Now that he's gone, I just...can't. I can't bring myself to move his stuff that he hasn't taken over to the new house yet, or clean his part of the room.

When we were kids we didn't really get along, and I HATED sharing a room with him. But over time, as we grew up, we started to get along better, and for the past couple years, we've always just talked in the middle of the night when we were both awake. And now he's gone (the new house is maybe a 10 minute drive away), and I know he's not coming back. I know that this whole space is mine now.

I'm gonna miss the talks in the middle of the night, and us keeping each other in check (whenever one of us isn't home in the middle of the night we tend to text each other like "bruh where the fuck you at"), and waking up in the middle of the night (when I'm able to actually fall asleep kinda early) to see him playing Skyrim or Fallout. Hell, even coming home from work or wherever to see him passed the fuck out.

I know that I'm gonna have to clean the whole room soon, and that I'll just have to get over it. I've always been the one in my family that doesn't really show emotion very often, unless I get angry, so when people were crying earlier, I just sat there with an emotionless look on my face. But that's also because I wasn't really feeling much at the time, it didn't really hit until I got home and came upstairs to my room. Hell, right now I'm sitting here just expecting to hear his car alarm as he locks his car like I normally hear every night.

Today was the most fuckedup day of my internship as a software developer. I have this shithead manager who doesnt know how to explain the client requirements properly and keeps on fucking yelling at me for not understanding the requirement and not coming up with the right output. That asshole compares me with the other teammate as to how fast he is and how slow i am to even write 5 lines of code in python.(I am new to python). He has yelled at me in his cabin with the door open so that everyone on the floor could hear. Most humiliating and disappointing day of my life. I dont feel like seeing that shitheads face again. I just have a month left and i will be happy if the opportunity doesnt get converted to a full time. Todays events have made me doubt myself to a great extent and has left me disheartened. Ranting abt it makes me feel a little better.

A PCB I designed on the job over the last weeks shipped today! A benefit of hardware is the haptic element you have at the end of the design process - you made something touchable. (I am proud.)
Also, errors made earlier in the design process are permanent now. But other than on my software my design got reviewed, so I'm optimistic it'll not contain many if any.

I'm on vacation right now for moving stuff but I'm looking forward to do the "pick'n place" on monday. Soldering manually is quite relaxing for me, you should try it, too! ;)

In other news, I'm no longer sleeping on the floor in my home-office while the paint is drying in other rooms.
I already moved the most of my stuff - books and tech equipment are the worst - and I moved my furniture yesterday.
My new roommates are considerably quieter and my sleeping rhythm is slowly shifting back to normal.

I started working in a company where they use scala/akka stack, that requires a huge amount of hw resources to compile and debug, so my boss bought me a new laptop: a MacBook Pro. I came from a Dell with Linux Fedora, and now:
FUCK YOU APPLE YOUR COMPUTERS ARE SO SHITTY
JUST EXPLAIN ME WHY THE FUCKING KEYBOARD IS SO A PIECE OF SHIT WITH THE FUCKING COMMAND KEY
FUCK YOU COMMAND KEY
FUCK YOU MAC OS WITH YOUR SHITTY POLICIES YOU CAN'T INSTALL THIS PROGRAM BECAUSE YOU HAVE TO ENABLE UNKNOWN RESOURCES
FUCK YOU BREW AND BREW CASK WHAT THE FUCK OF TWO SHOULD I USE
FUCK THE STUPID TOUCHBAR I WANT THE FUCKING ESC, DELETE, F1, F2 AND SO ON
FUCK YOU APPLE YOUR MAC IS FRAGILE AS FUCK I CAN'T THROW THAT FROM THE FIFTH FLOOR OF MY BUILDING LIKE A THINKPAD
FUCK YOU SAFARI THAT YOU DON'T REFRESH THE PAGE WITH F5

I have a small gif for you just to explain how much shitty is Mac OS

Hey Root, remember that super high-priority ticket that we ignored for five months before demanding you rewrite it a specific way in one day?

Yeah, the new approach we made you use broke the expected usecases, and now the page is completely useless to the support team and they're freaking out. Drop everything you're doing and go fix it! Code-complete for this release is tonight! -- This right after "impacting our business flow" while being collapsed on the fucking floor.

Jesus FUCKING christ, what the fuck is wrong with these people?

If I dropped the ball on a high-priority ticket for two weeks, I'd get fired, let alone for five fucking months.

If I was a manager and demanded a one-day rewrite I can only imagine the amount of chewing out I'd receive, especially on something high-priority.

And let's not forget product ownership: imagine if I screwed up feature planning for someone so badly I made them break a support tool in production. I'd never hear the end of it.

Fucking double standards.

And while I'm at it. Some of the code I've seen in this codebase is awful. Uncommented spaghetti, or an unreadable mess with single-letter variables, super-tightly coupled modules so updates are nearly impossible, typos in freaking constants added across sixty+ files, obviously-incorrect comments, ... . I'll have to start posting snippets to show them off. But could I get away with any of it? ha. Hell no. My code must be absolutely perfect. I hear about any and every flaw, doesn't matter how minor, and nothing can go out until everything is just so.

Hell, I even hear about flaws in other peoples' code during my code reviews. Why? Because I should have fixed it, that's why. But if I do, I get yelled at for "muddying the waters."

Just. JESUS FUCKING CHRIST.

It's like playing a shell game where no matter which shell I pick (or point to their goddamn sleeve where they're clearly hiding it), I get insulted for being so consistently useless, and god damn, how can I never find the fucking pea or follow the damned rules? I'm so terrible and this is why "nobody trusts me." Fuck you.

I'll tell you why I can't find your damned pea: IT'S RATTLING INSIDE YOUR FUCKING HEADS, you ASSHOLE FUCKING IMBECILES.

That's right: one pea among the lot of them.

goddamn I am fucking pissed off.

Not a rant. Just a story.

So two weeks ago, a cat gave birth to two beautiful kittens in our balcony. We started giving milk to the mother and sometimes inviting the family to our house. The kittens are naughty charming. The mother sits for hours and sometimes sleeps while watching us do our chores (watching movies, coding, etc.)

Now, we live in New Delhi and Wednesday was Diwali. The family was playing in the balcony and we had to go out. So we locked the balcony door and went to have fun with friends. We didn't realize that people would burst firecrackers which could scare the cats. When we returned, the mother was very scared and (kind of) screaming. One of the kittens was missing!! We live on the fourth floor and I got scared too. We searched using a flashlight but there was no sign of kitten. After 30 minutes of search, We gave up. I assumed the kitten jumped from the balcony and might be dead. I tried to sleep but could not. Around 4 AM in the morning, I heard some noise. When I opened the door, the second kitten was there. Her mom was scolding (or so it seemed). It was a moment of joy.

Thought of sharing. This family has become our friends. Now I realize how cats are good companions.

I had a manager who scolded me in me in public on a non-IT floor because I used child classes and overloading of methods which "is too hard to read". Instead use "lots of ifs and else's". This is the guy that had a JSP so large (be cause he had so many ifs) that it couldn't be compiled even on a server.

The best karma happened a few months later. I was looking for a new job (wonder why?) and was very deep in the interview process - like round 5- of company A. I got talking to this jackass, who had no idea I was interviewing, said "yeah I applied to company A once. Couldn't get past the first round. Great benefits, though.". Me getting the job a week later was the best thing ever.

Well, devRant has turned me from a bigot arse into quite the humble and decent person, and on top of that, introduced me to some new series (well more so the users than the platform, but you know what I mean).

Binge watched Silicon Valley (season one, I just started) and learnt about dick to floor ratio.

Prior to that binge watched Mr Robot. Cannot remember who suggested that, so I cannot attribute the appropriate gratitude to the appropriate person here.

Add to that that I no longer claim one language to be holy amongst others. Yeah. I was that dick before, we all have a bad side. I'm just admitting it.

I sat down and started utilising other languages, and even found quite a few that did what I wanted more efficiently. Plus I have gotten to meet some sharp people and broaden my own mind.

Fuck I hate my job, but I see a fucking brilliant future for myself thanks to coding and the open mind that I have attained. I attribute this to devRant (perhaps it was lying dormant, but you guys awoke it.).

Enough chitty chat, I'm off to sleep and then code my balls off.

zero motivation for anything, i just want sit outside in the sun at the lake with ice cream and not in front of a screen. And not being bothered by the new vacum cleaner loud deep learning rig of the data science department in this open floor office.
I fucking forgot my noise cancling headphones. FML

So we've been on our Christmas holidays/vacation and decided to spend New year's eve at my place barbecuing.

Yes needless to say that we got somewhat intoxicated, had steak etc and then fucking fell asleep on the floor outside.
In -3 C°.
Woke up like 20 minutes later according to my friends.
Decided to continue barbecuing but since the fire turned into half dead embers I decided to fucking chop up some wooden planks laying around.

Short recap.
New year's Eve.
Barbecuing.
Intoxication.
Fell asleep.
Woke up.
Chopped up planks in the dead of night.

Continued barbecuing afterwards.
Fire ablaze again, roasted the remainder of the meat and since it was too boring for me I decided to pour fucking Korn, (German alcohol) over the flames.
Needless to say my arm hairs burnt off.

Friend comes out, sees me, fucking dies of laughter.

All promised to stfu about it.

Anyway the flamed steak and stuff were still delicious.

Both bathrooms on the floor being used. Had to go downstairs to use bathroom.

Translation:
I took this shit to a whole new level.

"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.

There is 2 broken pet floor on both iOS and web

Sorry I’m too lazy to open a new issue on gh

My fucking campus building.
Really. Built a new one in 2017, we started to study there since Oct 2017 til now and lemme tell something: it's shit. My classroom's paint cracked 2 months in. My classroom lacks a projector which is standard for every classroom to have one back in the old campus building. But nooope. No projector for 1.25 years, at least by now compensated by a 50" TV which whoever the fuck installed the thing took the *only* stock HDMI cable. Shitty floor tiling (think r/mildlyinfuriating but worse), shitty toilet that would break down every 2 weeks and "over the top" gymnasium with air ventilation so bad it feels like Hitler's fucking oven every time we got in.

Friends of mine have a new flat.

It's a nice flat. Cheap. Noone wanted it. 100 square meters.

Reason noone wanted it...

Previous owners were bastards from hell.

Really. Every motherfucking room needed to be completely renovated by the owner.

Door frames were made of wood, nice and old - at least the part that was left of them. Splinters, scratch marks, partially broken out of the wall.

2 windows needed to be fully replaced. Rest of the windows needed to be bleached, PET abrasive cleaning solution and the frames needed repair with resin as they drilled into the frames. Then treatment with sealant of course.

Yes. There was no other solution. After bleaching you recognized the windows were white. Before... Let's not talk about it.

The previous owners even managed to destroy the bathtub.

The kitchen tiles... Fat cleaner. Bleaching. Abrasion. Polishing.

Soooo.

Day of moving.

The apartment is in the 6th floor / level.

Cran / lift was ordered.

16 people wanted to come.

7 people came.

2 including myself couldn't lift heavy stuff nor walk the stairs due to health issues.

Crane broke after first try.

Today. I want to murder the previous owners. After torture and crucification.

I'm feeling levels of pain I couldn't Imagine before.

Only hate and beer let's me keep my shit together.

I REALLY didn't think after renovating and cleaning the flat for my friends in the last several weeks that it could get worse.

Boy. I was wrong.

Thanks for letting me vent here. I really feel devastated currently -.-

And I need to help them tomorrow, too.

Bikini Atoll, tchernobyl and every other atom bomb desaster Zone combined looks better than the chaos in their flat.

Everyone who could lift shoved everything inside.

I solo carried everything that wasn't too large in the room and then, as every room looked like desaster, completely managed the kitchen (cleaning, unpacking, trash, placing everything where it belongs and so on) :( :(

Have a couple I want to air today.

First was at my first gig as a dev, 4-5 months out of school. I was the only dev at a startup where the owner was a computer illiterate psycopath with serious temper tantrums. We're talking slamming doors, shouting at you while you are on the phone with customers, the works...

Anyways, what happened was that we needed to do an update in our database to correct some data on a few order lines regarding a specific product. Guess who forgot the fucking where-clause... Did I mention this boss was a cheap ass, dollar stupid, penny wise asshole that refused to have anything but the cheapest hosting? No backups, no test/dev/staging environment, no local copies... Yeah, live devving in prod, fucking all customers with a missing semi-colon (or where clause).

Amazingly, his sheer incompetance saved my ass, because even if I explained it, he didn't get it, and just wanted it fixed as best we could.

The second time was at a different company where we were delivering managed network services for a few municipalities. I was working netops at that time, mostly Cisco branded stuff, from Voice-over-IP and wifi to switches and some routing.

One day I was rolling out a new wireless network, and had to add the VLAN to the core switch on the correct port. VLAN's, for those who don't know, are virtual networks you can use to run several separated networks on the same cable.

To add a VLAN on a Cisco switch one uses the command:

switchport access vlan add XYZ

My mistake was omitting the 'add', which Cisco switches happily accept without warning. That command however can be quite disruptive as it replaces all of the excisting VLAN's with the new one.

Not a big deal on a distribution switch supplying an office floor or something, but on a fucking core switch in the datacenter this meant 20K user had no internet, no access to the applications in the DS, no access to Active Directory etc. Oh and my remote access to that switch also went down the drain...

Luckily a colleague of mine was on site with a console cable and access to config backups. Shit was over within 15 minutes. My boss at that time was thankfully a pragmatic guy who just responded "Well, at least you won't make that mistake again" when we debriefed him after the dust settled.

Let me tell you a very sad, sad story:

I was standing in the line at Lidl (a supermarket here in Germany) and was listening to a podcaste peacefully, minding my own business.
As I was the next one, I took out my AirPods and than it happend:

One of my AirPods felt down, jumped from the floor into a shelf under the cash register and sliped through a FUCKING HOLE WITH ONE FUCKING SQUARE CENTIMETER SIZE!!! WHAT A FUCKING MISFORTUNE!!! No way to get it back. And the biggest shit is that Apple wants FUCKING-80-FUCKING-€ for one single new AirPod.

my day went to shit immediately... long night, got to sleep at 4AM, poked awake at 8AM, "hey wake up we gotta go to a town 200 miles away, dress like you're rich, we gotta go find a place to live for my new job" ugh, fine, got another 30 minutes or so of sleep in the car. We get there, the guy shows us a place that I physically can't fully stand up in and is like 600-some square feet for $750/month. Fuck that. We get halfway back home, "hey i forgot, we just finished renovating a new unit, come look!" goddammit gotta go BACK to the city... get there, it's a 2-floor 1200 square foot place for $675, a hell of a lot better. We leave to go see relatives in town, get a call, "hey hurry home your grandfather's hallucinating" we get there before an ambulance (we traveled 120 miles in less time than an ambulance took to drive 50 miles...) and my grandfather's hauled (by us, as the ambulance refuses to take him to the right hospital, they want to take him OUT OF STATE in an ambulance and he's not actively dying) to the VA in the city we were just in... he's immediately screened and his dementia has progressed to the point he needs to be in a nursing home in 12 hours somehow. I have no idea either. Anyways, we're about 3/4 of the way back home and it's now 2:40AM. My dad's been driving for 18 hours pretty much straight. I'm still awake, he's wired (the worst possible state to be in while driving) and family drama has happened as family members are already trying to take the land my grandpa lived on AND HE'S LITERALLY ONLY BEEN GONE FOR 6 HOURS.

so how was your day?

So, I am a couple of more months in working in my new role. Learning the trade and boy do people have a lot of fucking things to say! It’s incredible the AMOUNT OF BULLSHIT these people get away with…

Background, I’ve been a software consultant for a number of companies working in different sectors in different development roles for +16 years. I built everything from RS232, iOS to BI. Shifted to permanent developer for large global corporation where I got promoted to clown.

Anyway, anyhow.

FUCK, these FUCKING people!!!

Meeting after meeting after endless pointless discussions and even more pointless fucking powerpoint presentation which if you stack them on top of each other will reach the FUCKING top floor where there are even more morons. FUCK!

There is absolutely NO cohesion, there is NO plan, short-term or long-term, no vision that can be practically implemented. There are different organizations of equal power and the result is a FUCKING MAZE.

But people travel the FUCKING GLOBE. You know, THE FUCKING PLANET EARTH, for pointless workshops and alignments (plural). FUCK!

And it’s getting worse. We’ve got consultants hiring consultants now whose job is to hire consultants. True story! And it’s not that high up the org chart either!

It’s a beast! A retarded beast.

We are NOT helping.

I got to get out of this fucking corporation. So, I am starting to design my exit strategy. The master plan.

Impossible deadline experience?
A few, but this one is more recent (and not mine, yet)

Company has plans to build a x hundred thousand square feet facility (x = 300, 500, 800 depending on the day and the VP telling the story)

1. Land is purchased, but no infrastructure exists (its in a somewhat rural area, no water or sewage capable of supporting such a large facility)
2. No direct architectural plans (just a few random ideas about layout, floor plans, parking etc)
3. Already having software dev meetings in attempt to 'fix' all the current logistical software issues we have in the current warehouse and not knowing any of the details of the new facility.

One morning in our stand-up, the mgr says

Mgr: "Plans for the new warehouse are moving along. We hope to be in the new building by September."
Me: "September of 2022?"
<very puzzled look>
Mgr: "Um, no. Next year, 2021"
Me: "That's not going to happen."
Mgr: "I was just in a meeting with VP-Jack yesterday. He said everything is on schedule."
Me: "On schedule for what?"
<I lay out some of the known roadblocks from above, and new ones like the political mess we will very likely get into when the local zoning big shots get involved>
Mgr: "Oh, yea, those could be problems."
Me: "Swiiiiishhhhh"
Mgr: "What's that?"
Me: "That's the sound of a September 2021 date flying by."
Mgr: "Funny. Guess what? We've been tasked with designing the security system. Overhead RFID readers, tracking, badge scans, etc. Normally Dan's team takes care of facility security, but they are going to be busy for a few weeks for an audit. Better start reaching out to RFID vendors for quotes. Have a proposal ready in a couple of weeks."
Me: "Sure, why not."

HR: good news! We're going to be moving your whole floor to a **newly renovated floor** in our main building.

Me (thinking): sounds good! It'll be all new and I'll be reintegrated with the main population, see young ppl (girls) finally.

HR: there will be no assigned seating though. Do you think you will have any problems finding a seat since your deaf?

Me: Hm.... should be fine... (Thinking: so no nobody will care if I work from home or not...yes!)

HR: Actually they said they can give you a fixed seat!

Me: wow thanks!

(Wait... Fuck... Did they actually review my low physical attendance rate so now if I become the only guy with a fixed seat on the floor, I will have to show up more instead of working remotely whenever I want (the rest of my team are in different countries)... I will literally be the center of attention...)

My team's been moved to a new floor. We're now sat by sales and marketing andI'm losing my fucking mind.

There's one lady who starts every call with the most sing-song version of 'Hi, {}'.format(Name) where she draws out 'Hi' so it's about 3 syllables long. If I have to hear it one more time I'm going to rip the phone out of her hand and throw it out the window.

I have headphones, but it's as if she waits for the second I take them off to say her catchphrase.

So the company I work for is moving to a new building. The project managers, who we do everything we do to avoid, are going to be on the same floor as us. The contractors, who we pay a crap ton of money to fly them in from halfway across the globe so we can work closely with them, are going to be 6 floors away.

...who approved this bullshit?

An intern made a very bad impression on the first day.

This was before I become a developer. I was working in commercial art sales. One day, I had an appointment to onboard two new interns together.

Intern 1 shows up and I ask her for her signed confidentiality agreement. The boss had sent it out a week before and told me the interns were bringing the signed paperwork on their first day. I see the surprised look on her face and she says she forgot. She’s lucky I had access to another copy. If I didn’t, things could have gotten pretty awkward if I had to contact my boss, who was out of office. If there’s no signed agreement, I can’t onboard her and I’d have to send her home. The appointment was made with intern 1’s availability in mind, so intern 1 could have spent her time coming to the office for nothing and being turned away because of a stupid mistake she made.

While we wait for intern 2 to arrive, I try to engage in small talk with intern 1. I try to get to know her a little better and I ask “are you still in college/university?” She word vomits that she thought she had graduated, but six months later she hadn’t received her diploma and she called the school and they told her her pre-college credits had not transferred, so she’s finishing those credits now.

Oh, intern, you should have just simplified all this to “I’m finishing up my degree” or “yes, I’m still in college.” This is TMI. You don’t want to give out information about yourself that could put you in a bad light. You need to know to be discreet about yourself. You’re 22 years old. It’s really bad judgement to say this to your supervisor (me) and we’ve only known each other for ten minutes. I’m not your friend, I’m your supervisor. Honestly, I thought the explanation didn’t make sense because she would have found out about the credits when she tried to transfer them and when she applied for graduation. I didn’t prod for more details.

I did have to tell my boss about intern 1 forgetting the paperwork. It’s not something the intern would be reprimanded for, but it is something that’s not a good sign. The paperwork had been sent by the boss a week prior. It’s troublesome that an intern would forget to complete an important task that was sent by the boss. This was never a problem with prior interns.

Boss did freak out because boss thought I onboarded intern 1 without intern agreeing to the confidentiality agreement. Boss hadn’t considered an intern would forget the paperwork and didn’t tell me what to do if this did happen. I reassured boss that I had printed a new copy and had intern 1 sign the agreement.

I didn’t say anything about the word vomit. The content was troubling, but I was concerned this would be gossip and I wasn’t out to sabotage the intern.

Forgetting the paperwork and the word vomit were signs the intern wasn’t reliable. Intern had trouble taking direction even when it was written down. She’d do stupid things like invite her boyfriend to the office for hours and let BF sit at the boss’s desk—boss caught her and boss’s office is visible from our public viewing floor, so visitor did see this too. I suspected she might have an diagnosed learning disability.

In the end, intern didn’t ask for a reference letter. Boss said that if intern asked for one in the future, the answer would be no.

Intern 1 is the reason why I don’t want to be in change of interns ever again even though I’m not in art sales anymore.

Long time ago i ranted here, but i have to write this off my chest.

I'm , as some of you know, a "DevOps" guy, but mainly system infrastructure. I'm responsible for deploying a shitload of applications in regular intervals (2 weeks) manually through the pipeline. No CI/CD yet for the vast majority of applications (only 2 applications actually have CI/CD directly into production)

Today, was such a deployment day. We must ensure things like dns and load balancer configurations and tomcat setups and many many things that have to be "standard". And that last word (standard) is where it goes horribly wrong

Every webapp "should" have a decent health , info and status page according to an agreed format.. NOPE, some dev's just do their thing. When bringing the issue up to said dev the (surprisingly standard) answer is "it's always been like that, i'm not going to change". This is a problem for YEARS and nobody, especially "managers" don't take action whatsoever. This makes verification really troublesome.

But that is not the worst part, no no no.

the worst is THIS:

"git push -a origin master"

Oh yes, this is EVERYWHERE, up to the point that, when i said "enough" and protected the master branch of hieradata (puppet CfgMgmt, is a ENC) people lots their shits... Proper gitflow however is apparently something otherworldly.

After reading this back myself there is in fact a LOT more to tell but i already had enough. I'm gonna close down this rant and see what next week comes in.

There is a positive thing though. After next week, the new quarter starts, and i have the authority to change certain aspects... And then, heads WILL roll on the floor.

It all started with an undelivereable e-mail.

New manager (soon-to-be boss) walks into admin guy's office and complains about an e-mail he sent to a customer being rejected by the recipient's mail server. I can hear parts of the conversation from my office across the floor.

Recipient uses the spamcop.net blacklist and our mail was rejected since it came from an IP address known to be sending mails to their spamtrap.

Admin guy wants to verify the claim by trying to find out our static public IPv4 address, to compare it to the blacklisted one from the notification.
For half an hour boss and him are trying to find the correct login credentials for the telco's customer-self-care web interface.
Eventually they call telco's support to get new credentials, it turned out during the VoIP migration about six months ago we got new credentials that were apparently not noted anywhere.

Eventually admin guy can log in, and wonders why he can't see any static IP address listed there, calls support again. Turns out we were not even using a static IP address anymore since the VoIP change. Now it's not like we would be hosting any services that need to be publicly accessible, nor would all users send their e-mail via a local server (at least my machine is already configured to talk directly to the telco's smtp, but this was supposedly different in the good ol' days, so I'm not sure whether it still applies to some users).

In any case, the e-mail issue seems completely forgotten by now: Admin guy wants his static ip address back, negotiates with telco support.
The change will require new PPPoE credentials for the VDSL line, he apparently received them over the phone(?) and should update them in the CPE after they had disabled the login for the dynamic address. Obviously something went wrong, admin guy meanwhile having to use his private phone to call support, claims the credentials would be reverted immediately when he changed them in the CPE Web UI.

Now I'm not exactly sure why, there's two scenarios I could imagine:
- Maybe telco would use TR-069/CWMP to remotely provision the credentials which are not updated in their system, thus overwriting CPE to the old ones and don't allow for manual changes, or
- Maybe just a browser issue. The CPE's login page is not even rendered correctly in my browser, but then again I'm the only one at the company using Firefox Private Mode with Ghostery, so it can't be reproduced on another machine. At least viewing the login/status page works with IE11 though, no idea how badly-written the config stuff itself might be.

Many hours pass, I enjoy not being annoyed by incoming phone calls for the rest of the day. Boss is slightly less happy, no internet and no incoming calls.

Next morning, windows would ask me to classify this new network as public/work/private - apparently someone tried factory-resetting the CPE. Or did they even get a replacement!? Still no internet though.
Hours later, everything finally back to normal, no idea what exactly happened - but we have our old static IPv4 address back, still wondering what we need it for.

Oh, and the blacklisted IP address was just the telco's mail server, of course. They end up on the spamcop list every once in a while.

tl;dr: if you're running a business in Germany that needs e-mail, just don't send it via the big magenta monopoly - you would end up sharing the same mail servers with tons of small businesses that might not employ the most qualified people for securing their stuff, so they will naturally be pwned and abused for spam every once in a while, having your mailservers blacklisted.

I'm waiting for the day when the next e-mail will be blocked and manager / boss eventually wonder how the 24-hours-outage did not even fix aynything in the end...

“Huddles don't work in safari 🤡,” Slack said.
Develop → User Agent → Google Chrome.
Boom, huddles suddenly work in Safari, and my today's huddle went absolutely fine.

Yep, I switched to Safari as my default browser. Previously, I didn't use it solely because YouTube's full-screen mode acted weird, but now I quit watching YouTube altogether.

Safari is a stellar browser. First, it wipes the floor with everything, even including Thorium, in the performance department (on Apple Silicon at least). Second, it's really beautiful with its new inline tab panel, where you have just one line of icons on top, instead of having two (tabs and url bar). DevTools are amazing. It can also connect to my iPhone's Safari via Wi-Fi and inspect the opened page — a must-have for heavy layouts. Plus, if my website works fine in Safari, it sure as hell will work fine everywhere. Safari is a great hack detector, as it won't tolerate dirty hacks. Works wonders for your code discipline.

At work we have to split a potentially large ID into 2 10-digit long parts that will be passed to an outside system that will later return them with some more data to us.

A colleague had implemented it using regular expression, it passed code review, everything was ok, until he noticed a potential problem. For some cases, because the outside system stores them as int and therefore will remove any leading zeros, there will be no way to reconstruct the number.
So we brainstorm and I propose ether a modified regex, or to just use math like part1 = id % 10^10 and part2 = floor(id % 10^10) and then we can reconstruct it simply by: part2 * 10000000000 + part1

Colleague: - Well, the regex will be faster, there won't be any calculations
Me: - :| I disagree but ok..

We do some more brainstorming and testing and find a case where the proposed new regex fails as well
So I bring up my previous proposal, I explain what exactly it does.

Colleague: - I don't like the math, it has calculations, which won't be needed before we reach the 11th digit

Have I missed some major development in computer hardware? When did they become bad/slow at doing math? :|

The coffee/food room on my floor is absurd.

On day, the Keurig machines, microwave oven and convection oven all disappeared. Turns out they were owned by some employees and when they moved to an other floor they took their stuff with them.

In the caffeine-deprived panic that ensued, a bunch of other employees pooled together some money and went across the street to purchase new applicances.

They now charge us 5¢ for each packet of sugar or milk/cream cup. And they announced it with a passive-aggressive poster with an angry dog on it.

Thou shalt not talk while I'm pooping.

-- New Commandment after the floor Karen confronted one of our colleagues about her talking on the phone while washing her hands.

I work for an investment wank. Worked for a few. The classic setup - it's like something out of a museum, and they HATE engineers. You are only of value if work on the trade floor close to the money.

They treat software engineering like it's data entry. For the local roles they demand x number of years experience, but almost all roles are outsourced, and they take literally ANYONE the agency offers. Most of them can't even write a for loop. They don't know what recursion is.

If you put in a tech test, the agency cries to a PMO, who calls you a bully, and hires the clueless intern. An intern or two is great, if they have passion, but you don't want a whole department staffed by interns, especially ones who make clear they only took this job for the money. Literally takes 100 people to change a lightbulb. More meetings and bullshit than development.

The Head of Engineering worked with Cobol, can't write code, has no idea what anyone does, hates Agile, hates JIRA. Clueless, bitter, insecure dinosaur. In no position to know who to hire or what developers should be doing. Randomly deletes tickets and epics from JIRA in spite, then screams about deadlines.

Testing is the same in all 3 environments - Dev, SIT, and UAT. They have literally deployment instructions they run in all 3 - that is their "testing". The Head of Engineering doesn't believe test automation is possible.

They literally don't have architects. Literally no form of technical leadership whatsoever. Just screaming PMOs and lots of intern devs.

PMO full of lots of BAs refuses to use JIRA. Doesn't think it is its job to talk to the clients. Does nothing really except demands 2 hour phone calls every day which ALL developers and testers must attend to get shouted at. No screenshare. Just pure chaos. No system. Not Agile. Not Waterfall. Just spam the shit out of you, literally 2,000 emails a day, then scream if one task was missed.

Developers, PMO, everyone spends ALL day in Zoom. Zoom call after call. Almost no code is ever written. Whatever code is written is so bad. No design patterns. Hardcoded to death. Then when a new feature comes in that should take the day, it takes these unskilled devs 6 months, with PMO screaming like a banshee, demanding literally 12 hours days and weekends.

Everything on spreadsheets. Every JIRA ticket is copy pasted to Excel and emailed around, though Excel can do this.

The DevOps team doesn't know how to use Jenkins or GitHub.

You are not allowed to use NoSQL database because it is high risk.

Any other IT company is like:

* Task -> Designer -> Markup coder -> Backend -> Finish

Our IT company:

Act I: "Art of setting up contact with idiots".
------
Items:
*Cave scripts (aka "typical task")

Designer: -- "DAFUQ?"
Customer: *gives another interpretation*
Designer: -- "Erm... really? White text on white background?"
Customer: -- "Make a decision by yourself. I was expecting much more independence from you. You are an expert after all."
Designer: -- "Well. I'm making decision by myself. The text will be placed *here* and will be gray-colored, because *bla-bla-bla*"
Customer: -- "I disagree."
Designer: *1 hour of silence later* -- "Well...k."

Act II: "Design meets ar(u)tist"
----

Items:
*Something, that was drawn by dumb kid while smashing his own head against desk. (PSD layout)
* Salt (to pour it on open wounds)

Designer: -- "I'm seeing this task *this way*"
Markup: -- "And how do u think i should get this done? Have you even seen what you made?? This is bullshit!"
Designer: -- "It's not bullshit! It's a sci-fi themed layout!"
Markup: -- "With gameplay elements and graphics from Alien Shooter??"
Designer: -- "Well, I don't care." *brings new edits and changes*
Markup: -- "????"
Designer: *smug face* -- "!!!"

Act III (7 days later, 9 hours till deadline): "Short story about boy, who was trying to hang himself, but instead fell out from window."
----

Items:
*Markup, smelling like it went through hell and back (x1)
* Markup coder with fried butt (x1)

Backend: -- "What. Is. THAT?"
Markup: -- "It's a work we should complete in 9 hours."
Backend: -- "WE?? I know u mean me, but that's a nightmare. What the f*ck were you doing all this time?"
Markup: -- "Well..." *finds out that he was only watching films and sleeping* "I was making this thing up..."
Backend: -- "You mean "f*cking" *this* thing "up"?"
Markup: -- "Not without it"

(*3 hours of edits and changes of color from white to white later*)
Backend: -- "Well, let's do this."
*Picks PHP and tries to bundle it up with MongoDB. After some time tries to rewrite everything to JS and starts shouting something like "F***CK" and looking for window to walk through. Figures out that he is on first floor. And that he is too lazy to go upstairs*

Act IV (3 days after deadline): "Pain and misery":
-----

Items:
*Something covered with insul(t)ating tape. (Final product)

Customer: -- "Really?"
Team: -- "Kinda."
Customer: -- "Well, thanks for your work anyway. It feels like it's going to disassemble right in my hands but it just works. Oh, also, you didnt made this in time, so your payment will be over9000 times lower. That's all"
Backend, on fluids: -- "Well...yeah..."
Markup: -- "Don't look at me like that. I really was doing my job."
Designer, with twitching eye: -- "Huh, I see. You worked so hard that we have nothing to eat now. Thanks for that."
Backend: ...

New floor opened in our office building last month or so.. they are filling it and now there is lack of chairs. So we typically can pay musical chair @office. This is my wallpaper made using gimp

I still have no internet at my new home. The technician will be here in 5 weeks. So I spend my time in the old flat sitting on the floor to get work done.

I'm developing a new (just for fun) programming language and I'm wondering what features I should add next? These features are already implemented:

- Printing text
- Variables
- user-input
- Datatype conversion (String, Int, Float, Bool, List, Dictionary)
- lists/arrays
- dictionaries
- Sorting
- Shuffling
- random numbers & choices
- Math stuff like: log, abs, floor, ceiling, sin, etc...
- Time & Date
- Working with files
- If-else statements
- Ternary operators
- Loops (for & while)
- Functions
- Classes
- Error handling
- Importing libraries & other scripts
- Arrow/callback functions
- Escaping (\)

is there anything you often use missing?

So the other day, I was working on some Python project when there was this bug that kept transforming. Like seriously, I would turn from "bool not defined" to "function does not exist" to literally "file does not exist"... within the FILE. And when I fixed them, new bugs kept popping up, and I couldn't find anything that was a problem. Nothing. There was this one function in there that, if I changed even the comments in there, would break. And so.... I turned off Atom and turned it on again. ( ha ) Didn't work. I restarted my computer. I copy pasted the file into another file. I used another IDE. I restarted GHCI. I restarted Jupyter Notebook... and after 6 hours... I found that it was because an if statement has a comparison between a bool and a bool, with a = in the middle. (not ==). I swear I almost threw the computer on the floor.

It seems like there is a whole another grade of fear — Basilisk grade. It’s impossible to experience it and walk away without serious consequences.

Imagine: I’m barely 20. It’s my first real, official, high-paying job. I’m already a team lead. A big Russian non-govt company with a blue logo. Huge new office in Moscow.
My “childhood” is officially over — I’m not playing around anymore. I’m an adult in every sense of the word.

Several weeks go by. Maybe even a month. Just a regular day at the office. I’m waiting for the coffee machine to heat up, and suddenly, it hits me. I’m here, at the office. Moscow, a city of 10 million people, is beautiful in the summer, yet I can’t just leave the office and go for a walk whenever I want to. When the day is over, it’s already evening, and I barely have time for myself. There are other people around me, with way higher positions, but their schedule is just the same as mine: nine-to-six. My adult life just started. I have forty years of this ahead of me. No matter the company, no matter the position: unless I’m the CEO, I’m doomed to get to work in the morning and go back home in the evening. And then I retire, old and not that beautiful anymore. And then that’s it.

I was never the same after that day. People are plotting my betrayal behind my back. They all act as one. Just out of my frame of view, their heads are turned to me, and they all look at me with the same devilish grin. There are no people — it’s all one huge shoggoth that lives under the office floor, and my colleagues are its ugly tentacles wrapped in human skin. I start missing deadlines. I become paranoid. Next thing I know, I’m at the psychiatrist’s office, being prescribed aripiprazol — a strong antipsychotic that is designed to literally make you slower. Anxiety worsens. I develop restless legs syndrome. I lose my ability to sleep. My intelligence is slipping away. I’m fired.

I have the return to Saint-Petersburg, cariprazine prescription that felt like lobotomy with extra steps, losing my ability to read, delirious manic episodes ahead of me.

It is only now that I kinda-sorta tuned my medication scheme in by going through countless psychiatrists of all sorts. But I sure as hell work at a place where I can do whatever I want if I meet deadlines.

Our keyboards/mouses are getting replaced (it's a matter of years) to Bluetooth ones. No spare batteries are given. From some of the offices the helpdesk where they give you new batteries are a few kilometers away, you have to call a shuttle...

Nobody communicated, but finally turned out that there is a floor responsible who has spare batteries. Of course, they are kept in a locked down cupboard, so each time that poor person has to be interrupted if someone has a drained battery.

Shall we stay with the gold old USB keyboards?

Trust me dude I can totally code but only alone and not with others around where no one can see me. Where no one can see me 🤥 Is there a Sunkist machine on the floor with my office? I'm the new senior developpah! Develll-opp-bah! Senyyyyawwww! Devel0PPA!🤪🙃

New office stories during the emotional turmoil...

Story 1: The creepy fuck

So being unaware of the fact that I was connected with this guy on LinkedIn already.

Ron walks upto my desk and greets me on my first day on floor. Weird, but whatever.

I politely interact, because gotta make friends and create my following to get shit done.

The next day, randomly comes asking for a laptop sticker and I am like WTF! He is like sticker was an excuse, I just wanted to say Hi!

👀

Day 3: same random creep shit. Talks about personal topics and invades personal space uninvited.

Day 4: Keeps starring at me while I ignore and judges me evidently with stupid suggestions on how to exist without being asked for.

Fuck this guy.

Story 2: The classic case of Dunning Kruger effect

So I get introduced to my tech team today and everyone start piling on me to guide them on decision making. The CTO creates a Slack thread with me and Co-founder asking me to get things moving on priority.

The co-founder shut him out right away. Fucking hilarious.

But, a retard starts schooling me on how to use Slack. Lmfao.

Me being polite, said I'll follow.. dude starts bragging on how he wrote company policy to get everyone on Slack yada yada..

To be honest, the Slack experience is beyond broken based on what these idiot has setup.

He literally opened my Slack and responded to the CTO thread.

That's where I got pissed. I upfront told him that hey! Calm your tiddies down. I know how to use Slack. I have used it since it was in the beta.

I have been in much much mucy bigger orgs and places more well structured than what you have here.

I told him on his face what the flaws where and how I felt a downgrade from where I am coming from.

The look on his face was priceless and he started sweating. Lol

Never again he'll school anyone.

I mean I understand if you are humble and genuinely guiding a new hire. But being cocky unnecessarily and shoving things down my throat without yourself knowing shit or know about the other person is purely asshole move.

Anyway, I am still upset about the scam. Fuck this world.

New colleague;
This guy; smacks on his desk to make things work. I sit across him, facing. Fidgets with his body on the transmitting wooden floor, my monitors are twitching, and my chair feels like I am riding the back of a horse, or sitting on a washing machine 🥲. Damn it 🥲

I was in a hurry
this Asian chick grabbed me and not let me pass
I kept slinking out of her grip
she kept grabbing me again
I said "no I'm serious, I gotta go"
I pulled more violently
she fell on the floor
she pulled me down with her
she grabbed my legs
I started kicking her off
a kick to her shoulder dislocated it, but she kept going anyway
I'm trying to get up and kicking
I look back and now even her face is busted
yet she's still going at me, grabbing, pulling
what the fuck?

then the scene changes to a forest
we're in a band and trying to survive out there
by now the jig is up
encounter a person in a clearing, sledgehammer him in the face to disable him so he doesn't notice us
except that didn't do shit. his skull caved in, his bones are broken, but he's moving and moaning to try to get to you. he's not a zombie either. he's alive. looks perfectly alive. but his bones are broken and he's still moving and going. what the fuck do you do?
the bones start moving underneath his skin, he's just reorganizing and reinventing his body live
they're unkillable
the fuck you do now?

I used to have a lot of zombie dreams but what the fuck is this new shit

today has been one of the worst day of my life

- the parking situation went out of hand : i bought a new car 2 days ago, nd since last 2 days i have been just taking it out to practice for 1 hr in morning with the trainer. today one of our pesky neighbour took this opportunity and parked in our spot. i had to call my friend in the early morning to get it parked in a place far away from home . my new car is parked in an unsafe place , just because the neighbour wants to make me mad 😭

- office announced that since cto is coming, you must do wfo fod next 2 days. our office is tuesday nd Thursday, now i will have to go on friday too. plus our team lead is coming, so next weekend is going to be 4days wfo. they are giving random surprises, why not just tell us that its full wfo?

- one of our neighbour's bike got stolen in plain sight. our road is usually having a lot of people going around whole day, as its opposite to park. nd those neighbours have a hon ground floor, so they are almost always outside. we have installed a camera just 2 days ago, nd that caught the incident live. i am 100% sure that if my car had been parked here today, then it would have been my car 😭😭😭

- we friends went for a night stroll in my car. the car was mine, but my friend was driving it as he's experienced. we stopped at a food joint. i took the key from him for sometime because i was having fun playing with it . then when we were heading out, our key was gone!
i almost had a mini heart attack. my friends were not messing up with me. fortunately the restaurant had cameras , so we requested for cctv footage. in the footage we found that i accidentally put the key in the restaurant menu. and that fucking guy had taken away the menu!!!
imagine if he had given that menu to someone else 😭😭😭. our car would have been gone in a moment, as we were not even seeing the car from the window. imagine if the restaurant didn't had the fucking cameras 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

life fucks super bad in a moment of truth

i am 24 and i feel like i am making some very bad choices with money.
my last few regretful stuff:

- i bought a phone when i found my current one (less than 6 months old) to be slightly less peformant. what's worse is that i don't even like that phone i purchased a lower end phone just coz i felt like experiencing a new phone brand!

- i bought an earpods when i lost my old one. whats worse is that they are lost somewhere at home, and i might find them once i life some beds and other heavy stuff ( although i searched significantly)

- i bought a freaking macbook some months ago. i guess that's not a majorly had investment but its being rarely used as i can't play any games in it(feel like it's a good thing though) and i have to sometimes vsit my old hp laptop to run some softwares as m1 sometimes sucks

- i got into an argument with my dad and recently slammed their phone on floor, then bought them a new one . i regret my angry self that day

- i got myself a personal trainer at gym for additional fees even though i am a beginner. our gym has 4 trainers and they provide basic directions for free of cost , i did not needed that guy.

- i recently bought a few track suits which , although i don't regret buying, i felt that i could get them at cheaper price at my local markets.

plus there are many other stuff that if i look into my amazon or flipkart history , i will regret more.

i need help with this shit. i am spending like 5-20% of my salary on regretful stuff, so its not a bad ratio but i still need to control.
send help :'(

If you have an old computer, here's what to do:
1. Find a tall building with a window, preferably on the top floor.
2. Throw your computer out of said window.
3. Enjoy your new computer!

Story of two poor puppies

when my mom returned from market, she saw a puppy with her
siblings surrounded by people choosing which one to take.
she pick one puppy. she's color is grayish black puppy with the tip
of his tail and a place in she's neck.

she whined and cried when she separated from her siblings and Mom.
but she quickly familiarize herself with the new family and place.
she was very happy when we bring her sister we found in the same place.
I take care of them.
I feed, wash and play with the new friends.
we built them a house. they were very happy and playful.
but things started to go downhill all of a sudden.
my parents start to prevent me from playing with them.
they say " We bring the puppies for them to be guards ".
they really hate dogs. they started to lock
the house and the window. they had to pass all day in the
same place
(How BORING) they pee there, eat there sleep there.
Since me and my sis prevented from take care of them, we couldn't
do anything all this only to make them cruel dogs and very unfriendly
to people.
when time pass, they started to forget them.
before yesterday, we remembered that we didn't
give them any food or water for the past 3 DAYS !!!
my sister unlock the door for them and they get out
from the house (~Prison~). they were completely
different. the gray puppy was very tired and depressed
and unhealthily skinny. the sister was fine.

we let them outside for few days when the gray puppy
started to get more and more skinny.

he lies on the floor all the day, when we are nearby, she
only wag it's tail no more.

Today, I wake up only to hear the bad story
the gray puppy, well we found her 0x00DEAD ! ! ! !

immediately after I heard the phrase, I burst into tears
I really couldn't stop crying. I couldn't even see that
cute face 0x00DEAD.

My sister's case was way worse than me. the is still
crying at the time of writing. we didn't see their funeral.

the other puppy was very sad because of her sibling

The Worst part is, we didn't name them or take ANY
photo with them !!! :`(

Today, an hour left of work, our team was brought to an all-hands meeting. 20 mins later, I learned why our team was so often left out when getting a 3rd dev.
Someone higher up decided to move our train to another part of the state (it's birth place was where it is now). And that same person decided to localize all teams on a train to the same location too... which means my team is getting killed. We have an estimated lifespan of a few months.

...and here I thought moving to an open floor plan was gonna be horrible. The new location is 200 miles north (an hour 30 via the free campus bus). This won't be a fun coming new year.

TL;DR As time goes by, I'm feel deeply in love with linux. An infatuation? :D

Before, I really dont mind how the file system works, permission setup, library installation, etc. as long I finished my project (before like 90% of the time I copy paste cmds). But now, after many hair pulling while debugging times, crying while rolling on the floor moments, and painful production deployments (wtf! it's working on my machine/dev server rants), it helps me clearly realized how amazing it is. I might be relatively new with the OS compare to others so maybe what I feel like now is like having a crush on someone in a bus :). But still, I just wanted to say thank you to all who are giving their time in developing/improving linux distros - you are heroes!

I'm hoping that I can contribute something soon :)

senti_mode off

Warning - Not IT related.

Long ago, I had a chemist professor who told us a story. She worked in a laboratory where they have studied cristal formations, so basically made a liquid highly capable to form cristals, and they watched them forming, doing tests and so on. In the meantime new building of the campus opened and they had to move the lab to the new location, which was a fourth floor of newly made building. Few of them started to work there even before they moved the old materials and equipment and they started few cristalisation studies, the interesting part is that the cristals didn't formed. She said that at the end they had many cups with prepared liquid and apsolutely no cristals for weeks, but one day the lead researcher arrived with the old, already formed cristals, from the old lab, and toon those inside of the room with prepared cups all the cristals started to form at the same time. After telling us a story she asked us not to tell this to anyone because the science currently doesn't accept this phenomenon and we will be demonised and looked fools it the scientific community.

This story made a hole in my brain...
It was like 10 years ago, and as a problem solver I still have sometimes some weird ideas about it, and strange explanations comming from nothing, and without any deep understanding of quantum physics or even cristalisation. :D