Someone from the higher ups had received complaints that I don’t answer my phone enough.

My boss told them I wasn’t hired here to provide phone support.

Overheard a phone call between the Senior Network Engineer and a contracted Printer-company at 9am this morning. Photocopier was giving a 'functional error' message on-screen and not printing;

N.E:
I logged this call last
Thursday afternoon. Thats 1.5 days of the photocopier not working on our busiest site! Where's the engineer??
.... yes, that's the error message.
Yes, i can log into it, you should have the IP address from the call.
Yes, it's obviously pinging too.
Yes.... we've power-cycled the printer multiple times...
yes, tried that too...
yes, I've unplugged the network cable as well... left it for 15 minutes.
... sorry. What?
What did you say?
Are you f***ing kidding me?
Would you also like me to rub the side of the f***ing machine, and say a prayer while I'm at it??
*takes a deep breath*
Fine, I'll do that but when it doesn't work, i want someone out on the site before lunchtime today!
*slams phone down angrily*

N.E to me as he stomps out of the office;
He wants me to get the user to unplug the network cable and do a power cycle. How the f**k is that going to help? Idiots! Don't know why we have a contract with them, i could do a better job!!!

*comes back into office 5 minutes later*

Me: did it fix it?
NE: yeah. Damn.
*leaves room again to make apologetic phonecall*

It's official I just got a phonecall after my interview/2h test today!

I'm starting my first software developer job on Monday! 🤓🎉

.. so I'm back here finally after a few months as I thought I didn't belong , but now I do, yay ,

🙏🏼

(Written March 13th at 2am.)

This morning (yesterday), my computer decided not to boot again: it halts on "cannot find firmware rtl-whatever" every time. (it has booted just fine several times since removing the firmware.) I've had quite the ordeal today trying to fix it, and every freaking step along the way has thrown errors and/or required workarounds and a lot of research.

Let's make a list of everything that went wrong!

1) Live CD: 2yo had been playing with it, and lost it. Not easy to find, and super smudgy.

2) Unencrypt volume: Dolphin reports errors when decrypting the volume. Research reveals the Live CD doesn't incude the cryptsetup packages. First attempts at installing them mysteriously fail.

3) Break for Lunch: automatic powersaving features turned off the displays, and also killed my session.

4) Live CD redux: 25min phonecall from work! yay, more things added to my six-month backlog.

5) Mount encrypted volume: Dolphin doesn't know how, and neither do I. Research ensues. Missing LVM2 package; lvmetad connection failure ad nauseam; had to look up commands to unlock, clone, open, and mount encrypted Luks volume, and how to perform these actions on Debian instead of Ubuntu/Kali. This group of steps took four hours.

6) Chroot into mounted volume group: No DNS! Research reveals how to share the host's resolv with the chroot.

7) `# apt install firmware-realtek`: /boot/initrd.img does not exist. Cannot update.

8) Find and mount /boot, then reinstall firmware: Apt cannot write to its log (minor), listed three install warnings, and initially refused to write to /boot/initrd.img-[...]

9) Reboot!: Volume group not found. Cannot process volume group. Dropping to a shell! oh no..

(Not listed: much research, many repeated attempts with various changes.)

At this point it's been 9 hours. I'm exhausted and frustrated and running out of ideas, so I ask @perfectasshole for help.
He walks me through some debugging steps (most of which i've already done), and we both get frustrated because everything looks correct but isn't working.

10) Thirteenth coming of the Live CD: `update-initramfs -u` within chroot throws warnings about /etc/crypttab and fsck, but everything looks fine with both. Still won't boot. Editing grub config manually to use the new volume group name likewise produces no boots. Nothing is making sense.

11) Rename volume group: doubles -'s for whatever reason; Rebooting gives the same dreaded "dropping to a shell" result.

A huge thank-you to @perfectasshole for spending three hours fighting with this issue with me! I finally fixed it about half an hour after he went to bed.

After renaming the volume group to what it was originally, one of the three recovery modes managed to actually boot and load the volume. From there I was able to run `update-initramfs -u` from the system proper (which completed without issue) and was able to boot normally thereafter.

I've run updates and rebooted twice now.
After twelve+ hours... yay, I have my Debian back!

oof.

Client called the office in an angry voice complaining about how he could nog see the data in the latest generated excel sheets. Calmy tryimg to figure out what could be the problem. Asked him to send over the file so I could check it. Works perfect on my end. Ask him to open the file again on his computer and tell me what he is seeing. Error message, empty excel file. He starts to me discribing a directory full of files and folders. 15 minutes later I finally figuren out what it is.

The guy had set winzip as default program for excel files. Hoe do these people work behind a PC Evert day. Are they like I hope this magic box with screen and buttond does everything right today.

OH MY FUCKING GOD XD

My female coworker was in an phonecall with my boss and he was sharing his desktop.

He is not the smartest so he forgot about sharing his desktop after the phonecall.

We are watching since half an hour while he is answering his e-mails :D and he don't even notice XD

Today I had the most f...g ABSURD and POINTLESS meeting with the client ever, that was arranged by the sales! I drove f...g 100km there and f...g 100km back to have a meeting that lasted about 20 minutes. And it's not even the worst yet. It turned out that I was not even the right person to be there. So guess what - the whole meeting boiled down to me making a phonecall on a loudspeaker to the f...g right person. I have wasted half a day and I HAVE OFFICIALY BECAME THE MOST EXPENSIVE PHONE HOLDER!! Not that I have not insisted a few times before to make a call to ensure that the meeting is necessary at all.

Context: one of my dad's friends is a veterinarian and he's opening a new clinic. My dad is renovating the building and I'm supposed to handle the IT part (Ethernet cables, server, laptops etc.).

Last Monday I get a phonecall from the veterinarian (which I'll be calling boss from now on) that he plans to open the next Monday. I ask him what hardware is bought and if anything is already done. As you can probably guess, the only hardware bough are Ethernet cables (with no plugs) that my dad run under the floor half a year ago.

After a brief wtf?! I asked him what he needs. The conversation goes like this (shortened a bit):
> What do you want/need?
< Make it good
> What?
< Make it so that the network lasts for years
> Ok, but what do you want? Do you want cameras? WiFi? How many PCs and laptops? What software will you use for client/patient management?
< Yes, I want cameras. Look around and decide where would be best. Clients won't need WiF, so don't botheri. I think one pc and two laptops will be fine.
> Ok, what software do you use? What does it need on the server?
< Don't worry about that. I signed a deal for a monthly subscription. I got a special offer where if I sign it for at least a year I get 10% off.

// We had this conversation about 2 month earlier. I was against cloud software because internet here is flaky at best and if the company goes out of business he loses all client data

> Why would you do that? I told you it's a bad idea because [above comment]
< Yeah, but [his employee] convinced me. He said that with cloud he'll be able to check that stuff even from his home.
> I could've set it up so that he could do it anyway. Whatever, did you get an internet connection to the building?
< Well, I've been considering getting LTE...
> Stop. You already made one mistake. If you also get an unreliable internet you risk having to close the clinic when you lose connection due to storm.

// Here he tried to argue a bit, but I was able to convince him to not do the stupidest thing he could

< Oh, and can you make it so that when I'm here I have internet on my phone and laptop?

At this point I just wanted to smack him in the face.

Anyways, a week and a half later the clinic is still closed. Not just because half of the stuff needed arrived last Friday, but mostly because the building is not usable yet. The renovations on second and third floor haven't even started yet.

And there is still no internet connection. Last Friday I even went to a local ISP (with his permission) to get everything done and he just has to go and sign the contract. When I asked him today about it he said he still hasn't been there.

!dev sucks++
Soo, my GF who I moved to Germany for wrote that we needed to talk on Friday (today is Monday).
I was away for the weekend, and yester I asked what I could expect when I got home.
She wrote that we could hug, but not kiss...
One short phonecall later, she had broken up...

So now I will have to figure out what I will do... I don't have a home anymore (moved into her apartment), my job sucks, so nothing left...

Hold me

I hate phonecalls so i rarely do them. Today my project lead called me with a question and he just couldnt hear me. This was my fourth phonecall in 2 years time with this phone. And everytime they couldnt hear me. After switching to speaker they do.

Today I found out that my pinky is blocking the mic since its on the left side of the charger port. I guess Ive got a phone for lefthanded people. I hope I remember this in six months.

I can't stand talking to clients on the phone!

One of my first freelancing clients used to talk to me for an hour at a time. I really wish I could have billed him by the hour, it took him twice as long to explain anything and then I'd have to get back in the mindset for what I was working on. The phone is just so disruptive.

I'm so much happier working for a company where the project manager deals with the client's and product managers.

Firts social hacking ever 😁😁😁

In the bus at the end of the day
Me:(fake phonecall to Bell)ho you offert me a 10go of data per months for 30$ ! Wow

Guy in bus: he call is phone company and give all is Private information in the bus to have a better deal.

Me: poke him and say "you know now i can create accounts on your billing address for free"

Guy: Holy shit man you are right i need to take care.

Me: now change all you password contains what you publicly said.

Me: have a good day 😋

When the best event of the day is a business phonecall and you are a developer.

Customer actually gets what we do, is excited about it and is willing to put in some effort.

I have the bad luck to deal with clients who want to phonecall me. "It's quicker", they say.

I hate that, Im not asking them to use Trello, but at least write an email...

Its clear they didn't work seriously in their lifes.

I usually switch off the phone all day.

Manager to External : <badEnglish>We have problem with data feed, please fix</badEnglish>

External: Here's the situation <gives situation>
Me: Thank you! Here's the situation, but corrected <corrected situation>. Can we arrange a phone call on Friday or Monday?
External: Sure! whenever you like

Manager, this morning: where is the meeting for the phonecall?

Now I'm her fucking assistant. I had a glance a her calendar, it's full of full.

She'll soon ask me to cook for her and make her coffee too...

Shitty I don't have the qualifications for a proper developer job :((

don't respond to those phone calls - fraud attempt...