Me: hey I have a major issue I need to discuss. Would you be free tomorrow at any of these times: A, B or C?

Him: Yes

Me: ... ... ... ok I’ve a new issue I need to discuss with you right now!

Best part of working from home? Oh boy, here I go

1. NO COMMUTE !! Fuck public transport. I can just grab my laptop straight to my bed, get comfortable and work in whatever posture I wish to.

2. Relaxation and peace of mind. The local park, library, football ground. I can go anywhere to get work done. All I need is my phone and laptop.

3. Better food - I can cook my own food. Dieting actually works by eating home-made food and not the fried bullshit we eat outside.

4. No office politics - Remote working means you don't have to think about being a circle and getting liked or not. Get your work done and that's it.

5. No "Extra" Activities - We all know HRs are just bored af people making employees have "fun" activities just to push a "culture" agenda on LinkedIn. Umm no thanks.

6. No toxicity - Well, this one is a doozie, you don't get workplace toxicity but you do get home toxicity. People assuming that you stay in ur room all day and do nothing. I'd still take home toxicity though.

7. If there is no work, I don't have to pretend that I am working and hiding my screen from my boss. I can just play video games in that time.

8. Option to start a side-hustle. You have more chances to retain some energy after your shift to start investing/putting time into something that can make you extra cash.

9. Worldwide opportunities - Because of WFH, I work with clients from Netherlands, Estonia, London and Cayman Islands. It never would have happened if I was in an office job.

10. Only work, no extra bullshit - be it smoke breaks, casual tea, conferences, work summits etc. None of that and I don't want it.

11. Your errands get done - Need to go to the dentist at 10 am? You can do that. Need to pick up your kid at 3 pm? You can do that. You need 5 pm time dedicated to go the gym? You can do that.

In conclusion, I absolutely vouch for WFH and would never take WFO for as long as possible.

WFH FTW !!!

This morning:
SLACK HAS A DARK THEME! ALL GLORY TO THE AMAZING SLACK TEAM! SLACK FOR PRESIDENT!

This afternoon:
OH GOD THIS THEME MAKES ME WANT TO SCOOP THE EYES OUT OF MY SOCKETS THE FONT LOOKS UGLIER THAN THE PILE OF SKINFAT I SCRAPED OFF MY MOUSE ITS AWFUL I NEED HUGS SEND HELP

Thanks, companies, for trying, I guess.

I love dark themes, but the ones provided are often even worse than the light themes.

They go overboard with extreme black/white contrasts, pick a super weird hue of puke-gray, or certain elements are unreadable.

So, please, instead of wasting the time of your designers on something that's clearly too difficult for them.... how about just making it easy to create community themes for your app?

Especially if it's an electron app, how hard is it to add a config option to import a CSS file, and provide one template as an example?

Like most people I needed some extra cash during uni, so I proceeded to learn CSS + Photoshop (yeah, I know). Followed by PHP and WordPress.

It can be a very shitty platform until you realize that you can stop combining plug-ins from all over the place with dubious code quality and roll your own.

Anyhow I kept at it until I was able to join a niche company doing a quite popular caching plug-in for WP (yeah, W3 Total) when I suddenly became *very* interested in anything and everything performance.

This landed me a very cozy consulting gig in the Nordics - they were using WP for an elephant-traffic website and had run into a myriad of perf issues.

Fixing them and breaking the monolith awarded me with skills in nodejs, linux, asynchronous caching among others.

I was soon in charge with managing the dev boxes for the entire team, and when the main operations dude left, I was promoted to owning the entire platform. (!) Tinkering with Linux for most of my life really came in handy here. (remember Debian potato?)

Used saltstack + aws cloudformation to achieve full parity between all environments. Learned myself some python and all various tips and tricks which in the end amounted to 90% reduction in time-to-first-byte and considerable cost savings.

By the end of the 2yr contract I had turned myself into a fullstack systems engineer and never looked back.

Lawyers not getting along resulted in us having to abandon NewRelic, so I got to learn and deploy the ELK stack as a homegrown replacement, which was super-fun.

Now I work in the engineering effectiveness department of a Swedish fintech unicorn where all languages under the Sun are an option (tho we prefer Python), so the tech stack is unlimited. Infinite tools and technologies, but with strong governing principles and with performance always in mind so as to pick the right tool for the job.

It's like that childhood feeling when you've just dumped a ton of Lego on the floor and are about to build something massive.

I guess the morale here is however disappointed you feel by your current stack - don't. Always strive to make things better, faster, more decoupled, easier to test, etc. and always challenge yourself to go outside the comfort zone.

Windows: I have updates, please pick an option:
* Update and shut down
* Update and reboot

Me: Ok, update and shut down

Windows: Updates and reboots

Fucking Amazon rant again...

TLDR: Amazon specializes in “the last mile”. They are repeatedly allowing a 3rd party shipper (Purolator) destroy their main value proposition. Thoughts at the end.

Me on the phone with their support...

Me: so it says my package was attempted to be delivered today. I did not get a call or notification or anything and I have been working from home all day to wait for the package.

Support: -Sigh- yes, I can see it was Purolator we have been having trouble with them lately.

Me: ok, so are you able to see what happened?

Support: let me put you on hold.

.......

Support: So they said they will not call for a delivery, did they use your building buzzer?

Me: Nope, just stood outside the building and then left I guess.

Support: -sigh- Well you can pick it up at their depot. Let me get you the address.

Me: The one by the airport?

Support: Yes it looks like it is about an hour away from where you are. And they are only open during work hours.

Me: So, after working from home to get this package you advice is to take 3 hours off work and go there to pick it up?

Support: Well, we can refund it? If thats what you want.

Me: No, I would like the package I ordered please.

Support: There is nothing I can do sir.

Me: So before I hang up let me see if I have it straight. When I order a package from Amazon, do I have an option of who ships it?

Support: No, I’m sorry but that is decided on our end.

Me: And I have had this problem before with this shipping agent. So, your telling me that when I ship things to me with Amazon that I have no control of wether I even get the package? Your telling me it is literally a coin toss as to wether or not I ever get my package?

Support: yes sir, I’m sorry but that is all I can do.

Me: So you realize that, for example, if I went to my local grocery store and it was a coin toss that I could take my groceries home (even after I paid for them) then I will always go to another store....

Support: yes, I know. There is nothing I can do.

Me: So from now on I have to order items, wait for them to be shipped, check the shipper and then cancel the order of it is them?

Support: -sigh- you cannot cancel an order after it has shipped...

Me: wow. Sure is great being a prime and audible member. I get fast delivery of 50% of my packages and no delivery at all of the other 50%. Sorry for the sarcasm...

Support: I’m sorry I can’t help more.

Me: So just to clarify. I can expect NOT to get the package I ordered?

Support: sorry

Me: have a nice day.

————

Here are my thoughts as a student of business...

Amazon specializes in “the last mile” (in their delivery service anyway) and when they deliver the package they also deliver on that value proposition.

However, now it seems that one of their shipping providers is failing at getting packages that last mile, which is resulting and destroying the idea of their value proposition in a customers eyes. (Affecting more than me as the rep said)

Now, instead of believing that Amazon will get things to me, saving me that last mile trip to the store etc., I firmly believe that it is a toss up as to wether I will ever receive my package (based on carrier)

I know that if I was in Amazon’s position (a carrier hurting my overall value proposition with consistently unacceptable service) that I would come down on them with a force they have never seen or drop them entirely.

But of course, every company reaches a point where they have such market share and sway that they take their eye off the ball when it comes to their value proposition to customers.

!dev
I'M SO GONNA GET MY OWN LOCKPICKING SET AND LEARN HOW TO FUCKING PICK LOCKS. I'M SICK OF GETTING LOCKED OUT OF MY OWN FUCKING ROOM. "WHY DON'T YOU USE A KEY?" YOU ASK? GOOD QUESTION. MY JERKBAG ARSEHOLE PARENTS DECIDED TO NOT GIVE ME A FUCKING KEY FOR MY OWN FUCKING ROOM *FOR 6 GODDAM YEARS* SINCE WE'VE MOVED IN. "WHY DON'T YOU JUST GO TO THE LOCKSMITH OR SOME SHIT-" DO YOU I THINK I CAN JUST FUCKING WALTZ IN, ASK FOR THE KEY AND BRING IT TO THE FUCKING LOCKSMITH TO GET A DUPLICATE? AS IF THEY WOULD!!! AND NOW I'M GONNA GET EITHER AN F OR GO FULL SUICIDAL BECAUSE COFFEE THROUGH THE NIGHT IS NOT A FUCKING OPTION FOR ME. BECAUSE ALL THE FUCKING MATERIAL I HAVE FOR MY GODDAM ASSIGNMENT, ALONG WITH MY LAPTOP IS IN MY FUCKING ROOM. THANKS DAD! YOU SURE ARE HELPFUL AS FUCK! FUCK YOU!

Tried to find and download drivers for a Dell laptop, but no matter what I got redirected to pages in Finnish. There's a country selector - also in Finnish. However, in my country we speak Swedish. Åland Islands is not an option in the country list, and Sweden is not called anything even remotely close to Sverige or Sweden in Finnish...so unless you happen to know Finnish you'll have to pick a country haphazardly until you find a language where you can at least understand the word Sweden. Once finally on the Swedish page, if you click your way forward on the support pages, you end up on the Finnish page again...AAARGH! Dell, if you want to be helpful then do it right! Once again, in Åland Islands, we speak Swedish. Even if Dell would acknowledge my country, making any assumptions about the user's language merely based on their geographical location, is flat out stupid! Have those morons at Dell never heard about multi-lingual countries? Or commuters? Tourists? Newsflash: In AD 2016 the world is multicultural and people also tend to travel abroad.

Thanks google for creating the illusion of an option to change the shipping address for a repair order. You even mention the new address in your notification email, but when I click on UPS tracking, I can see that you sent the shipment to the old address, which is in a different city where I can't quickly go to pick up my repaired phone. After charging an extra 95,- Euros for additional damage supposedly not covered by my warranty. Lucky you that my old phone had connection problems with the shitty Vodafone station wi-fi router, which is one of the few reasons that I still even want to use a google hardware product. Thanks google for just being slightly less wretched and mediocre than your competitors, that might grant you some more years before you will be buried in history forever. Pixel phones are just like Macbooks: high quality product and good marketing, good enough to make your customer accept everything else being bullshit. Google search is even worse, but based on the same concept: just suck a little less than your competitors but don't waste any effort trying to actually be really good at anything.

I've lost count of the days at this point...

First things first, lets all praise musky for getting David Bowie stuck in my head for the next month or so, not a bad thing, his song choice was on point. Also the rants have become few and far between because apparently I have to be an "adult" and go to work, pay my bills, and other things that distract me from programming.

Okay, now to the actual dev stuff. I've started to think that maybe my scope of languages is limited somewhat to my comfort zone, which is only java at this point. So for my project (game development), I've decided to pick a language based on what will work best instead of what I'm comfortable with, my runners so far...

C++: The default go to for game development. I would chose this but if I did, my best C++ game would look like Frankenstein's monster and would be filled with terrible code. For that alone I have scratched C++ from my list, for lack of experience.

Java: My usual, my go to, my comfort zone. I don't want to be comfortable though, I want to learn things. That asides, java has tones of resources, frameworks, libraries, and tutorials available. In addition, it's also able to run on pretty much anything, huge ++. The cons are trying to find the best resources, frameworks, libraries, and tutorials to use for a particular situation and that can be hard and confusing. Java may still be my go to but I'll get to that with the next language.

C#: I have never touched C# in my life, and the only things I know about it are what I've heard or read. So far I've heard it is SIMILAR to java, based around C++, and has aged really well compared to other languages. I like that it is similar to java without it being the same language, it will force me to learn things over and you can never reinforce the basics enough. It also has the huge benefit of being Microsoft based while still running on iOS, linux, macOS, windows, and android. This gives me really easy access to implement a mobile version (in the future obviously), while being able to run well on windows, the default OS for most gamers.

Overall I will start writing in C# and see if I like it. If I don't it's no big deal, I still have a good option in java to fall back on. I'm open to hearing opinions on this topic, java vs. C# but please keep your bias nonexistent and you constructive conversation very high. If any actual game developers that have experience with both languages are out their, and reading this, please comment so I can pick your brain.

Some of you may ask about the android scholarship, I contacted google and told them android development wasn't for me so they sent someone a late invite and rescinded mine, hopefully someone else will put it to better use.

Holy god this is long. I'm sorry.

So, I have been offered two jobs at the same company (big, global corp)

1. RPA coordinator or operator or business analyst. Completely new to me, they're happy with my background enough so that I could learn on the job. RPA is new in this place and they're creating team from scratch.

2. Member of IT security team where most of my work would be split between things that interest me greatly - vulnerabilities, fixing them and pen testing.

I'm not sure what to pick, really.

Option 1 seems to be way more future proof and seems like a lifetime opportunity to get into something relatively new, potentially more ££ down the road.
Option 2 is what I already spent some time learning and I have quite a big interest in. I've always been less of a programmer and more of an admin/sec guy.

Tbh before option 1 called me yesterday I thought that option 2 is a dream job for me. Now I'm all in doubt.