Mac: Suddenly turns off
Me: Fuck my code..F***
Mac: No response at all
Me: reset SMC etc etc
Mac: I am dead (no battery detection, dies after 10 min on power adaptor)
Me: Skips a heart beat..(Git, oh yea git)

**Takes Mac to store, After diagnosis**

Apple Freaking Genius (AG): Your Mac has a mother board problem it needs to be replaced.
Me: Hmm what is the problem exactly??
AG: Issues in logic board and some other components.
Me: How much?
AG: Out of warranty so $$$ (60% of original amount)
Me: (wtf?) Really
AG: It's entire motherboard replacement .. bla bla

**Bring it home > open > everything seems ok on multimeter as per circuit diagram > finally finds a voltage drop that is not consistent > minute short circuit > remove > check further > nothing else > reassemble > hit power button > starts fine > freaking battery detected > works fine**

0 $ repair

Fixes two more devices @ 0 $ in friend circle

Builds a raspberry pi backup laptop with 3d printed body..Ubuntu.. you know can't live without a computer

#ThugLife #Engineer

I'm lacking a rubber duck at my office. I asked for one, but the company won't buy one. Instead they offered me a 1m x 1m sheet of bubble wrap, which they replace every day. Love my new place.

Linux sucks.

Now now, chill. I'm using it as my main OS for a few years now. I know what I'm talking and this title is a bit click-baity, but this just has to go out there:

1. It's usable as a Windows replacement just fine - FALSE. XFCE4 is years old and buggy as hell especially on multi-monitor set-up, Gnome3 gets stuck more often than my Windows 98 machine used to, KDE is like a rich kid on meth. Plug in Bluetooth headphones? Well no, sorry, you have to research that online, since you'll probably need to install some packages for it to work. Did I say "work"? Well no, because after more research you realize that Debian on Gnome3 on gdm3 launches pulseaudio on its own, so you have 2 instances of pulseaudio, and one of them is stealing your headphones sometimes and you either have no sound or shitty sound. How do I know that you ask? The same way I know everything else - every time you try to do something new on any Linux, it involves a ton of research. Exciting research, don't get me wrong, but at this point it looks more like a toy than a reliable desktop computer operating system.

2. And why am I using pulseaudio? Why not alsa? years ago people were discussing on forums that pulseaudio is old and dead, yet here we are with new LTS release of Ubuntu still shining with Pulseaudio. How about several different service management systems being deprecated by new ones, each having different configurations and calling methods? Apparently systemd is old and lame now. It's a mix of 10 year old software that works badly, with a 5 year old replacement that works worse, somehow trying to live under the same roof. Does it work? Ask my headphones who sound like a fucking dial-up modem.

3. Let's talk about displays, shall we? xorg is old and deprecated, right? We got Wayland that's mostly stable. Don't know what that is? That's just basic knowledge for Linux. And when you try to install network-manager, it also tries to install Mir toolkits. Because why the fuck not install 3 display managers when you want a network manager, of which one is old and dying, one is young and stupid, and another is an infant that died of cancer?

4. Want to integrate with Google Drive? Yeah, there's a tool that mounts the drive as a local directory. Yeah only for Ubuntu. Want it on Debian? You need to compile it. Oh wait, it's on Ocaml, because fuck mainstream languages, we're hipsters. How do you compile Ocaml? Well you need to have Ocaml on your system, dummy. How do you do that? Well you need to compile Ocaml. Ok, how do I do that? Well, git clone, download and install some dependencies, configure, make... oh sorry, you're using libssl1.0.2g when you need libssl1.0.1f, nope, sorry, won't work. Want to install libssl1.0.1f? Why? You already have the "g", stupid! Want to remove libssl1.0.2g? Bye-bye literally everything that you have on your PC. But at least you got the "f". Does it work now? Well no, because you need libssl1.0.2g for another dependency to work.
And all I ever wanted was to get a fucking document from google drive (not nudes, I promise).

5. Want to watch a movie? Let me tear that screen in half and make the bottom half late by a couple of frames, because who needs vertical sync, right? Oh you do? Well install the native drivers maybe. Oh you have? Welcome to eternal Boot to Recovery mode, motherfucka!

---------------------------------

Yeah, most of the times things work just fine. But the reason I know what those things are and how they work is not curiosity. The reason that I know the inner workings of Linux much better than the inner workings of Windows, is because in those few years that I've been using it full time, it has caused me 10 times more headache than I have ever experienced with other systems. And it's not the usual annoyances like "OMG it rebooted when I didn't ask it to", but more like "Oh, it won't work and I need 2 days to find out why" kind of stuff, because even if you experience the same thing again, it's always caused by some new shit and the old solution won't work any more.

I still love it, and will continue to use it. I don't know why really. Maybe because I'm not afraid of fucking it up any more? Maybe because I can do what I want in it and recovering will be easier than on Windows?
It's a toy for me, after all these years. And I also use it for professional reasons.

But whenever someone presents it as a better alternative to Windows, I just want to puke.

My friend silently quited his job. He simply stopped coming to work and that is OK, because his contract expired last Monday. He worked for very bad company, where everyone was braging about how awesome dev they are and know everything better than him. Since company forgot to talk with him about contract renewal or to find a replacement, they are now in big troubles because braggers broke production and none know how to fix it :)

Tldr :
Office Building : 1
Population: 5000
Number of PC users: 5000
No of Spare mice: 0

Day 1:
Training period commences.
My mouse laser sensor doesn't work.

Solution: Use this mouse to log in to your system.
Open the company portal.
Connect to vpn.
Enter username password.
Create a ticket for mouse replacement.
Done.

Day 3
I bring my own mouse.
Confiscated at security.
Becomes a security violation.

Day 9
I get a call from helpdesk.
Agent- what is the problem?
Me- my mouse is not working.
Agent- why?
Me- what do you mean? Something is wrong with the sensor.
Agent- clean the sensor.
Disconnects call.
Marks ticket as resolved.
Me- WTF just happened!

Naturally, I escalate the issue.

Day 15
Level 2 Agent- what happened? Why have you escalated the issue?
Me- I need a mouse, waiting since 2 weeks.
Him- No mouse is available
Me- you don't have a single spare mouse available in an office with 5000 PC users?
Him- no they're out of stock.
Me- when will it be back in stock?
Him- we will 'soon' launch a tender for quotations from sellers.
Me- time?
Him- 1 week.

Day 34

I email the head of supplies for the city office. Next day I get a used super small mouse, which doesn't have a left button. Anyways, I've given up hope now.

Day 45
I become a master at keyboard shortcuts.
Finish my training.
Get transferred to another city.
No mouse till date.

Surprisingly, this was one of the top recruiters in my country. Never knew, MNCs can be so so inefficient for such simple tasks.
Start-ups are way better in this regard. Latest tech, small community, minimal bureaucracy and a lot of respect and things to learn.

My CEO: "So! You are the new guy we hired to design and manage the implementation of our new state of the art super-duper fancy ERP solution with badass Business Intelligence systems to grow our company which already spans over several localities across the county, that has to live for at least the next 12-15 years?

Please remember that the Windows Server in the rack in the basement needs replacement soon, and that our new fancy solution must not in any way utilize cloud-technology or SaSS! I don't like that! I think it's a scam! We store everything on premises, own our infrastructure and we buy our software...Because I think that is best!"

Me: "So... let me get this straight: You want me to build you a one-off, concept sports car that can outperform a Lamborghini using only plywood, duct-tape and a donkey cart?"

He walked off... I may need a new job next week!

Somehow I feel like I personally owe Linus for git.

17:50 Colleague whispers "fuck" and the entire project we've worked on for the last half year responds with 404.

17:55 A quick diagnosis shows that she wrote "rm - rf ../" instead of "./" when she threw out her staging dir an thereby deleted everything.

17:58 git pull, everything is back.

18:15 everything is configured and we're up and running again.

**Alternative Timeline without Version control **

17:58 We start looking through Backup folders

18:20 We're fairly confident to have found the most up to date Backup in /var/backup/newback/v2/june/new/released/ and start copying back into the project directory.

19:30 Some files are missing we start patching shit up.

19:40 I realize how much work went down the drain and start strangling my colleague. The Api seems to do the most important things again.

20:00 My colleagues dead body is hidden and I'm 80% confident that the tasks depending on us should run.

Next day: They didn't run. Every nightly build failed, nobody can do anything useful.

A week later : Shits starting to work again, all lost files are replaced. Replacement for dead colleague still missing though.

It's moments like this that make you really appreciate the luxurys we have nowadays...

Swift, oh my god, why do you have to be like this?

I'm looking to write a simple for loop like this one in java

for(int i = 5; i > 0; i--) {
// do shit
}

Thats it, simple, go from 5 to 1 (inclusive), I saw that to iterate over a range in a for loop (increasing ordeR) I can do this

for i in 0...5 {
// do shit.
}

So I thought maybe I could do this to go in reverse (which seems logical when you think about it doesn't it?)

for i in 5..<0 {
// do shit
}

But no, this compiles FINE (THIS IS THE FUCKING KICKER IT COMPILES), alright, when you the code runs you get a fucking exception that crashes the mother fucking application, and you know what the problem is?? This dogshit, shitStain of a language doesn't like it when integer that the for loop starts with is larger than the integer that the for loop ends with MOTHERFUCKER ATLEAST TELL ME THAT AT COMPILE TIME AS A MOTHERFUCKING WARNING YOU PIECE OF SHIT!!

Alright *deep breathing*, now we can't just be stuck on this raging, we're developers need to move forward, so I google this, "Swift for loop in reverse" fair enough I get a straight forward answer that tells me to use the `stride` functionality. The relevant code for it

for i in stride(from:5 to:1 by:-1) {
// do shit
}

Wow looks fine and simple right?? (looks like god damn any other language if you ask me, no innovations here piece of shit apple!) WRONG BITCHES !!! In the latest version of Swift THE FUCKING DEVELOPERS DECIDED TO REMOVE STRIDE ALTOGETHER, WITHOUT ADDING IN A GOOD REPLACEMENT FOR THAT SHIT!

Alright NOW IM FUCKING MAD, I got rage on stackoverflow chat, a guy who's been working on ios for quite a while comes up n says and I quote
"I can sort of figure it out, but besides that, iterating in reverse is uncommon enough that it probably hasn't crossed anyone's mind."

Now hope you guys understand my frustration, and send me cookies to calm me down.

Thank you for listening to me !

I was 15 years old and the first year of high school. Everything was new to me and I was such a newbie. At that time I had 2-3 year of programming behind me at an institution where they taught competitive programming. And I knew something about computers. Not much but more than most of my school mates. At that time I wanted to become "super cool hacker".

So we had this very very thought teacher for history which was also our form master. She really knows how to explained everything about history and in an interesting way. But while she was teaching we also had to write down notes from her powerpoints that were on a projector. And occasionally she would wait for us to copy everything and then move on with her lecture. But sometimes she didn't. This was frustrating as hell. The whole class would complain about this because you couldn't take notes down normal, you had to do it at double speed.

But she got one weak spot. She was not very good with computers. Our school computers were locked in some kinda closet so that students didn't have physical access to a computer and were also password protected. So I came up with the plan to plant wireless mouse in her computer so that I could control her mouse. At that time it seemed like SUPER HACKER MASTER PLAN.

So I got an opportunity one time when she left the classroom and let closet where the computer was open. I quickly sneaked the USB of the wireless mouse in the computer and then go back to the seat.

So THE FUN began.

Firstly I would only go back in powerpoint so that all my schoolmates could write down notes including me. And it was hilarious to watch when she didn't know what is happening. So then I would move her mouse when she tried to close some window. I would just move it slightly so she wouldn't notice that somebody else is controlling mouse. And by missing X button just by slight she would click other things and other things would pop up and now she had to close this thing so it became a nightmare for her. And she would become angry at the mouse and start complaining how the computer doesn't work and that mouse doesn't obey her.

One time when she didn't pay attention to her computer and projector I went to paint program and drew a heart and wrote we love you (In Slovenian Imamo vas radi -> See the picture below) and one of my school mates has the picture of it. We were all giggling and she didn't know what is was for. And I managed to close everything before she even noticed.

So it got to the point where she couldn't hand it more so she called our school IT guy so that he would check her computer (2 or 3 weeks passed before she called IT guy). And he didn't find anything. He was really crappy IT guy in general. So one week passed by and I still had messed with her mouse. So she got a replacement computer. Who would guessed all the problems went away (because I didn't have another mouse like that). I guess when our IT guy took the computer to his room and really thoroughly check it he found my USB.

So he told her what was the problem she was so pissed off really I didn't see her pissed off so much in all my 4 years in high school. She demanded the apology from whom did it. And at that moment my mind went through all possible scenarios... And the most likely one was that I was going to be expelled... And I didn't have the balls to say that I did it and I was too afraid... Thanks to God nobody from my school mates didn't tell that it was me.

While she waited that somebody would come forward there was one moment when our looks met and at that moment both of us knew that I was the one that did it.

Next day the whole class wrote the apology letter and she accepted it. But for the rest of 4 years whenever was there a problem with the computer I had to fixed it and she didn't trust anybody not even our IT guy at school. It was our unwritten contract that I would repair her computer to pay off my sin that I did. And she once even trusted me with her personal laptop.

So to end this story I have really high respect for her because she is a great teacher and great persons that guide me through my teen years. And we stayed in contact.

toxic workplace; leaving

I haven't wanted to write this rant. I haven't even wanted to talk to anyone (save my gf, ofc). I've just been silently fuming.

I wrote a much longer rant going into far too much detail, but none of that is relevant, so I deleted it and wrote this shorter (believe it or not) version instead. And then added in more details because details.

------

On Tuesday, as every Tuesday, I had a conference call with the rest of the company. For various, mostly stupid reasons, the boss yelled at and insulted me for twenty minutes straight in front of everyone, telling me how i'm disorganized, forgetful, how can't manage my time, can't manage myself let alone others, how I don't have my priorities straight, etc. He told the sales team to get off the call, and then proceeded to yell and chew at me for another twenty minutes in front of the frontend contractor about basically the same things. The call was 53 minutes, and he spent 40 minutes of it telling me how terrible I've been. No exaggeration, no spin. The issues? I didn't respond to an email (it got lost in my ever-filling inbox), and I didn't push a very minor update last week (untested and straight to prod, ofc). (Side note: he's yelled at me for ~15 minutes before for being horribly disorganized and unable to keep up on Trello -- because I had a single card in the wrong column. One card, out of 60+ over two boards. Never mind that most have time estimates, project tags, details, linked to cards on his boards, columns for project/qa/released, labels for deferred, released to / rejected from qa, finished, in production, are ordered by priority, .... Yep. I'm totes disorganized.)

Anyway, I spent most of conference call writing "Go fuck yourself," "Choke on a cat and die asshole," "Shit code, low pay, and broken promises. what a prize position," etc. or flipping him off under the camera on our conference-turn-video-call (switched due to connection issues, because ofc video is more stable than audio-only in his mind).

I'm just.
so, so done.

I did nothing the rest of the day on Tuesday, and basically just played games on Wednesday. I did one small ticket -- a cert replacement since that was to expire the next day -- but the rest was just playing CrossCode. (fun game, fyi; totally recommend.)

Today? It's 3:30pm and I can't be bothered to do anything. I have an "urgent" project to finish by Monday, literally "to give [random third party sales guy] a small win". Total actual wording. I was to drop all other tasks (even the expiring cert lol) and give this guy his small win. fucking whatever. But the project deals with decent code -- it's a minor extension to the first project I did for the company (see my much earlier rants), back when I was actually applying myself and learning something (everything) new, enjoying myself, and architecting+writing my own code. So I might actually do the project, but It's been two days and I haven't even opened single file yet.

But yeah. This place is total and complete shit. Dealing with the asshole reminds me of dealing with my parents while growing up, and that's a subject I don't want to broach -- far too many toxic memories.

So, I'm quitting as soon as I find something new.
and with luck, this will be before assface hires my replacement-to-be, and who will hopefully quit as soon as s/he sees the abysmal codebase. With even more luck, the asshole king himself will get to watch his company die due to horrible mismanagement. (though ofc he'll never attribute it to himself. whatever.)

I just never want to see or think about him again.
(nor this fetid landfill of a codebase. bleh.)

With luck, this will be one of my last rants about this toxic waste dump and its king of the pile.
Fourty fucking minutes, what the fuck.

Hey JavaScripters, it's October already. Time to find a replacement for React.

This rant is a confession I had to make, for all of you out there having a bad time (or year), this story is for you.

Last year, I joined devRant and after a month, I was hired at a local company as an IT god (just joking but not far from what they expected from me), developer, web admin, printer configurator (of course) and all that in my country it's just called "the tech guy", as some of you may know.

I wasn't in immediate need for a full-time job, I had already started to work as a freelancer then and I was doing pretty good. But, you know how it goes, you can always aim for more and that's what I did.

The workspace was the usual, two rooms, one for us employees and one for the bosses (there were two bosses).

Let me tell you right now. I don't hate people, even if I get mad or irritated, I never feel hatred inside me or the need to think bad of someone. But, one of the two bosses made me discover that feeling of hate.

He had a snake-shaped face (I don't think that was random), and he always laughed at his jokes. He was always shouting at me because he was a nervous person, more than normal. He had a tone in his voice like he knew everything. Early on, after being yelled for no reason a dozen of times, I decided that this was not a place for me.

After just two months of doing everything, from tech support to Photoshop and to building websites with WordPress, I gave my one month's notice, or so I thought. I was confronted by the bosses, one of which was a cousin of mine and he was really ok with me leaving and said that I just had to find a person to replace me which was an easy task. Now, the other boss, the evil one, looked me on the eye and said "you're not going anywhere".

I was frozen like, "I can't stay here". He smiled like a snake he was and said "come on, you got this we are counting on you and we are really satisfied with how you are performing till now". I couldn't shake him, I was already sweating. He was rolling his eyes constantly like saying "ok, you are wasting my time now" and left to go to some basketball practice or something.

So, I was stuck there, I could have caused a scene but as I told you, one of the bosses was a cousin of mine, I couldn't do anything crazy. So, I went along with it. Until the next downfall.

I decided to focus on the job and not mind for the bad boss situation but things went really wrong. After a month, I realised that the previous "tech guy" had left me with around 20 ancient Joomla - version 1.0 websites, bursting with security holes and infested with malware like a swamp. I had never seen anything like it. Everyday the websites would become defaced or the server (VPN) would start sending tons of spam cause of the malware, and going offline at the end. I was feeling hopeless.

And then the personal destruction began. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat. I was having panick attacks at the office's bathroom. My girlfriend almost broke up with me because I was acting like an asshole due to my anxiety issues (but in the end she was the one to "bring me back"(man, she is a keeper)) and I hadn't put a smile on my face for months. I was on the brink of depression, if not already there. Everyday I would anxiously check if the server is running because I would be the one to blame, even though I was trying to talk to the boss (the bad one was in charge of the IT department) and tell him about the problem.

And then I snapped. I finally realised that I had hit rock bottom. I said "I can't let this happen to me" and I took a deep breath. I still remember that morning, it was a life-changing moment for me. I decided to bite the bullet and stay for one more month, dealing with the stupid old server and the low intelligence business environment. So, I woke up, kissed my girlfriend (now wife), took the bus and went straight to work, and I went into the boss's office. I lied that I had found another job on another city and I had one month in order to be there on time. He was like, "so you are leaving? Is it that good a job the one you found? And when are you going? And are you sure?", and with no hesitation I just said "yup". He didn't expect it and just said "ok then", just find your replacement and you're good to go. I found the guy that would replace me, informing him of every little detail of what's going on (and I recently found out, that he is currently working for some big company nowadays, I'm really glad for him!).

I was surprised that it went so smoothly, one month later I felt the taste of freedom again, away from all the bullshit. Totally one of the best feelings out there.

I don't want to be cliche, but do believe in yourself people! Things are not what the seem.

With all that said, I want to give my special thanks to devRant for making this platform. I was inactive for some time but I was reading rants and jokes. It helped me to get through all that. I'm back now! Bless you devRant!

I'm glad that I shared this story with all of you, have an awesome day!

Hooray for open source!

So my mother's Model M died. I didn't think that was possible but it looks like even the best ones have to die eventually.

I was one click away from ordering a replacement controller board for around the same price I had bought the keyboard for, when I duck-duck-went one last time for a service manual. Because maybe there was a error code table and maybe that flashing num lock light would tell me something about the defect. Then, I could investigate further and maybe repair the keyboard. I didn't find one.

What I did find was someone who made a USB controller board back in 2008, documented it well and published everything. It fit my Model M and I had all the parts at hand so I could fire up printer, etching bath, drill and soldering station and make that thing.

Now there's a working Model M on my table just because a guy named Ronald Schaten thought of future people having the same problem as he had.

Be like Ronald. How specific your issue might be, someone /will/ have the exact same one. Document and publish your solutions!

My replacement phone came! I can finally use devRant during class again. :D

I guess i have a new debug buddies at the office

Client: We're gonna be hosting our site on [Overly popular shit host] via a shared hosting account.

Me: Well the performance isn't going to be stellar with WordPress on there, but if that's what you want, sure. I'll enable all the cache rules possible and make sure PHP 7 is running it, but there won't be any further optimizations I can do to make it faster with such limited hosting access.

[Next day after launching the website...]

Client: The website is super slow. I thought you were going to optimize it?

Me: That is the loading time with the optimizations I said I can apply. That host isn't great for performance unfortunately.

Client: Well you're going to need to find us a reputable host as a replacement, set up the account and move the website there so we aren't waiting forever for a page to load.

Me (in a reply via email):

Got me some free swag. Thanks @dfox & @trogus! Might I suggest:
500++ stress ball
1000++ mouse mat
2000++ t-shirt
4000++ sexual favours
8000++ replacement soul

!rant
Got fired a few months back because of my 'colourful personality'...
They hired a replacement for my position, a yes-knodder and -apparently- a person without any sense of pro-active commitment.

Hearing from ex-coworkerd, the replacement is a total slob, and the company owners already regretting their decision.

Meanwhile, got my own company and do the things i did before for a lot more money.

Muahahahahaha

Goddamn I'm retarded to the next level.

Rebooted my phone a few days ago, some stuff didn't work well anymore and I'm looking for a new one which supports custom roms but I shouldn't spend too much right now so I thought I'd let it go for now.

Rebooted again last night and the network time wouldn't set properly so set it manually. Today I suddenly noticed that any app/page loading through a secure connection wasn't loading at all.

This to the goddamn point that my phone was becoming useless.

Started to search for a quick, cheap replacement supporting custom roms while debugging on and on.

I just (now) looked at the date and BAM, it hit me: I set it to one month earlier.

Mother of god I'm stupid. Brain fart to the max.

A few days ago, I had a trashed laptop, lost my wallet with University ID and my debit card, a thesis and a poster not started, and no real content to put on either. I'd need money to get a new univ ID but no debit card. Same ges for buying a laptop. Also homework and shit due. Which required a load of Python.

Fast forward a week.

Laptop on its way, thank PayPal. Got new univ ID. Library loans out laptops. All homeworks done. Even got the replacement fee on my debit card waived by being nice to the customer service person.

I'd like to thank devRant for keeping me sane. And I'd like to say I'm fairly proud of my adulting abilities. They're not stellar, but they're pretty okay.

Dear tech YouTubers, fucking stop trying to justify the iPad pro as an actual pro device that can replace a laptop for everyone...

Yes you can make music, yes you can draw and yes you can watch content...

Can you have multiple windows?
Can you write code and natively compile?
Can I use a mouse?
Can I power multiple displays with seperate apps?

Yes it's powerful but it's still an iPad, just because you made a bigger screenee phone doesn't mean you can claim it as a full PC replacement... Cunts -,-

(Would like to point this out mostly to Johnathan Morrison for that video showing off a single person using the iPad for a singular purpose, pissed me off more than anything!)

Today my manager asked me about my research into using RabbitMQ as a backup in case Azure Service Bus ever goes down.

Me: "Good. The way we designed the framework, all we have to do is drop the DLLs into the directory, update the config, and the services will start using RabbitMQ."
Mgr: "Excellent. Probably should be looking into using RabbitMQ as a permanent replacement for Azure"
Me: "What? The whole reason we moved to Azure was to eliminate the problems with having an on prem service bus. Since we've switched, there has been zero downtime."
Mgr: "That's what VP-Joe is afraid of. If Azure ever goes down, he won't know how to explain Azure to the president as to why we're not taking orders or can't ship packages."
Me: "That makes no sense. What did VP-Joe tell the president when a database goes down or a server mis-configuration?"
Mgr: "President understands internal outages, its just the whole 'cloud' thing he doesn't understand."
Me: "Um..then VP-Joe needs to explain it to him?"
Mgr: "The decision has already been made. Are you on board? Lets look at this move as a cost savings."
Me: "You mean the $10 a month? How much hardware will we need to support RabbitMQ?"
Mgr: "Yea, nobody probably thought of that."
Me: "I'm on board with whatever decision, but I'd like a little more than VP-Joe being afraid of the president."
Mgr: "I'm sure its not being afraid."
Me: "..."
Mgr: "OK, lets wait and see if VP-Joe forgets about this and moves on to something new."

Just discovered a terminal replacement for windows... And its fine as hell.
It's called cmder and it's got tons and I mean TONS of options to make it perfect for you!

I fried my laptop's lithium-ion battery by overheating it too much when gaming for 1.5 years now. Was only getting 20 minutes on a charge. Bought a replacement battery to install.

My laptop is full-body aluminum, and when removing the difficult-to-remove backplate, I sliced my thumb deeply on the razor-sharp internal edge of the backplate.

Hurt like hell. Took a while to get the bleeding to stop. I had to finish what I started, so I swore I'll be careful the rest of the time.

Yet somehow, my hand eventually slipped and I ended up slicing my OTHER thumb, on the exact same component! And the gash was even deeper and hurt even more! And took 3x as long to stop bleeding! I lost so much blood... 😫

Moral of the story: Be careful when dealing with full-body aluminum laptops. They're fucking evil and dangerous. Also, don't let your laptop reach temps above 82-85 degrees Celsius.

Thankfully, no tetanus from any of this. 😓

Me: Why is there such a delay between the app and the hardware device?

Colleague: Ah, same old same old, TCP is just an inefficient protocol. We should stop development and build our own replacement to TCP.

(PS. The actual problem was his code)

My mom had forgotten her cellphone with me, and of course it rang. So I answered to be greeted by a "Microsoft" support employee. *thinking, this is gonna be good*

- Bla bla bla there is a virus on your computer which I am calling to assist you in removing.
- Oh? Great! But it's running Ubuntu! (my moms windows drive crashed some weeks ago, so I installed Ubuntu on replacement instead)
- Oh you think you're so smart with Ubuntu and your bullshit! You are lying.
- Oh, yeah I do love lying!
- You are a liar! You should be ashamed of yourself!
I didn't get to give him a piece of my mind before he hung up....

So today I got called a liar by a scammer... Not sure if I should be happy or disappointed in myself 🤔😂

!dev
> Get on Deutsche Bahn train
> Train delayed
> Miss Eurostar connection (not just me, many people did too), get the next one
> Building works in Brussels Station
> Maps inaccurate
> Get lost
> Find Eurostar terminal
> Electricity failure
> Check-in suspended
> After 40min, announcement
> This train cancelled, get the next one
> Electricity fixed
> Check in, finally
> Now 2½ trains worth of people need to get on this one
> Somehow fit on train
> Lose table because family needs it (fair, but annoying)
> Train departs
> More delays due to scheduling conflict
> Arrive in Lille Europe
> Stop for 10 minutes for no reason
> Announcement: "there is an illegal passenger on board, everyone and their luggage needs to get off"
> Get off train, stand on platform for a decade
> "Who has left an orange bag on coach 18?"
> Nobody
> They bring the bag out
> It's red, not orange
> "Oh it's mine, sorry" - some woman
> Wait around for ages
> "Everybody go downstairs and go through security again"
> Go through security and passport control
> Get back on train
> Arrive at St. Pancreas
> Last train to where I live has gone
> Woohoo, I get to pay for an expensive hotel in London
> Get rail replacement bus service home
> Home 😒

I'm a f****** idiot. Wifi adapter stopped working, I rebooted. I reinstall my distro. I look up for a replacement card. I troubleshoot the issue in software.

Finally someone says something one of the fourms.

I hit Fn + F2

It fucking works!!! The hardware was disabled by accident when I tried to open tty2.

FUCK!!!

Arglebargle.

I went to buy flowers for [redacted event] and gave the florist my CC info, number, and email for a receipt. He was a nice old man who loves what he does, and makes beautiful arrangements. But. He just emailed me all of my CC info, and asked what part of it was wrong. Twice. Emailed. Plain text. SMTP.

Guess who's requesting a replacement card?

😞

Background: I'm not drunk yet, BUT I'M WORKING ON IT.

okay.

I just finished a second sprint on my React app. The first was to build a merchant onboarding flow. The second was to do substantial cleanup as I learned more about react/redux, and to create a "supply order" flow -- basically purchasing marketing materials and services. I finished that in a week, and I'm pretty proud. api-guy wanted it done in a day. i laughed. he probably could have, but it would have been a copy of the code in a new repo with some lines changed.

ANYWAY. it's all done and It's super pretty and works amazingly well. It has both the onboarding flow and the ordering flow, with a nice pop-out sidebar for navigation, namespaced actions, etc. Everything is pretty clean. I even added a cart to the ordering (despite everyone telling me not to) because wtf, what if someone wants to order TWO items? dumbasses. So I made that. it's sexy.

Anyway, it's all done and shiny and fancy and wonderful and I'd *love* to share screenshots if only it didn't give away where I worked. :<

... but the point of the rant!

After the first sprint, I made a copy of the repo so I could rework it and add more functionality without touching the original. (Hey! That's what a branch is for, right? Why didn't I branch it up?
well, read on)

I knew we were going to have multiple separate flows for this app: onboard, ordering, merchant tools, admin tools, support, etc. So, I wrote its server portion (the webpack builder + http server) so it would serve the same app at whatever url the user hit, and set a cookie containing that host+url. This allows the app to serve different content (basically showing/hiding content) based on the URL and future login roles. If someone hits /order, it would hide everything but the order flow. If they're a merchant, it would show all the merchant views plus ordering, etc.

tl;dr This way I can use the same codebase for multiple sites, drastically simplifying development, branding, and what have you. This new app could obv also be a drop-in replacement for the original onboarding project because of the above.

HOWEVER. this apparently isn't good enough for api-guy. He's terrified that adding/updating future components will affect all the existing content somehow.

so.

now we have three repos for basically the same codebase. 1) onboard aka "surfboard", 2) ordering, 3) merchant tools, aka "ferrari" (the "future" app).

Except.
1) "surfboard" is a very old version of the code. 3) "ferrari" is also old, since 2) "ordering" has newer content in it now.

... and somehow this is better?
fuck if i can figure out how.

His reasoning is "well, you won't be touching surfboard or ordering for 6 months, so now you don't have to worry about it." Sure, except, you know, it'll be a pain in the ass in 6 months now when I have a crapton of code and branding to redo. ffs.

Oh. We also have three Heroku pipelines for these three repos. for the same codebase.

and now you know why i'm drinking.

!dev

My laptop battery finally died, it’s been 4 years. Damn gotta spend some money to get a replacement one. Did you guys think we could get a genuine replacement from the vendor? It’s ASUS brand

A bit of the masterpiece i have to work almost every week, note the line number... and there a plethora of files like this. Oh, and the company i'm working on has 500+ employees and almost 500K customers, but don't you dare to propose a system replacement, as the manager says we are very busy with a lot a changes and always mentions that we take a lot of time to make the modifications.... Probably he will belive us when a extremely expensive external consultat say the samething we do.

A temporary replacement teacher came in today, she is so fucking dumb omfg, I am literally shakeing, this pic will tell you everything.

Simplicity is a prerequisite for reliability.

I put those words on the wall in giant vinyl letters, and I point to them every time someone asks me "can you add a frontend button which checks this external API and stores the correlation between the amount of rain and the sales numbers of purple buttplugs inside the user profiles?"

People always ask for one more column in a table, one more paragraph under an image — they never ask for replacement or removal of items.

So I force them. Want a feature? Fine, if you point at something of equal or greater complexity to delete.

Replacement for git VCS 😂

I die, go to hell and my punishment is to write software for hell network that is having power problems due to light source disruptions and is running on Windows 95 on FAT32 without any service pack.

Network speed is trough 300bps dial up modem. Protocol is over IPX/SPX.

My task is to write interactive websites that are replacement of modern websites but in VBScript, ActiveX, IE 4.0.

I have 10 managers that tell me what to do and scream when I miss deadline that is set everyday without my knowledge at random times.

They send me an email and 5 minutes later they arrive at my desk to ask me about it.

I must work 16 hours a day before I can leave the place and if I won’t show up police beats me and escorts me to the office.
If I’m late a second I don’t get payment.
I can’t afford to rent a place so I sleep in the sleeping bag.

It doesn’t matter much cause as soon as I fall asleep phone rings until I wake up and my manager screams about the problems he have for about an hour.

My MacBook finally died after 5 years (got it when I was 14). Looking to get a non-Apple replacement for windows/Linux dual boot. Any suggestions? Also, any Linux distro suggestions for a n00b?

I left some spaghetti code on production at the company i left, i really hope my replacement isn’t a psycho who’ll try to find me

Promotions? What are those.
Every title I have gained has been out of necessity of needing someone to work on stack "X".

It usually goes something like:

Dev: I quit

Management: oh shit, we need another dev 🤔oh @C0D4 can do it until we find a replacement.

@C0D4: fuck, I don't know anything about this stack.

Management: we didn't find a replacement, this thing is yours now, here's a pay bump for your efforts.

@C0D4: I swear they'll regret all these projects being managed by a single dev 1 day.

I'm leaving my job.

That had already been decided when I learned that the only other front end guy at the company put in his two weeks notice. I immediately decided that I was morally obligated to put in my 4 months notice to give the company enough time to find a replacement (because, contrary to the beliefs of some programmers, front end plays a critical role in web dev).

With only 2 weeks left, I was put on his project to do some "simple design work".

Jesus christ in heaven alive and dead...

I've never in my career seen CSS with such an intense level of specificity -- nobody on that team should have ever let that code get so out of control.

I've spent the past week cursing, walking out of the room, whispering "I can't believe you've done this", ranting to non-developer friends.

Here's an example: the application has a panel used all over the place with a header and a body. Every Single View has it's own duplicated panel, each with its own unique class names and CSS. And that's just one element.

Every view has hundreds of lines of duplicated CSS. Every button, link, list, all with unique styles.

To any junior developer reading this, please hear me: Write one block of CSS for any element that will be reused. DO NOT duplicate your code when it can be used over and over.

/rant

I dropped my phone and the charger port broke, so now I can't use devRant that often until the replacement comes.

At least I still have devRantron and the web app.

I have an interview on Thursday for a job I've been doing for the past 9 months - I bloody hope I get it!

I'm currently classed as an 'Apprentice' but have been doing the sole job of the Developer after he left a week before I started.

The only differences between the two roles is the pay difference and title (just about double my current rate).

I've started to produce documentation and processes for rolling upgrades to our application without downtime which is something they're big on.

Public sector for you, it took 9 months for a replacement...

Man in the event of some newcomers to the development game, those that will mostly work in the web domain or sys admins that are in training I want to offer some small advice:

Do not neglect vim

I know it might be a bitch to use at first. And I will never use it as a replacement to vs code. But fuuuuuck me I cannot count the number of times that vim wizardry has helped me when dealing with servers when dealing on a machine with windows and nothing but putty.

The thing is a lifesaver yo, and it makes for an impressive show when doing something in front of senior executives.

Learn it, love it, live by it

And exit is :q, save is :w, to copy and paste is :v then surround the text and then y to yank it and p to paste it.
:vsplit and :split are your friends and to move around splits is ctrl w and direction.

Good luck my friends. Stay classy.

My laptop started making faint high-pitched noises - I hope I misheard and it's actually just some coil singing inside the power-supply and not one of the disks/something else - also, I seem to have dropped 4GB of RAM suddenly where there should be 8GB.

(Also, I should really wipe the messed up dual-boot still residing on disk from last semester and replace it by a fresh arch-only install. (No time and joy in debugging that right now.) Probably something for tomorrow evening.)

The device is ~8 years old by now and starting to fall apart - nothing duct tape can't fix - but I'm somewhat worried about the rest right now. D:

Meh, I really need that laptop during the next two weeks, I just hope the hardware doesn't die on me in the meantime because I can't wait for an order to arrive, let alone afford some cheap replacement.

I don't know what Google's design team has taken for drugs lately, but I want some!!

First, replacement of the blobs into this trash that they call emoji nowadays. 10-20 years ago we called it the crap stickers from MSN.
Next, Android Pie would look like iOS, but in the most grotesque way possible.
And now it's creeping into the apps.. Google Play, YouTube, Messaging, …

It all looks so.. white, and round, and childish. What happened to sharp corners, using all the screen real estate, and.. those colors?! God I can't stand how white the Google apps are starting to look. But I know the solution. I'll accuse Google of being RACIST!! Because black people would be so offended by the lack of dark themes. GOOGLE, YOU PATRIARCHIC, NON-INCLUSIVE, RACISTIC A-HOLES!!! CHANGE YOUR COLORS NOW!!!

I can see how that could actually work nowadays 🙃

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.

I have a noisy client laptop fan.
It is like a DJ... 📼
Some time it sounds
Taaaaarrrraaaaa...
Some times
Tararararara....
Other times
Tara...tara..tara....
I am getting addicted to it
I am keeping headphones at home now as noise cancellation is not that good and have to listen to laptop fan music.
I have to ask for replacement.
But I guess I will miss my DJ then 😭

I've caught the efficiency bug.

I recently started a minimum wage job to get my life back in order after a failed 2 year project (post mortem: next time bring more cash for a longer runway)

I've noticed this thing I do at every job, where I see inefficiency and I think "how can I use technology to automate myself out of this job?"

My first ever application was in C++ for college (a BASIC interpreter) and it's been so long I've since forgotten the language.

But after a while every language starts to look like every other language, and you start to wonder if maybe the reason you never seriously went anywhere as a programmer was because you never really were cut out for it.

Code monkey, sure. Programmer? Dunno, maybe I just suffer from imposter syndrome.

So a few years back I worked at a retail chain. Nothing as big as walmart, but they have well over 10k store locations. They had two IBM handscanners per store, old grungy ugly things, and one of these machines would inevitably be broken, lost or in need of upgrade/replacement about once a year, per location. District manager, who I hit it off with, and made a point of building report with, told me they were paying something like $1500 a piece.

After a programming dry spell, I picked up 'coding' with MIT app inventor. Built a 'mostly complete' inventory management app over the course of a month, and waited for the right time.

The day of a big store audit, (and the day before a multi-regional meeting), I made sure I was in-store at the same time as my district manager, so he could 'stumble upon' me working, scanning in and pricing items into the app.

Naturally he asked about it, and I had the numbers, the print outs, and the app itself to show him. He seemed impressed by what amounted to a code monkeys 'non-code' solution for a problem they had.

Long story short, he does what I expected, runs it by the other regionals and middle executives at the meeting, and six months later they had invested in a full blown in house app, cutting IBM out of the mix I presume.

From what I understand they now use the app throughout the entire store chain.

So if you work at IBM, sorry, that contract you lost for handscanners at 10k+ stores? Yeah that was my fault (and MIT app inventor).

They say software is 'eating the world' but it really goes to show, for a lot of 'almost coders' and 'code monkeys' half our problem is dealing with setup and platform boilerplate. I think in the future that a lot of jobs are either going to be created or destroyed thanks to better 'low code' solutions, and it seems to be a big potential future market.

In the mean while I've realized, while working on side projects, that maybe I can do this after all, and taken up Kotlin. I want to do a couple of apps for efficiency and store tracking at my current employer to see if I'm capable and not just an mit app-inventor codemonkey after all.

I'm hoping, by demonstrating what I can do, I can use that as a springboard into an internal programming position at my current gig (which seems to be a company thats moving towards a more tech oriented approach to efficiency and management). Also watching money walk out the door due to inefficiency kinda pisses me off, and the thought of fixing those issues sounds really interesting. At the end of the day I just like learning new technologies, and maybe this is all just an excuse to pick up something new after spending so long on less serious work.

I still have a ways to go, but the prospect of working on B2B, and being able to offer technological solutions to common and recurring business needs excites the hell out of me..as cringy and over-repeated as that may sound.

Why does almost everyone act as if the world they live in is perfect, or is supposed to be perfect?

This is about approaching IT infrastructures, but goes way beyond IT, into daily lives.

Daniel Kahneman wrote about the "Econs" - a mythical creature that behaves according to rules and rational thoughts, that everybody is guided by, as opposed to Humans, who are irrational, intuitive and emotional.
My beef is with a wider perception, beyond economical analysis, profit, investment and so on.

Examples:
Organization A uses a 15 year old system that is crappy beyond description, but any recent attempt to replace it have failed. Josh thinks that this is a crappy organization, any problem lies within the replacement of that system, and all resources should be devoted to that. Josh lives in a perfect world - where shit can be replaced, where people don't have to live with crappy systems. Josh is stupid, unless he can replace that old system with something better. Don't be Josh. Adapt to the fucking reality, unless you have the power to change it.

Peter is a moron who downloads pirated software with cracks, at the office. He introduced a ransomware that encrypted the entire company NAS. Peter was fired obviously, but Sylvia, the systems administrator, got off easily because Peter the moron was the scapegoat. Sylvia truly believes that it's not her fault, that Peter happened to be a cosmic overgrown lobotomized amoeba. Sylvia is a fucking idiot, because she didn't do backups, restrict access, etc. Because she relied on all people being rational and smart, as people in her imaginary world would be.

Amit finished a project for his company, which is a nice modern website frontend. Tom, the manager says that the website doesn't work with Internet Explorer 8, and Amit is outraged that Tom would even ask this, quoting that IE8 is a dinosaur that should've been euthanized before even hatching. Amit doesn't give a shit about the fact that 20% of the revenue comes from customers that use IE8, what's more important to him is that in his perfect imaginary world everybody uses new hardware and software, and if someone doesn't - it's their fault and that's final. Amit is a fucking asshole. Don't be like Amit.

React to the REAL world, not what you WANT the world to be. Otherwise you're one of them.
The real world can be determined by looking at all the fuck ups and bad situations, admit that they happen, that they're real, that they will keep happening unless you do something that will make them impossible to happen or exist.

Acting as if these bad things don't exist, or that they won't exist because someone would or should change it, is retarded.

This probably isn't the coolest bug I've ever solved, but surely the one with the biggest faceplam
So I was building a Bluetooth smart watch that pairs with your Android device for the final year bachelor's project. The submission was in a 2 days and it was all ready and it suddenly stopped working.. Spent hours trying to fix it, even tried to get a replacement Bluetooth module (was out of stock -_-).. After a day's worth of freaking out I discovered that Android phones (at least the OnePlus X) don't connect to Bluetooth modules when their battery is below 15% -_- and since I was freaking out I would let the phone charge a bit and get back to debugging and it never crossed 15% so it never worked.. One day of debugging attempts later it suddenly struck me that low battery might be an issue.. And voila! It worked after charging the phone

Shouldn't such things be clearly mentioned in documentation :/

(Btw, got full for the project, got a 10/10 GPA for the semester)

Going to replace my laptop HDD to a SSD tomorrow. Can't wait for a better workflow.

$str = str_replace(array("\{","\}")," ",$str);

//Replaces with spaces the braces in cases where braces in places cause stasis

So it happened that a roll of my office chair broke. Since the ordering process in our company is a nightmare and takes forever AND my employer is too cheap to buy enough adequate replacement, I had to draw and print a spare part myself...

> pic related
This is what I've been putting up with on my personal machine for months.

tl;dr: Suggestions for a wlan card/adapter for Debian9? My current RealTek wnic is barely functional, and my replacement (a TPLink... something) is completely incompatible.

I don't need anything super fancy, though I would ofc love support for AC/AD if at all possible.

I don't care (too much) about price, since I'm only going to buy one and very likely won't replace it for years.

------

I'm running Debian9 and have a have a RealTek card. Even when it's not arbitrarily dropping packets like in the screenie, it randomly caches them for up to 90 seconds and dumps them hilariously out of order. I can't play games like that. I can barely even browse devRant. Steam goes offline about once every 30 seconds, and therefore spams all of my friends with online/offline notifications. Streaming "works" on good days. Git works fine, however, so most days I don't notice the connection issues.

And yes, I'm using a community-patched driver (rtl8188ce) that's supposed to fix some of RealTek's more major screwups and increase the transmit power by ~20x. The driver helps, but only a little.

I've done some reasearch on wlan linux support, but haven't found anything very reassuring. Mostly just forum posts saying things like "Intel cards usually work fine!" I don't want to gamble. I just want to buy a card that will work and be done with it. :(

Suggestions? Insight?

Follow up.
Did the only sensible thing IMO and installed a Linux VM on that thing.

In case you don't know what this is about. Essentially at the hotel I'm staying at they have put iMacs in every room as a TV replacement. And some of them run an OSX version from 2011! That means there a quite a lot of known remote execution bugs known for these devices. You can't update them either because they reset after each reboot. Because I was sick of using Firefox 6 for watching videos I installed xubuntu on that thing. (God knows why the admin passwort is blank)

So, finally after a very long time, I get a new keyboard (Ok, the previous one is 35 years old..), so lets see how technology has progressed in that time shall we..

First off, I'll need to plug it in..

Mm.. no spare USB ports..

No problem, I'll just go on Ebay, and buy some more !

They are expensive aren't they..

No problem, I'll buy this older cheap one..

When it arrives, I find out its wired up differently to what I need, so..

Rewire it, which takes ages of course.

Not having the best soldering iron, or anything really to hold the work with (Where did that rusty thing with lots of clasps go I had earlier!) and the only piece of wire I could easily find is covered in black goo, oh well, we can clean that off our hands afterwards..

Now, to plug in the new USB ports, I have to take out half of the inside of my PC..

So... that takes a while.

I seemed to have disturbed something, since now it wont' boot and complains of floppy drive error..

As a temp fix I unplug the floppy drive and disable it in the BIOS.

Now it boots..

Lets install the driver/etc.

Download it.

Install it.

Reboot.

Run application.

Nothing happens..

Uninstall it.

Antivirus software pops up, is unhappy about a file in the driver !

Google about it..

Install an earlier version of the software.

Reboot.

Run application, it works !

Adjust colours from pulsating make you seasick colour scheme to solid damp colour.

Reboot to see if colour sticks..

It does !

Place keyboard on desk in just the right place..

It rocks..

No I mean, it moves about, from front to back !

Why is it not flat !!!

Blu-tak time..

Actually, I forgot to mention I need blu-tak anyhow, to keep the two halves together, since it hasn't got a locking mechanism to hold the numberpad to it..

It's a 80/20 keyboard, or I should say, a 20/80..

So, what else do I not so much like about it..

Well, the font is too small !

It's way smaller than my previous keyboard and I really need to put my glasses on to read it...

Unlike my previous one, which was designed for old folk with less than perfect eyesight !

And the cable..

It comes out the back, in the middle..

Not the back and to a side..

And it leaks light everywhere !

It needs a skirt / cover around the keys..
(3D printer time.. which could also help hold the numberpad in place at the same time !)

Keys are rated for what, 50 million clicks or something, so should last me till I die..

Assuming something in it doesn't fail before then..

I guess no one does replacement key caps for it with a bigger font then..

So, the perfect keyboard still hasn't been invented yet !

Maybe in a few years I might design my own then..

Oh the keyboard, its an Asus ROG Claymore:

A couple more issues..

The capslock key is too wide..

The enter key is too wide..

So, how does it feel / sound compared to the old IBM Model M I used before..

It feels newer..

Snappier..

Crisper sound.

Maybe not so loud.

Though I'm pretty sure, everyone complains about blue keys being loud. :-)

It should be a little kinder on my fingers, need a little less pressure too.

And I now have this huge space on the right for the mouse to play !

(I got a new mouse recently too !)

EOF

I've had to surrender my rubber duck to my son for him to play with while bathing. This guy just got the job as a replacement :)

I love my Nexus 6P but goddamn do I hate its battery. Shuts down randomly at 25%, lasts only half a day, and a lot of other crap. So I want to replace it, bought a new battery from AliExpress but didn't buy any tools for it.. so I'll have to make do with what I currently have. On iFixit I found that the replacement process is apparently quite difficult as it's glued in (God I fucking hate that) and can only be safely removed by heatgunning it (which I don't have a heatgun for). Are the results worth the risk of breaking it? Is it possible to pull it out while cold, without too much risk of breaking stuff or damaging the battery? I've got experience in disassembling 2 previous phones and one of them had the battery glued in as well.. and I didn't break the battery (in fact I'm still using it) but it was very difficult.. and this is my daily driver. So yeah 😶

My first job was actually nontechnical - I was 18 years old and sold premium office furniture for a small store in Munich.
I did code in my free time though (PHP/JS mostly, had a litte browsergame back then - those were the days), so when my boss approached me and asked me whether I liked to take over a coding project, I agreed to the idea.

Little did I know at the time: I was supposed to work with a web agency the boss had contracted to build their online shop. Only that he had no plan or anything, he basically told them "build me an online shop like abc(a major competitor of ours at the time)"

He employed another sales lady who was supposed to manage the shop (that didn't exist yet). In the end, I think 80% of her job was to keep me from killing my boss.

As you can imagine, with this huuuuge amout of planning and these exact visions of what was supposed to be, things went south fast and far. So far that I could visit my fellow flightless birds down in the Penguin's republic of Antarctica and still need to go further.

Well... When my boss started suing the web agency, I was... ahem, asked to take over. Dumb as I was, I did - I was a PHP kid and thought that Magento, being written in PHP, would be easy to master. If you know Magento, you know that was maybe the wrongest thing I ever said.

Fast forward 3 very exhausting months, the thing was online. Not all of it worked yet, but it was online and fairly secure.

I did next to everything myself, administrating the CentOS box the shop was running on, its (own) e-mail server, the web server, all the coding required for the shop (can you spell 12 hour day for 8 hour pay?)

3 further months later, my life basically was a wreck, I dragged myself to work, the only thing I looked forward being the motorcycle ride home. The system worked though.

Mind you, I was still, at the time, working with three major customers, doing deskside support and some admin (Win Server 2008R2 at the time) - because, to quote my boss, "We could not afford a full time developer and we don't need one".

I think i stopped coding in my free time, the one hobby I used to love more than anything on the world, somewhere Decemerish 2012. I dropped out of the open source projects I was in, quit working on my browser game and let everything slide.

I didn't even care to renew the domains and servers for it, I just let it die without notice.

The little free time I had, I spent playing video games and getting drunk/high.

December 2013, 1.5 years on the job, I reached my breaking point and just left, called in sick at least a week per month because I just could not see this fucking place anymore.

I looked for another job outside of ALL of what I did before. No more Magento, no more sales, no more PHP. I didn't have to look for long, despite what I thought of my skills.

In February 2014, I told my boss that I quit. It was still seven months until my new job started, but I wanted him to know early so we could migrate and find a replacement.

The search for said replacement started in June 2014. I had considerably less work in the months before, looks like he got the hint.

In August 2014, my replacement arrived and I got him started.

I found a job, which I am still in, and still happy about after almost half a decade, at a local, medium sized ISP as a software dev and IT security guy. Got a proper training with a certificate and everything now.

My replacement lasted two months, he was external and never really did his job - the site, which until I had quit, had a total of 3 days downtime for 3 YEARS (they were the hoster's fault, not mine), was down for an entire month and he could not even tell why.

HIS followup was kicked after taking two weeks to familiarize himself with the project. Well, I think that two weeks is not even barely enough to familiarize yourself with nearly three years of work, but my boss gave him two days.

In 2016, the shop was replaced with another one. Different shop system, different OS, different CI. I don't know why and I can't say I give a damn.

Almost all the people that worked at the company back with me have left for greener pastures, taking their customers (and revenue) with them.

As for my boss' comments, instructions and lines: THAT might not be safe for work. Or kids. Or humans in general. And there wouldn't be much left if you put it through a language filter...

Moral of the story: No, it's not a bad thing to leave a place if you're mistreated there. Don't mistake loyalty with stupidity!

And, to quote one of my favourite Bands: "Nothing matters when the pain is all but gone" (Tragedy + Time by Rise Against).

Lemon juice
Water
Vodka
Limoncello
Splash of gin (I used Bombay)
Sugar/replacement to taste
Ice

Tastes like traditional lemonade, but this one is a great remedy for burnout/reality.

Highly recommend!

Do you know when you think "Oh that doesn't look too hard. I bet I can do it in no time"?
That is how I felt when I saw the DIY 3D printer kit Anet A8. It's only 150€ on gearbest so that is pretty cheap.
The reviews said it takes about 3 - 4 hours to build and I though "Ok I am a computer specialist and engineer so 3h sounds reasonable".
When I bought it from gearbest the first problems started: 5 days after the estimated shipping date the packet was still not on its way. After I fucked the support up, it finally arrived 3 weeks after the estimated date.
When I took the first look, everything seemed to be fine except for some small scratches but for that price that is not a problem.
So I started to build the printer at about 14:00 and even if some random sites in the manual were in Chinese I felt confident to get it done in a view hours.
And then it started to get really fucked. The first problem was that 2 screws were unusable and I had to use my own screws instead. The next problem was that the manual was just in the wrong fucking order at some points and I had to reverse multiple steps to get it right.
But the most fucked up thing: There should have been 2 threaded rods with a length of 345mm but the rods had a length of 310mm which was nowhere listed in the parts list. So I had to go buy some aluminium rods to fill the gap temporary so that I can at least go on with the build before getting a replacement. And I could go on and on and with the problems but the point is, it is now 19:30 which is about 5.5 hours after I started and I am still not fucking done with this.

So what have I learned?
Cheap Chinese hardware is good, but only as long as you don't have to assemble that shit yourself.

I kind of feel like I invested 2.5 years of my life trying to run away from being a hamster, and here I am in my PhD back in the hamster spot.
The moment I finish compiling some not-os-compatible package, I get a new one to tame. A day after perfecting a sensor integration, another sensor is thrown at me. I am the one who calibrate and tunes the MoCap system, including manufacturing the markers and ordering part. I make sure the robot is functional, from software to battery replacement.
I need to crawl on floors to collect data, while the rest of the lab uses public datasets.
I optimize C++ code, and then get asked to write unit tests and use a CI, while the rest of the lab just writes some subpar Python.
They are doing research and I am doing Cinderella work.
I shouldn't be punished because I get shit done, whether it 3D modeling, CMake voodoo or low-level programming.
Instead of encouraging other lab mates to develop skills, everything is thrown at me. Fuck that shit.

Working on my Lenovo x1 carbon. Akku warning "less then 6%" appears. No problem, I will connect the cable just after I finished this function... "Will shutdown in a view moments" message appears. Ok, I connect the cable. Nothing happens. Maybe power adapter is broken or something more worst. Panic. Try to commit and push as fast as I can (around 2000 LOC from today, made big changes on my project today). While pushing to github laptop powers off. Fuck. Check github on smartphone to see if commits had been pushed. No. I do not have a power adapter for replacement. FML.

After 10 days of waiting for my replacement Xbox from microsoft... It never came so I asked Amazon and they sent me a new one with next day delivery. Just received it today... And it's defective.... fml.

//Quickfix

//TODO: Buy a replacement switch and fix it in the proper way

Narrator: he never bought the replacement

I worked for a company who supplied CERN with some ultra high end equipment.

At one point the guys at CERN email me "Problem, check this out."

The picture was of some burnt out ultra expensive cards that fit into a larger chassis... the cards looked like they had been exposed to a fire that was located exactly between the cards, but none of the cards themselves looked like they had been on fire. The chips and such looked burnt, but more so exposed to a very hot fire, not like they were on fire themselves.

It was weird. I sent them some crates to securely ship them to our QA folks, and ordered them up about $500k in replacement equipment.

QA later said they never got the equipment, someone "from another department" picked them up from the dock. And CERN never asked about what QA found, that was weird because they always asked.

Always back up your data.

I came to my computer earlier today to find it on my Linux login screen. This could only mean one thing: something went horribly wrong.

Let me explain.

I have my BIOS set up to boot into Windows automatically. The exception is a reboot or something horrible happens and the computer crashes. Then, it boots me into Linux. Due to a hardware issue I never looked into, I have to be present to push F1 to allow the computer to start. The fact that it rebooted successfully, without me present, into *Linux*, could only mean one thing:

My primary hard drive died and was no longer bootable.

The warning was the BIOS telling me the drive was likely to fail ("Device Error" doesn't really tell me anything to be fair).

The massive wave of panic hit me.

I rebooted in hopes of reviving the drive. No dice.

I rebooted again. The drive appeared.

Let's see how much data I can recover from it before I can no longer mount it. Hopefully, I can come out of this relatively unscathed.

The drive in question is a 10 year old 1.5 TB Seagate drive that came with the computer. It served me well.

Press F to pay respects I guess.

On the bright side, I'll be getting an SSD as a replacement (probably a Samsung EVO).

Serious considering wiping the Windows 10 partition on my computer.

Only thing keeping me from doing it is the Adobe Suite. Damn it.

If only they made it for Linux, life would be such a blessing.

P.S. : GIMP is not a replacement.

When you resign and before you leave your coworkers ask you to help them write a job description for your replacement and you be like "MUUUUUUHAHAHAHAHAAAA! Just TRY to find THIS!" #IDoAllTheThings

Cracking old recovery CDs for the 9x/2000/XP era shines some light into how companies operated and when concepts came to be in that time:

Packard Bell: An EXE checks that you're running on a Packard Bell machine and reboots if it's not. How do we bypass it? Easy: just fucking delete it. The files to reinstall Windows from scratch come from...
...
C:?
Yup. Turns out Packard Bell was doing the recovery partition thing all the way back to the 9x era, maybe even further. Files aren't even on the restore disc so if your partition table got fucked (pretty common because malware and disk corruption) you were totally fucked and needed to repurchase Windows. (My dad, at the time, only charged at-cost OEM prices for a replacement retail copy. He knew it was dumb so he never sold PB machines.)

Compaq:
Computer check? Nope, remove one line from a BATCH file and it's gone.

Six archives, named "WINA.ZIP" through "WINF.ZIP" (plus one or two extras for OEM software) hold Windows. Problematic? Well... only because they never put the password anywhere so the installer can't install them. (Some interesting on-disc technician-only utils, though!)

Dell:
If not a Dell machine, lock up. Cause? CONFIG.SYS driver masquerading as OAK (the common CD driver) doing the check, then chainloading the real OAK driver. Simple fix: replace the fake driver with the real one.

Issues?

Would I mention this one if there weren't?

Disc is mounted on N:. Subdirectories work, but doing anything in them (a DIR, trying to execute something, trying to view shit in EDIT.COM) kicked you back to the disc root.

Installer couldn't find machine manifest in the MAP folder (it wanted your PC's serial before it'd let you install, to make sure you have the correct recovery disc) so it asked for 12-digit alphanumeric serial. The defined serials in the manifest were something like "02884902-01" or similar (8-2, all numbers) and it couldn't read the file so it couldn't show the right format, nor check for the right type.

Bypassing that issue, trying to do the ACTUAL install process caused nothing to happen... as all BATCHes for install think the CD should be on X:.

Welp.

well that was fun. Now to test on-real-PC behavior, as VBOX and VMWare both don't like the special hardware shit it tries to use. (Why does a textmode GUI need GPU acceleration, COMPAQ?????)

First week of being self employed is going well. I’ve clearly learnt from the best start ups out there

Ashleigh: Ashleigh, you’re a shit dev you can’t meet deadlines

Ashleigh: Well you’re a shit manager Ashleigh, you don’t listen to any of the dev

Ashleigh: Well fuck you I quit

Ashleigh: you can’t quit you’re fired

Ashleigh: you can’t fire me, I’ve dissolved the company so you’re redundant

Ashleigh: yea well I’m Ganna take this up with HR

Ashleigh to HR: dear Ashleigh, I’m being harassed by Ashleigh

Ashleigh at HR: sorry Ashleigh, as a start up we don’t have a HR department so we can get away with harassment and grievances. All the best, Ashleigh.

Client: hi Ashleigh, Ashleigh said she’d have it finished by today

Ashleigh: hi client Ashleigh, we’ve had to let Ashleigh go, we’ll update you once we’ve found a replacement Ashleigh

Ashleigh: Ashleigh ashlrigh ashlrigh alscbuddjdhsgs

Sorry I’ve had 553 ml of monster :D think I’ve gone mad...

Today's project was answering the question: "Can I update tables in a Microsoft Word document programmatically?"

(spoiler: YES)

My coworker got the ball rolling by showing that the docx file is just a zip archive with a bunch of XML in it.

The thing I needed to update were a pair of tables. Not knowing anything about Word's XML schema, I investigated things like:
- what tag is the table declared with?
- is the table paginated within the table?
- where is the cell background color specified?

Fortunately this wasn't too cumbersome.

For the data, CSV was the obvious choice. And I quickly confirmed that I could use OpenCSV easily within gradle.

The Word XML segments were far too verbose to put into constants, so I made a series of templates with tokens to use for replacement.

In creating the templates, I had to analyze the word xml to see what changed between cells (thankfully, very little). This then informed the design of the CSV parsing loops to make sure the dynamic stuff got injected properly.

I got my proof of concept working in less than a day. Have some more polishing to do, but I'm pretty happy with the initial results!

I waited 8 years for cyberpunk 2077. I also bought the most expensive pc of my life including 34inch ultra wide monitor.

But at the last moment I got fucked by AMD. The 5900x that I ordered was dead on arrival and went back for replacement. But they don't have any stock to replacement. So I am fucking waiting for cpu. They are not providing any information on the stock.

I am getting depressed day by day.

This app is like a replacement of 9gag for me. It's even better tbh.

The last software I worked on in my previous company (a few months back), was a temporary replacement because they were switching techs. It was meant to be replaced within 2 years.

So, before I left, I added a kill. 2 years and 2 months into the future. First it spams the devs with emails "how is the tech upgrade going?" with no further clues. 6 months later it will start throwing random exceptions at random intervals. 6 months after that it just terminates the application immediately upon startup. Snuck it in between large commits, and since they stopped code reviews when I left, doubt they found it.

There is a setting in configuration with an obscure name to disable it all.

I marked the dates in my calendar. Would love to be a fly on the wall then.

Just another big rant story full of WTFs and completely true.

The company I work for atm is like the landlord for a big german city. We build houses and flats and rent them to normal people, just that we want to be very cheap and most nearly all our tenants are jobless.
So the company hired a lot of software-dev-companies to manage everything.

The company I want to talk about is "ABI...", a 40-man big software company. ABI sold us different software, e.g. a datawarehouse for our ERP System they "invented" for 300K or the software we talk about today: a document management system. It has workflows, a 100 year-save archive system, a history feature etc.
The software itself, called ELO (you can google it if you want) is a component based software in which every company that is a "partner" can develop things into, like ABI did for our company.

Since 2013 we pay ABI 150€ / hour (most of the time it feels like 300€ / hour, because if you want something done from a dev from ABI you first have to talk to the project manager of him and of course pay him too). They did thousand of hours in all that years for my company.

In 2017 they started to talk about a module in ELO called Invoice-Module. With that you can manage all your paper invoices digital, like scan that piece of paper, then OCR it, then fill formular data, add data and at the end you can send it to the ERP system automatically and we can pay the invoice automatically. "Digitization" is the key word.

After 1.5 years of project planning and a 3 month test phase, we talked to them and decided to go live at 01.01.2019. We are talking about already ~ 200 hours planning and work just from ABI for this (do the math. No. Please dont...).

I joined my actual company in October 2018 and I should "just overview" the project a bit, I mean, hey, they planned it since 1.5 years - how bad can it be, right?

In the first week of 2019 we found 25 bugs and users reporting around 50 feature requests, around 30 of them of such high need that they can't do their daily work with the invoices like they did before without ELO.
In the first three weeks of 2019 we where around 70 bugs deep, 20 of them fixed, with nearly 70 feature requests, 5 done. Around 10 bugs where so high, that the complete system would not work any more if they dont get fixed.

Want examples?
- Delete a Invoice (right click -> delete, no super deep hiding menu), and the server crashed until someone restarts it.
- missing dropdown of tax rate, everything was 19% (in germany 99,9% of all invoices are 19%, 7% or 0%).

But the biggest thing was, that the complete webservice send to ERP wasn't even finished in the code.
So that means we had around 600 invoices to pay with nearly 300.000€ of cash in the first 3 weeks and we couldn't even pay 1 cent - as a urban company!

Shortly after receiving and starting to discussing this high prio request with ABI the project manager of my assigned dev told me he will be gone the next day. He is getting married. And honeymoon. 1 Week. So: Wish him luck, when will his replacement here?

Deep breath.
Deep breath.

There was no replacement. They just had 1 developer. As a 40-people-software-house they had exactly one developer which knows ELO, which they sold to A LOT of companies.

He came back, 1 week gone, we asked for a meeting, they told us "oh, he is now in other ELO projects planned, we can offer you time from him in 4 weeks earliest".

To cut a long story short (it's to late for that, right?) we fought around 3 month with ABI to even rescue this project in any thinkable way. The solution mid February was, that I (software dev) would visit crash courses in ELO to be the second developer ABI didnt had, even without working for ABI....

Now its may and we decided to cut strings with ABI in ELO and switch to a new company who knows ELO. There where around 10 meetings on CEO-level to make this a "good" cut and not a bad cut, because we can't afford to scare them (think about the 300K tool they sold us...).

01.06.2019 we should start with the new company. 2 days before I found out, by accident, that there was a password on the project file on the server for one of the ELO services. I called my boss and my CEO. No one knows anything about it. I found out, that ABI sneaked into this folder, while working on another thing a week ago, and set this password to lock us out. OF OUR OWN FCKING FILE.
Without this password we are not able to fix any bug, develop any feature or even change an image within ELO, regardless, that we paid thausend of hours for that.

When we asked ABI about this, his CEO told us, it is "their property" and they will not remove it.
When I asked my CEO about it, they told me to do nothing, we can't scare them, we need them for the 300K tool.

No punt.
No finish.

Just the project file with a password still there today

I propose that the study of Rust and therefore the application of said programming language and all of the technology that compromises it should be made because the language is actually really fucking good. Reading and studying how it manages to manipulate and otherwise use memory without a garbage collector is something to be admired, illuminating in its own accord.

BUT going for it because it is a "beTter C++" should not constitute a basis for it's study.

Let me expand through anecdotal evidence, which is really not to be taken seriously, but at the same time what I am using for my reasoning behind this, please feel free to correct me if I am wrong, for I am a software engineer yes, I do have academic training through a B.S in Computer Science yes, BUT my professional life has been solely dedicated to web development, which admittedly I do not go on about technical details of it with you all because: I am not allowed to(1) and (2)it is better for me to bitch and shit over other petty development related details.

Anecdotal and otherwise non statistically supported evidence: I have seen many motherfuckers doing shit in both C and C++ that ADMIT not covering their mistakes through the use of a debugger. Mostly because (A) using a debugger and proper IDE is for pendejos and debugging is for putos GDB is too hard and the VS IDE is waaaaaa "I onlLy NeeD Vim" and (B) "If an error would have registered then it would not have compiled no?", thus giving me the idea that the most common occurrences of issues through the use of the C father/son languages come from user error, non formal training in the language and a nice cusp of "fuck it it runs" while leaving all sorts of issues that come from manipulating the realm of the Gods "memory".
EVERY manual, book, coming all the way back to the K&C book talks about memory and the way in which developers of these 2 languages are able to manipulate and work on it. EVERY new standard of the ISO implementation of these languages deals, through community effort or standard documentation about the new items excised through features concerning MODERN (meaning, no, the shit you learned 20 years ago won't fucking cut it) will not cut it.

THUS if your ass is not constantly checking what the scalpel of electrical/circuitry/computational representation of algorithms CONDONES in what you are doing then YOU are the fucking problem.

Rust is thus no different from the original ideas of the developers behind Go when stating that their developers are not efficient enough to deal with X language, Rust protects you, because it knows that you are a fucking moron, so the compiler, advanced, and well made as it is, will give you warnings of your own idiotic tendencies, which would not have been required have you not been.....well....a fucking idiot.

Rust is a good language, but I feel one that came out from the necessity of people writing system level software as a bunch of fucking morons.
This speaks a lot more of our academic endeavors and current documentation than anything else. But to me DEALING with the idea of adapting Rust as a better C++ should come from a different point of view.

Do I agree with Linus's point of view of C++? fuck no, I do not, he is a kernel engineer, a damn good one at that regardless of what Dr. Tanenbaum believes(ed) but not everyone writes kernels, and sometimes that everyone requires OOP and additions to the language that they use. Else I would be a fucking moron for dabbling in the dictionary of languages that I use professionally.
BUT in terms of C++ being unsafe and unsecured and a horrible alternative to Rust I personaly do not believe so. I see it as a powerful white canvas, in which you are able to paint software to the best of your ability WHICH then requires thorough scrutiny from the entire team. NOT a quick replacement for something that protects your from your own stupidity BY impending the use of what are otherwise unknown "safe" features.

To be clear: I am not diminishing Rust as the powerhouse of a language that it is, myself I am quite invested in the language. But instead do not feel the reason/need before articles claiming it as the C++ killer.

I am currently heavily invested in C++ since I am trying a lot of different things for a lot of projects, and have been able to discern multiple pain points and unsafe features. Mainly the reason for this is documentation (your mother knows C++) and tooling, ide support, debugging operations, plethora of resources come from it and I have been able to push out to my secret project a lot of good dealings. WHICH I will eventually replicate with Rust to see the main differences.

Online articles stating that one will delimit or otherwise kill the other is well....wrong to me. And not the proper approach.

Anyways, I like big tits and small waists.

So I set up push notifications from my Raspberry Pi to my Android phone, to know when exim sent a mail locally.
The easy part was the actual push notifications.
The more tedious part turned out to be looking for a way to send a notification for each mail.
After some research, Procmail seemed to be the only fitting tool to pass info to a command (in order to give the push notification some content so I know what's up)

In the middle of everything, I managed to fuck up exim system-wide, so mails didn't work, which was fucking great of course...

The magic receipt is this:
:0 c
| ${NOTIFY} -t "Pi mail: $SUBJECT"

Anyway, this is the result (using a test mail by mdadm + an actual degraded array I am still waiting on replacement drives for):

Just ordered a replacement screen for my laptop.. long live the hp 350-g2

Replacement ink: $28.
New printer with ink: $29.99.
Engineered obsolescence: Priceless.

That one horrendous in-house legacy application that should be ditched, but no one is brave enough to start building replacement from scratch ... Every company has one.

Compiled a small style change in LESS file. Whole page is broken. Realized holiday replacement made all changes in main CSS file which is generated through LESS compiling.

Conspiracy Theory:

Windows 10 - suspiciously free upgrade and "pirate friendly."

Microsoft - really rolling with the hardware scene lately.

Windows 10 Updates - suspiciously destroyed the hardware in 4 laptops and a desktop I've worked on putting the owners in the market for new Microsoft hardware.

Coincidence?

There’s nothing like fixing dad’s laptop for relaxation

YES! I got the job!

Now I'm looking for a replacement >.<

The only thing more dangerous than an alcoholic short-term-memory-challenged non-technical throw-you-under-the-bus IT director with self-esteem issues that are sporadically punctuated by delusions of superiority is one who fears for his job. Submitted for your inspection: a besotted mass of near-human brain function who not only has a 50 person IT department to run, but has also been questioned by the business owners as to what he actually does. So he has decided to show them. He has purchased a vendor product to replace a core in-house developed application used to facilitate creating the product the business sells. The purchased software only covers about 40 percent of the in-house application's functionality, so he is contracting with the vendor to perform custom development on the purchased product (at a cost likely to be just shy of six-figures) so that about 90 percent of existing functionality will be covered. He has asked one of his developers (me) to scale down the existing software to cover the functionality gaps the purchased software creates. There is no deployment plan that will allow the business to transition from the current software to the new vendor​-supplied one without significantly hurting the ability of the business to function. When anyone raises this issue he dismisses it with sage musings such as, "I know it will be painful, but we'll just have to give the users really good support." Because he has no idea what any of his staff actually does, he is expecting one of his developers (again, unfortunately, me) to work with the vendor so that the Frankensoftware will perform as effectively as the current software (essentially as a project manager since there will be no in-house coding involved). Lastly, he refuses to assign someone to be responsible for the software: taking care of maintenance, configuration, and issue resolutions after it has been rolled out. When I pointedly tell him I will not be doing that (because this is purchased software and I am not a system admin or desktop engineer) he tells me, "Let me think about this." The worst part is that this is only one of four software replacement initiatives he is injecting himself into so he can prove his worth to the business owners. And by doing so he is systematically making every software development initiative akin to living in Dante's Eighth Circle. I am at the point where I want to burn my eye out with a hot poker, pour salt into the wound, and howl to the heavens in unbearable agony for a month, so when these projects come to fruition, and I am suffering the wrath of the business owners, I can look back on that moment I lost my eye and think "good times."

Ok. FUCK MySQL Workbench.
Most of our products built on MySQL and we just had enough of the tools that we are using for our mysql databases...
We decided to make our own tool :)

If it goes well, we plan to open source it. Would you guys be interested in it?
We planned the following features:
1. Schema editing
2. Schema versioning
3. Update/downgrade script generation to move easily between schema versions
4. Manual/auto sync
5. Might include our own replication solution too...

What do you think?

TL;DR - Developers, do not buy HP Stream models laptop unless they are selling at $1.

Cannot even handle Sublime + Firefox + LAMP use case well. On lubuntu OS with literally nothing else on it. Sublime crashes every hour.

Now I am learning how to code using other tools before I can buy a better replacement for it. Failure with gedit; very slow and sluggish. Currently trying Geany.

It's a pain in the ass to learn new tool especially when you are so accustomed to something. 😣

I have this reserve phone. My previous phone broke and I needed a cheap replacement till next February.

First thing I did is download DevRant.

Since I play BF1 I also wanted to download the companion app.
It appears that I ran out of space and my phone asks me if I want to remove DevRant to free some space....

Guess I'll use the companion on the web then.

TIL the best way to “win” an argument on Twitter is to simply abandon the thread when people think you should answer for your “crime” of having a difference of opinion and they start bringing social justice nonsense into it as a replacement for logic. They’re going on and on about how you are obligated to reply to them to answer for your alleged “privilege” and your silence just makes them sputter with rage.

battery replacement...

You know what I don't like?
Getting dropped into an ongoing project, especially as a replacement for somebody else - looking through the code and realising the code is perfectly fine - except I would do it differently.
Yes, I see why those choices were made. It's up to specs and according to the convention - but it still _feels_ wrong.

I just got the book "The C Programming Language, 2nd Edition" from Amazon.

I've had my wars with Amazon in the past for not protecting packages properly, and now it happened again. For the third time in 6 months.

The cover of the book is damaged, pages are bend a bit and it looks like someone took a key and tried to draw something on the front cover.

I contacted customer support to get a replacement, which was no problem, but still fucking annoying that I have to spend time on this shit.
Anyway, what pisses me off is the amount of work I have to do in order to send this shit back to them. Holy fuck!

First of all, I haven't met a single competent employee at a "post office" here in Denmark, as all of the offices are now a part of a either hyper markets or grocery stores. This means, that it's the stores employees handling this.

In this process from Amazon I have to actually clear it for customs with a form they need to take care of.
I have to print 4 labels, 2 which I need to sign and 2 I need to do something else with...

But I'm so freaking scared that they'll fuck this up and I'll get billed for 2 books. It wouldn't fucking surprise me, considering how fucking shit our postal service is in Denmark and how I've been screwed over by Amazon in the past

I'm quite tired if all the hate that PHP gets. Whilst the language composition is terrible it runs well with almost minimal setup on a Linux box, it is very powerful when it is used correctly and can even be OK to work in if you take time to setup nicely.

Neither Python nor node seem to me like a good enough replacement as they serve different purposes.

I prefer Python as a language but php serves a purpose

Upgrading RAM in a customer's laptop, pretty easy, right?

Well not in the Asus VivoBook Max. You have to disassemble everything just to get to the slot under the motherboard because it was too hard to put a fucking hole in the bottom for that. 20 minutes to complete the job and you know what? I also managed to break a flex cable so now I have to fix that or buy a replacement for the whole keyboard/mousepad assembly.

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK

I really felt like a badass one time when I managed to recover all projects on our dev server after a full meltdown of the HDD.

We had no recent backups, because our backup server was down for a few months, and our (at the time small) company was in a tight spot on finances, and couldn't get a replacement.

The problem was that the HDD on the backup server failed, but we were storing all projects also on the dev server, along with our local git repos (no GitHub at the time for us), but then the dev server HDD also broke, and I used every piece of data recovery software I found trying to recover the data, until one actually managed to read the raw data from the HDD and store it as a virtual drive, that I then used to try and build another partition index and it actually worked!

Lost about 10% of the data, but that was enough, as i managed to recover all the git repos and databases...

I don't even remember the tools that got the job done in the end, but that was one hell of a week, and at the end I felt like a true IT God!

True story!

PS: 2 weeks later we had a new backup server, another offsite backup solution and a GitHub account for the company. Was delayed on salary in order to manage it (me and the CEO both agreed to give our pay for one month to get them), but worth it!

I'm thinking of buying a Samsung Galaxy S7 as a replacement to my Nexus 6P.. from what I can tell, it ticks all the boxes.. nice battery (3000mAh), 5GHz Wi-Fi, octacore CPU, kernel source being available, QHD display... However, it being sold at €350 - and that only in the Netherlands - does introduce quite some hurdles. For anyone who's owned this device, how long did you own this device and did any issues show up, especially hardware-related ones? Last time I owned a Samsung device was with a Galaxy S3 Mini, which was a delight to use. Other than that I don't really have any experience with it.

Another thing that piqued my curiosity - I still have 3 Raspberry Pi's unused, as well as one LCD display (but without touch). It got me thinking, the only things that I really use my phones for on the go is for calling, texting and listening to music via Bluetooth. Perhaps a Raspberry Pi or even an Arduino could take care of that? The smart devices that I'd consume and produce most content on are my tablet and my PC anyway.

I started using Google Docs over the weekend working on my thesis paper for my CS degree. I've come to the conclusion that it's a suitable replacement for MS Office and my need for Microsoft's ecosystem. Don't know why I kept paying it for so long.

So, unlike normal people who just click on an mp3 file in windows explorer, I'm listening to music saved on my windows hard drive, accessed via an sshfs mount, using VLC running inside a HyperV linux VM and Xming/pulseaudio to make it show up inside windows like a normal window and play sound.
Why? Because this is my replacement for WSL which broke (Good Job on the updates as always, M$) and I'm celebrating that I got everything* to work.

* Nevermind the hours I wasted because I forgot to add a rule to the windows firewall allowing pulseaudio to connect and the fact that Xming can't handle vlc playing video

Got my phone back after a service screen replacement. This was my lockscreen wallpaper before the screen cracked.

Had given my laptop at the repair store. They were just suppose to do a checkup and then give a choice on whether to repair or not. They repaired it and charged me 2.8K. No unit replacement or anything, just service. I didn't mind it (was actually happy seeing my laptop boot up and not have a blank screen). It's a dual-boot (Windows/Antergos(Arch-linux)). It booted to Windows instead of GRUB. Didn't care too much, because it had happened before and I had handled it.
After I take it back home, I discover that the WiFi doesn't work (it doesn't even seem to be a driver issue). Live boot of arch doesn't have access to WiFi either. Reinstalled GRUB, only to discover it doesn't boot successfully (issues with video card). So, now I'm stuck with fucking Windows WITHOUT WiFi and an arch-linux that doesn't fucking boot.
Gonna reinstall Arch now.

P. S. : Windows is super fast, because I haven't really used it and don't really like using it. I feel very limited by Windows.

Office Ninja!

Today, my PM dropped by in the morning and mentioned she had some customer feedback on some item in a project where I'm the holiday replacement for someone else. I already had work to do, so that kind of interruption wasn't welcome.

"Well yeah, just forward it to me, I'll see what I can do", I told her. She agreed. Half an hour later, still no email from her. Hey, that looked promising!

For the rest of the day, I didn't talk to her, avoided speaking at all when she was near and even sneaked by her room (open doors) in silent mode lest I drew her attention and she might have remembered the email.

Until afternoon when I went home, still no email. Success! :-)

Today I had to give the most awkward excuse to my clients for delaying my work.

"Hello, I am sorry to say this job would be a little delayed as I managed to break my MacBook charger and will not be able to get a replacement until morning. I hope you understand"

Well I certainly do hope they understand.

Asher.

An open source replacement to the Google home and Amazon Alexa.

Unit testing is cool and all, but FFS...

If you want unit test - cool. But its not drop-in replacement for functional testing!

I believe each release should be manually tested.

A year ago I was hired as a Jr dev to assist the senior dev because he was so busy. Within 2 months he was pushed out and I replaced him. I thought maybe he just got busy with other things or found a new job.

After working alone this past year, I was told last week that since I am so busy with things outside the job, they were hiring someone to help me finish the project I'm currently on.

(for context : I work as a contracted dev for a small dev company of 5 or so people. One for each language/os.)

I can't help but think that I'm probably being pushed out and replaced. I flat out asked that, but never got a reply. Now I'm 70% through a project and disgruntled with everything. Not sure how I'm supposed to feel really.

If they want to replace me for one reason or another that's fine, I just wish they weren't shady about it.

I should probably be working right now, but I'm going to take my kids to the pet store to clear my head. I'll enjoy a little time away from my computer.

THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS.

I recently got a secondhand Sony WH-1000XM3 headphones. they were used for less than a year, were in perfect shape and they still had warranty.

The app that is supposed to go alongside the headphones told me that I have a firmware update for my headphones. So naturally, I pressed install.

AGAIN, THIS IS A FIRMWARE UPDATE ISSUED BY SONY!!

It bricked the headphones. I can't turn them on.

The issue was probably Bluetooth file sharing. BTFS is SO unreliable and it's known to be unreliable and Sony updates their top tier headphones with this communication method.

Thankfully, I still have warranty. I had to fight with the official importers of Sony in Israel (called "Ishfar", you read it like you see it) to go through the process of repairing / giving me a replacement.

O U T R A G E O U S

I'm a student at a cyber education program. They taught us Python sockets two weeks ago. The next day, I went home and learned multithreading.
Then, I realized the potential.
I know a guy1 who knows a guy2 who runs a business and could really use an app I could totally make. And it's a great idea and it's gonna be awesome and I'm finally gonna do something useful with my life.
All I gotta do is learn UI. Easy peasy.
I spent the next week or so experimenting with my code, coming up with ideas for the app in my head and of course, telling all my friends about it. Bad habit, I know.

Guy1 was about to meet Guy2, so I asked Guy1 to tell Guy2 about my idea. He agreed. I reminded him again later that day, and then again in a text message.
The next day, I asked him if he remembered.
Guess what.
I asked him to text Guy2 instead. He came back to me with Guy2's reply: "Why won't he send me a message himself?".
So I contacted Guy2. After a while, he replied. We had a short, awkward conversation. Then he asked why he should prefer a new app over the existing replacement.
He activated my trap card. With a long chqin of messages, I unloaded everything I was gathering in my mind for the last week. I explained how he could use the app, what features it could have and how it would solve his problem and improve his product. I finished it off with the good old "Yeah, I was bored😅" to make the whole thing look a bit more casual.
Now, all that's left to do is wait.
...
Out of all the possible outcomes to this situation, this was both the worst the least expected one.
I'm not familliar with the English word for "Two blue checkmarks, no reply". But I'm certain there is no word in any language to describe what I'm feeling about this right now.
By that point, Guy1 has already made it clear that he's not interested in being my messanger anymore. He also told me to let the thing die, just in case I didn't get the hint. I don't blame him though.

It's been almost a week since then. Still no reply from Guy2. I haven't quite been able to get over it. Telling all my friends about it didn't really help.
Looking back, I think Guy2 has never realised he has that problem with his product.
But still, the least he could do is tell me why he dosen't like it...
"Why won't he send me a message himself?" Yeah, why really? HMMM :thinking:

You know what? If I ever somehow get the guts to leave my home country, I'm sending a big "fuck you" to this guy.

Idiot mode: on

It's bad when you realize you are the most idotic person you know. I just bought a wifi card replacement for my laptop only to find out that one of the screws on its back was completely unscrewable. I foolishly decided to force my way through by forcing the plastic. I tought I got away with it as I only damaged a plastic support tighten to the laptop base but now, my laptop screen isn't showing anything.

When I first booted it up after this, it was working, but it started showing troubling signs shortly after. Now, all I can get out of it is a completely black screen, no backlight at all.

What should I do? 😥

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...

Years ago when I was younger than currently I got this first summer job as help in IT departament to answer calls from distressed workers.

Once this lady calls that "her monitor went black" and she cannot work, so I have to get her a replacement. They got only this big heavy CRT monitors as replacements so I had to drag it to 4th floor (no elevator) from basement.

As I reached her it turned out that her monitor is fine, only the wallpaper was changed to black, that what she was meaning :p

Well, at least I got some exercise back then.

If Google hadn't kill Google Play Music, I don't think a single soul would voluntarily switch to it's YouTube Crap Music.
If you remember prior to 2011 the initial plan of Google was to take market away from Apple's iTunes. They initially shipped Amazon music with branded Android OS before the development of Play music.

As a long term user of Play music I'd say "killing the product" was a "bitch move"!
Because Play music is doing really great and you could tell from its reviews and moreover the destination product is quarterly-baked not even a viable replacement in the least sense.
There are more than a million and one problem with YouTube music, currently you would notice your playlist history gets clogged up with your videos when you visit the video web. It's more like the actual YouTube app hiding behind a curtain to mimick a music player. Which is so so stupid and annoying!
As a user all I want from a music player is to fucking listen to music not to watch fucking videos... which makes the app unnecessarily filled with stupid options you never really need.
I understand that monetisation is necessary but please show some fucking courtesy by doing shit with wisdom!

What the hell has happened to Hewlett Packard?
They used to make the best notebooks around. 10-15 Years ago, basically all notebooks my family bought were from HP. These devices lasted for at least 6-8 years each.
Now I have a fucking expensive OMEN series notebook failing after 2 years with the most embarrasing hardware problems: Once a shielded piece of plastic from the bottom broke off and made a short on the mainboard, next time the way too thin power line that goes from the power plug to the PCB was placed alongside a sharp metal piece that damaged the isolation and again produced a short. When the display is moved, the webcam disconnects, which is also a hint at the production quality.
From my daughter's HP notebook the Display just broke off after like 18 months of use. When we brought it to service I asked the guy whether this happens a lot, he was like "I have 6 other notebooks of that type with the same problem in repair right now". After a repair that took forever because they couldn't get the proper replacement parts, the integrated webcam has died.
Never ever going to buy anything from this shitbrand again.

Who thought that "IP" was a good replacement for ifconfig... I don't care how great it is, you can't Google for "release DHCP IP" and get instructions like you could for "release DHCP ifconfig"

For some reason my wife was watching me reading away at devrant and then says:

Wife: You are missing your protection!
Me: ehh what ....
Wife: Let me fix that.

Then she comes back with a ... wait for it ... green yellow striped glitter apple sticker for my webcam.

I don't know if I should be proud of my wife or ashamed of myself for not a replacement yet.

And a big fuck you to sony mobile, I hope you die soon.
TLDR: sent a weeks old phone for repair to Sony, they asked 450€ because according to their "experts" chassis was bent and main board was busted besides the obvious screen and touch being broken.
It costed less than 400€ including vat.
Out of spite I ordered a replacement screen for 55€, and it's fucking working again, thanks a lot for the offer but I still can replace an lcd myself. Screw your warranty policies, you made a phone that slips like a wet soap.
I've owned xperias all my life, Arc, U, M, Z1 besides all the dumb phones manufactured by Sony/Ericsson.
Guess I'm finding a new brand very soon.

So today a drawer above my desk fell, but sadly my MacBook Air was under it, now I had a cushion based cover and a hard shell case for my Mac. However the edges of drawer penetrated the cover and case leaving a dent on the back. Which somehow means I don’t get the display but everything else is working (ie keys and sound).

Now I have to push an important bug fix and screen replacement will take at least 10-12 days.

Have you become a replacement tool doing manual and menial IT work to bridge the lack of a proper IT process and streamlining?

I've worked for such companies and it's super annoying.. companies that zip projects to Google Drive instead of using a VCS.. not even having a drawing board or proper office chairs.. not even a cafeteria.. companies using Subversion instead of Git, no project management systems nor software, no JIRA, shit written down on printed paper,.. the list goes on.

A nightmare, really. Like developing in the 90's..

One of my hobbies is to repair stuff.

In front of me is a Xiaomi Notebook air 13.3", a very nicely build device.

But it's driving me nuts, the screen is completely glued onto the front glass.
How the fuck am I supposed to exchange that display with a new one?

The main problem with those devices seems to be the display-cable in the hinge.
It might short 3.3V to 19V backlight, killing the display, the hdmi controller and the audio-chip.

2 ez fixes so far, but that fucken display.
And the absolute worst is that there are 0 official replacement parts available for any of the Xiaomi notebook's.
The fuck!

If you like scripting I can recommended you Perl6.
It may be no as popular as other languages or its predecessor, but its definitely worth a try.
Its also and excellent replacement for Shell-Scripts.

Hello devs, I need help from database devs.

The company where I'm interning is a non IT company, so they planned to migrate to a SQL Database from their older MS Access Database.

Since I'm the only IT intern, I'm up against the major devs and hot shots from where my company outsources IT solutions.
They suggested SQL Express.

I have a meeting tomorrow with them, please help me so that I can get better results for my company.
Basically I have to question them about how their decision works better for our firm and why didn't we go for MySQL Enterprise Edition or anything which is much better and cheaper and such critical questions.
Please help me.

The Database would be used to store information about the products manufactured and their parts' history so that in future if there's a problem with the product, it can be looked up in the database so that there can be further replacement or repair processes.

Going into uni, the first thing I did (like many others) was to join an on campus organization (club/group). I made the choice of joining my unis publication. Little did I know 2 years ago that I had just joined the top most student magazine in this country. (Literally).
Honestly, I was excited. I was the first web developer that qualified that year, and within a year I was able to claim my position as the senior developer. It had been an uphill climb all the way, I was able to redesign the entire website and implement an insane amount of features as well as add both iOS and Android apps to the list of things I had done in a year.

I had loved everything I did, only when I was given my new position as senior dev did I see the reality of being in this magazine.. it's in total chaos. Every year we elect new editorial members (as old ones graduate) however the new ones have no idea how to run the magazine, they have literally declared that were in crisis mode. Being in an art school were all about creativity, and honestly, there is nothing creative about our magazine anymore.

Suddenly after two years I feel that my work no longer matters to them anymore. I have thought about quiting a million times now but they would take away my grant if I did (we get a subsidy for working for the magazine). I have two more years and I feel like absolute shit being in this magazine, my work is never credited and I am never mentioned either! While I am the reason they have a face on the internet, they never once have credited me. I don't feel like I belong in the team anymore. I feel like they only have me there is because they can't find a replacement nearly as good. (I'm sorry but I consider myself the best.)

The agency I own built a WordPress plugin for a client using a freelancer developer. The client, out of ambivalence, withheld information that would have drastically changed the design of the plugin, but by the time we found out it was much to late to start over. The developer moved overseas in the middle of it all and from then on was not very responsive to communications about the project which delayed things by months. I tried to find a replacement developer but nobody else had experience with the third-party API. The live version of the API ended up not being able to support what we were trying to get it to do with the plugin even though the test version of the API was fine and the vendor was unhelpful. And because we spent so much time and money on the plugin, we weren’t able to even begin on another part of the project. The client complained of over $30,000 in lost revenue due to these issues. Complete fail all around. I’m never doing another custom software project again. It’s all just website design from here.

The other day, I accidentally broke the R key on my laptop keyboard. The mechanism still works, but the keycap no longer locks in

I go to buy a replacement, since it's really messing with my typing flow, and I find out it costs 7 USD per keycap, plus shipping. That means that to replace every key on my keyboard, it would cost me about $680!!

I only paid about $500 for the ENTIRE FUCKING LAPTOP AND YOU'RE GONNA CHARGE ME $7 FOR A SINGLE FUCKING KEY!!! FUCK YOU ASUS!!!

Audiophiles here?

My Beats In-ear earphones just died, after 3 years of pretty frequent use. The cable is broken and one side is dead and the other side is flickering. Now I am looking for a replacement. And I hope that someone here can suggest me something that fits my needs :s
First question would be wireless or cable. I am not to sure yet, I think I'd prefer cable because I don"t need to charge them and the possibility of loosing them is not as big. However I am open to wireless earphones as well, since they are pretty good to listen to music during workout.
I want my earphones to have deep bass and clear highs.
One of the most important aspects is durability. If its a cable earphone, I would prefer something with strong durable cables, nothing flimsy that breaks again in a short time.
Oh yeah and the price shouldn"t break the bank, I am thinking about something <100 euros.

What would you guys recommend me?

Well I can say one thing for sure. The tooling found for Flutter in the form of IntelliJ and Android Studio is far superior than fucking around on a text editor das for sure.

Not really into the continuous nesting of widgets. But then again I was not a big fan of having jsx either.

Both options still better than fucking around with the Java Android api....and I fucking love Java.

Still feels like Google realized that such approach was better, else I don't think they would have justified the creation of the Flutter lib. And yes. I know that it is not a complete replacement for Android Java, but the interfacing between Dart and the Java api feels more natural at least to me and the widgets look native af so we go on with them big plus digits.

RIP fridge. You served me well but why couldn’t you last 2 more months until I get the fuck out from this subscription AaaS (apartment as a service) and move to place I own with bank moderators.

Understand that at this point I’m just leveling up my new place with bathroom and furniture attributes to be able to live there on my own.

I don’t have enough gold to buy replacement and start living in new location at the same time.
Fuuuuuuuuuck !!!

I'm working in a complex CMake/C++14 project.
Many libraries uses EASTL as STL replacement, works and compiles flawlessly.
Have to use Qt5 for an application which uses the libraries.
The EASTL Library fucking collapses
Compile fails, 1k of syntax errors somehow.
After hours trying to figure out without alterating the EASTL library (i don't want to maintain custom versions of 3rd party libraries, an complete burden to maintaining updated)
Remove all reference of Qt5 from the code and the build system.
It fucking compiles.
Isolate an minimal build which only uses CMake, EASTL and Hello World in Qt5.
1k of syntax errors again.
Spend hours trying to fix it, no avail, still fucking 1k syntax errors.
I'm past beyond of the project development where ALL the big libraries of the project uses EASTL extensively.
One day C++ will drive me into the depths of madness.

My team and I are working on a huge project that's been in development for years.

First deadline was in the fall last year. We were never going to make that.

Then we were supposed to be ready just after the summer holidays (months ago). We didn't make that either.

Then we were supposed to launch last week. Didn't happen, still too many critical errors and unfinished, untested features.

Now we are having daily meetings to discuss whether we'll be ready to release... that day!

Meanwhile, stability issues and other critical errors keep popping up. The product is barely finished and has not been through rigorous testing with all the latest features and bug fixes. Not to mention that we don't really have a deployment pipeline either.

And here's the kicker: The customers don't know this is coming. It's highly anticipated, but only internally. It is a replacement for an existing product, which strives towards not changing the frontend too much.

Why do we rush it so? I get that a deadline can help motivate you to reach your goal, but how motivated will we be if the launch fails and we get buried in bugs and missing features?
Would it not be better to launch it with at least the confidence of knowing that we've tried to test it properly?

There's very little good use cases for mongo, change my mind.

Prototyping maybe? Rails can prototype, create/update/destroy db schemas really quickly anyways.

If you're doing a web app, there's tons of libs that let you have a store in your app, even a fake mongo on the browser.

Are the reads fast? When I need that, use with redis.

Can it be an actual replacement for an app's db? No. Safety mechanisms that relational dbs have are pretty much must haves for a production level app.
Data type checks, null checks, foreign key checks, query checks.
All this robustness, this safety is something critical to maintain the data of an app sane.

Screw ups in the app layer affecting the data are a lot less visible and don't get noticed immediately (things like this can happen with relational dbs but are a lot less likely)

Let's not even get into mutating structures. Once you pick a structure with mongo, you're pretty much set.
Redoing a structure is manual, and you better have checks afterwards.

But at the same time, this is kind of a pro for mongo, since if there's variable data, as in some fields that are not always present, you don't need to create column for them, they just go into the data.

But you can have json columns in postgres too!

Is it easier to migrate than relational dbs? yes, but docker makes everything easy also.

Job BS that made me consider quitting?

Huh. so timely.

With my previous employer, it was the whole "we're doing Agile and sprints and all the things" with "finish the project in six weeks plus here are some more requirements" garbage. Plus my tech lead always let the business roll over her and add unplanned requirements during a sprint without adjusting the deadlines set by the project managers. In summary: a fuck-all combination of Waterfall deadlines, Kanban tickets and Scrum timeboxes.

At my current employer, it's our business partners who're a bunch of douchebags that don't plan for anything except making sure their bonuses stay intact. Recently they terminated support for a third-party product that literally drives 99% of their web application then says to us "Hey, we need to build our own replacement for the vendor product using an entirely new stack. You have 3 months or our clients will get pissed." Oh, and these business partners keep raising new issues without any documentary basis except "this doesn't feel right" when they test our in-progress work. So helpful <sarcasm />

On the bright side, I'm getting paid whether or not this project fails, so... meh.

When I was young I'd play games and around age 11 received an Xbox for my bday. Hated the case, so I painted the case. Since I had it open looked into getting a replacement fan.Thats when everything changed. I discovered the modding scene and without having any computer background/literacy got to studying.

The program that caught my eye ran on Linux. *shrugs thinking how hard can it be? * Read about Linux and discover dual booting. To do that I needed to resize windows partition. Learn more about partitions and get to it. Finally prepped... Backup in case of the worst, resized windows partition, working Ubuntu bootable USB, and printed install tutorial. Check, check, and check. Install was good. Sort of.

While Ubuntu worked, the broadcam wireless chipset driver did not. Fast forward a week and I feel that i had mastered the terminal basics. And WiFi worked! Go download the aforementioned program and FTP into the Xbox and BOOM... It doesn't work. More days and hours spent researching. In the end it all chalked up to not setting a static IP address on Xbox.

After all was said and done I had a bitchin Xbox. I think the only thing I didn't put on it was some gold spinning rims.

Sad part about that Xbox is that I never used it after. Instead I just kept messing around with Linux and learning more about computers. Taught myself HTML/CSS. Learned more about shell scripting. Then Windows cmd basics. Tried programming languages but felt a little overwhelmed. Only messed with <10 lines of code to tweak existing programs.

Now I'm learning C# and loving it. Planning on C++ or Java next!

The railway service in Sydney is called CityRail.

Fuck CityRail!

It's so unreliable that service disruption is to be expected when the weather is too hot, too cold, too wet, or too dry. If it rains, some services will be cancelled while the rest face delays.

Fuck CityRail!

The rail network is so dilapidated it costs the government millions of dollars each year for maintenance, despite charging a fare that is one of the most expensive.

Fuck CityRail!

Now I'm typing this because I've be stuck on this train for the last hour and there little hope for me to reach home before fucking MIDNIGHT!

FUCK CITYRAIL!

They initially offered replacement service but later retracted.

Fuck CityRail!

Weird thought.

Everyone seems to hate electron. It's one of the strongest cross platform developing environments though, so everyone uses it.

Google recently made 2 new platforms, flutter and dart, designed for cross platform applications... but then why is project fuschia's entire UI built in, you guessed it, dart and flutter?

I think Google is trying to make an electron replacement, endorse and grow it in fuschia, and have it grow as the new (resource friendlier) electron.

Of course, only my ramblings. Take with a grain of salt.

So at our company, we use Google Sheets to for to coordinate everything, from designs to bug reporting to localization decisions, etc... Except for roadmaps, we use Trello for that. I found this very unintuitive and disorganized. Google Sheets GUI, as you all know, was not tailored for development project coordination. It is a spreadsheet creation tool. Pages of document are loosely connected to each other and you often have to keep a link to each of them because each Google Sheets document is isolated from each other by design. Not to mention the constant requests for permission for each document, wasting everybody's time.

I brought up the suggestion to the CEO that we should migrate everything to GitHub because everybody already needed a Github account to pull the latest version of our codebase even if they're not developers themselves. Gihub interface is easier to navigate, there's an Issues tab for bug report, a Wiki tab for designs and a Projects tab for roadmaps, eliminating the need for a separate Trello account. All tabs are organized within each project. This is how I've seen people coordinated with each other on open-source projects, it's a proven, battle-tested model of coordination between different roles in a software project.

The CEO shot down the proposal immediately, reason cited: The design team is not familiar with using the Github website because they've never thought of Github as a website for any role other than developers.

Fast-forward to a recent meeting where the person operating the computer connected to the big TV is struggling to scroll down a 600+ row long spreadsheet trying to find one of the open bugs. At that point, the CEO asked if there's anyway to hide resolved bugs. I immediately brought up Github and received support from our tester (vocal support anyway, other devs might have felt the same but were afraid to speak up). As you all know, Github by default only shows open issues by default, reducing the clutter that would be generated by past closed issues. This is the most obvious solution to the CEO's problem. But this CEO still stubbornly rejected the proposal.

2 lessons to take away from this story:

- Developer seems to be the only role in a development team that is willing to learn new tools for their work. Everybody else just tries to stretch the limit of the tools they already knew even if it meant fitting a square peg into a round hole. Well, I can't speak for testers, out of 2 testers I interacted with, one I never asked her opinion about Github, and the other one was the guy mentioned above. But I do know a pixel artist in the same company having a similar condition. She tries to make pixel arts using Photoshop. Didn't get to talk to her about this because we're not on the same project, but if we were, I'd suggest her use Aseprite, or (at least Pixelorama if the company doesn't want to spend for Aseprite's price tag) for the purpose of drawing pixel arts. Not sure how willing she would be at learning new tools, though.

- Github and other git hosts have a bit of a branding problem. Their names - Github, BitBucket, GitLab, etc... - are evocative of a tool exclusively used by developers, yet their websites have these features that are supposed to be used by different roles other than developers. Issues tabs are used by testers as well as developers. Wiki tabs are used by designers alongside developers. Projects and Insights tabs are used by project managers/product owners. Discussion tabs are used by every roles. Artists can even submit new assets through Pull Requests tabs if the Art Directors know how to use the site interface (Art Directors' job is literally just code review, but for artistic assets). These websites are more than just git hosts. They are straight-up Jira replacement with git hosting as a bonus feature. How can we get that through the head of non-developers so that we don't have to keep 4+ accounts for different websites for the same project?

Oracle, please get your crap together.

If you really wanted to make an amazing replacement for Java swing, you could have made the scene builder application for javafx not crash every 15 minutes on macOS. Seriously. I can't go more than a half hour without it freezing up and/or having the window disappear, never to open again. I get that it's a complicated program, but it's 10 YEARS OLD. It should have been stable by now.

The company I work for had an employee train his replacement without any clue that he was his replacement....savage

His long do you think it will take for Google to come up with a true replacement for Java. A replacement, not an alternative like Kotlin, but a complete "go f**k yourself, Larry" replacement that anyone can port their Java app over to. On January 1, if you are a for profit, Larry had said if you want to update to the next version and use Java SE to code with, you need a support license. It's a brill move, because Java is everywhere, and at least for a little while, it will generate a respectable profit for Oracle. But I'm sure Google is working on something to stick it to Larry. Wonder if EU competition chief Vestager will threaten am investigation. This should be fun to watch.

I don't think "main" is the best replacement for "master" on GitHub, I mean Git already uses branches so why not continue with the whole tree analogy and call it the "root" branch?

When you try and replace the hard drive in your dev machine because the replacement you bought for someone else doesn't work but works for you. You go to turn the computer back on but nothing comes on screen........

some students aren't treating their school laptops well at all, today i had a student asking us if he would get a replacement if he "accidentally" gave it a little bath in acid :/

wHo WrItEs OnLiNe LiKe ThIs?

ALSO THE UNIT MADE A REPLACEMENT CLASS IN THE TIMETABLE WHICH MEANS ALL OTHER UNIT CLASSES OR SLOTS CANNOT GO IN THERE FOR THE WHOLE SEMESTER, JUST FOR 1 WEEK!!!!

1 CLASS IN 1 TIMESLOT IN 1 WEEK FOR 2 HOURS IS RUINING MY WHOLE TIMETABLE

Ok, so the company ask me for "responsabilities guidelines" for ease the training of new guy who will work as my replacement in the company.

They distributed my responsibilities to 10 people...

Can i say that i'm a "x10 Engineer"?

Fun fact: i don't even have the Engineer degree yet. I´ll get it at october's last friday.

*dab*

I loved my Watch, i wore it everyday, and even bought a premium bracelet 40 euros or so... then, THE FUCKING BACK OF THE WATCH FELL OFF! LIKE THE FUCKING BACK! So i returned it... AND THESE CUNTS SEND ME A FUCKING REPLACEMENT WITHOUT MY FUCKING BRACELET! WHICH FUCK DID THIS! WHO CAME UP WITH THIS FUCKERY! FUCK!

Chemists recently "compiled" a programming language into chemicals! I'll admit that I have no clue how it works, but they were able to get a mathematical function working without any electronics. The article I read doesn't describe the speed of the reaction, so I'm not sure if it's really useful as a replacement for computer operations.

Watched a co-worker configure a new "MacBook pro" as a replacement for the four-year-old one this personcurrently has. A replacement machine is justified as the old one is on the fritz... Naturally because MacBooks aren't any better than any other machine, build quality or otherwise. I still cannot fathom why anyone would even consider budgeting over $3000 for a single machine, only to then buy several adapters just to make the thing work.

Apple is off the deep end. People who fall for that BS are off the deep end.

I feel like showing the manager several alternative models at half the price just to make the point that MacBooks are a pointless waste of money.

So a package came at my door today and it looked like it had stickers in it. I thought they were my devRant stickers and became so overjoyed I happily signed the package and quickly went back in without reading the sender's name.

And then I opened it up and it had a phone's battery.

My sis-in-law sent her phone's battery and asked me to buy and send her a replacement.

Feels fucking bad, man...

Get replaced by an AI^WDeep ML device. That's coded for a 8051 and running on an emulator written in ActionScript, being executed on a container so trendy its hype hasn't started yet, on top of some forgotten cloud.
Then get called in to debug my replacement.

Replaced battery in my phone but during the process I broke cable to front camera.
Looks like it’s time to also replace front camera.
I am impressed it works without it.