The programmer and the interns part 3.

Many of you asked me to keep posting about the interns that I'm responsible for.

I had the intention but never had the time or the energy. Since the interns only kept doing stupid, unthinkable things and just filtering out the good ones is a task of its own.

Time has passed, some interns left us by their choice, others were fired (for obvious reasons). Some stayed loyal and were given permanent positions. New ones joined. I no longer am directly responsible for their wellbeing, yet, somehow I am still their tech-lead and the developer of their tools.

Without further delay,

Case 0:
New guy get's into the internship, has his LinkedIn title set to ‘HTML Technician’.
Didn’t know about the existence of HTML5.
Been building static web pages in the early 2000s. The kind with embedded, inline CSS.
Claims that he is about to finish an engineering degree (sadly I believe him).
Fails the entry level Linux test. Complains about the similarity of the answer options.
Fails the basic web-standars test because "they change so fast, but the foundation is HTML and it's rock-solid!".
Get's caught taking home onions and milk from the kitchen.
Is spotted eating in a restaurant under our offices in his day off. Thrice. He lives a 30 minute drive away and comes here on a bicycle or by bus.
Apparently didn't know that the scrolling wheel on the mouse is clickable.
Said that his PC experience is mostly from his PlayStation (PC = PlayCtation apparently).
Get's fired, says that he'll go to the press. Never does.

Case 1:
Yet another new intern. He seems very eager to learn and work, capable, even charismatic. Has an impressive CV.
Does nothing.
Learns from the "case 0" guy and spends time with him until he is fired.
Comes to work at 8:00 AM and immediately goes to sleep on an office puff. In front of everyone.
Keeps dining alone, without a notice, at different times, for hours. Sometimes brings food into the office and loudly eats it there.
On his evening shifts keeps disappearing for long periods of time. Apparently drinking in the nearby bars and hitting on girls.
Keeps bragging about his success with getting their numbers and rants about those who reject him.
For over a year he fails his final training test and remains a trainee, without the ability to work on a real case.
Not fired yet.

Case 2:
Company retreat. Beautiful, exotic views, warm sun beams, all inclusive package for everyone on a huge half-island.
Simon (he's still with us, now as a true engineer!) brings his MacBook to the beach in order to work and impress all others.
Everybody get's drunk and start throwing huge inflatable balls at each other. One hits his laptop and it immediately is flattened.
Upset Simon is going in circles and ranting about the situation, looking for a solution.
Loses his phone on the beach.
Takes his broken laptop with him while searching for the phone.
Dips the laptop in the river while drunkenly ducking in order to pick a clam.

Case 3:
Still company retreat.
Drunk intern makes out with an employee's drunk wife.
Huge verbal fight. The husband says that he files for a divorce. Intern get's fired.

Case 4:
Still company retreat.
Three interns each take an inflatable swimming mattress and drift with the current. Get found on the other side of the resort three hours later, with red skin and severely dehydrated.

Case 5:
Still company retreat.
The 'informally fired' intern gets drunk again, climbs through a window into a room and makes out with an employee's drunk wife.
Again, gets caught when the husband returns to find a locked door but can see them though the window.

Case 6:
Still company retreat.
We all get ferociously drunk and wander off to the unknown in search of more booze.
Everybody does something stupid and somebody finds Simon's phone.
Simon is lost.
Frenzied horde of drunks is roaming the half-island in search of ethanol and the lost comrade.
Simon's phone get's permanently lost.
Five people step on sea urchins but find that out only hours later and then are unable to walk.
The mob, now including more drunk people who joined voluntarily, finds the sexually active intern making out with the enraged employee's wife yet again.
Surprisingly Simon is found sleeping in a room nearby.

The strangest place I've ever coded... I woudn't say it was the strangest, but definitely the least expected?

The hospital's recovery room after my second child.

I was working at/in Hell at the time (see previous rants concerning API Guy and the asshole salesman CEO). Said salesman douchebag ceo bossman had no recollection of me being expecting, going to the hospital, or even why I was there (and if he did, he wouldn't have cared at all). He still insisted I work on his shit features because they were so important for his ever-so-important client and their new signups that they were going to do anyway. I loathe him so fucking much.

Anyway, the feature in question was pretty tiny: during the new client onboarding process, if the client came from a specific affiliate link, the frontpage should change to reflect that affiliate's branding -- different background, a custom header, etc. It was pretty easy to do, though I made certain he didn't know that. During an hour while everyone else was asleep (and while I wasn't passing out from exhaustion), I pulled out my macbook air and built his stupid feature next to my hours-hold newborn.

Did I get any appreciation for that? Sure! He showed appreciation by not yelling at me for a few days. But only because he thought the feature was difficult and that I got it done quickly, not because anything else was difficult. Asshole.

Yes, I told him several times before and several times more afterward. I don't know what goes though his head or how it even works, but it didn't seem like a big deal to him, and he kept forgetting, or maybe he just pretended to listen like he always did. Fucking asshole apparently never heard of maternity leave. I could rant and swear and curse and fume and rage about him for years 🤬 I can't believe I was so excited when I netted that job.

But anyway, building the feature was actually kind of relaxing. I organized and wrote the entire project myself, so working with it was a pleasure, and it was an easy change that I could abstract nicely and cleanly. I totally didn't mind doing it, and actually kind of enjoyed it. I just hated who I was doing it for, and that he didn't fucking care. Used and abused? absolutely. I hope he dies in the most painful, gruesome way possible. Spaghettification might not even be awful enough

Friend of mine killed his MacBook with some Softdrink.

Just poured it all over his poor a1502.

He let it dry for a few days, it starts to work again.
Except the battery.

Goes on Amazon and buys a new battery.

New battery doesn't work either and so he tells me about it and I as stupid as I am couldn't resist the temptation to finally work on a MacBook like my "hero" Lois Rossmann does.

So turns out the board is good.
Cleaned it up and basically nothing happened to it.

So what's the deal with "los batlerias"?

The first got hit by liquid, the second had a broken connection to a cell.
That could have happened through my friend, installing it without testing it first, or at the seller, so it being a DOA battery.

Now away from the stupidity of my friend and the situation to the actual source for this rant.

Once something happens to a modern Managed battery, the Battery Management System (BMS) disconnects the voltage from the system and goes into an error state, staying there and not powering anything ever again.
For noobs, it's dead. Buy a new one.

But It can be reset, depending you know how to, and which passwords were set at the factory.
Yes, the common Texas instruments BQ20Zxx chips have default passwords, and apple seems to leav them at default.

The Usb to SMBus adaptors arrived a few days ago and I went to prod the BMS.

There is a very nice available for Windows called BE2works, that I used the demo of to go in and figure out stuff. The full version supports password cracking, the demo not.

After some time figuring out how Smart Battery Systems (SBS) "API" works, I got to actually enter the passwords into the battery to try get into manufacturer and full access mode.

Just to realise, they don't unlock the BMS.

So, to conclude, my friend bought a "new" battery that was most likely cut out of a used / dead macbook, which reports 3000mah as fully charged instead of the 6xxx mah that it should have, with 0 cycles and 0hours used.
And non default access.

This screams after those motherfuckers scaming the shit out of people on Amazon, with refurb, reset, and locked fucken batteries.

I could kill those people right now.

Last but not least,
My friend theoretically can't send it back because I opened the battery to fix the broken connection.
Though maybe, it'll get send back anyway, with some suprise in the package.

Oh my word, shut up everyone about the ESC key. In interface design do you keep something around that 1% of your user base uses, or do you make something better? It's not even gone. It's on the touch bar for fricks sake.

And while we're talking about it, stop calling Apple so innovative. Innovation at Apple died with Steve Jobs. "We developed this awesome new iPad Pro!" it's just a bigger iPad with the same stupid limitations of all iPads. If you want a real portable work tablet, go buy a Surface. "We added a touch bar to the MacBook Pro!" some manufacturers of Windows laptops have had that thing for years!

😰

You can believe or not but it’s just one of those stories. It’s long and crazy and it probably happened.

A few years ago I was interviewed by this big insurance company. They asked me on linkedin and were interested. They didn’t specify who they were so I didn’t specify who I am either.

After they revealed who they are I was just curious how they fuck they want to spend those billions of dollars they claimed in their press notes about this fucking digital transformation everyone is talking about. The numbers were big.

I got into 3 or 4 phone/skype interviews without technical questions and I was invited to see them by person.
I know that it would be funny because they didn’t asked me for CV so they didn’t know anything about me and I was just more curious how far I can get without revealing myself.

They canceled interview at midnight and I was in the middle of Louis de Funès comedies marathon so I didn’t sleep whole night. I assumed they would just reschedule but then they phoned me at 8 am if I can come because they made mistake.

So at first talk I was just interviewed by some manager I knowed after 5 minutes he would be shitty as fuck and demand stupid things in no time because he is not technical. He was trying to explain me that they got so great people and they do everything so fast.

From my experience speed and programming are not the things that match. ( for reference of my thought see three virtues of a GREAT programmer )

So I just pissed them off by asking what they would do with me when I finish this transformation thingy next year. ( Probably get rid off and fire at some point were my thoughts )

Then I got this technical interview on newest gold color MacBook pro - pair programming ( they were showing off how much money they have all the time ).
The person asked me to transform json and get some data in javascript .

Really that was the thing and I was so bored and tired that I just asked in what ES standard I can code.
The problem was despite he told me I can do anything and they are using newest standards ( yeah right ) the “for of” loop didn’t worked and he even didn’t know that syntax existed. So I explained him it’s the newest syntax pointing mozilla page and that he need to adjust his configuration. Because we didn’t have time for that I just did it using var an function by writing bunch of code.
When he was asking me if I want to write some tests probably because my code looked ugly as fuck ( I didn’t sleep for more then 24 hours at that point and wanted to live the building as fast as I can) I told I finished and there is no time for tests because it’s so simple and dumb task. The code worked.

After showing me how awesome their office is ( yeah please I work from home so I don’t care ) I got into the talk with VP of engineering and he was the only person who asked me where is my CV because he didn’t know what to talk about. I just laughed at him and told him that I got here just by talking how awesome I am so we can talk about whatever he wants.
After quick talk about 4 different problems where I introduced 4 different languages and bunch of libraries just because I can and I worked with those he was mine.

He told me about this awesome stack they’re building with kubernetes and micro services and the shitty future where they want to put IOT into peoples ass to sell them insurance and suddenly I got awake and started to want that job but behind that all awesomeness there was just .NET bridge with stack of mainframes running COBOL that they want to get rid off and move company to the cloud.

They needed mostly people who would dump code to different technology stack and get rid of old stack ( and probably those old people ) and I was bored again because I work more in r&d field where you sometimes need to think about something that don’t exist and be creative.

I asked him why it would take so much time so he explained me how they would do the transformation by consolidating bunch of companies and how much money they would make by probably firing people that don’t know about it to this day.

I didn’t met any person working permanently there but only consultants from corporations and people hired in some 3rd party company created by this mother company.

They didn’t responded with any decision after me wasting so much time and they asked me for interview for another position year after.
I just explained HR person how they treat people and I don’t want to work there for any money.

If You reached this point it is the end and if it was entertaining thank YOU I did my best.

Have a nice day.

last time I went into a "computer shop" one of the staff members was trying to sell this poor little old bloke a mid spec macbook pro just to Skype and email his son/grandkids who live in Australia, when he asked if there was a cheaper option as he didn't have much money they very rudely told him no and that they where the "experts", best bit is when I tried to point out how wrong this was and that he could do that on a cheap tablet (let alone a macbook) to a manager he tried to convince me that he needed the macbook.

are these people just stupid or really that shallow as to try and convince an elderly man to spend such an outrageous amount of money.

So, I'm using a new MacBook Air (running Sierra), and while I'm still getting used to it (especially the different Sublime hotkeys), overall it really is quite wonderful. I particularly love the magic touchpad and ease of scrolling/swiping between desktops.

However, I ran into an issue this morning that gave me pause: apparent file caching.

My webpack setup auto-compiles my project when files change, and I noticed something was causing errors -- not really surprising since I was in the middle of fixing the project last night. However, the error it displayed wasn't something I was expecting, and referenced a line I was positive I had removed several hours before calling it a night. Whatever, I was probably mistaken, so I went to remove it.

... It wasn't there.

I double checked that I was looking at the right file. Yep, src/styles/header.scss -- that's the correct file. Figuring webpack was acting up, I killed and restarted it.

Same error.

So whatever, maybe Sublime cached it. Rather unexpected, but possible, and I am on a mac now... so maybe. So, I closed the file and reopened it. The line wasn't there. I did this twice more. It STILL wasn't there. Maybe I'm going crazy...? I checked the file with cat. The line was there. I checked with vim. The line was still there.

OKAY. I've seen a lot of people with beef with Sublime, and I often defended it. but maybe they're actually right. maybe Sublime really isn't the way to go. :( So, I killed and reopened Sublime, and I checked the file again.

The line STILL ISN'T THERE.

Maybe I'm going crazy? I double, triple, quadruple checked the path. all correct.
Alright; let's try again and make sure I do it properly. I closed everything I had open in sublime (two projects), and quit. I reopened Sublime, navigated to the correct path, and reopened the file...

The offending line STILL wasn't there.

I'm angry at this point and just mash the keyboard. I save the resulting garbage, and cat the file again. No visible changes.

KAJSFLK STUPID PIECE OF <redacted>

okay, whatever. Reboots fix everything, right? So I reboot, and keep the option to re-open everything again ticked.

The terminal comes back up, along with half(?) my browsers, but Sublime doesn't. grrrrrrr.

so I cat the damn thing.

GUESS WHAT.
THE GARBAGE IS THERE.

Sublime was doing its job. BUT EVERYTHING ELSE FAILED.

(Oh Sublime, why did I ever question you? 💚)

... but seriously, what the fuck could have caused that? Was the OS caching the file for some programs, but not others? Now I'm questioning the macbook...

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

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

! rant
Finally got a macbook..I was SO sick of stupid windows!!

My tab key now requires a harder press than it used to earlier. STUPID MACBOOK. This minor inconvenience is a really major annoyance.

Can't fucking realise how a 8 GB RAM Dell laptop is considered as a programmer's laptop over a MacBook Pro in my office!!!! 😑
The stupid Windows laptop keeps getting updates, as if anyone cares 😑

Macbook keyboard is shit
Especially european variant.

I want to see any person in the world that is braindead enough to think that making short left shift if favour of having abolutely useless button there is good.
This is the most stupid decision that could be ever made.

Not only the symbols used by that button are seldom used, they also are duplicated on they other keyboard keys. But shift is used all the time and must be big enough instead of that shit.

It still amazes me that people willingly choose apple. After being given a MacBook for work, I sort of expected it to grow on me a bit. But no, it forces you to do everything in their stupid apple way. It is form over function in its purest form.

Could we all just agree that Mac is a piece of shit in terms of performance? Specially with those lousy animations and that stupid dock?

Got Archlinux running on my Macbook. Happy days again.

Today, my macbook pro 2020 get spilled with my ice coke, i am just looking at the laptop, take some tissue to clean it, and waiting for my mac is getting up again. Feel so sad and very fcking stupid 😭

This stupid computer is in clamshell mode connected to my screen and mech %99.999999 of the time. I take it with me on a trip and the down arrow key breaks off (little plastic shit-thing snapped off)..WTF? 2013 Macbook that has about 5 hours of total keyboard-use, at best.

Walk into the Apple shop in Varna, 3 Euros and I'm back in action.

ahhhh fuck..it was probably my fault clacking too hard.

Good sushi here and my dry February has happily turned into large pints of Kamenitza...

Cheers from Bulgaria, you fucks..

Since I was a child I had always been interested in computers and when I bought a MacBook Pro at the age of 15 I discovered that I could make apps for iOS for free with Xcode and figured I could try it out. Started watching swift tutorials and shortly fell in love with programming. I then started building a stupid camera app, and published it on the AppStore. I am now working on my second project called ChairGame (musical chairs) I am 16 now and confident that I will become a developer.

I'm in several FB groups for selling/buying IT material, and from time to time I see someone trying to scam other people by selling those "GAMING PC L33TL4z0rz" with 4GB RAM and an GeForce 700GT GPU, attaching some LED action photos and League of Legends / CS:GO prints.

One of the most recent posts, was a guy who was trying to sell his (really old) macBook.
He said it was great for gaming, had an i5 CPU and 4GB of RAM.

Upon leaving my comment on the pieace of shit he was selling and that 4GB was barely enough to run Chrome, I got a shitload of replies saying that 4GB on a mac are not the same as 4GB on windows... So I immediately forgot everything I knew about computers and just left most (if not all) sales groups because I felt that a tumor of sorts started growing in me, a tumor of rage and awe in human stupidity.

Slowly, I started feeling superior to other people, and would immediately regard them as idiot simpletons. And I don't want to be THAT guy, who rolls his eyes every time someone asks a stupid question...

Now, if any of you could please inform me... What is the RAM conversion rate between a windows and a mac ?

Start up my windows gaming machine, the internet adapter is not recognized... sigh.

2 years with my macbook pro for work, 0 issues. Literally "it just works".

And no thanks, I already went through that teenager phase of my life where I'd shout "omg I use linux I'm so special" and then browse through 5 forums to solve a stupid issue from any tool by "just build it from source, follow these 12 steps and apt-get these other 20 dev libs"

Ok... so I have a unique question/opportunity. I can't give all the details but here's the jist:

3yrs ago I was hired to consult a now prominent(still decently well known then) web-based company with many thousands of users, dealing with a lot of money and leveraging a social environment. They had several issues but initially they really needed me to find/train chat mods.

I did not take the offer for monetary reasons, like all consulting I've done, I had additional reason and/or fondness to fix the issues. In this case it was an interesting challenge and I knew several customers and some support staff so it'd be worthwhile.

They (without request) reduced their typical 2mo probationary period to 2wk for me. With less than a day left of that period, I was 'hacked' via a pushed telegram update, on the account they made me create for work purposes (they had control of the phone number not me).

During this 'hack' one of the 2, currently active, culprits sent a message to his tg account from the 'hacked' one and quickly deleted the entire convo. The other pretended (poorly) to be me in the chat with the mods in training (at least a few directly witnessed this and provided commentary).

Suddenly, I was fired without any rationale or even a direct, non-culprit, saying anything to me.

The 'hack' also included some very legit, and very ignorantly used, Ukrainian malware.

This 'hack' was only to a 2nd gen lenovo yoga I got due to being a certified refurbisher... just used for small bs like this chat mod/etc job. I even opened up my network, made honey pots, etc., waiting for something more interesting... nope not even an attempt at the static ip.

I started a screen recording program shortly after this crap started (unfortunately after the message sent be 'me' to the dude who actually sent it happened... so i still dont know the contents).

I figured I'd wait it out until i was bored enough or the lead culprit was at a pinnacle to fall from...

The evidence is overwhelming. This moron had no clue what he was doing (rich af by birth type)... as this malware literally created an unhidden log file, including his info down to the MAC id of his MacBook... on my desktop in real time (no, not joking... that stupid)

Here's my quandary... Due to the somewhat adjacent nature of part of our soon to be public start-up... as i dont want it to turn into some coat tail for our tech to ride on for popularity... it's now or never.

Currently im thinking, aside from any revenge-esq scheme, it'd be somewhat socially irresponsible to not out him to his fellow investors and/or the organisation that is growing with him as one of few at the forefront... ironically all about trust/safety/verification of admins in the industry.

I tried to reach out to him and request a call... he's still just as immature. Spent hours essentially spamming me while claiming it wasnt him but hed help me find whoever it was... and several other failed attempts to know what i had. When i confirmed he wasnt going to attempt a call, i informed him id likey mute him because i don't have time for back and forth bs. True to form he deleted the chat (i recorded it but its of no value).

So... any thoughts?

I am an stupid human being. How many times should I experience the same problem to learn from it? I don’t know why should I possibly be obsessed by latest MacOS updates? This fucking error ruined my day. Those fucking idiot coders in Apple must use some unit tests (including transparent iTerm in second display). Fuck you all. My £1600 Macbook pro is literally useless until some fucking coder finds what is wrong in their NEW update.

I once added a scale css-transform with a media query targeting some specific Macbook to the whole <body> of a site.

Some designer came up with a pretty stupid navigation which wouldn't fit into that viewport, deadline was close and the customer wanted to see exactly the layout he had approved. Still feel bad about this :/

I just completed this heartfelt and sincere little cry for help on another ste but it wasn't verified because I'm not special enough to format it like a PAD, whatever that means. I cannot seem to simply burn music files anymore. I'm using a Samsung laptop Device name DESKTOP-AII2T2S
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2675QM CPU @ 2.20GHz 2.20 GHz
Installed RAM 8.00 GB
Device ID D766A89B-5671-4D9F-B6F9-2D884E9EA309
Product ID 00326-10000-00000-AA880
System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor
Pen and touch No pen or touch input is available for this display
Edition Windows 10 Home
Version 20H2
Installed on ‎09/‎08/‎2020
OS build 19042.928
Experience Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.551.0

The music is a combination of commercially relased material as well as bootleg recorded material.

I am not looking for a "This is Why We Can No Longer Burn Our Music Files" Intro. All you need to tell me is the corporations that eat the world are protecting their copywrighted music and I must be up earlier and eat bettter breakkie than those individuals. That I can handle. Although I'm not a dev, I'm sure you can understand the feelling after you have worked for hours on attempting something, only to discover your effort has been in vain (much like my former relationships). Again, if you can give me any direction aside from hanging it up and attempting to find happeniness elsewhere, sock it to me. I deserve it. Thanks.
11 years ago when I used a Macbook putting together a playlist, inserting a blank CDR, and burning the file onto the CDR was very easy. I\'m am now faced with hurdles I sometimes scale, only to fall on my face.
I\'m not stupid, or uneducatated about flac, blah blah. I learnt it all myself. I\'m now using a windows operating system. Afew weeks ago I was able to burn what ever I pleased and it was OK.
Then one day, it just wouldn\'t do it. I was following no altered procedures. Since then it\'s been misery. I remember that ocenaudio once burned music files for me.
I don\'t know how to go about retrieving an instruction manual that will take me step by step as to how to do this.

You help would be appreciated.

Cheers,
Jonno

I've been lurking here since 2017 when my Macbook died. I've always enjoy the level of sanity and have attempted to add my jaded, distant and nihilistic spin on a few threads. It won't destroy me if I can't burn files anymore, I'll just go back on heavy tranques and change my name to Ben Zo. Dia Za P.een

Stupid Adobe Experience Manager only works in IE11.

I develop on MacBook pro.

I setup remote desktop on a windows computer at office to remote in so I can work on my MacBook remotely and deploy (manually via copy and paste into a text area called “HTML code”).

Everything is setup for the weekend.

Boom, it restarted itself and went to sleep after a Windows update...