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Search - "surgery"
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Our programming teacher had a surgery on his left eye and will not be able to do the lessons with us. Guess what the subject of the email he sent us was.
"I can't C#."
He made a pun about his fucking health status, alright then.14 -
Me and my love-hate Linux.
I lost virginity really early. In the age of 5 it was my first time with windows 95. I spend almost 10 years with Windows before something happened that would change everything. I met Linux. Her forename was Arch. I had a crush on her right from the beginning. It didn't take long for me to abandon windows. Arch had everything I wanted. She had latex which was pretty hot and looked simply and elegant on her. Sometimes she was really hard to deal with and almost drove me crazy, but I knew I fell in love.
Until that day. I had to write a short paper which was quite fun and Linux helped me alot. It was a breeze to work with her. The evening before the deadline she was quite thoughtful. She sometimes was, so I thought it'll be alright, but this time was different. She struggled a bit, so I put her to sleep and she never woke up. I brought her to the emergency lab which was open 24/7. Since no one was there I had todo the surgery myself. After 5 hours I was almost to tired to continue when she finally woke up. I asked her about the things she should remember for me - then I killed her. I started to hate Linux for what she had done to me. The unbelievable stress and horror.
I returned to Windows. Besides that she got a bit more curious what I was doing when and where nothing really changed and she was glad to have me back. I just was happy how simple our relationship was.
One day then, I couldn't believe it at first, I met Archs sister. Manjaro. No matter how strange that is, but it was as if I would meet Linux again for the first time. She was just a bit simpler but as flexible as arch. Since then we are happy together. It seems that we both just grew up a little.
And with Windows? She got even more curious! Actually I have the feeling she is stalking me now, but I don't regret anything!15 -
My biggest dev blunder. I haven't told a single soul about this, until now.
👻👻👻👻👻👻
So, I was working as a full stack dev at a small consulting company. By this time I had about 3 years of experience and started to get pretty comfortable with my tools and the systems I worked with.
I was the person in charge of a system dealing with interactions between people in different roles. Some of this data could be sensitive in nature and users had a legal right to have data permanently removed from our system. In this case it meant remoting into the production database server and manually issuing DELETE statements against the db. Ugh.
As soon as my brain finishes processing the request to venture into that binary minefield and perform rocket surgery on that cursed database my sympathetic nervous system goes into high alert, palms sweaty. Mom's spaghetti.
Alright. Let's do this the safe way. I write the statements needed and do a test run on my machine. Works like a charm 😎
Time to get this over with. I remote into the server. I paste the code into Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio. I read through the code again and again and again. It's solid. I hit run.
....
Wait. I ran it?
....
With the IDs from my local run?
...
I stare at the confirmation message: "Nice job dude, you just deleted some stuff. Cool. See ya. - Your old pal SQL Server".
What did I just delete? What ramifications will this have? Am I sweating? My life is over. Fuck! Think, think, think.
You're a professional. Handle it like one, goddammit.
I think about doing a rollback but the server dudes are even more incompetent than me and we'd lose all the transactions that occurred after my little slip. No, that won't fly.
I do the only sensible thing: I run the statements again with the correct IDs, disconnect my remote session, and BOTTLE THAT SHIT UP FOREVER.
I tell no one. The next few days I await some kind of bug report or maybe a SWAT team. Days pass. Nothing. My anxiety slowly dissipates. That fateful day fades into oblivion and I feel confident my secret will die with me. Cool ¯\_(ツ)_/¯12 -
Watching the Dutch government trying to get through the public procurement process for a "corona app" is equal parts hilarious and terrifying.
7 large IT firms screaming that they're going to make the perfect app.
Presentations with happy guitar strumming advertisement videos about how everyone will feel healthy, picnicking on green sunny meadows with laughing families, if only their app is installed on every citizen's phone.
Luckily, also plenty of security and privacy experts completely body-bagging these firms.
"It will connect people to fight this disease together" -- "BUT HOW" -- "The magic of Bluetooth. And maybe... machine learning. Oh! And blockchain!" -- "BUT HOW" -- "Shut up give us money, we promise, our app is going to cure the planet"
You got salesmen, promising their app will be ready in 2 weeks, although they can't even show any screenshots yet.
You got politicians mispronouncing technical terminology, trying hard to look as informed as possible.
You got TV presenters polling population support for "The App" by interviewing the most digitally oblivious people.
One of the app development firms (using some blockchain-based crap) promised transparency about their source code for auditing.... so they committed their source, including a backup file from one of their other apps, containing 200 emails/passwords to Github.
It's kind of entertaining... in the same way as a surgery documentary about the removal of glass shards from a sexually adventurous guy's butthole.
Imma keep watching out of morbid fascination.... from a very safe distance, far away from the blood and shit that's splattering against the walls.
And my phone -- keep your filthy infected bytes away from my sweet baby.
I'll stick with social distancing, regular hand washing, working from home and limited supermarket trips, thank you very much.26 -
This one is for devs and gamers.
But first some background story.
My girlfriend is special. Not just generically lovey mush mush special. She is 1 in 100 more accurately 1 in 10000. She was born with a rare Congenital Heart Defect {CHD}. Called Truncus Arteriosus or TA for sake of brevity. TA's main thing is the two main arteries going into the heart are fused together and never seperated at birth. It's bad news. There is no cure for this kind of thing. Simply repairs that happen over the course of life.
So here is me. Desperately trying to find a way to get the word about this and the 40 other types of CHD out there in the world. I thought. "What if I make a game..." Not based around the medical jargon but on a level people could understand. I spent the better part of the last six years attending appointments with her and still don't get it. What I do get is her Emotional state. How her CHD causes her to think and feel.
So here is the pitch.
The game is about a girl who is diagnosed at birth with a CHD. She is now in her 20's and has to undergo an open heart surgery to repair the defect. The day comes. She goes under but when she wakes up she find herself in a final fantasy style environment. This new world has a darkness cast over it. She is unknowingly the hero of this world and she has to face off with multiple bosses of varied degrees of evil.
Then after beating these bosses she really wakes up from the surgery. Waking up to the realization that the world she saved was herself. And all the bosses were manifestations of her own internal feelings. Depression, anxiety, hopelessness, Denise, desire and so on.
I would sell this game with the caveat that 2/3 of all profits get split between the Adult Congenital Heart Association and Project Heart. As those are the two main organizations that deal heavily with creating standards of care and raising awareness for CHD survivors.
Thoughts?
Note: I am still learning game dev. This is an eventual goal for me.33 -
It seems like every other day I run into some post/tweet/article about people whining about having the imposter syndrome. It seems like no other profession (except maybe acting) is filled with people like this.
Well lemme answer that question for you lot.
YES YOU ARE A BLOODY IMPOSTER.
There. I said it. BUT.
Know that you're already a step up from those clowns that talk a lot but say nothing of substance.
You're better than the rockstar dev that "understands" the entire codebase because s/he is the freaking moron that created that convoluted nonsensical pile of shit in the first place.
You're better than that person who thinks knowing nothing is fine. It's just a job and a pay cheque.
The main question is, what the flying fuck are you going to do about being an imposter? Whine about it on twtr/fb/medium? HOW ABOUT YOU GO LEARN SOMETHING BEYOND FRAMEWORKS OR MAKING DUMB CRUD WEBSITES WITH COLOR CHANGING BUTTONS.
Computers are hard. Did you expect to spend 1 year studying random things and waltz into the field as a fucking expert? FUCK YOU. How about you let a "doctor" who taught himself medicine for 1 year do your open heart surgery?
Learn how a godamn computer actually works. Do you expect your doctors and surgeons to be ignorant of how the body works? If you aspire to be a professional WHY THE FUCK DO YOU STAY AT THE SURFACE.
Go learn about Compilers, complete projects with low level languages like C / Rust (protip: stay away from C++, Java doesn't count), read up on CPU architecture, to name a few topics.
Then, after learning how your computers work, you can start learning functional programming and appreciate the tradeoffs it makes. Or go learn AI/ML/DS. But preferably not before.
Basically, it's fine if you were never formally taught. Get yourself schooled, quit bitching, and be patient. It's ok to be stupid, but it's not ok to stay stupid forever.
/rant16 -
!Rant
Doctors called me back, I’ve got brain decompression surgery in a month... fuck my life. If it’s not one fucking thing it’s another.11 -
Conversations I've genuinely had at work:
Me: "Do you want some advice understanding that function?"
Dev: "Yeah, please!"
Me: "Get a plastic bag and some super glue..."
Dev: "I think I'm seeing the light at the end of the tunnel!"
Me: "It's just the train of mental bitchslaps coming in the other direction."
... Some time later
Dev:"You were right... "
Dev: "If the system is so unstable, how does it keep working?"
Me: "Do you see any goats in the office?"
Dev: "Uhm no... Why would there be goats?"
Me: "There aren't, now, we ran out."
Dev: "The hell are you talking about?"
Me: "We just sacrifice our own blood to Cthulhu these days, it's cleaner and we didn't have to pay to have all the goats blood and waste matter to be cleaned up. That and it was needlessly cruel to the poor goats and that is why there is no goats and despite conventional logic the app continues to work."
Dev: "So what language is the web app written in?"
Me: "You need to understand I inherited this project, I had nothing to do with it's spawning..."
Dev: "OK, that sounds ominous... How bad is it?"
Me: "Java..."
Dev: "..."
Dev: "So what's it like working on this project? What should I expect?"
Me: "You'll call your grandmother during your lunch break just to know there's a world beyond this project. You'll go home, nose bleeding and you are gonna sit in the shower and rock back and forth, holding yourself and feeling like you're suffering imposter syndrome. You'll question why you joined this team and it'll get inside your head til it's all you think about..."
Dev: "Damn man, why are you still on it?"
Me: "Stockholm syndrome, it's too late for me..."
PM: "You're such a dark person, we're not gonna find you hanging from the lights one day are we?"
Me: "Impossible, we use those industrial fluorescent strip lights, there's no cord to hang from."
PM: "That really wasn't the comforting answer I was looking for."
Head of department: "So I need to apologize, you were never meant to be left on your to manage the product on your own, it's something someone way more senior should have been doing and we reassigned him. It wasn't professional of us, it wasn't fair of us, we're sorry. Truth be told,we're impressed you've not gone mad."
Me: "I think I have. Wibble."
A card goes round work for a sick member of staff I've never met.
Me: "How would you describe her condition?"
Dev: "She said that she 'survived' the surgery."
Me: "Yeah, I'm not great at being appropriate but even I think writing 'glad to hear that you are not dead' in a get well soon card isn't the done thing."5 -
Small update on my UWP File Explorer:
Got some nice work done on the Navigation Box. A right click (Or long tap on touch displays) gives a context menu with subfolders, as opposed to the Classic application which had a drop-down button (This is not as friendly for touch, in my opinion)
A left click navigates to that folder.
Been a bit sick from my surgery, so not much progress these past few days, but I'm still happy with this.12 -
I used to work in a call center for a local hospital.
One night, all of our lines are swamped. Literally no time for a break between phone calls, +15 minute wait times. I answer the next call:
Me: "Its a marvelous Monday at AskIT, how may I help you?"
Doctor: "This is Dr. [Noone Care]. I need you to fix my password now."
Me: "Absolutely! You should be able to enter a new password now."
Doctor: "MY HANDS ARE NOT FOR PASSWORDS, MY HANDS ARE FOR SURGERY!"
😩 So glad I don't work for doctors anymore. Oh and the best part is, he had selected the general phone queue, rather than the doctor queue (~3 minute wait time instead).7 -
!dev
If you comment shit like "mUsIc ToDaY iS gArBaGe" and "iM fRoM tHe WrOnG gEnErAtIoN" on YouTube, you deserve to have whatever rights you're given stripped from you.
We live in the most technically advanced time the world has ever seen. We have music available 24/7 from literally all over the world. So shut the fuck up and listen to your preference. Nobody holds a gun to your head and makes you listen to today's music. Don't like it? Don't listen.
It's not brain surgery and this doesn't make you unique or quirky as much as you want it to, nor is it a personality trait.12 -
I'm the leader of a team developing a project at my company. Recently I had an accident which required me to have a surgery, and I was out for the last month.
Since it's an important project, our CTO reassigned a Xamarin dev to help my team (in JEE) while I'm out, you know, cause "C# looks like Java". The guy had to write a file stream handler, and - though the guy does a really good job - it's funny to see how desperately he's trying to understand how Java works with streams. Censored because of reasons.7 -
devRant frustrated my all life. checking devRant at operating room while waiting patient for surgery13
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Fucking teammate who did not know how to read/write a simple class diagram.
We warned him that he have to study or we just kick his fucking ass out of the team.
He just did nothing. When we had meetings he just stayed at home pretending to have an heart issue needing surgery.
After just 2-3 days he was tagged on FB in a photo shooted a few days earlier where he was riding a bike for a competition.
He skipped another scheduled-a-fucking-week-before meeting saying that he was on a surprise trip, when I called him 5 minutes before meeting start.
In the end we just kick him out because he did nothing. He went to professor talking about some relationship problem in the team and asked him if he could continue the project by himself just forking the ours.
Professor said HELL NO SON OF A BITCH.
But our team learned a precious lesson : choose your team carefully.5 -
I develop apps for a medical school. You'd think the students would be pretty bright, but it legitimately scares me that some of these people are going to perform brain surgery.
I guess the moral of the story is you're not too dumb to get that dream dev job - if these morons can be doctors, you can do what you set your mind to. And you can feel good knowing your mistakes won't kill anyone!9 -
My dad just got his abdominal surgery done. The surgeon was shocked how bad it became. He wasn't expecting it to be this bad. From an expected 1.5h surgery it prolonged to 4.5h... Thank God it went well and my dad is awake now from anesthesia. Now he has to rest in hospital for a few days. I was stressing so much about this. Thank you God🙏🙏🙏🙏☦️☦️☦️❤️❤️❤️❤️11
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A physician, a civil engineer, and a computer scientist were arguing about what was the oldest profession in the world. The physician remarked, "Well, in the Bible, it says that God created Eve from a rib taken out of Adam. This clearly required surgery, and so I can rightly claim that mine is the oldest profession in the world."
The civil engineer interrupted, and said, "But even earlier in the book of Genesis, it states that God created the order of the heavens and the earth from out of the chaos. This was the first and certainly the most spectacular application of civil engineering. Therefore, fair doctor, you are wrong: mine is the oldest profession in the world."
The computer scientist leaned back in her chair, smiled, and then said confidently, "Ah, but who do you think created the chaos?"
Note:
Ten points for an arbitrarily female Computer Scientist. ;)4 -
* Got an epileptic seizure
* fell down
* broke my left humerus top to 3 pieces
* bone pieces will be held together with titanium plates/screws tomorrow with surgery
* need some good wishes although I am hardcore materialist
* thanks in advance.16 -
I did it.
I finally fucked prod.
And had to do open heart surgery on the service to get it unfucked.
Shit happens. Luckily its internal prod only...10 -
I've started writing Rust code for fun. My initial experience with it is that its like writing a program wearing a surgery mask and latex gloves with a condom around your keyboard, while you sit in a padded room with a nanny nagging over your shoulder.
The borrow checker is somewhat of a pain in the ass to deal with.
But that said, I've never been so safe and confident my code won't fail during runtime before.
And the best part: it's blazing fast.7 -
A huge new hospital opened up.
it looks very modern and nice, lots of new doctors and facilities.. but..
Why is everything wireless?!
everything's connected to different APs across the hospital!
Receptionist's pc? has a wifi adaptor sticking out to the side.
in-patient's smart tvs? Wireless, connected to their own ap
etc etc.
conveniently enough, the SSID's were labeled with where they were being used and didnt bother to hide it
"Office A" "Smart TVs" "DB".
now im not saying wireless is bad, it's convenient! but why make everything in the building connect wirelessly.
any kid who's feeling naughty could do:
aireplay-ng -0 0 [BSSID] wlan[#]
and it's good bye connectivity.
or maybe flip put wireshark or any kind of sniffer.
i dont wanna have to come here for surgery only to find out the machine's wireless too.
imagine it stopping halfway through your surgery.. Yikes..6 -
I quit abusive relationship. I quit smoking. I quit vaping salt nicotine, yes, the one that vape bloggers tell you is impossible to quit. I overcame opioid drugs addiction that developed when I recovered after a surgery back in 2015.
My last addiction is sugar. Yesterday night was the night when I ate about 100 grams of it in one take, feeling like I need more and more to take that hunger away. It felt EXACTLY like when I was hitting my 50mg vape literally every 20 seconds no matter the headache and dizziness.
I’m already insulin-resistant. After I’ve eaten all that sugar I felt really thirsty and then it hit me. I don’t want diabetes. I don’t want to inject myself. And I’m already insulin-resistant. It’s not me who crave sugar, it’s my internal animal and it only understands the language of pain and fear of death.
After I quit it, I’m officially a superhuman. Addicted to nothing but self-expression. That’s what I like, that’s who I naturally am.12 -
!dev rant about social media 🤡 s like this one.
I hate when people seek for a reason to bitch on social media. This tweet for example.
1) I went to a small high school (small compared to a lot) and we still had a personal management class and this was covered.
2) Who the fuck uses checks still.
3) It's addition and subtraction, not brain surgery.
4) if you actually cared, Google it. There's a shit ton of information on balancing a check book out there.
5) You're probably in debt due to a shitty lifestyle combined with terrible money management, but keep playing victim. It's never your fault.
But of course she doesn't care. It's another case of someone wanting a reason to bitch and moan on social media. Get a hobby you clown.28 -
I went to the university today to perform a turkey heart surgery and to puff into pig's lungs. (Which was cool) Then I saw this sign, really have no idea how this could ever happen. Any suggestions?2
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Expat issues of the month is that the HR is taking its sweet time, while I'm trying to find a house and probably need to provide employment certificate or some shit.
So basically, I'll arrive in a month and either be homeless, crash on a friend's at least an hour and half away by PT, or pay for hotel or airbnb.
... Heaven and hell, could you please work together on solving this, particularly the house issue? Because neither am I made of money nor my nerves can currently take this, specially with this upcoming surgery thing. 🙏5 -
the nurse just called to say that my moms heart surgery is done and it went well. shes now sleeping under heavy narcotics and anesthesia in the shock room. thank you GOD and Doctors 🙏🙏🙏❤️❤️❤️5
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My mother is a manipulative bitch.
From my childhood, I remember nothing but fear and guilt. When I was 13, she shamed me for my body looking ugly and too feminine. She shamed me for having better vision than her, and that I don’t need to wear glasses.
I had a broken toe once, and she shamed me into admitting it wasn’t in fact broken. After two weeks of pain, she finally got me to the doctor, and x-ray had shown it was in fact broken.
She always made me carry her heavy luggage with her crap to the airport, and once I got hernia. The surgery was needed. After the surgery, they didn’t care, didn’t give me the time to recover, and made me carry her crap again. The second surgery was needed. It was more complex than the first one. Now my body is ruined by those disgusting scars. I hate my body now. It is ruined.
She tried to knock down the door into my room when I was crying and didn’t want to talk.
She screamed at me when I wanted to donate some of my old clothes to charity, the ones I bought with my own money. She is so obsessed with her crap. She hoards it, and she was hoarding it into _my_ room, not hers.
My father is still unknown. She abandoned me as a kid for my grandparents to grow me. I barely saw her till the age of six. Then I grew up with her and my stepdad, and their relationship was all manipulation and guilt. She made him apologize and beg almost every day over the course of thirteen years. They were fighting about their miserable sexual life, lack of her orgasms while I was still a kid. She just didn’t care. Once they decided to talk about their pissing kink right next to me when I was (not in fact) asleep.
When I was raped, she did nothing. She just kept on calling me beautiful and insisting she wanted me to wear mascara, while hating gay people. It was all before I realized my gender identity.
She also didn’t notice I was autistic. She liked it, as it gave her advantage. It’s easy to manipulate an autistic teenager.
After my coming-out, she told me she had cancer, and she wanted to stop treatment in order to “die sooner and not see me”.
But once my bipolar disorder awakened, things changed. Bipolar is my shield. I can be manipulated, yes, but bipolar will obliterate my whole world view once a year, together with your manipulative crap you planted into my life. And because it dismantled a 19-year-long, almost fractal manipulative masterpiece, I fear nothing now.
I disowned her some two years ago.21 -
I don't get people..
He is a good person and and realy tries..
Tries what?! To annoy coworkers that have to fix every single thing he does?!
Some people will justify anything with 'he is a nice person and tries hard'. WTF?!
So if someone is a nice person, likes to talk a lot, has 'good' social skills but writes crappy code he doesn't test at all.. or tests and see that it's glitchy and still doesn't fix it.. so he is a good worker for that?! Dafaq?!
So if he is a 'lovable' person, he deserves to be here, doing more damage than helps.. he deserves to have a job, with same pay (or even more) than me?! WTF?! How?!
Why is this ok?! If we were heart surgeons and he killed a person or two due to lack of skills or negligence, what would happen?!
He'd get fired on spot!! Why can't it be the same with devs?!
Why on fucking earth do we need to put up with people who try their best and fail?! Especially if their best is lowest of all, lower than the 'I don't give a fuck, just doing sth so the boss stops nagging'?!
Fuuuuuuuu!!!!
But ok, some people are not cut out for some work, I get it.. but why the fuck do other people justify that with 'he tries'?! Dafaq?!
Maybe next time 'I'll try' to perfom brain surgery on you..and you'll end up a fuckin plant.. is that ok with you?! I'll be trying (not really) and do my best (well I will try not to use a chainsaw when cutting open your head).. will that be ok with you?!
Fuck!!5 -
Struggling to earn money to pay for medical bills for my dad at a private hospital because he's having some problems with bile in his stomach. He pukes after eating almost anything so he has to eat some dry bread and drink tea. The only solution for this is surgery. He made appointment for august which is the earliest date... I have to find a way to earn money asap so he can go privately Now without waiting...
No i cant use gofundme because its not available for my bullshit 3rd world country just like most services16 -
Why do people like hiring managers at companies seem to think that because you are paid to code you spend your spare time coding?
You don't expect a surgeon to operate all day then go home and randomly start cutting people up, so don't expect a code surgeon to spend all day coding to go clock off the start hacking away at shit either!10 -
Easy.
I just worked a shitty manual labor job from 5am - 4pm Mon - Friday while going to night school. I told myself if I didn’t succeed in programming I would be stuck at that dead end job which would eventually lead to my own suicide. I kind of put myself in a position where getting good at coding was my only way out of a shitty/brutal lifestyle. It worked, as I now work from home and make twice as much money. It’s a funny thing to think about sometimes, two years ago I had to have knee surgery due to the physical strain of my former job job, and nowadays I sometimes get a neck cramp from not sitting up straight.
Moral of the story, sometimes growth can only happen when we put ourselves in uncomfortable situations.2 -
I have a situation that is so out there I almost wouldn’t believe it if it wasn’t happening to me. The company I work at has three branches and around 100 employees. The owner of the company has a brother who needs a liver transplant. Two weeks ago, a company-wide memo went out that all employees would be required to undergo testing to see if they were a suitable liver donor for the owners brother. No exceptions.
Last week at the branch the owner works out of most of the time, his assistant went around to schedule days off for everyone so they could go get tested. People who declined were let go. One of these people was born with liver disease and therefore ineligible to donate. She had a doctor’s note. Other people also had medical reasons as well and some were just uncomfortable with the request and didn’t want to do it. One was pregnant. They were still terminated. My employer’s assistant has said that because our employment is at will, he can legally fire us.
I’m in remission from cancer. I’m ineligible to donate and any kind of surgery would put a major strain on my system. Even if I was healthy, I would still object to possibly being forced into donating an organ just to keep my job. Soon they will be scheduling people’s days off for testing at my branch.
I know this situation is nuts, but I don’t know what to do. I know I could just go for the testing and then be declined, but I don’t think I should have to do that. I’ve had enough with hospitals. Other coworkers who don’t have medical conditions are afraid they won’t be declined because they will be a match. I’m looking for another job but in the meantime I don’t know what to do and I and many of my coworkers are really stressed out.25 -
Really worried about one of my devs tonight. He's going to go into surgery. Hoping everything will be okay. :(
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So I've had a shoulder surgery to fix my problem always losing my left arm, I'm on a medical leave, so no work but i get payed, nice and dandy ... Yesterday my old colleague/friend calls me that he arranged an interview for me for a project ... Excuse me but wtf, I'm happy getting payed and not working 🤔
I vent to the interview, and all they want is to add Romanian and Hungarian translations to a site and mobile app they have, technically they don't even have access to the server or files to add the other languages.
Now explain that to a non tech guy.
We agreed that they get my answer when they have approval and access to the needed stuff 🤣
Edit: this also fits this weeks question6 -
Update to my "I broke prod" rant:
- I managed to unfuck it on the same evening.
- Worked fine for one day
- Crashed today morning
- Can't fix it because I had surgery yesterday and am on sick leave currently
=> Probably gonna result in me VPNing into the comp network and RDPing into the prod instance to analyse the failure
Yep, ladies and gents, more open heart surgery on the menu!11 -
Clients defining exactly how they want to build something they don't understand is a bit like me telling a brain surgeon to use a butter knife to perform surgery.1
-
I was reading a book and came across this :
"
What if you were a doctor and had a patient who demanded that you stop all the silly hand-washing in preparation for surgery because it was taking too much time? Clearly the patient is the boss; and yet the doctor should absolutely refuse to comply. Why? Because the doctor knows more than the patient about the risks of disease and infection. It would be unprofessional (never mind criminal) for the doctor to comply with the patient. So too it is unprofessional for programmers to bend to the will of managers who don’t understand the risks of making messes.
"
It's fair point but at the same time we have to comply with the manager in order to have a raise/promotion. What do you think guys ?6 -
!personal
So, I was diagnosed with congenital nystagmus at an early fucking age. This is complicated for people who've never heard of it before to comprehend, until they notice the eyes of the person in question. Think of it this way: I lack the biological form of optical image stabilization. Because of nystagmus, I can't fucking drive.
Now, let me tell you, it really fucking sucks. I've never had a girlfriend, never been able to get a job, basically never been able to do the type of shit most of you can already fucking do. Pile that on with college, where I don't really fucking know anybody, and it's really fucking easy to see why I've had depression and nearly fucked my GPA over last semester (2.08, yeah it's embarrassing but fuck it).
That out of the way, nystagmus is rare. So rare that any surgeries to fix it aren't guaranteed to fix the problem, and are only marginally better. I have strong skepticism for any optometrist who acts like they perform this surgery every day, because the numbers simply don't back them up. If there's so few who have this issue, then the amount of operations and opportunities to do them are fucking slim.
Today, my mom came over to Indiana from Ohio, and took me to the local Cheddar's (do other countries have those??). We sit down, and she wanted to re-hash this surgery idea. I have made the statement before that these are the only two eyes that I will ever have, and there's no guaranteed ROI on any procedures, and is probably going to fuck me over if shit hits the fan.
Then she tells me there's this doctor in Maryland. I might be geographically challenged (lol), but I'm pretty sure that's over on the east coast. It's forever from here, we'd probably have to take an airliner.
This doctor made some pretty bold fucking claims. Not only was it possible he could fix the nystagmus, but he could help me use a special form of glasses that would enable me to learn to drive. Knowing that R&D on nystagmus was sketchy because of the aforementioned conditions, I had to tell her that I still don't know how I feel about it. Also, if this doctor moves from Maryland to any of the other states, would he still be allowed to do these things?
I told her I don't know how I feel about it. I'm not sure it's worth the money if we follow through and come to find out it's not enough, and I still can't drive. She acts like this stuff is dead simple. I don't think it is. You have perceived benefits, but there have to be caveats. This would be a major change, and I don't know how I feel about following through with it.9 -
Hey DevRant,
Today I bring bad news. My little coding companion (little degu) in one of my past posts has done something to its back leg/paw whilst taking a fall off my brother's leg. My younger brother wasn't careful enough and the goo was unlucky enough to land on the floor injured. My feelings towards my brother and what he has done are still something I'm not sure about.
We took the goo to the vet as the goo was in severe pain. The vet gave the goo some morphine for the pain. It stopped looking stressed after a while and then it was completely chill. I was just so glad (and still am) that it's not feeling the excruciating pain it felt before. Because we don't have insurance, the price for the emergency consultation alone was quite high, but at this point I really didn't care about money...
The goo is spending the night at the vets where it will be free of pain and in the morning, the vets will x-ray the goo and see weather it can be mended. If it will not be able to be mended, the goo will have to be put down. But even during the x-ray or surgery process, the goo can die. Small animals and goos are at a higher rate of dying under anesthesia than other animals simply because you cannot feed them tubes. I just really really hope this will be okay.
Thank you for listening,
C3ypt1c7 -
Debugging javascript in Internet Explorer feels like doing brain surgery with a paving slab, there just isn't any finese2
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IMHO technical dept is kind of like smoking cigarettes for some decades.
You were told that shit will hit the fan but you do not take proper action. And one day you'll realize that you fucked up (or not, also seen that).
Worked for a company in IT, where we maintained an ERP which was "in progress" for over a decade. The basic implementation was done by people with zero technical understanding. To clarify: not self coded. Software was bought. We are talking about integrating the system.
Therefore, the foundation was like a wet noodle. When I joined that company, I told them that they need to address that. I told them that things will get slower and slower and that shit will hit the fan if no proper actions taken.
Even made a list with flaws I found. With potential risk and actions to take, that could then be measured.
At that time, five people worked in said department (including me).
People did not want to listen. "Would be too expensive to rewrite stuff".
Nothing has changed about the wet noodle, but I tried to fix as many things in a working system as I could. Felt like heart surgery, because changes got implemented and "tested" in prod. No version control, no documentation, everyone implemented things like they felt (no guidelines for consistency).
A lot of small fuckups that summed up over the years.
I left the company after two years because I had the chance to land a job as a dev.
Been around two years now since I left. Now 9 people work in that department with around the same efficiency as us 5 people back then.
The new employees struggle to be productive, because things are just implemented poorly and not maintainable anymore.
Had some dialogs with them some time ago. Everything I told them would happen, actually happened. What a suprise :-|
I will not go into too much detail about all the shit that's going on there, as it would be just too much (and my morning coffe is almost finished).
I think that we all know the difference between "not beautiful, but does the job" and "oh, that will backfire - badly". And I wish that my communication skills increase so that people start listening in future.8 -
I decided I should finally relocate from Russia. As one of the people I value much once said, it’s not about grass being greener, it’s about grass being alive.
I’m not going to buy a property here. Instead, I do this all at the same time:
- fixing my health (eye surgery done, quit smoking half a year ago, quit sugar several months ago, now through dental care and an obesity treatment with newest novo-nordisk stuff and sports, so far so good)
- gaining some momentum (newsletter launched, articles and open source stuff are published on a regular basis, it all gonna assembly to make my new website and a v2.0 media presence)
- learning (hands-on management and a11y experience on my current job as a tech evangelist, also a11y courses, bleeding edge JavaScript and css)
- saving money. Fuck rouble, just converting everything into usd covers up all commissions and taxes and basically makes me money
I’m going to accomplish all this and finally relocate.
Being attached to my city is a bias and a mind game. I just need to leave.18 -
Just came back from vaccation yesterday. During sprint retrospective today I hear my team was having trouble dealing with the API layer (which was mostly written by me). Suggestion was a session where I sit and explain the application to the team ,which I have no problem with.
One of my teammates asserts that it's written in such a way that "only the person who wrote it can modify it".
Agree to disagree but whatever. This thing goes through code review everytime I push changes to it. If there was a problem I don't know why he's just discovering it 6 months into the project. I assure you there's no rocket surgery going on. The problem is that I have been doing everything on that side of the project and nobody was curious enough to give it a read sometime. In fact I dont think anything needed to change while I was on vacation, they just didn't have me to troubleshoot every problem for them like usual 😤 -
Story Time!
Tittle: About Larry.
Fun Game: Tell me if / when in this story you know the plot twist.
Setting: Years ago, non coding job.
I work with Larry a lot, Larry works remote. In technical terms Larry is senior to me and I escalate some technical issues that get assigned to Larry. I've never met Larry in person.
Larry can be hard to work with, but he's plenty good at his job and I don't mind his prickly side. Sometimes it takes telling Larry something a few times before it sinks it, but that's not a big deal. Sometimes it seems like Larry doesn't remember his cases entirely, but he has a lot of cases. Also Larry has good reason for how he works considering the land of scubs who usually escalate to him without any thought / effort.
Larry's escalation team is short staffed and they're trying to hire folks, but that's been like that forever.
So one day I get an email that Larry is going to be out of the office for a few weeks. Nothing unusual there.
My current case that I share with Larry sort of floats in limbo for a while. The customer is kinda slow to respond anyhow and there's nothing that I need Larry for.
Finally I get automated notice that my case has had a new escalation engineer. Laura. Laura is much more positive and happy compared to Larry. Understandably Laura isn't up to date on the case so we go back and forth with some emails and notes in the case.
The case is moving along just fine, we're making progress, but it's slow because of the customer's testing procedures. Then we hit a point where this customer's management pushes on sales for a solution (this customer's management is known for doing this rando like for no reason).
Down the management chain it goes and everyone wants a big conference call to get everyone up to date / discuss next steps (no big deal).
Now I really don't want to do this with Laura and throw her into the deep end with this customer, she doesn't have the background and I'd rather do this call with Larry & Me & Laura. Also according to the original email Larry is due back soon.
I start writing an email to Laura about "Let's try to schedule this for when Larry gets back."
Then I stop ... I don't really know why I stop but when it is a "political case" I want some buy in on next steps from management so I go talk to my manager.
-Plot Twist Incoming-
Long story short, my manager says:
"Laura IS Larry..."
O
M
G
I had no idea. Nobody told me, nobody told ANYBODY, (except a couple managers).
Back up a few months Larry apparently went to his managers and told them he was going to transition, surgery and all, in a few months.
Managers wondering how to address this went to HR and some new hire very young to be a manager HR manager drone logiced out in her bonkers head that "Well it shouldn't matter so don't tell anyone."
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!!??
Thank god I didn't send that email...
I did send an email to Laura explaining that I had no idea and hoped I didn't say anything stupid. She was very nice about it and said it was all good.
After that incident made the management rounds (management was already fuming about being told not to tell anyone) things came to another critical point.
Laura was going to visit the company HQ. Laura had been there before, as Larry, everyone knew her as Larry... nobody (outside some managers) knew Laura was Larry either. With nobody knowing shit Laura was going to walk in and meet everyone ...
One manager at HQ finally rebelled and held a meeting to tell his people. He didn't want Laura walking in and someone confused, thinking it was a joke or something horrible happening.
HR found out and went ballistic. They were on a rampage about this other manager, they wanted to interview me about how I found out. I told HR to schedule their meeting through my manager (I knew they didn't want my manager to know they were sniffing around).
Finally the VP in our department called up the HR head and asked WTF was going on / kind of idiots they had over there (word has it legal and the CEO were on the call too).
HR had a change in leadership and then a couple weeks later there were department wide meetings on how to handle such situations and etc.27 -
I have no words to describe the look and feel of this website. Did the puppies at this place design their website? O_o
http://www.tripleabcpups.com/random dogs i am now in need of eye surgery pls help wtf is this shit ux fail css ui web design puppies16 -
tomorrow, my mom has heart surgery. thats one of the most serious surgeries to exist. i hope and pray the advancement of medicine and technology has improved well enough for the results to be ok 🙏6
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The best way to describe what I had to do today is I "Channeled Macgyver"... now production is working.
⚪Data wasn't flowing as expected.
⚪Component written by our team was blamed.
⚪Boss asked me to bypass the component so data can flow.
Sure, I can fix that... Give me a car battery, a roll of duck tape and a butter knife. Data will be flowing in production shortly.undefined seems to be working not what jenkins is meant for putting the 'dev' in devops open heart bypass surgery -
After I received my laser eye surgery, I knew it would become painful after the effect of anesthesia would decrease so I got painkillers in advance.
It was nimesulide.
Even in 2008 ISDB raised a concern about the liver damage and asked for it to be withdrawn worldwide, but I didn't knew it.
So the terrible pain started and I took the pill. Just. One. Pill.
This all started in like fifteen minutes. Eye pain won't go away, but it didn't mattered anymore as I felt really terrible. I never experienced that kind of feeling before and I don't even know how to describe it. It felt like a terrible sensation inside my stomach mixed with an urge to vomit. "This is probably what a liver failure feels like. This is it, I'm going do die here", I remember thinking about as I collapsed.
This whole incident led to an investigation about why the doctors "forgot" to give me proper eye anesthesia drops. This got several doctors fired.
This all got me really interested in how different medications work. I started casually reading popular medical literature and when my depression came, I was prepared, as much as you can even get prepared to a mental disorder.
The thing that probably nearly killed me helped me not to lose my sanity later.4 -
Inside Microsoft Palo Alto, the office where only women work: a surgery! The kidney is a frag grenade.
Left to right: white coat, black coat holds kidney (frag), a girl in “sleep” T-shirt, a girl that holds a gun. Meanwhile, my gun’s barrel was made from that fridge flexible magnet material. I fixed it using rainworms as glue.
Now we’re entering my uni teacher’s brain, trying to make her give me a passing grade, all while she sings.
It’s just two of us here. Inside her, we fuse into one. Now we sing too:
🎵 We are Scottish — 🎵
🎵 A batshit crazy thing to be, 🎵
🎵 Trying to be normal 🎵
Xiaomi made a torture device for home that was quite popular in Kazakhstan. -
Cant believe this shit happened in my country today
A mass school shooting where a 13 year old kid shot and killed 9 kids, teachers and a security guard. Several other kids wounded and one girl having brain surgery
All of this because he got an F in history class
He was a quiet kid, well behaved, got straight A's and very intelligent. But he was reportedly bullied and no one did shit about it
This the type of shit you see in america daily. But now Serbia marks #1 country in europe with a school shooting
The kid planned all of this attack for 1 whole month. He drew a sketch on the paper of the school's pathway so he can know where to go, from enter door to exit door. Even wrote the names of kids he planned to kill, sorted from high to low priority
Due to Serbia's law, no one under 14 will be held accountable or go to jail for any crime, and this 13 year old kid was so intelligent of knowing this dumbass law that he executed on this plan Now in May because he turns 14 in July this year
Ironically, his dad was a well known doctor, and now the dad is fucked. Dad's gonna go to jail. Because the kid stole his dad's gun with 5-6 clips of magazine
Very bizarre21 -
I messed up . My testicle problem isn't going anywhere soon, and one ultrasound report already says could be a tumor. 2nd test will be done in 10 days, but if its a cancer, then my life just got officially reduced by 20 years and practically reduced to this year, coz fuck this life if I can't be normal.
I already
- haven't ever got love or chance to kiss a loved one,
-have a super beta personality and never got enough respect from anyone
- am not having any friends at current stage
- shifted from my native location and living in a new isolated place
- got ugly ass looks, height and weight to never feel happy
and now with a probable tumor coming which would lead to hair lossing chemo sesssions, ball removal surgery and followed by lifelong of infertility, I would prefer death over a meaningless loveless life
I am so devastated as to why i got into this state. nothing has been going good for lalst 2 years.
- i left my previous company which had a great culture, less work but asked for relocation . i joined this current company with horrible work culture, 3 days working and overload of stress
- I had fights with my friends and don't have any friends anymore
- i broke my arm this year.
- i caught terrible cough last year which took time but got better
- there have been constant bickering and fights among parents for 100s of reason . no more than 2 days goes by when any 2/3 people of our nucleolus family is not fighting
- and countless more shitty stuff
I was on a path to become a mediocre okayish guy. i was having a decent salary , learning new stuff everyday, fighting new task battles, becoming a beeter dev amd aiming to go for senior dev/TL role, buying car l, new home and planning for marriage, ...
but nope. God has some other plans.. some ugly and cruel plans, for the guys who don't even had the chance to live a villionous life.
I wonder how that guy from my scchool who used to date so many girls is doing now. God must be very angry with his Casanova behaviour. Oh wait, that asshole is earning 160k and married her gf from last 8 years!
i wonder how that gu from my homies is doing who used to hookup with random girls every weekend. Oh wait, he got promoted to TL and bought a new home!
I wonder how my friend who smokes 4 cigs a day and drinks beer every night is doing. Oh, he's going on international trips every month , earning 600k and have a clean medical record!
yepp such a great decision maker that guy on the top is . Let me connect with him soon and ask these questions , will let you know what he says. :/7 -
The ridiculous and shameful story of how simply "installing Windows" saved my hard drive from the garbage.
(Also update on https://devrant.com/rants/3105365/)
It started with my root partition turning read-only all of a sudden. Some quick search suggested that I should check the sanity of my hard drive, by running a SMART test, which failed of course. I backed up my data using ddrescue and ran a badblocks over the whole thing, which found around 800 unreadable blocks in a row. I was ready to bid farewell to my drive, but as a last resort, instead of the trash, I brought it to this place where they claimed they can repair the damaged hard drives by "surgery".
To my surprise, they returned my drive the next week, saying it is all well now, and charged me 1/8 the price of a new drive, with a refund guarantee if there was a problem in two days. There was a problem right there: I ran another SMART test which failed again, and also the faulty blocks were still unreadable! So I stormed the place and called for my refund, showing the failed SMART report. The only answer I would get from the staff was "Have you tried installing Windows?".
I usually try to be patient in such situations; I really don't like to declare publicly that "not everyone uses that stinky piece of rotten software you call an OS", but their suggestion seemed totally irrelevant! I got all types of IO errors all over the damn thing and they told me to install Windows. Why? Because this was the only test they would rely on. At last I managed to meet the "technician" there and showed him the IO errors: tried to read the bad sectors with dd and failed. He first mumbled somethings like "Have you checked the connector?" or "Are these the same blocks?", but after he ran out of bullshit, he said "Why don't you just install Windows first and see if that helps?" and I was ready to explode in his face!
"You test drives by installing Windows, just because it will make a nasty NTFS partition and probably does an fsck? If you shut your mouth for a sec and open your eyes you'll see this is a shit load of IO errors we got here: You can't install Windows, you can't even make an NTFS here, because it will try to zero-the-fuck-out the damn partition and it will face the same fucking IO error that I'm showing you right now in almost one single fucking system call!"
"I don't know this kind of test you are using. We have our own tests and they've passed successfully. So all I can do is to give you a Windows CD if you want."
"I don't need a Windows CD. I will just try to make an NTFS partition on the error spot and I will fail."
"Ok. Then call me when your done."
I was angry, not only because I felt they're just trying to avoid a refund, but also because I knew I've lost my drive. But just with hope that I could get my money back, I made a small partition over the error spot and ran `mkfs.ntfs` on it. I was ready to show the failure to the guy, but I looked more precisely and saw that "the filesystem was created successfully!" I was sure something is nor write. I then successfully mounted the new partition, write over it and read it again. I even dd'ed the blocks again, and this time there was no IO error. All of a sudden everything was fine.
I didn't know what happened. Maybe it just needed a write, while I'd just tried to read from those blocks. But anyway, I didn't called the technician guy again. I just thanked one of the staff there and said that my problem was solved. I then ran a successful SMART test and then restored my backup. Ridiculous like that.
I'm still not sure if my drive will continue to live with no more problems. I also have no explanation for what happened. (I appreciate any help on this https://superuser.com/questions/...) But I really like to see the look on the poor guy's face when he finds out that trying to install Windows just saved my ass!11 -
TLDR; of my current job:
Deal with shit that nobody wants to deal with, if I manage to make something good out of it, prepare that the credit will be stolen.
At a previous workplace, people wanted me to deal with shit that they wanted to blame me for it, so it’s kind of an improvement. But I wish I could find a normal job where I either do normal work or just have someone that would have my back and just say “idkhow did this” or “let’s bring them to this meeting as they might be able to help with the cool stuff too”.
Also, remember that one of my parents has cancer? I won’t be able to be there for the surgery, due to things out of my control. A lot of things feel out of control lately…1 -
So, you all may remember my rant about my visual impairment. This dude applied the UNIX philosophy to glasses: They do one thing, and one thing well. He actually calls them "task-specific glasses" but come on now, that's the OG UNIX concept!
No, I will not have to have surgery - supposedly. The glasses he builds are ~$25,000. He said that when we go over spring break, he'll determine if we can go from 98% to 100% positive. If this can be pulled off, my life could be forever changed, for the better, hopefully...3 -
Surgery continued...recovery.
I was going to try going to work today. But it hurts like a bitch. So I ended up needing to take my prescription. I cannot drive when I take this. We don't do remote work. So I have to miss a day.
The prescription gave me really weird dreams last night. I had a dream I was beating the shit out of a skyscraper building. I was like Neo and I kicked its ass. The building tried to attack me, but it lost. What is also weird is I remembered most of my dreams. Involved guns, fighting, and violence against buildings.
I really think we need a category in movies called: "violence against buildings" or "violence against infrastructure".7 -
my mom is still in hospital but in extreme pain. she keeps crying and vomitting from pain. heart surgery is a serious fcking surgery not smth to joke ab5
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Here's an incomplete list of things my mother did to me:
- She insulted my body when I was 13. She told me it was weak and feminine. I identified as a boy back then, and I was going to the gym.
- She told me my face was ugly because of acne.
- She shamed me for having better vision than her.
- She shamed me for having longer eyelashes than her, the told me I looked like a girl.
- She always wanted me to learn everything and have all A's. When I got B+, she destroyed me mentally every time. When I got C, this was a catastrophe. Yet, if I told her she was wrong about mundane things like how many volts there are in an outlet, it was me who's in the wrong, despite me having an A for physics. There was no contradiction here in her eyes.
- She forced me to carry heavy things as a punishment. At the age of fifteen, I had an inguinal hernia. The surgery was needed. After that, doctors told me (and her) that I should go easy on carrying heavy things for a month. She didn't listen and forced me to carry heavy things again after two weeks. I had another inguinal hernia. Now, I needed a much more invasive laparoscopy to implant nylon webbing. Because of all of that, now I have messy, ugly scars all over my belly. Guess what happened next? She shamed me for having them!
- Since I was 18, even though I was studying in the uni, she demanded money for rent, for me living in my parents' house I grew up in. The sum she demanded was 27x my scholarship money.
- When I broke my toe, it was obvious that I broke it. It was swollen, twice the size of a normal toe, for two weeks straight. She told me to quit whining and go to PE/Taekwon-do lessons she forced me to attend.10 -
in the hospital with surgery and our deployment goes wrong, so glad I work with really good people!3
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Modifying .htaccess for WordPress multisite so that my custom url(slug) will redirect to wp-login for security reasons.
It is like performing a neuro surgery where the slightest of mistake will get u paralyzed.
I have already reached a vegetative state..
I wonder what more damage I could do? FML.3 -
Kids these days and their ultrasonic scalpels. Back in _my_ day, we were doing sugreries with _real_ scalpels made of bare metal. Who cares that ultrasonic ones are way less invasive and it heals faster! If you’re using an ultrasonic scalpel, you’re not even a real surgeon. What’s next? Computer does a surgery for you while you wiggling around the controllers? WHAT DO YOU MEAN ITS ALREADY BEING DONE!? What happened to this country!4
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I just basically performed emergency surgery on production while in a cab on my way to a class where I'll be unreachable for an hour and brought it back to life in the nick of time. I've never felt more alive.1
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Eavesdropping by phone's microphone and speech recognition to serve targetted ads by Google? Anyone here had a feeling this happened to them or knows is this already a thing?
Happened to me on my Android phone multiple times over last year on different subjects, that I was talking live with a person, for example how someone had eyelid surgery (my phone was locked in my pocket the whole time and I didn't google search what that is, or made any text input into device whatsoever) and couple minutes later an ad came on my phone for exactly something we were discussing before. Weird coincedence or something more? 🤔9 -
My mom came home crying
I thought she watched a sad dog movie again in the cinema
She said she came back from the doctor
Immediately i felt extreme distress, cause my mom never cries from doctors unless it is something extremely serious such as cancer (she had cancer surgeries about 3 times over 15 years)
I asked what is it
She said she has to do... a heart surgery....
why..... what kind of life is this6 -
I subscribe to many copywriting newsletters. Here's an article that shows how it's like on "the other side", marketers struggle, too.
How Kevin's Massive Mistake
Completely Changed His Life
Kevin H. made a huge mistake.
The biggest, he would say, if he could tell you himself.
And he knew it immediately.
It was, he said, "instant regret."
Within milliseconds, he was asking himself "What have I done..."
Kevin, see, had just jumped the rail of the single most popular suicide spot in the world, the Golden Gate Bridge.
On average, the site gets another distraught jumper every two weeks. Kevin was one of them.
It wasn't like he hadn't tried to quiet the voices in his head. Therapy, drugs, hospitalization.
Time to die, those voices still said.
And yet, in the minutes his bus dropped him off at the bridge, he hesitated and paced with tears in his eyes.
"I told myself if just one person comes up to me and asks if I'm okay... if one person asks if they can help... I won't do it. I'll stop and tell them my whole story..."
But nobody did, so he jumped.
It was in those next milliseconds, he would later say, he knew it was the biggest mistake of his life.
He didn't want to die.
But now, he was sure, it was too late.
From its highest point, it's a 245-foot plummet into the icy bay waters below.
Out of the 1,700 people that have jumped from the bridge since it first opened in 1937, only 25 have survived.
Kevin, against all odds, would be one of them.
He slammed into the water like hitting concrete. Three of his vertebrae instantly shattered.
When he surfaced, he couldn't hold his own head above water. But, incredibly, a sea lion kept pushing him up.
The Coast Guard soon arrived and pulled him out.
From there, he began a long recovery that required intense surgery, physical therapy, and psychiatric care.
While still under treatment, a priest urged him to give a talk to a bunch of seventh and eighth graders.
Afterward, they sent him a pile of letters, both encouraging and full of their own pained thoughts.
He also met a woman.
Today, Kevin lives in Atlanta and he's been happily married for the last 12 years.
And he tours the country, sharing his story.
So why re-tell it here?
Obviously -- I hope -- you don't get lots of copywriters looking to snuff it after a flopped headline test.
Just the same...
We've talked a lot in this space about the things one needs to get by in this biz.
My friend and colleague Joe, over at the publishing powerhouse Agora Financial, likes to list requirements.
You need intense curiosity...
You need a killer work ethic...
And you must, MUST have... resilience.
Meaning, you must have or find the capacity to bounce back from failure and flops, even huge ones.
Now, again, Kevin's story is an extreme and in this context -- I hope -- a hyperbolic example of somebody giving up. In the worst way possible.
It is also, though, a metaphor.
See, I get a lot of notes from some of you guys... and at conferences, I get to talk to a lot of people...
And I often get the sense, from some folks, that they're feeling a little more overwhelmed than they let on.
Some are just starting out, and they've got a lot on the line. For some, it's everything. And some are desperate to make it work.
Because they have to, because their pride or livelihoods or a family business is at stake, because it's a dream.
And yet, they're overwhelmed by all the tips and secrets... or by piles of confusing research or ideas...
For others, even had some success, but they're burned out, feel antiquated, or feel like "imposters" that know less than they let on, in an industry that's evolving.
To all those folks... and to you... I can only say, I've been there. And frankly, go back there now and again.
Flops happen, failures happen. And you can and will -- even years and decades into doing this -- make the wrong choices, pick the wrong projects, or botch the right ones.
The legendary Gene Schwartz put it this way, according to a quote spotted recently in fellow writer Ben Settle's e-letter...
" A very good copywriter is going to fail. If the guy doesn't fail, he's no good. He's got to fail. It hurts. But it's the only way to get the home runs the next time."
Once more, nobody -- I hope -- is taking the trials of this profession hard enough to make Kevin's choice.
And believe me, I don't mean to make light of the latter. I just want to make sure we hit this anvil with a big hammer. To drive home the point that, whatever your struggle, be it with this biz or something bigger, that you don't want to give up. Press on.
As Churchill put it, "Success, is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm."
Or even more succinctly when he said, "If you're going through hell, keep going."
Because it's worth it.
.
John Forde -
On This Episode of Ghetto Medium..
Posted after midnight for extra spooky effects. Read in the dark at your own risk. You've been warned.
So my mother has been on a binge watching shows like long island medium (apparently the taller your hair the closer you are to god or something), and every time we talk she begins at length to talk about, you guessed it.. 'ghosts.'
Now don't get me wrong, I've had some 'spooby' shit occur in my lifetime, the sort that will tighten your sphincter faster than bill cosby asking you if you want some koolaid or grape drank, but I digress.
The ghost talk is tiring. Lately theres been a *flood* of these new shows, purportedly showing mediums and people who can 'look into the other side' and I realize just how vapid and ridiculous it's all become, as if they all are being personally haunted by the ghost of John Edwards burnt out husk of a career. Theres long island beehive big-hair medium, celebrity medium, allison DuBois (the inspiration for that one sappy show *medium*) whos red hair and vacant stare speak of glimpses into centuries past like an intimate unseen horizon. or maybe she forgot to unplug her curling iron in a hotel one time and has been rendered permanently catatonic. And who can forget *Beyond With James Van Praagh* (everyone) whos face, as measured by the width of his mustache, appears to be expanding at a constant rate like a bad image macro edit thats been memed and repasted a thousand times. Then theres Chip Coffee, whos name is about as believable as his teaching degree on the show *Psychic Kids* where he mentored, again, you guessed it, *psychic kids*. Of course theres Tyler Henry, a youthful, uh, "flamboyant" medium for celebrities with ghost problems. Never trust a man with two names, this ones no exception, he looks so clean cut hes either secretly mormon, or secretly gay, maybe both. I'm not judging, but I am saying if I ever saw his clean cut, smooth, wrinkless (seriously, how tyler? how?), all american face, say smiling that subtle smile outside my kitchen sliding glass door at 3 am, his face watching me from the pitch dark outside, I wouldn't at all be surprised, except for the hospital bill I'd have to pay after shitting a brick and needing anal surgery.
At this rate we have mediums popping out left and right, like clowns at one of them R.L Stein nightmare carnivals, or beggers outside a methodone clinic. Geez, they're coming out the wood work, like those painting you see with hidden faces in them, or wheres-waldo posters, only you're trying to find the non-waldo guy amongst all the characters because they're ALL waldo: goofy acting, goofy dressing, and just all around goofy looking.
At this rate I'm fully expecting "pet medium" (starring a character named Stephen King and his marital problems, played by johnny depp eating way to much corn), and "haunted objects medium", and "car medium" (it's just seinfeld in a car, talking to psychics instead of other people), and "ghetto medium."
Today on this episode of "Ghetto Medium"..
Medium: Teneesha, aw yeah girl, u *definitely* ded gurl, uh huh! You WAY to white too be alive, you done passed over gurl!
And in the next episode of Ghetto Medium, one man claims "every time I bend over I can hear "wOoOoOoOoO!, Is my asshole possessed? Find out is it real or fake, and what our verdict is in Ghost Medium, episode 3: A Haunting In My Nether-regions."
Cut commercial break.
"Jerry Springer: One women asks, 'jerry, is my unborn child's foreskin haunted? And later today we ask the crowd, would you have sex with a ghost?"
Welcome to American television 'programming' in 2019.
Yes, it's all brainwashing.2 -
Yesterday I spent my whole fucking day solving a bug from a Drupal multistep form, the kind of bugs you know it worked for a year then suddenly start to go full retard and simply not working at all
Took me half a day to get how it worked, half the rest to get why it stopped working and how to to make it work again, knowing that the "old fashion way" can't be applied anymore for dumb reasons (unless the client wants his user and payment history tables to be dropped, which I doubt)
I don't know if my solution is the best, but it works without too much tweaks, and hey, it still works today!! -
I am a human being... I have feelings... I have a family who love me... I have friends who hang out with me...
I am treated worse than Katie Price (for American readers insert some talented hoe with a penchant for plastic surgery).
My name is Andy and I am a Project Manager *sobs*
This is Project Managers Anonymous ... Isn't it?????? 😕3 -
Went for a hand surgery, the anesthetic doctor is learning swift and then he put the needle in the wrong hand.
Lesson learned: never trust a programmer with your life6 -
For me, biggest influence have been my bosses.
One of them mailed me that my work was shit and he was cutting my pay while I was far off with my father post surgery and battling a terminal illness.
The other one gave me an offer while I fired my previous boss from the job of being my boss. He also knew the exact reason for my switch. That taught me a lot on what kind of person/programmer I want to be. -
“Those stitches under my belly hurt, for sure, but what if I… hypothetically, just took manicure scissors, and… was urgently rushed back to hospital for no reason in particular, so to speak?”, — echoed in my head. I was 15. Just out of hospital after hernia surgery, knowing full well they will give me morphine again if I did that.
Yes, they used morphine on a 15-year-old kid. It was a town of 50k people in rural Russia.
Withdrawal syndrome lasted about two weeks that felt like two years. You can't tell if you're asleep or not, you shiver while you constantly think about nothing but morphine, and you're anxious because your grandparents shouldn't know! As if it was ever a 15-year-old kid's fault.
Yes, I, in a way, quit morphine at the age of 15.
The hernia was caused by what my mother did to me, but that's the story for another day.6 -
some languages completely get lost in minutiae, disposable preciousism that looks pretty but mischievously gobble development cycles. Now, there's no doubt they make for skinnier, trustworthy, low maintenance code, yes, congratulations Haskell. Although, you see, Haskell, not every language out here is defacto an academic one. You hear me, Rust. So, for fuck sakes, Rust dear. You've macros, sis, you don't need a new languages feature every other naughty day. You need prototyping speed, not more complexity. I'm not complaining not really.... It's your fucking language server, your compiler... They can't take this shit no more. Have you seen their overeating problems? Please, Rust, stop picking plastic surgery instead of make-up and use macros instead
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and google, dear, your auto completion sucks ass1 -
So, the past 2 months I get random freezes on my OS(Ubuntu 18.04). ONLY the mouse is working, nothing else but REISUB.
This happens sporadically, but seemingly ONLY WHEN I'M 30-80% DONE AND MY "ADD" HAS ME WORKING ON 4 DIFFERENT THINGS AT ONCE.
Disabling docker hasn't helped.. Ensuring using less than 50% RAM doesn't help. Changing browsers, cleaning my VSCode extensions, shifting to XMonad(lightweight DE) from gnome(which almost worked for almost a couple of days), changing graphics drivers, downgrading kernel AND JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING ELSE.. DOES. NOT. WORK.
AAARGH MY MOTHERFUCKING 7 YEAR OLD LAPTOP WITH SSD IS PROBABLY SINGING ITS LAST TUNES. TODAY IS THE LAST TIME I'LL LET FREEZES HAPPEN.. I'M RUNNING MEMTEST86 AND WILL COPY ALL MY LATEST LOGS AND LEARN A BUNCH OF STUFF I'LL NEVER WANT TO TOUCH AGAIN. I HAVE TO SPEND SUPER VALUABLE TIME TO MAKE SURGERY ON THE MIRACLE THAT IS MY ANCIENT LAPTOP. I'M SO AFRAID THAT IT FALLS APART WHEN OPENING IT.. THE PLSTIC FOR THE COOLER IS BROKEN AND THE SHIT HASENT HAD THE BEST LIVING CONDITIONS (SOME TIMES -5c OTHER 40+)
I'm aware that I should go to the forums, which is my next move. But reading on there, it could be a graphics drive or, kernel problem, a faulty harddisk or RAM problems. It also goes without saying that I'm backing up for the 14th time the past month.
My thing is, that I have dual boot and running Windows for 14 hours straight with loads of loads, while really getting punished, renders a completely functional computer...4 -
so one of our managers sent me an email what has to be changed in our FAQ section which runs on WP...
but then i remembered, our cleaning lady had a surgery and wasn't here for a week, maybe she will not come for another week and the kitchen is already starting to get real smelly...
so i created a user for our manager and sent him the credentials to his brand new WP editor account so he can make his changes and went to wash the dishes instead
the end.rant friday wordpress friyay kitchen wp manager surgery cleaning lady devlife bullshit task story time1 -
apple you mongoloids, default background of images should be transparent not white
im too retarded to figure out how to be able to view these fuckign white images (svg file extensions to be specific) ive been given because the fucking default background is white and im too retarded to find a way around it quickly (still working)
fuck you
"IT juSt WerkZ!!!!1111" - steve jobs dying of an easily prevented early caught cancer or some shit because he doesn't want the minimally invasive surgery that would fix him, but would rather juice cleanse (idk if true, only vaguely remember memes)2 -
I work for a health company. Had to get a letter from a surgeon to WFO before an upcoming surgery due to all my coworkers being sick (covid, step, flu…).1
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ughh i don't know what the fuck is going on with my karmas right now. I just want to know if i was a satan all my life to deserve what i am getting for this year... well let me count what the sins that i might have done till 26 , which might be considered bad karma by me or anyone else
1. not being as punctual enough in praying (as expected by my parents and religion)
2. eating forbidden stuff occasionally ( we are forbidden onion and garlic, alcohol, etc, but i sometimes have these)
3. watching hours of porn 5-7 times a week and masturbating
4. not being always honest.
as far as i remember these things don't hurt anybody and I don't recall killing someone or being a fraud.
but then why i am being treated like a broken piece of crap that should no longer exist?
At the start of this year, i had a plate inserted in my arm via surgery because i broke it in an arm wrestling. i am currently recovering from it and am not in the most active shape.
But now i have one of my testicles swell to the size of a mango and from what the google says its going to be another surgery (hydrocelectomy).
i currently have only 9 leaves left and i was told just yesterday that i am being considered for senior role next year
I am devastated... why do i need to go through this shit? why me?37 -
Took a Visual Basic class in high school. Ended up being the teacher aide two years later while she was away recovering from surgery.
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!rant
Anyone have tips on working one-handed? I'm having shoulder surgery tomorrow and while I'll probably be able to take my arm out of the sling to type, I should be keeping it in there as much as possible. Thankfully my unaffected arm is my dominant one. Coding with one hand sounds like a fkn nightmare.3 -
There’s somewhat of a magical moment when you teach the interns how to turn their huge switch statement into a function Pinter branch table....
Eliminating shotgun surgery as the project advances and new features are added to a module.
Colleges definitely don’t teach students certain things... and when I end up teaching them... the excitement and ideas they come up with are always great.. and they always end up with a stronger understanding of things.
(Embedded company .. all software here is C or C++) yes we use the optimizer.... sometimes you gotta do seemingly complex things to improve readability and maintainability. -
the boy needed dick surgery..... and there was his girlfriend before surgery and she's like "don't worry it'll be alright"..... and then he woke up after anesthesia and everything went fine but there was no girlfriend......... and he asked where is my girlfriend...... and doctor told him "who do you think gave you the dick"....... this is so sad..... liek if u agree...........4
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Last night on uyouthe’s weird dreams:
- I gave an interview about my ex and why she died
- my other ex got involved in huge marketing campaign of a new laser surgery by receiving said surgery but they somehow completely evaporate her pelvic and hip bones with laser. I saw her body after that happened
- I somehow live in 2003 Netherlands and work for some scientific lab as a frontend developer. All that ie and ancient JavaScript shit but I like that, processes and culture are flawless
- many other weird shit regarding self-driving vehicles being a mainstream and me owning one, my grandma turning evil and send swat to take me down, also I met a lot of hipsters at defcon and I don’t know why are they there
All that in one dream. Amazing. -
!tech . Can a doctor ever advise to get off the preventive measures?
I had a fracture 2 months ago which lead to a surgery in which a plate was inserted in my arm. post surgery i was asked to wear an arm brace (pic in comments)
this is basically a preventive brace to restrict certain movements while new bone is coming up at the crack.
i can understand its need but i am not sure if the doctor is going to recommend not using it ever. my arm has healed enough that i no longer feel pain in the surgery area, but in x rays, the bone still shows as not healed.
my feeling is that i should start wearing normal clothes and discard the brace and bone will eventually come on its own. its been 60+ days already.
But last time i had checkup with the doctor, he said to continue my daily operations while wearing ba brace because "what's wrong with wearing a brace in public? your hand was broken, now you can work with both hands but wearing a brace while your hand heals?"4