Actual rant time. And oh boy, is it pissy.

If you've read my posts, you've caught glimpses of this struggle. And it's come to quite a head.

First off, let it be known that WINDOWS Boot Manager ate GRUB, not the other way around. Windows was the instigator here. And when I reinstalled GRUB, Windows threw a tantrum and won't boot anymore. I went through every obvious fix, everything tech support would ever think of, before I called them. I just got this laptop this week, so it must be in warranty, right? Wrong. The reseller only accepts it unopened, and the manufacturer only covers hardware issues. I found this after screaming past a pretty idiotic 'customer representative' ("Thank you for answering basic questions. Thank you for your patience. Thank you for repeating obvious information I didn't catch the first three times you said it. Thank you for letting me follow my script." For real. Are you tech support, or emotional support? You sound like a middle school counselor.) to an xkcd-shibboleth type 'advanced support'. All of this only to be told, "No, you can't fix it yourself, because we won't give you the license key YOU already bought with the computer." And we already know there's no way Microsoft is going to swoop in and save the day. It's their product that's so faulty in the first place. (Debian is perfectly fine.)

So I found a hidden partition with a single file called 'Image' and I'm currently researching how to reverse-engineer WIM and SWM files to basically replicate Dell's manufacturing process because they won't take it back even to do a simple factory reset and send it right back.

What the fuck, Dell.

As for you, Microsoft, you're going to make it so difficult to use your shit product that I have to choose between an arduous, dangerous, and likely illegal process to reclaim what I ALREADY BOUGHT, or just _not use_ a license key? (Which, there's no penalty for that.) Why am I going so far out of my way to legitimize myself to you, when you're probably selling backdoors and private data of mine anyway? Why do I owe you anything?

Oh, right. Because I couldn't get Fallout 3 to run in Wine. Because the game industry follows money, not common sense. Because you marketed upon idiocy and cheapness and won a global share.

Fuck you. Fuck everything. Gah.

VS Code is pretty good, though.

Had an interesting time these past few days. Had a customer who, when I left for vacay, was complaining that he couldn't get access to our private package registry. Get back, this issue is still active.

We'd granted access to his github enterprise, and for some reason he wasn't getting the activation email. We spent about 22 hours of customer support time on his failing to help himself before he finally escalated to the standard 40 person IT enterprise tantrum/come to jesus meeting.

Long story short, he had somehow ignored repeated attempts (35 email replies to the ticket chain, 4 phone calls) to get him to check his spam folder. In which, as it was revealed to all the hollywood squares in attendance, there were no less than 35 activation emails from github granting him access. Of course, none of this was his fault. And while screensharing his big brain to god and everyone he decides the problem is now actually Microsoft because their office 365 spam email filtered his emails incorrectly. We of course agreed with his big brain, smoothed over his bruised ego and went about our day.

I mean, fair enough, it's kind of dumb that Microsoft ever spam lists github, but still. I was just a fly on the wall, and he burned all his paid support tickets on the issue, so hopefully we won't be dealing with him again this year.

Also, this is an edge case with our new product line, most of our customers are painless.

Not laughing.

Not cursing.

Both for interviewing and being interviewed.

Some interviews could have been taken straight from a mexican telenovela.......

"Yeah, I worked for a year in the Walmart IT administration."

"Ok, what did you do?"

"Oh I had the high responsibility of taking care of swapping printer cartridges, programming the registers, stuff like that..."

"You apply for a senior database management role, you're aware of that?"

"Yeah. I took a bootcamp for 3 months in the evening after work. I'm up for the job and expect a payment of <lol, even having a stroke while writing a payment check that number will never happen>".

I made that up - but we had these cases... The story is just rewritten and mixed up for obvious reasons.

When I'm being interviewed, the same thing can happen by the way, too.

IMHO a interview is made not only for the company, but for me as an employee, too. I don't sugar coat it. I want to know what type of shit I'm getting into and how much I'm drowning in it.

Some "types" of interviewers react kinda funny when I start roasting them with questions...

For example, the authoritarian type usually reacts with disrespect. How dare u piss on my front lawn.... Kind of reaction. Which makes it hard not too laugh, because who wants to work for someone who throws a tamper tantrum during a interview? Even harder when the same guy promised you heaveb before (the flowery kind of bullshit, like everything's peaceful and fine and teams great and they have such a great leadership...)

Even worse is the patsy.

When you're sitting in an interview and the only answers you get are:

- Sorry, I don't know.
- I'm not allowed to ....
- Not in my area of expertise....

All just nice ways of saying: I will say nothing cause then I'd need to take some responsibility.

:)

The most Mexican telenovela stuff though in being interviewed is when I managed to divide a team of interviewers and it starts to become a "Judge Judy" or similar freaked out justice show...

A: "No, our team doesn't work that way".
B: "But you will in the short future, WE committed to it".
C: "Not that I'm aware of".

And me, an obvious sinner and person who enjoys entertainment and schadenfreude, just keeps adding kerosene to the fire.

"So, it seems like the team of A has its own rules which do not apply to B and C, do they also have greater funding?".

Oh it makes just fun to spur a good blood bath.

When the Product Owner is so angry about Agile that he removes all the Dev team from JIRA?!?! Then has a tantrum about nothing being delivered.... hmmm... because, mate, we can read your flipping mind!

Story of me trying to connect to a colleague from neighbouring team with 12 hour difference timezone:

Me: Hey! Shall we catch up to discuss a feature that will help us dominate the world?

She: Sure.. what time works for you?

Me: Since we have timezone challenge, I'd say boundary times would be good so none of us have to stretch.

She: umm.. good..

Me: How about 07:30 PM your time?

She: oh sweetie.. evenings don't work for me.. I want my evenings free..

Me: fine.. how about 07:00 AM your time?

She: no darling.. I am not a morning person..

Me: GO FUCK YOURSELF BITCH. I CAN'T COMPLY WITH EVERY TANTRUM OF YOURS.

And with that.. I didn't respond to her invites which were either super early for me or super late. Let her keep waiting..

Juniors with ego are shittiest folks to work with.

You know what I do when I get upset or depressed?

I put myself in bed. I guess some things from childhood don't change.

Having a tantrum? Time to go to bed.

I was in class one time, chatting with a pal of mine. We had just started our Web development course so I was working on that while we talked.
A few rows behind me sat another classmate, struggeling with this project we were going to turn in The week after.
So our teacher comes by and asks us how's it going and the guy behind us starts throwing a tantrum (it didnt go Well for him).
- "I have no idéa what I'm supposed to do, or what I'm even doing!"
My teacher started out very empathetic and calm, explaining and helping him.
This guy got more and more frustrated to the point an hour later where he started to scream.
And then came the one and only time I've heard my teacher angry, it was exactly like The calm before a storm.
- "Do you know what 99% of all developers do when they get stuck?! They use fucking Google!! You have to learn how to fucking Google!!"

Non the less the dude calmed down and started to use google.

"four million dollars"

TL;DR. Seriously, It's way too long.

That's all the management really cares about, apparently.

It all started when there were heated, war faced discussions with a major client this weekend (coonts, I tell ye) and it was decided that a stupid, out of context customisation POC had that was hacked together by the "customisation and delivery " (they know to do neither) team needed to be merged with the product (a hot, lumpy cluster fuck, made in a technology so old that even the great creators (namely Goo-fucking-gle) decided that it was their worst mistake ever and stopped supporting it (or even considering its existence at this point)).

Today morning, I my manager calls me and announces that I'm the lucky fuck who gets to do this shit.

Now being the defacto got admin to our team (after the last lead left, I was the only one with adequate experience), I suggested to my manager "boss, here's a light bulb. Why don't we just create a new branch for the fuckers and ask them to merge their shite with our shite and then all we'll have to do it build the mixed up shite to create an even smellier pile of shite and feed it to the customer".

"I agree with you mahaDev (when haven't you said that, coont), but the thing is <insert random manger talk here> so we're the ones who'll have to do it (again, when haven't you said that, coont)"

I said fine. Send me the details. He forwarded me a mail, which contained context not amounting to half a syllable of the word "context". I pinged the guy who developed the hack. He gave me nothing but a link to his code repo. I said give me details. He simply said "I've sent the repo details, what else do you require?"

1st motherfucker.

Dafuq? Dude, gimme some spice. Dafuq you done? Dafuq libraries you used? Dafuq APIs you used? Where Dafuq did you get this old ass checkout on which you've made these changes? AND DAFUQ IS THIS TOOL SUPPOSED TO DO AND HOW DOES IT AFFECT MY PRODUCT?

Anyway, since I didn't get a lot of info, I set about trying to just merge the code blindly and fix all conflicts, assuming that no new libraries/APIs have been used and the code is compatible with our master code base.

Enter delivery head. 2nd motherfucker.

This coont neither has technical knowledge nor the common sense to ask someone who knows his shit to help out with the technical stuff.

I find out that this was the half assed moron who agreed to a 3 day timeline (and our build takes around 13 hours to complete, end to end). Because fuck testing. They validated the their tool, we've tested our product. There's no way it can fail when we make a hybrid cocktail that will make the elephants foot look like a frikkin mojito!

Anywho, he comes by every half-mother fucking-hour and asks whether the build has been triggered.

Bitch. I have no clue what is going on and your people apparently don't have the time to give a fuck. How in the world do you expect me to finish this in 5 minutes?

Anyway, after I compile for the first time after merging, I see enough compilations to last a frikkin life time. I kid you not, I scrolled for a complete minute before reaching the last one.

Again, my assumption was that there are no library or dependency changes, neither did I know the fact that the dude implemented using completely different libraries altogether in some places.

Now I know it's my fault for not checking myself, but I was already having a bad day.

I then proceeded to have a little tantrum. In the middle of the floor, because I DIDN'T HAVE A CLUE WHAT CHANGES WERE MADE AND NOBODY CARED ENOUGH TO GIVE A FUCKING FUCK ABOUT THE DAMN FUCK.

Lo and behold, everyone's at my service now. I get all things clarified, takes around an hour and a half of my time (could have been done in 20 minutes had someone given me the complete info) to find out all I need to know and proceed to remove all compilation problems.

Hurrah. In my frustration, I forgot to push some changes, and because of some weird shit in our build framework, the build failed in Jenkins. Multiple times. Even though the exact same code was working on my local setup (cliche, I know).

In any case, it was sometime during sorting out this mess did I come to know that the reason why the 2nd motherfucker accepted the 3 day deadline was because the total bill being slapped to the customer is four fucking million USD.

Greed. Wow. The fucker just sacrificed everyone's day and night (his team and the next) for 4mil. And my manager and director agreed. Four fucking million dollars. I don't get to see a penny of it, I work for peanut shells, for 15 hours, you'll get bonuses and commissions, the fucking junior Dev earns more than me, but my manager says I'm the MVP of the team, all I get is a thanks and a bad rating for this hike cycle.

4mil usd, I learnt today, is enough to make you lick the smelly, hairy balls of a Neanderthal even though the money isn't truly yours.

Management Double standards...
At a previous employer, the manager had me doing some QA testing for a updated version of some customer facing UIs. I spent 3 days constantly testing, except for my lunch break.
Every bug that I found I sent to a Sr dev.
Now this Sr dev was a coding savant. I mean awesome coder, but he had the personality of a rat and snake combined. If he wasn't coding he was brown-nosing the manager, talking about how he was doing all the work, or trying to rat on us other devs.
Anyway this dev has spent the 3 days of bug fixing alternating between watching videos and fixing bugs. Don't know what the videos were, don't realy care. I do know that he did not like to be disturbed while watching them...
On the third day, on my lunch break, I decided to watch two fifiteen minute videos on VSTS feeds and linking node packages.
As soon as I started Sr dev came over and asked me if I was focused on the teams priorities. I told him that it was my lunch break and since this was related to an upcoming sprint I thought it was worth it.
This S.O.B. goes full out hissy fit. He was flat out throwing a tantrum like my small daughter would. He made such a noise that my manager walked over and asked what was going on.
This shitbag Sr dev smirked at me and asked to speak to the manager in his office. When the manager called me over I knew what was up. I was lectured on not focusing on the teams priorities. I tried to explain that the videos were relevant to an upcoming sprint but was shot down. When I brought up the fact that the Sr dev was watching videos, the manager told me flat out that he didn't care. I was mad and told the manager that this was bullshit. All the manager cared about was keeping the Sr dev happy. I was told to "treat <shithead sr dev> with respect or else".
It was at that time I decided to look for another job. Less than a month later I left, for a much better paying job with awesome benefits. Sr dev acted like he was hurt I was leaving. Manager couldn't have cared less.
When some others on the team heard what he did, they started looking for work elsewhere too.
A month after I left another Sr dev on the same project left. At the same time a BA and QA tester demanded to be put on another team or else they would leave.
Manager started out with a team of 6 was left with only two people.
When the last one left, manager had the nerve to ask me why I didn't let him know anyone was unhappy. I told him if he cared so little for me, why would I think he care about them.
Ultimately, leaving was one of the best things I could have done.

This fcktard client that insist on using an iframe and demands support for browsers like IE7. You are costing me years of my life.

Fucking fuck of a Microsoft trying to protect people against tracking from 3d parties in an iframe in random ways in some versions of IE7. Or IE11 in IE7 compatibility mode.

If you are going to refuse sessions just do it! I got a fucking check and fix for that. Because these fuck faces friendly people at Apple like to refuse sessions on iPads and iPhone too. But we worked that out, because they are at least consistent. So a few dirty little hacks made it all Okay.

But no, Boo Hoo I'm Microsoft and I will throw a tantrum. I like my browsers to be like an magican, instead of an usefull piece of software. If you look in this page, or look here we got them. I got your sessions​, safe and secure.

But when you need me, to verify that the user is allowed to access data we do a little hocus pocus and now they are gone. Nowhere to be seen or found again. Fun times free fucking magic shows all day long.

It's morning but maybe its time for a bottle of scotch. Maybe if I'm in the state as this browser. Where I don't know what I'm doing because I'm shitfaced drunk it will start working.

When in Rome do as the romans do.

Twice a year, my work throws a party to celebrate our successes. Think of this as a post-Christmas and post-tax season party. Usually it’s a simple affair – they hire out a room in a bar, we have a theme to dress up to (last year for tax it was green, the colour of money), and it’s a social gathering. No pressure to participate, theme was broad enough that everyone could participate, and everyone came along for as long as they wanted.

This year, they’ve decided to make our post-tax party at a karaoke bar. I am usually a fan of karaoke…with my friends, after a drink or five, on my own terms. But singing in front of work colleagues?

To make things worse, they’ve created a committee to hyper-organise the games and teams. I know the usual AAM stance on organised/forced fun, and I attempted to get on the committee in an effort to steer them towards voluntary participation, but I was told the committee was full.

The party is next week and I’m already feeling panicky. We have been allocated into teams. We’ve been assured that these weren’t random, but were purposefully chosen to ensure a mix of outgoing and introverted people. Lovely. On top of being forced to participate, I have to sing with team members I normally wouldn’t spend time with. I’d be happy to do karaoke in front of my colleagues if it was a relaxed, opt-in thing where anyone who wanted to just jumped up there, but the forced, organised activity with judging and prizing is just making me dread it.

And there will be awards, which means there will be judging. I’ve alreasdy spoken up once after hearing a committee member excitedly tell a friend “there will even be an award for worst singer!” I straight up told her that there was no way they could have that as an award after forcing people to participate. I told I was being a party pooper and that it was all in good fun.

The official teams and rules were sent out yesterday and I noticed the award is actually for “best strangling of cat sound-a-like.” Which is infinitely worse.

How do I get through this party without ruffling any feathers, but also not putting myself and my singing abilities up for scrutiny in front of everyone I work with? Short of throwing a tantrum or sitting at the party in a corner and sulking, I’m not sure how to handle this diplomatically. The only people who aren’t going are those who have leave planned. They’ve even scheduled it so that it is running from 3 pm-6.30 pm (so, as my boss explained, those with childcare can still come for a few hours and not have to get a babysitter).

I'm at this point where I want to throw a temper tantrum - throw myself on the floor and crying like a child.

Frustrated. Only shit mundane work. Isolation sucks. Health sucks. Everything stinks.

And my willpower is like a candle in the wind.

I know it's not specificly the job, because not everything is mundane. It's my brain and soul poking each other's eyes out.

*scratches head*

Why must everything be so shitty at the moment...

If you're going to add unnecessary white space to code, at least keep it consistent. And by consistent, I mean learn to write code that doesn't look like you pair programmed with a toddler who had a hour long tantrum on the damn spacebar.

I was nearly about to punch someone today.

So, this guy is taking issues with my 3D model, yeah? But it's not the model he has issues with, it's that "why doesn't this include the stuff """I""" need?". Well, you giant man-baby could have actually visited the model like two months ago when I made it, but noooooooo let's leave it until a few days before his massive demonstration is due. Plus, the pieces I received from someone else also didn't have this info, so, like, where do you want me to get them from? Oh, from the "other" model that was literally delivered by a third party like two weeks ago? Nice. Hold onto your breath while I go rip that model apart piece by piece and put the info you need, in the format you need, in this model. 😒

... Jeeeeeez. And my computer broke down two days ago. 🤦

Could this get any worse? It could, but didn't. Luckily, someone else gave me a hand, so now I just need to go to work on a weekend just to install unreal engine again just so I can rip the second model apart for this one piece that he "really needs".

The worst part? I'm sure all of this tantrum is actually so he can justify why his work is ... well... "not working".

Let the finger pointing games begin!
(Actually not afraid of that at all. My boss knows better so yolo)

Idk, my brain is eeeeeeeeeek.

Client: "When will feature X be ready? How much time to you need?"

Me: "Well, considering the size of the feature it will probable ta..."

Client: "You have exactly 8 minutes to finish or I'll throw a tantrum."

A bit exaggerated, but it pretty much sums up my job.

Yesterday I was a bad dad and couldn't wait for my box to shut down completely before I forced it and this morning it threw a little tantrum

Don't ya just love it when someone you work with is constantly asking you to do stuff. Even though you literally ask nothing of them. Can't say no though because then they throw a gigantic 11 year old temper tantrum..