Hacking/attack experiences...
I'm, for obvious reasons, only going to talk about the attacks I went through and the *legal* ones I did 😅 😜

Let's first get some things clear/funny facts:
I've been doing offensive security since I was 14-15. Defensive since the age of 16-17. I'm getting close to 23 now, for the record.

First system ever hacked (metasploit exploit): Windows XP.
(To be clear, at home through a pentesting environment, all legal)
Easiest system ever hacked: Windows XP yet again.

Time it took me to crack/hack into today's OS's (remote + local exploits, don't remember which ones I used by the way):
Windows: XP - five seconds (damn, those metasploit exploits are powerful)
Windows Vista: Few minutes.
Windows 7: Few minutes.
Windows 10: Few minutes.
OSX (in general): 1 Hour (finding a good exploit took some time, got to root level easily aftewards. No, I do not remember how/what exactly, it's years and years ago)
Linux (Ubuntu): A month approx. Ended up using a Java applet through Firefox when that was still a thing. Literally had to click it manually xD
Linux: (RHEL based systems): Still not exploited, SELinux is powerful, motherfucker.

Keep in mind that I had a great pentesting setup back then 😊. I don't have nor do that anymore since I love defensive security more nowadays and simply don't have the time anymore.

Dealing with attacks and getting hacked.

Keep in mind that I manage around 20 servers (including vps's and dedi's) so I get the usual amount of ssh brute force attacks (thanks for keeping me safe, CSF!) which is about 40-50K every hour. Those ip's automatically get blocked after three failed attempts within 5 minutes. No root login allowed + rsa key login with freaking strong passwords/passphrases.

linu.xxx/much-security.nl - All kinds of attacks, application attacks, brute force, DDoS sometimes but that is also mostly mitigated at provider level, to name a few. So, except for my own tests and a few ddos's on both those domains, nothing really threatening. (as in, nothing seems to have fucked anything up yet)

How did I discover that two of my servers were hacked through brute forcers while no brute force protection was in place yet? installed a barebones ubuntu server onto both. They only come with system-default applications. Tried installing Nginx next day, port 80 was already in use. I always run 'pidof apache2' to make sure it isn't running and thought I'd run that for fun while I knew I didn't install it and it didn't come with the distro. It was actually running. Checked the auth logs and saw succesful root logins - fuck me - reinstalled the servers and installed Fail2Ban. It bans any ip address which had three failed ssh logins within 5 minutes:
Enabled Fail2Ban -> checked iptables (iptables -L) literally two seconds later: 100+ banned ip addresses - holy fuck, no wonder I got hacked!

One other kind/type of attack I get regularly but if it doesn't get much worse, I'll deal with that :)

Dealing with different kinds of attacks:

Web app attacks: extensively testing everything for security vulns before releasing it into the open.
Network attacks: Nginx rate limiting/CSF rate limiting against SYN DDoS attacks for example.
System attacks: Anti brute force software (Fail2Ban or CSF), anti rootkit software, AppArmor or (which I prefer) SELinux which actually catches quite some web app attacks as well and REGULARLY UPDATING THE SERVERS/SOFTWARE.

So yah, hereby :P

So, basically i am getting desperate, and i'm also angry... and want to cry, and i feel a failure.
My biggest error in this story is "believing"

First of all, I'm a starting entrepreneur as freelancer, started of 6 months ago, back then it all seemed bright, i had my first customer, they believed me, got a second assignment for that same customer, fulfilled the task in brilliance, and was ready to move on to a bigger customer base. Here's where shit goes wrong.

Working with another office that outsources people to various (goverment) contractors, Had a meeting with them, we would cooperate very soon. This was january.

PM: "We've got a gov Dept as a customer that wants to do project XYZ and starting in february, requirements are yadiyadiyadi, you up for it?
Me:"Sure, send me the specs, and timeframe and i'll apply with my offer)"
Project is about a bit backup system migration, lots of fancy shmancy tech used, 2 datacenters setup... a big project that can take up several months...
- sends offer- received an acceptance on the offer

PM " Great, we'll start end of february"
Me: "Ok, end of february is a go then, looking forward to cooperate"

FF to near end of february, receive msg from PM: "Project XYZ delayed until half if march"
Me: "Okay... what is the delay?"
PM:"Govt bureaucracy"
Me " Ok, let's keep in touch"

Near Half of March
PM " Project delayed again".
Me: " Okay... what's the reason?"
PM: "they have decided to take a different approach, and want 3 datacenters now"
Me: "That will change the offer i made for you, can you send me the specs?"
PM: "No, because they havent decided on the techs used, expect end of march"
Me: "Okay...but once you got the specs,s end them to me"

End of March
Pm: " Hy NeatNerdPrime, we still havent got any specs yet... they still forgot to make the shopping list"
Me: "(-_-) ... I thought they already had that covered"
PM:" No, new Govt budget cuts and lots of changes, basically, they still don't know what they really want. But we're just -delayed- , not -cancelled-"
Me: "Okay... i hope we get started soon"
PM: "expect launch beginning of april"
I was not really satisfied with this explanation.... but ok

Beginning of april, at april's folls day
PM "Project delayed again"
Me: " This is a joke right?"
PM: "Sadly, no, they delayed the project since they don't really know what they actually want, we are trying to give them the proposed solution... but they still need approval, and still need to set up shopping list"
Me:"when do we start then?"
PM: " I was told 17th of april'
Me:" I really hope it gets through, i had to decline some proposals for work for months due to this, this ain't funny"
PM: "I know, i'll make up for it"

15th of april...
PM " Project delayed again"
Me right now almost losing my shit
"why this time??? I thought you said 17th of april real launch!"
PM: "they fired their PM, need to hire a new one, delayed until May/June"
Me: "I've set aside some other assignments just because you said you were going to launch at those dates... This is really pushing my limits, can you give me SOME assurances?"
PM: "5th of june would be official go" Me: " Okay, i'm noting 5th of june in my agenda, let's get this through!"

And now i get a message...stating that the date of 5th of june , is for another project, at the same goct dept, but totally different project

WHAT THE FUCKING SHIT I'VE SPENT MONTHS WAITING FOR A PROJECT THAT WAS PRACTICALLY ALL SET AND GO AND EVERY SINGLE FUCKING TIME IT GETS DELAYED, EVERY FUCKING TIME I THINK "you know, i cannot accept these offers since that Govt project will start soon, i cannot do 2 assignments at once especially when they require me to work at govt office at the capital..." AND EVERY FUCKING TIME IT GETS DELAYED!!!

I feel at a loss now..... i've done i think the most horrible thing you can do as a independent and that's not accepting another assignment just because there was a concrete promise for a govt contract...

Almost dried up, nothing much left, had to do some spending because of a move to another apartment... I'm feeling really down, and angry...and down, but mostly angry, for not accepting those offers in the meantime...

Haven’t been on here for ages, but I felt like I needed to post this:

Warning:
This is long, and it might make you cry.

Backstory:
A couple of months back I worked for a completely clueless dude who had somehow landed a contract for a new website for a huge company. After a while he realised that he was incapable of completing the assignment. He then hired me as a subcontractor and I deleted literally everything he had done and started from scratch. He had over promised and under explained what needed to be done to me. It took many sleepless nights to get this finished with all the amendments and I had to double my pricing because he kept changing the brief.

Even after doubling my prices I still put in way too many hours of work. At one point I had enough and just ghosted the guy as I had done what he asked, and when he submitted it to them they wanted changes. He couldn’t make the changes, so I had to. He wouldn’t pay me extra though. I decided it wasn’t worth my time.

A couple of days ago I heard from him again. He had found another subcontractor to finish the changes. He still needed a few things though, so he promised me that I would get paid after fixing those things. I looked at the few things he had listed in our KANBAN and thought it was a few easy tasks.. until I opened the project..

I had my computer set up to sync with his server because he wanted everything done live and in production. So I naturally thought I would just “sync down” everything that the other subcontractor had done.

Here is where the magic started to happen.. I started the sync and went to grab a glass of water, and it was still running when I came back. I looked at the log and saw a bunch of “node_module” files syncing - around 900 folders. Funny thing is; neither the site nor server has anything to do with node..

I disregarded this and downloaded the files in a more manual fashion to a new folder. Interestingly I could see that my SCSS folders had not been touched since I stopped working on the project.. interesting, I thought to myself..

Turns out, the other subcontractor had taken my rendered and minimised CSS file, prettified it and worked from there. This meant that the around ~1500 lines of SCSS neatly organised in around 20 files was suddenly turned into a monster of a single CSS file of no less than 17300 lines.

I tried to explain to the guy that the other subcontractor had fucked up, but he said that I should be able to fix it since I was the one that made it initially. I haven’t replied. My life is too short for this.

Wtf, really??? Are they trying to liyerally KILL ME????

Got home from hospital today wth my family. Baby got sick. Wife also caught cold... Bad news. It was just me still healthy like a raddish [we have such saying].
So I got home. Started feeling somewhat funny. Sore thighs, feeling nauseaus, chilly, a bit dizzy.

10 minutes later I'm fucking trembling! It felt as of I was kicked put bare ass to -20C outside! I'm not exaggerating [probably made some typos.. Pls correct me] - i live where winters get like -35C. Everything around got like twice darker. And my lower teeth got itchy af [NOT the best feeling, trust me].

I must have caught cold too - I thought to myself, cuz I know what these sympthoms mean. I always have 'em all when I have fever. Since shivers are caused by rising fever I got my Microlife remote thermometer out of my drawer. Click, blue light, wait, beeep. 36.5C. Allright.. Maybe I got it wrong... Try again -- same result. Wife also gave a couple tries - nada. Nil. Nullpointerexception. Healthy like a pickle!

10 minutes later I couldn't stand the cold. Got under my blankets wife made some soup, tea,... I still have this analog thermometer, the one with quicksilver. Pop it into my armpit - jusyt in case. 10minutes later I take it out. It says 39,5 and rising. Try the microlife again. 36,5. WHAT THE FUCK?????????

If I weren't so fond of old-school stuff I'd be in a fucking ER now!!

Fuck you medical digital equipment made to be used at home! FUCK YOU!!

I'm pissed.

Do you folks kbow where could I get those q-silver thermometers? Just in case. They're already out of matket in my area for quite some time... For being dangerous [i give 'em that, okay?] and.... Lisen to this.... "unreliable"!

FUCK IT!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have a nice day.

What's the difference between a wasp and single loose hair?
Apparently none till the wasp stings :/

Yesterday I thought I had a loose hair on my neck.. ok, I shrug it off.. later again the creepy feeling.. shrugs off..

I continue to work, sumberged in code, wanting to find the fucker (bug, not the wasp/hair).. lean in to the monitor... 10 cents away from the screen... Ok, maybe that's it! Feels the hair on my back, near shoulderblades again... shrugging again more violently to get it further down to fall out.. nothing.. ok, got the bug, threw myslef back in the chair with substential force & BAAAAM!!! Motherfucking hair bit me!! O.o

I scream in horror & on top of the lungs (it was late, after work hours so I didn't expect anyone else still at the office) PROKLETA PRASICA (roughly translated to goddamn female swine).. I previously saw some green bug flying around the office and I thought that nasty thing bit me (didn't know they bite soo, much more horror for me).. O.o

Anyhow, I jump up from the computer and see my coworker looking at me all baffled.. I proceed to franticly take of my headphones and hoodie..thinking about wtf should I do now, I cannot get undressed in front of him (not for my sake, bra is the same as top of the bathing suit for me, but still..I don't want anyone suing me for impropper behaviour of undreasing in front of coworkers..), how the fuck should I get to the toilet?! O.o

C: Are you ok?!
M: Um.. sth bit me..wtf?!
C: There was a wasp flying around somewhere some time ago.. are you alergic?!
M: um..not sure, I don't think so..we'll see soon..

I proceed to the WC, to take off tshirt & check/kill off the fucker.. on my way there (walking funny to not press the hair to my body again) I got another surprise, another coworker was working late..

C2: Are you ok?! O.o
M: yeah, sth bit me, probably a wasp..

Ok, finally on the loo..ok, do not lock self in in case it escapes and you need help.. don't even shut the door. Check.. standing between the doors I contemplate on how the fuck should I take my tshirt off without angering the fucker even more and getting bitten again.. O.O

I lifted the tshirt up my back to let it out.. nope, not there..the creepy felling of buzzing around between my shoulder blades continues.. crap.. what to do?!

I stood there & contemplated the task.. ok, roll up the tshirt to the shoulder blades, not against the body (duh) to prevent further stings..tighten the fabric, so it cannot escape, quickly remove the band from the body.. done..reversed the tshirt and straightened it.. bzzz... Fucker fell somewhere.. Dafaq?! Was it really just a wasp?! If yes, no problem...but what if coworker was wrong and I got bitten by that nasty green whateveritsname bug?! Eeeeewwww! Is it poisonous? Gotta find it & kill it for good.. waited a bit, than saw a goddamn wasp crawl from under the toilet.. wasp!! Yess!! Stopm stomp fucker!!

I get dressed & go back to my desk..

C: Did you terminate it?!
M: Yup, fucker went on a toilet paper trip down the drain!!

I sit down, starting to get my headphones back on and proceed to work.., but before I could, one last gem:

C: CTO would say, thank god it didn't sting you in your finger cuz you wouldn't be able to type anymore..

M: O.O so true hahhahahaaa

Disclaimer - I like animals, but I freakking hate wasps..especially if they get under my tshirt to sting.. :/

I just tried to sign up to Instagram. I made a big mistake.

First up with Facebook related stuff is data. Data, data and more data. Initially when you sign up (with a new account, not login with Facebook) you're asked your real name, email address and phone number. And finally the username you'd like to have on the service. I gave them a phone number that I actually own, that is in my iPhone, my daily driver right now (and yes I have 3 Androids which all run custom ROMs, hold your keyboards). The email address is a usual for me, instagram at my domain. I am a postmaster after all, and my mail server is a catch-all one. For a setup like that, this is perfectly reasonable. And here it's no different, devrant at my domain. On Facebook even, I use fb at my domain. I'm sure you're starting to see a pattern here. And on Facebook the username, real name and email domain are actually the same.

So I signed up, with - as far as I'm aware - perfectly valid data. I submitted the data and was told that someone at Instagram will review the data within 24 hours. That's already pretty dystopian to me. It is now how you block bots. It is not how Facebook does it either, at least since last time I checked. But whatever. You'd imagine that regardless of the result, they'd let you know. Cool, you're in, or sorry, you're rejected and here's why. Nope.

Fast-forward to today when I recalled that I wanted to sign up to Instagram to see my girlfriend's pictures. So I opened Chromium again that I already use only for the rancid Facebook shit.. and it was rejected. Apparently the mere act of signing up is a Terms of Service violation. I have read them. I do not know which section I have violated with the heinous act of signing up. But I do have a hunch.

Many times now have I been told by ignorant organizations that I would be "stealing" their intellectual property, or business assets or whatever, just because I sent them an email from their name on my domain. It is fucking retarded. That is MY domain, not yours. Learn how email works before you go educate a postmaster. Always funny to tell them how that works. But I think that in this case, that is what happened.

So I appealed it, using a random link to something on Instagram's help section from a third-party blog. You know it's good when the third-party random blog is better. But I found the form and filled it in. Same shit all over again for info, prefilling be damned I guess. Minor convenience though, whatever.

I get sent an email in German, because apparently browsing through a VPS in Germany acting as a VPN means you're German. Whatever... After translating it, I found that it asks me to upload a picture of myself, holding a paper in my hands, on which I would have a confirmation code, my username, and my email address.. all hand-written. It must not be too dark, it must be clear, it must be in JPEG.. look, I just wanted to fucking sign up.

I sent them an email back asking them to fix all of this. While I was writing it and this rant, I thought to myself that they can shove that piece of paper up their ass. In fact I would gladly do it for them.

Long story short, do not use Instagram. And one final thing I have gripes with every time. You are not being told all the data you'll have to present from the get-go. You're not being told the process. Initially I thought it'd just be email, phone, username, and real name. Once signed up (instantly, not within 24 hours!) I would start setting up my account and adding a profile picture. The right way to ask for a picture of me! And just do it at my own pace, as I please.

And for God's sake, tackle abuse when it actually happens. You'll find out who's a bot and who isn't by their usage patterns soon enough. Do not do any of this at sign-up. Or hell, use a CAPTCHA or whatever, I don't fucking care. There's so many millions of ways to skin this cat.

Facebook and especially Instagram. Both of them are fucking retarded.

Story time!

I worked at a company that was the HQ for a sizable organization for a while, until it was eventually bought out by another company, and then yet another company who was located in the valley.

We were kinda a forgotten office not being the HQ, like most places like that are.

No customers EVER visited our building, few if any people knew we existed even, even our own company. I visited HQ in the valley on a number of occasions and was stalked by the video monitoring system for hours before I was stopped by security and the cops called because nobody believed there as an office outside the valley when I explained why my badge looked different .... (San Jose cops were very nice about it and really pissed at the security team.) But that's another story...

One day people who were never at our office decided (after many meetings without talking to anyone at the office) ... they decided the beige walls at our office didn't match the company colors.

So they took all the generic wall coverings down and painted all the walls an almost imperceptible different color.

So now we had an office with all white(ish) walls and nothing on them. Due to the configuration of the building there were these huge monolithic white walls that looked pretty dumb.

This lasted quite a while so as a joke I printed up and framed (found an old frame, as a former HQ we had lots of stuff lying around) a sign that said:

"This space intentionally left blank."

When the "mediocre hotel room quality art" and posters were scheduled to go up the folks putting the art up skipped that wall thinking the sign was official.

Even the somewhat corporate drone directors, and one VP at our office thought it was so funny, they didn't say a word about it. Word has it back at HQ they assumed it "must be fire code or something" and told the folks hanging the crappy art to skip that wall.

It lasted on that wall for a decade until we moved out of that building. On the last day, everything was moved, but that sign remained. No idea if it is still there or not...

Oh man. I have been waiting for this one. Gather round lil' chil'rens it's story time.

So. I was looking for a new project because my old one was wrapping up and that's what my company does. So I was offered some simulation type stuff. I was like "sure why not, I want to make a computer pretend it isn't a computer no more." Side note I should not be a psychiatrist.

So, prior to coming on to this job I felt stifled by my old job's process. This job was a smaller team so I thought the process would be a little smoother. But it turned out they had NO process. Like they had a bug tracking system and they held the meeting to add things to the system, but that was just fucking lip service to a process.

First of all, they used the local disk on the test box as their version control. and had no real scheme as to how they organized it. We had a CM tool but gods forbid they ever fucking use it. I would be handed problem reports and interface change requests, write a bug to track it, go into the code and about 75% of the time or more it had already been worked. However, there was no record of it being worked and I would have to fucking hunt that shit down in a terribly shitty baseline (standardize your gods damned indentation for fuck's sake) and half the time only found out it was done because when I finally located the piece of code that needed changing, the work was already done.

Then, on top of all that, they ask me what time I want to come in. I said 10am, they said okay. One day I roll in at 10 and my boss is mad. Because I missed a meeting. That was at 9. That I wasn't told about. He says I can keep coming in at 10am though (I asked and volunteered to help get him up to speed on the things I was working he said it wasn't necessary) so I did, but every time I missed a 9am meeting he would get pissed. I'm like PICK ONE!!! They move the meeting to 9:30am (which is not 10am).

This shit starts affecting my health negatively. Stress is apt to do that. It triggered an anxiety relapse that pushed me back in to therapy for the first time in 7 years. On top of that the air quality in the office is so bad that I am getting back to back sinus infections and I get put on heavy antibiotics that tear up my stomach along with the stress and new meds tearing up my stomach. So one day as I am laid out in pain, I call out sick. Two days in a row. (Such a heinous crime right.) Well I missed a test event, that I wasn't even the primary or secondary on.

So fast forward to the most pissed off I have ever been. I get called in to a meeting with my boss's boss. As it turns out, my coworkers are not satisfied by the work that I'm doing (funny because I thought I was doing pretty good given that my only direction was fix the interface change reports and problem reports. And there was no priority assigned to any of them).

And rather than tell me any of this, they go behind my back to the boss and boss's boss. They tell me I need to communicate (which I did) and ask for help when I need it (I never did). That I missed an important event (that I played no part in and gods forbid I be sick) and that it seemed like I didn't want to be there (I didn't but who WANTS to work a corporate job).

They put me on a performance improvement plan and I jumped to another project. I am much happier now. Old coworkers won't even say hi, not even those I was friendly with, but fuck them anyway.

Today was a day at work that I felt like I made a significant contribution. It was not a lot of code. Actually it was a difference of 3 characters.

I am developing an industrial server so that my employer can provide access to their machines to enterprise industrial systems. You know, the big boys toys. Probably in fucking java...

Anyway, I am putting this server on an embedded system. So naturally you want to see how much serving a server can serve. In this case the device in more processor starved than memory starved. So I bumped up the speed of the serving from 1000mS to 100mS per sample. This caused the processor to jump from 8% of one core (as read from top) to 70%. Okay, 10x more sampling then 10x approx cpu usage. That is good. I know some basic metrics for a certain amount of data for a couple of different sampling rates.

Now, I realized this really was not that much activity for this processor. I mean, it didn't seem to me that it "took much" to see a large increase of processor usage. So I started wondering about another process on the system that was eating 60 to 70 % all the time. I know it updated a screen that showed some not often needed data from its display among controlling things. Most of the time it will be in a cabinet hidden from the world. I started looking at this code and figured out where the display code was being called.

This is where it gets interesting. I didn't write this code. Another really good programmer I work with wrote this. It also seemed to be pretty standard approach. It had a timer that fired an event every 50mS. This is 20 times per second. So 20 fps if you will. I thought, What would happen if I changed this to 250mS? So I did. It dropped the processor usage to 15%! WTF?! I showed another programmer: WTF?! I showed the guy who wrote it: WTF?! I asked what does it do? He said all it does it update the display. He said: Lets take to 1000mS! I was hesitant, but okay. It dropped to 5%!

What is funny is several people all said: This is running kinda hot. It really shouldn't be this hot.

Don't assume, if you have a hunch, play with it if its safe to do so. You might just shave off 55 to 60 % cpu usage on your system.

So the code I ended up changing: "50" to "1000".

Not sure if it was 2016 or late 2015, but it's a fun story anyway (and if it's not you'll at least learn something from it).

Back at the time I was quite new to unit testing (weird how it has become second nature in a years time). I was writing some software that was supposed to send out some SMS to customers. Of course this had to be tested. However, it was a bit difficult to test (or so I thought) without actually receiving an SMS to know if it was sent. So I decided to use the live API key to make sure the sending of SMS was actually working correctly. I tried it a few times but didn't receive an SMS. So I kept working on it and running tests.

The testing setup I had at the time was just a continues loop that went through all tests to make sure it all still worked (I've moved to only checking on file changes now, but that is besides the point). Keep in mind I was still running these tests, in a loop, with the _live_ API key.

So the end of the working day arrives and I go home and sit in the train. All of the sudden I receive some test SMS. I was thinking "hey nice, it did work". Then I started receiving more. It soon turned out to be an alarmingly big amount of SMS. It stopped around 100, but don't think that was the end of it. Oh no. I had changed the number to send the SMS to from my own number to a different number (+31612345678 to be exact, which I found out later isn't an actual phone number. I really hope I was right about that). I was beginning to become nervous, but there wasn't much I could do.

The next day I returned to work and checked the API for sent SMS. Turns out I had sent a couple of thousand (I think between two and three thousand) SMS in a couple of hours. Most of them to the test number I had supplied.

This probably cost the company a couple of hundred euros. Luckily my colleagues and team leader all thought it was pretty funny, but did tell me not to do it again. And I haven't of course.

Lesson learned: don't use live API keys during testing (among other things :)).

So yeah that was probably my worst dev experience.

Today I had to explain a bit of ressource planing for the coming quarter and ahead.

Hardware ressources.

All in all I knew what I was talking about, but given our tight budget, it''s a lot of moving stuff to either put the hardware to rest or to recycle it.

Moving in sense of new hardware, migrate old to new, decommission / recycle stuff.

After roughly half an hour I stopped and asked If I really should continue, as I felt bored by myself and it's really hard to follow when the whole thing looks exactly like the guy in the nice picture under the post...

A colleague of mine answered: I can still follow, but I'm terrified.

I somehow burst into a mixture of laughing and crying cause that was exactly my thought.

It's gonna be fun... Way easier than the last time, but still. XD

Was at least a funny meeting...

We stopped after everyone calmed down and talked the rest of the time bullshit.

By the way: I look exactly like the dude during planning. :)

Alright lads here is the thing, have not been posting anything other than replies to things cuz I have been busy being miserable at school and dealing with work stuff.

Our manager left us back in February. Because she was leaving I decided that I wanted to try a different path and went on to become a programmer analyst for my institution, if anything I knew that it was going to be pretty boring work, but it came with nice monetary compensation and a foot in the door for other data science related jobs in the future. Thing is, the department head asked me to stay in the web technologies department because we had a lack of people there and hiring is hard as shit, we do not do remote jobs since our work usually requires a level of discretion and security. Thus I have been working in the web tech department since she left albeit with a different title since I aced the interview for the analyst position and the team there were more than happy to have me. I have done very few things for them, some reports here and there and mostly working directly with the DBA in some projects. One migration project would have costed my institution a total of 58k and we managed to save the cost by building the migration software ourselves.....honestly it was a fucking cake walk, if you had any doubts about the shaddyness of enterprise level applications regarding selling overpriced shit with different levels of complexity, keep them, enterprise is shaddy af indeed. But I digress.

I wrote the specification for the manager position along the previous manager, we had decided that the next candidate needed to be strong with development knowledge as well as other things as to properly understand and manage a software team, we made the academic requirement(fuck you, yes we did ask for academic requirements) to be either in the Computer Science/software engineering area or at least on the Business Administration side. We were willing to consider BA holders in exchange for having knowledge of the development process of different products and a complete understanding of what developers go through. NOT ONE SINGLE motherfucker was able to satisfy this, some of them were idiots that I knew from before that had ABSOLUTELY no business even considering applying to the position, the courage it took for some of these assholes to apply would have hurt their mothers, their God if they had one, and their country, they were just that fucking bad in their jobs as well as being overall shit people.

Then we had 1 candidate actually fall through the cracks enough to get an interview. My dude here was lying out of his ass through the interview process. According to him he had "lots of Laravel experience and experience managing Laravel projects" and mentioned repeatedly how it would be a technology that we should consider for our products. I was to interview him alongside the vice president of our institution due to the head of my department and the rest of the managers for I.T being on vacation leave all at the same bloody time.

Backstory before the interview:
Whilst I was going over the interview questions with the vice president literally offered me the job instead. I replied with honesty, reflecting how I did not originally wanted him but feeling that our institution was ready to settle on any candidate due to the lack of potentials. He was happy to do it since apparently both him and the HOD were expecting me to step up sooner or later. I was floored.

Regardless, out of kindness he wanted to go through the interview.
So, going back to the interview. As soon as the person in question referenced the framework I started to ask him about it, just simple questions, the first was "what are your thoughts on the Eloquent ORM? I am not too fond of it and want to know what you as a full time laravel dev think of it"
his reply: "I am sorry I am not too familiar with it, I don't know what that is" <--- I appreciated his honesty in this but thought it funny that someone would say that he was a Laravel developer whilst not knowing what an ORM was since you can't really get away from using it on the initial stages of learning about Laravel, maybe if one wanted to go through the hurdle of switching to something like doctrine...but even then, it was....odd.

So I met with the hod when he came back, he was stoked at the prospect of having me become the manager and I happily accepted the position. It will be hell, but I don't even need to hit the ground running since I have been the face of the department since ages. My team were ecstatic about it since we are all close friends and they have been following my directions without complaints(but the ocational eat a dick puto) for some time, we work well together and we are happy to finally have someone to stop the constant barrage that comes from people taking advantage of a missing manager.

Its gonna get good, its gonna get fun, and i am getting to see how shit goes.

Alright. This is going to be long and incoherent, so buckle up. This is how I lost my motivation to program or to do anything really.

Japan is apparently experiencing a shortage of skilled IT workers. They are conducting standardized IT skill tests in 7 Asian countries including mine. Very few people apply and fewer actually pass the exam. There are exams of different levels that gives you better roles in the IT industry as you pass them. For example, the level 2 or IT Fundamental Engineering Exam makes you an IT worker, level 3 = capable of working on your own...so on.
I passed level 1 and came in 3rd in my country (there were only 78 examinees lol). Level 2 had 2 parts. The theoretical mcq type exam in the morning and the programming mcq in the afternoon. They questions describe a scenario/problem, gives you code that solves it with some parts blanked out.

I passed the morning exam and not the afternoon. As a programmer I thought I'd be good at the afternoon exam as it involves actual code. Anyway, they give you 2 more chances to pass the afternoon exam, failing that, you'll have to take both of them the next time. Someone who has passed 1 part is called a half-passer and I was one.

A local company funded by both JICA and my government does the selection and training for the Japanese companies. To get in you have to pass a written exam(write code/pseudocode on paper) and pass the final interview in which there are 2 parts - technical interview and general interview.

I went as far as the interview. Didn't do too good in the technical interview. They asked me how would I find the lightest ball from 8 identical balls using a balance only twice. You guys probably already know the solution. I don't have much theoritical knowledge. I know how to write code and solve problems but don't know formal name of the problem or the algorithm.

On to the next interview. I see 2 Japanese interviewers and immediately blurt out konichiwa! The find it funny. Asked me about my education. Say they are very impressed that self taught and working. The local HR guy is not impressed. Asks me why I left university and why never tried again. Goes on about how the dean is his friend and universites are cheap. foryou.jpg

The real part. So they tell me that Japanese companies pay 250000/month, I will have to pay 60% income tax, pay for my own accommodation, food, transportation cost etc. Hella sweet deal. Living in Japan! But I couldn't get in because the visa is only given to engineers. Btw I'm not looking to invade Japan spread my shitskin seed and white genocide the japs. Just wanted to live in another country for a while and learn stuff from them.

I'll admit I am a little salty and probably will remain salty forever. But this made me lose all interest in programming. It's like I don't belong. A dropout like me should be doing something lowly. Maybe I should sell drugs or be a pimp or something.

But sometimes I get this short lived urge to make something brilliant and show them that people like me are capable of doing good things. Fuck, do I have daddy issues?

rant = Rant.STORY_TIME

<<<Story
This is still something funny me and my friends often remember.

There was once upon a time we were young and stupid, playing on the internet with fake credit card numbers, sometimes we had luck and the orders passed.

We were on the living room, checking who could put an order for a coffee machine, while another friend of mine was talking about the deep web and what he found there.

Suddenly, someone knocks really hard on the door... We went silent...
Me: "Who's there?"
Voice: Federal Police, open up!

Me: *shiiiit*

I went blank, close my laptop as fast as possible, I thought of throwing it away through the window. My friends panicked, I had my laptop upside down, opening the lid to remove the HDD.

One of my friends stood up and went to the door, looked through the eyehole.

Friend: *whispering* The eyehole's covered!

We quickly stood up and looked at each other, like we were acknowledging our wrong doing and getting ready to face the consequences.

I took a deep breath and put the key in the door to open it. Sudden heavy knock again. I jumped and yelled "I'm on it, wait a minute!".

Slowly I opened the door... And there they were, another two of my friends.

F1: hey...what, what happened? Why are you so scared.

They stepped in while we told them what we were doing and they laughed their asses off.

We were shit scared, and those two were laughing.
Story;

So, nowadays, I don't even think about doing that kind of stuff again and I'm hoping to make a Master's degree in security...or electronics, whatever happens first.

This isn't a funny rant or story. It's one of becoming increasingly unsure of the career choices I've made the path they've led me down. And it's written with terrible punctuation and grammar, because it's a cathartic post. I swear I'm a better writer than this.

The highlights:
- I left a low-paying incredibly stable job with room to grow (think specialized office worker at a uni) to become a QA tester at a AAA game studio, after growing bored with the job and letting my productivity and sometimes even attendance slip
- I left AAA studio after having been promoted through the ranks to leading an embedded test tools development team where we automated testing the game (we got to create bots, basically!) and the database, and building some of the most requested tools internally to the company; but we were paid as if we were QA testers, not engineers, and were told that wouldn't change; rather than move over or up, I moved out to a better paying, less fabulous web and tools development job for a no-name company
- No-name company offered one or two days remote, was salaried, and close to home. CTO was a fan of long lunches and Quake 3 Arena 1-2 hours at the end of every day. CTO position was removed, I got a lot of his responsibilities, none of his pay, and started freelancing to learn new skills rather than deal with the CFO being my boss.
- Went to work as a freelancer for an email marketing SaaS provider my previous job had used. Made loads of money, dealt with an old, crappy code base, an old, cranky senior dev, and an owner who ran around like the world was on fire 24/7; but I worked without pants, bought a car, a house, had a kid, etc;

Now during ALL of this, I was teaching game dev as an adjunct at my former uni. This past fall, I went full time as a professor in game dev. I took a huge pay cut, but got a steady schedule (semester to semester anyway) and great benefits. I for once chose what I thought was the job I wanted over more money and something that was just "different". And honestly, I've regretted it so much. My peer / diagonally above me coworker feels untrustworthy half the time and teaches the majority of the programming courses when he's a designer and I've been the game programming professor for 8 years (I also teach non-game programming courses, but those just got folded into the games program...); I hate full-time uni politics; I'm struggling with money for my family; and I am in the car all the time it feels like. I could probably go back to my last job, which had some benefits, but nowhere near as good; my wife doesn't want me back to working in the house all the time because that was a struggle unto itself once we had a kid (for all of us, in different ways); and I have now less than 24 hours to tell my university I want to not pursue longer term contracts for full-time and go back to adjunct next Fall (or walk away entirely), or risk burning a bridge (we are reviewing applicants for next year tomorrow, including my own) by bailing out mid-application process.

I'm not sure I'm asking for advice. I'm really just ranting, I guess. Some people I know would kill to have the opportunities I have. I just feel like each job choice led me further away from a job I liked, towards more money, which was a tradeoff that worked out mostly, but now I feel like I don't have either, and I'm trapped due to healthcare and 401k and such. Sure, I like working more with my students and have been able to really support them in their endeavors this semester, but... that's their lives. Not mine. The wife thinks I should stay at the university and we'll figure out money eventually (we are literally sinking into debt, it's not going well at all), while most people think I should leave, make money, and figure out the happiness factor once my finances are back on track and the kid is old enough to be in school.

And I have less than 24 hours it feels like to make a momentous decision.

Yay. Thanks for reading :)

tl;dr Do you think we will any time soon move from editing raw source code? Will IDE or other interfaces allow us to change the code in graphic representation or even through voice?
---

One thing I found funny watching Westworld is how they depicted the "programming" - it is more like swiping on a smartphone, a bit maybe like Tom Cruise's investigations in Minority report. Or giving certain commands and key words by voice.

There was one quote from Uncle Bob's "Clean Code" I could never find again, where he said something along the lines, that back in the seventies or eighties they thought they would soon raise programming languages to such a high level they would use natural language interfaces, and look at us now, still the same "if's".

So I feel uncomfortable without my shell and having tried a graphical programming language once this particular (Labview) seemed clumsy to me at best. But maybe there are a lot of web devs here and it seems with them frameworks you might be able to abstract away a lot of the pesky system programming... so do you feel like moving to some new shiny programming experience or do you think it will stay the same for more decades as the computer is that stupid machine where you have to spill it out instruction by instruction anyways?

!dev

Another tinder story from last night.

Matched with a girl, I thought she was cute and all. She texted me first, and we started talking. We kinda just clicked, had similar interests and everything. Conversation turned to musicals, she said she wanted me to come listen to one with her at some point when we were both free. I mentioned the whole story from Sunday night to her (see previous rant), and told her how the girl said I was a "rebound", but nothing actually happened. Then she changed the conversation by saying something like "rebounds normally involve sex, maybe I can make up for it".

After that the conversation got sexual. Dirty talk, nudes, everything. Talking about how hard she wanted me to fuck her and everything. That carried on until about 6 in the morning. We both decided we should go to sleep.

I woke up around 11, we talked for a few minutes, then she said she had to get ready for a doctor appointment, and I didn't think anything of it. Went to work at 2, had to go get a car from a dealership like 20 minutes away. Me and my coworker got back, I decided to check my phone and see if she messaged me or anything.

Come to find out, she basically just fucking ghosted me. Blocked me, unmatched me on tinder, the whole nine yards. No warning, nothing. 8 hours earlier she was saying how much she wanted me inside her (not paraphrasing), and now she just decided "nah fuck him altogether".

I don't fucking know what it is. It's been about 10 hours since I found out, and I just..I don't know. She could have just said "nah I don't wanna fuck" and I would have been 100% fine with that. But nope. No warning, just blocked me.

I'm not mad that she just backed out of it, I'm mad that she didn't say fucking anything about it. Like, even apart from all the sexting and stuff, I genuinely liked this girl. She was nice, cute, funny, just everything I could have asked for. And now, I'm honestly kinda sad about it. Everything seemed like it was going well (maybe all the sexting would have been better for another time in the future ya know, but I can honestly say I didn't initiate it), and now I have nothing again.

Overengineering. Finding the right point between overdesign and no design at all. That's where fancy languages and unusual patterns being hit by real world problems, and you need to deal with all that utter mess you created being architecture astronaut. Isn't that funny how you realize that another fancy tool is fundamentally incompatible with the task you need to solve, and you realize it after a month of writing workarounds and hacks.

But on the other hand, duct tape slacking becomes a mess even quicker.

Not being able to promote projects. You may code the shit out of side project and still get zero response, absolutely no impact. That's why your side projects often becomes abandoned.

Oversleeping. You thought tomorrow was productive day, but you wake up oversleeped, your head aches, your mind is not clear and you be like "fuck that, I'm staying in bed watching memes all day". But there's job that has to be done, and that bothers you.

Writing tests. Oh, words can't describe how much I hate writing tests, any kind of. I tried testing so many times in high school, at university, even at production, but it seems like my mind is just doesn't accept it. I know that testing is fundamentally important, but my mind collapses every time I try to write a single fucking test, resulting in terrible headache. I don't know why it's like that, but it is, and I better repl the shit out of pure function than write fucking tests.

Just want to put it out here... reading this will waste ur time. :(

Having a serious crush on co-worker. I tried not to have a crush on him initially because he’s a colleague and he seems to be much older(max 10 yrs I guess). Age isn’t an issue but ppl say it’s not good to like someone from work.

But then he kept on glancing at me and caught him turning back to look into my cubicle at several occasions. Saw him looking at my direction across the room, hall, turning back to look when he was waiting at lobby, and all the way from smoking corner as well. Could be possible that he just happened to be looking in my direction several times.
Now, haven’t seen him since early feb because of the quarantine. Luckily, I chanced upon his number when everyone in the dept was put into the same chat channel for the Covid19 news. I had this urge to ask what was it all about because we’ve been told to wfh till further notice. Who knows what could happen to us during these period.

So tried to be brave and asked abt why he was looking into my cubicles several times, without coming out weird (I hope). His reply was “dont know”. I don’t know what to make of it. Could have been anything else but how could someone just reply don’t know.

Then came yesterday, my friend was telling me about her experience on tinder. Apparently she’s been using it for fun and she got funny texts from the guys there. So I decided to give it a try. Man, it was so fun swiping left all the way (cuz they couldnt be compared with work crush) till I swiped right for this older guy. We matched!
He was the first one to match, probably abt 5-10mins after I’ve finished setting up profile and all that. It was totally a new experience for me. I forgot abt my work crush in that moment. He had this minimalistic vibe. Didn’t smile much in his photos, gave me calm feeling and looked so cool. He put “Everything is good in moderation” in the bio. He’s the only one comparable for that work crush. Not sure who’s supposed to start saying hi. My friends said wait for the guy, so I waited.
Got a few other matches after him but didn’t like them as much as him. I finally decided to say hi. No respond till today. Given that he put Doctor for his occupation, I assumed he’d be busy. So I waited. Then sent another in late afternoon asking if he plays LoL often (he’s wearing LoL land yard in one of the photos). No reply.

I started to feel weird because this is supposed to be light and fun because who takes things seriously on tinder, right. They’re there to flirt and kill the boredom especially because of the lockdown. And I started to have serious feelings for this one guy whom didn’t even bother to reply. So decided to delete tinder for good. Sent him one final msg that I really wanted to get to know him and I thought he’s a really cool handsome dude. But now that I’ve deleted my acc, he wouldn’t even see my msg anymore.

His profile name is Randolf. I want to get to know him in real life. But is it illegal? :(

Thank u for read this far. I just didn’t know where to put all those feelings. And sorry for wasting your time with nonsense.

I'm really not sure. When I was 7-8 years old, I liked to view source in IE, then I somehow managed to use Javascript in the browser. First only some dumb opening of windows. And I liked Batch, so I made some files for copying, backup and stuff.

Then I got to PHP during the years from some online tutorial about making dynamic websites. My website was more static than stone, but yeah, I did page loading with PHP! Awful experience anyway, because I had to install Xampp, get it work and other stuff. 11 years old or so. (and I used Xampp only as a fileserver between laptop and desktop later, because.. PHP4... just no.)

As 12 years old or so I experienced my first World of Warcraft (vanilla) on a custom server in an internet cafe and I thought it's a singleplayer game. When I found out that no, I googled how to make my own server (hated multiplayer back then and loved good games with huge storylines). Failed miserably with ManGOS, got something to work with ArcEMU. There I learned some C++ basic stuff, which I hoped would helped me to fix some bugs. When I opened the code I was like: "Suuure." and left it like that. I learned what a MySQL database is, broke it like four times when I forgot WHERE and still rather played with websites i.e. html, css, js and optionally php when I wanted to repair a webpage for the server. With a friend we managed to get the server work via Hamachi, was fun, the server died too soon. Then I got ManGOS to work, but there wasn't really any interest to make a server anymore, just singleplayer for the lore. (big warcraft fan, don't kick me :D )

I think it was when I was 13y.o. I went to Delphi/Pascal course, which I liked a lot from the beginning, even managed to use my code on old Knoppix via Lazarus(Pascal). At this age I really liked thoae Flash games which were still common to see everywhere. So I downloaded .swfs, opened and tried to understand it. Managed to pull some stuff from it and rewrite in Pascal. Nope, never again that crap.

About the same time I got to Flash files I discovered Java. It was kind of popular back then, so I thought let's give it a try. I liked Flash more. Seriously. I've never seen so much repetitiveness and stupid styling of a code. I had either IDE for compiling C++ or Pascal or notepad! You think I wanted my code kicked all over the place in multiple folders and files? No.

So back to Pascal. I made some apps for my old hobby, was quite satisfied with the result (quiz like app), but it still wasn't the thing. And I really thought I'd like to study CS.

I started to love PHP because of phpBB forums I worked on as 15 y.o. I guess. At the same time I think there was an optional subject at school, again with Pascal. I hated the subject, teacher spoke some kind of gibberish I didn't really understand back then at all and now I find it only as a really stupid explanation of loops and strings.

So I started to hate Pascal subject, but not really the lang itself. Still I wanted something simpler and more portable. Then I got to Python as hm, 17y.o. I think and at the same time to C++ with DevC++. That was time when I was still deciding which lang to choose as my main one (still playing with website, database and js).

Then I decided that learning language from some teacher in a class seriously pisses me off and I don't want to experience it again. I choose Python, but still made some little scripts in C++, which is funny, because Python was considered only as a scripting lang back then.

I haven't really find a cross-platform framework for C++, which would: a) be easy to install b) not require VisualStudio PayForMe 20xy c) have nice license if I managed to make something nice and distribute it. I found Unity3D though, so I played with Blender for models, Audacity for music and C# for code. Only beautiful memories with Unity. I still haven't thought I'm a programmer back then.

For Python however I found Kivy and I was playing with it on a phone for about a year. Still I haven't really know what to do back then, so I thought... I like math, numbers, coding, but I want to avoid studying physics. Economics here I go!

Now I'm in my third year at Uni, should be writing thesis, study hard and what I do? Code like never before, contribute, work on a 3D tutorial and play with Blender. Still I don't really think about myself as a programmer, rather hobby-coder.

So, to answer the question: how did I learn to program? Bashing to shit until it behaved like I desired i.e. try-fail learning. I wouldn't choose a different path.

Actually I have two stories

The first one, that one project I talked about with a big company when I was at school. It wasn't that much coding since it was mostly researching, but it was a big project that seems really interesting, with Image Analysis and Machine Learning.
The projects at school this year got drawn randomly for each group, so when I've been announced that I've been chosen for the biggest project, thinking about every side of the project, I was hyped. And even a year after we finished it, I'm still happy and excited about it.

The second is something a little more funny :
So we got some projects to do during December for school including cryptography. Again, those were randomly drawn (but some can really fuck you up) and I got to do a Password Manager, like KeyPass. We were 4, and we thought we had the time to do it.
But we misread the date. At the end of Christmas break, I got a call of a friend saying that the project is due in two days.
Thing is, one of my three co-workers weren't contactable. And we got nothing.
So I kinda took the lead : I said to one to do the UI, another to do the cryptograph helper, and I'll do the linking and all the behaviour of it.

In two days, I literally spent all the time available on it.
Then first meeting with the teacher for saying what is wrong, where bugs are if they exist, ect. so we can fix the issues and deliver a clean code. They were like only 4 big problems. More is, I fixed them all in like two hours while thinking fixing only one. And we got something like the 2nd or the 3rd best mark of the prom. And everyone congratulated me for that. I got so excited I was able to do that in few time.

But never that again lmao

Since day 0, I have been fond of computers. One of my first plush was called "DataDog" and looked like a CRT screen with dog ears around. According to my mum I was "addicted" to it.

At year 2, my dad was arranging some music on some software while I was watching him on his lap. Quick jump to the present: nowadays and since 10 years I run my own home studio with three guitars, two keyboards, one bass, three monitors, a microphone, an amp and a cabinet... coincidence? I think not!

Fast forward 5 years later (so I'm 6-7 years old), and I was playing with the legendary pinball game on Win95, as well as Flight Simulator. Then I was hogging mum's laptop to play settlers II (<3 that game), I eventually got my computer, and got into Quake III Arena being aged 10 (and had to tell my mum that game was safe for my age haha - I eventually removed the blood effects).

The Quake 3 Arena chapter is interesting: it got me into router configuration as I wanted to open a port through the router to host my own dedicated games with friends, it got me into DNS configuration (I was running a no-DNS client that allowed friends to join me through a DNS while having a dynamic IP) and eventually... to modifying .cfg files to tune my server as I wanted it. No programming here but a nice intro into :)

Then I hated the fact everybody would point their finger at me and say "geek" - I was only 13, fragile, sensitive, and I wanted everything but a bad image on me.

Meanwhile I continued on getting interested in hardware and configure my own computers, and investing myself into music production.

Then, university. "What do you want to study?" I thought of everything but IT, fleeing the image of a "geek". Turns out it was a waste of time, and at 21 yo I got into web development (well, just html and css), then learned a bit of PHP, finally got a specialized 2-year training and now here I am!

I was bound to be in IT either way since day 0, and funny fact, I've used every windows edition since Win95.

Okay this is my first time posting on this site. I've browsed it (definitely not in class) and the community looks beautiful, so I'm going to just kind of slide in here. Anyways this is the part where I use my caps lock button and type lots of naughty words I guess...

<rant type = 'school'>
Our programming classes are fucking DISMAL uuugh... Okay so we have four technology classes: Tech Exploration, Coding 1, Coding 2, and Intro to CS (a 'high school' level class)... So this means a fuck ton of kids in programming classes, mostly because I WANNA MAKE MINCERAFT AND BE A KEWL BOI LIKE GAME DEV BUT I'M ALSO A FUCKING IDIOT AND WILL NOT LEARN ANYTHING YAAAAAAY but that's a mood and so there's a fucking tidal wave of dumb kids in these classes. So right we're dealing with like 80 kids per class period. Sorry if I'm repeating myself but there are a FUCKTON of students. Now, we have... wait for it... ONE FUCKING TEACHER. ONE. I fucking swear this district does not give a SINGLE SHIT about possibly THE SINGLE FUCKING MOST IMPORTANT SUBJECT WHYYYYYY... Okay so the teacher is kinda overworked as fuck lol. She can't really teach eighty kids at once so she mostly gives us exercises from websites but when she can she teaches us shit herself and actually knows a good bit about her field of study. She's usually pretty grumpy, understandably, but if you ask her a good question that makes her think you can see the passion there lol. So anyways that's a mood. Now at the other school it's even worse. They have this new asshole as a teacher that knows NOTHING about ANYTHING IT IS SO FUCKING REDICULOUS OH MY UUUUUGH... THEY STILL DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT A FUCKING LOOP IS LIKE OKAY YOU'VE BEEN TEACHING PROGRAMMING FOR A YEAR AND YOU'RE THE ONLY ONE TEACHING IT AT THAT DISTRICT SO MAYBE YOU SHOULD AT LEAST FUCKING TRY WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU... so he just makes them do shit from a website and obviously can't do half of the shit he assigns it's so fucking sad... I swear this district is supposed to be good but maybe not for the ONE THING I WANT IT TO BE GOOD FOR. Funny story: in elementary school once I wrote down school usernames for people I didn't really know and shared them a google doc that said "you have been hacked make a more secure password buddy" etc etc and made them the owner and these dull shits report it to the principal... So I'm in the principles office... Just a fucking dumb elementary school kid lol and the principal is like hAcKiNg Is BaD yOu ShOuLd NoT dO iT and I'm like how did you know it was me... so he goes on to say some bullshit about 'digital footprint' and 'tracing' me to it... he obviously has no clue what he's saying but anyways afterwards he points to where it says last change made by MY SCHOOL ACCOUNT... HOW DULL CAN YOU FUCKING POSSIBLY BE IT WAS FROM MY ACCOUNT THAT LITERALLY PROVED THAT I DID --NOT-- 'HACK' INTO THEIR ACCOUNT YOU DUMB FUCK. Okay so basically my school is a burning pile of garbage but it's better than most apparently but it's GARBAGE MY GOD... Please fucking tell me it gets better...

okay lol that was longer than I thought it would be guess I just needed to vent... later I guess
</rant>

So a bit ago I posted a rant saying that I would be getting ElementaryOS onto my computer and trying it out, buckle up kiddos because this goes to shit in just a moment.

I did everything right, used Rufus correctly and didn't destroy my computer nor my installer, good! I set it up, get everything going and everything is running smoothly. One problem... I couldn't download **any** programs that weren't from the Ubuntu Store, which really annoyed me because I like to use Brackets, and I couldn't find it in the UStore...

So I messed up **really** bad here... I didn't *format* my Elementary Installer, but tried to delete the files like a pleb and stick an Ubuntu ISO in it's place, I didn't even think on going through Rufus again, I just slapped that shit in there without a thought.

I restart my computer, I read a forum stating that I would get an option that allows Ubuntu (or another Linux distro) to take over the partition of a previous distro. Neat! Another bloody problem is that I decided to use "Win + R" and manually delete the Elementary partition **myself**... What is even wrong with me...

So I restarted it, and before my father left to go shopping, he said I should go into the BIOS to change the boot order (Now this is where I **really fucked up**. Thought what I said before was bad?).
Cool, so I boot my PC and go into the BIOS, now I couldn't figure out on my computer where the boot order was, when it was right in my face the whole damn time... I managed to almost destroy my entire BIOS with the fucking file in my USB stick, because I was being an idiot...

I restart, GRUB opens up with a black screen and white text in the top left corner, know what the most important line is in that small block of words? "unknown filesystem"... Of fucking course I fucked it that bad, GRUB didn't even give me the option of just using Windows 10 instead, just quietly gave me the middle finger since I basically nearly fucked everything.

What's funny is that I had someone (who lives with us, let's call him Jeff) look at my computer because I was done being a dumbass.
He told me that I still had my BIOS (which was a bloody relief, because I thought I basically destroyed my computer doing what I did) and that all I need to do is fix the installer I tried to use.

I gave him the USB and just started to play on my phone.
Then I remembered something maybe an hour or so ago... I had an older installer that I used on my shitty laptop awhile back, if I can find it again I could just use that instead of waiting on Jeff. I dug around my room and found the USB that had a working Ubuntu ISO on, correctly placed inside this time.

I basically walked up to my computer, plugged it in and started it up, and it worked. I got Ubuntu and Windows 10 back, and I was basically laughing like I just saved a man's life.

Moral of this story: Don't be like me and do something stupid, especially if you don't know what the fuck you're attempting at...

speedrun.com completely destroyed itself today.

Apparently they thought it was funny to change all kinds of labels, links, images etc. around for April fool's, so now the site became completely unusable. In a game that I identified as Minecraft by looking at the URL, over 10 moderators were added and minutes later, a 5 minute world record of getting all achievements was verified, which didn't even have a (complete?) video. Context: The previous world record was over an hour. I would check what the correct previous time was, but I can't figure out what any of the labels are supposed to say.

I already wrote them a mail saying that they should revert it as soon as possible, because the site is completely unusable, and that they should consider that there are people who don't like being blocked from doing anything just because it's April again. Hopefully they made a backup recently, because they might as well reset to yesterday's data.

Dear Thieves.
So I was looking at some guy who's job I designed today.
He was sitting there with the new laptop I bought during one visit here.
It was an hp with a silver keyboard and handrest because supposedly normal people stopped owning laptops when you all decided to embrace schizophrenia and create inane rather stupid meanings that are associated with literally everything but sense or sophistication.

comparing oneself to an animal for example doesn't focus on positive or spiritual values, its something perverse.

ordering food is not about enjoying new things or savoring flavors, its about something perverse.

going to school is not to learn things, its to crash and burn later because the powers that be refuse to update the system from the 1970s.

living, is not living at all, but working to pay bills and get old bitter and fat.

well.

shit.

retards.

anyway. doesn't explain people like myself who made things when we could and were enthusiastic about our jobs at points.

oh. and supposedly the guy who stole the job was 'I".... and it was a job that would become 'outmoded'......
i believe that was the word often used. let;s check. yup, close enough.

then all these people talking about 'new' jobs because noone could trust the group of monsters they made with too much spare time. since you know. they thought it was funny to steal human beings lives since they were not human. subhuman.

anyway.

where suddenly everything meant something else and a whole new world of retarded people emerged from the shadows because the trash children of a former generation got sick of being lectured about morality when they were in fact just bad people who should have been shot.

i don't care how else the whiney bastards explain themselves. i really don't.

you can say that in desperate fucked situations involving psychological torture, rape, etc that a decent person *raises their hand* might do TERRIBLE things to their captors in order to escape, but THEY caused that while whining that someone from the 1940s or earlier made them evil and they had no choice but to steal jobs, money, retirement funds, public institutions, the morals of a generation, i'll bite: toddlers, spread their legs like psycho whores to get pregnant, so steal people's unborn children, turn every fund available that could have gone towards people that needed things to money laundering and in general gleefully fucked our whole country up with the lack of foresight that psychopaths commonly display.

great job.
was it worth dying ?

how about going crazy and letting another group of evil people make an excuse to drive everyone into an endless idiotic loop ?

but hey no, keep lying. works so well.
well at least fedora 37 is released again.

give the stolen photos back.
just want to know what i looked like, and don't want to talk like a retard to get people who understand english to pretend they finally comprehend.

fucking bastards.