Details
-
Aboutautomation tools author, sysadmin, devops engineer, beer lover, husband, dad
-
Skillsperl, redis, linux, json, ugly html, system architecture, security, spelling
-
LocationDenver, CO, USA
-
Github
Joined devRant on 6/18/2017
Join devRant
Do all the things like
++ or -- rants, post your own rants, comment on others' rants and build your customized dev avatar
Sign Up
Pipeless API
From the creators of devRant, Pipeless lets you power real-time personalized recommendations and activity feeds using a simple API
Learn More
-
Recruiter: blablabla would you be interested in this job ?
Me: It looks great, hell yes I'm interested!
Recruiter: When are you available for a quick call?
Me: I'm not interested anymore.2 -
Story time on my job hunt: Currently interviewing with Google during my notice period.
I always had a love hate relationship with Google. Unlike my hate towards Meta or Amazon, where I had a reason to hate them for how ill intended they are, I never had a valid reason to dislike or hate Google apart from the fact that they steal my data.
That's it. That's my only reason why I hate Google. But I fell in love with their products during my trip to Istanbul and how throughout my journey, Google products were there for me to solve all my needs.
As y'all know, I was treated badly during my Meta interview, last October. With Google, the experience is on another level.
People are fucking smart and ingenious, but at the same time very polite, humble, and respectful.
During my 3 interviews so far (2 more remaining), each one of them made me so comfortable that I was more anxious before the interview than during or after.
They supported me during each question they asked. They made me felt heard and focused on my strength, instead of the weaknesses (or trying to break me down unnecessarily).
The interview syllabus is so fucking vast, and recruiters know so much that they helped me not only with preparation material, but also guided me personally. Haven't seen such knowledgeable recruiters.
The questions were dynamic in nature and thankfully because of my preparation, I was able to answer them most.
Overall, the culture at Google seems brilliant and an environment where one can flourish. No wonder companies are trying to copy every aspect of how Google operates and no surprise that Google is doing well at scale.
I feel so high on emotions (positively), after these interviews that I wonder how would it be to work at Google with such phenomenal people and exceptional environment.7 -
Well I did it guys. I'm officially a Software Engineer.
I'm feeling serious imposter syndrome. Working on telling myself that I'll be OK though.8 -
Positive story ahead.
Had to try and make a new system on my own in a company with no tech staff. I was scared shitless of the responsibility. About a year later we got 2 new devs and people are somehow paying for our very flawed and incomplete mvp.
It's fulfilling and fun. Taking something from zero and suddenly having an actual application with customers.
The other 2 engineers are fun and we talk shit while coding and teaching each other. We also study new tech every day to keep getting better.
I'm even getting some stocks soon.
Long road ahead but honestly, life's good. -
dad to uncle: you know, my son is a programmer
uncle to me: what do you do son, as a programmer
me: catch bugs
uncle( thinking ): 🐞🐞🐝🐝
uncle: I hope you find a better job in the future!!1 -
I was in a company (if you can call it that) for 3 months but I didn't exactly have a good selection process and I was even afraid to get paid for the first month. They made me install Hubstaff (or new slavery), I was in a project that mixed too many technologies, we were not clear who was making the decisions and finally they fired me this week, you don't know how happy I am.2
-
"In Python 3, exec is a function; its use has no effect on the compiled bytecode of the function where it is used."
Found in a stackoverflow post.
So wait, you mean to say, you could hide code in a pyc file or am I mistaken?
How is this not a security concern?12 -
I am the manager of a customer service team of about 10-12 members. Most of the team members are right out of school and this is their first professional job and their ages range from 22-24. I am about 10 years older than all of my employees. We have a great team and great working relationships. They all do great work and we have established a great team culture.
Well, a couple of months ago, I noticed something odd that my team (and other employees in the building) started doing. They would see each other in the hallways or break room and say “quack quack” like a duck. I assumed this was an inside joke and thought nothing of it and wrote it off as playful silliness or thought I perhaps missed a moment in a recent movie or TV show to which the quacks were referring.
Fast forward a few months. I needed to do some printing and our printer is in a room that can be locked by anyone when it is in use (our team often has large volumes of printing they need to do and it helps to be able to sort things in there by yourself, as multiple people can get their pages mixed up and it turns into a mess). The door had been locked the entire day and this was around noon, and the manager I have the key to the door in case someone forgot to unlock it when they left. I walked in, and there were two of my employees on the couch in the copier room having sex. I immediately closed the door and left.
This was last week and as you can imagine things are very awkward between the three of us. I haven’t addressed the situation yet because of a few factors: This was during both of their lunch hours. They were not doing this on the clock (they had both clocked out, I immediately checked). We have an understanding that you can go or do anything on your lunch that you want, as long as you’re back after an hour. Also, as you mentioned in your answer last week to the person who overheard their coworker involved in “adult activities,” these people are adults and old enough to make their own choices.
But that’s not the end of the story. That same day, after my team had left, I was wrapping up and putting a meeting agenda on each of their desks for our meeting the next day. Out in broad daylight on the guys desk (one of the employees I had caught in the printing room) was a piece of paper at the top that said “Duck Club.” Underneath it, it had a list of locations of places in and around the office followed by “points.” 25 points – president’s desk, 10 points – car in the parking lot, 20 points – copier room, etc.
So here is my theory about what is going on (and I think I am right). This “Duck Club” is a club people at work where people get “points” for having sex in these locations around the office. I think that is also where the quacking comes into play. Perhaps this is some weird mating call between members to let them know they want to get some “points” with the other person, and if they quack back, they meet up somewhere to “score.” The two I caught in the copier room I have heard “quacking” before.
I know this is all extremely weird. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to write you because of how weird this seems (plus I was a little embarrassed). I have no idea what to do. As I mentioned above, they weren’t on the clock when this happened, they’re all adults, and technically I broke a rule by entering the copier room when it was locked, and would have never caught them if I had obeyed that rule. The only company rule I can think of that these two broke is using the copier room for other purposes, preventing someone else from using it.
I would love to know your opinion on this. I tend to want to sweep it under the rug because I’m kind of a shy person and would be extremely embarrassed to bring it up.21 -
HR sent around updated contracts asking everyone to sign them since the company changed its name, fair enough.
In the contract it stated "Your normal place of work will be X" - only X was many miles away, and I'd never worked there, never planned too. Assumed it was a mistake, sent it back. HR refused to change it, stating that the "normal place of work does not need to be the place where you normally work."
A lot of back and forth entailed, I refused to sign, I was reprimanded for not doing so, I was asked what my problem was as it made no material difference, and then I eventually replied with:
"Angela, I'm refusing to sign this as it's factually incorrect. No further explanation is required. I'll maybe consider signing this if you sign a piece of paper declaring you believe the moon is made of cheese, and you're the cow the milk came from to make it."
A very strongly worded email came back about how this was going on my record, I needed to offer a formal apology, etc. - all cc'd to my manager. I replied back, again copying my manager in, stating that this was ok, as I couldn't remain at a company who forced employees to sign dodgy contracts anyway.
Problem was (for them), I was a *massive* single point of failure for them at this point owing to some others leaving with no handover - hence I knew I wasn't going to be the casualty here. My manager flipped the lid at HR, got the CEO involved on threat of *him* leaving, and the whole thing massively blew up. Happy ending in that the HR person in question was fired, everyone else's contracts also had to be redone (I assumed everyone else just signed without looking which is worrying), and I actually got a pay rise out of it when higher ups realised the massive single point of failure I was.
But damn, I would've walked over crap like that. Walked pretty soon after anyway!13 -
A while back, I had a lot of telemarketers were calling me daily, and I mean A LOT of them.
I got so frustrated with he calls that I decided I had to figure out a better way to handle those calls.
At the time, I was working with a PBX software called Asterisk, which is used to handle hardware interfaces and network applications for phone calls.
I needed a suitable side project and there was a version of Asterisk designed for Raspberry Pi, so I made a fun little answering service for myself.
Whenever a telemarketer called, I asked them to call back later, but to "my personal number", and gave them the number to my phone robot. (which had a pre-paid SIM card in a GSM dongle mounted)
When it received a call, it would play a pre-recorded phrase, wait for 1000 ms of silence and then play the next phrase.
After all 16 phrases had been played, it would start from phrase 7 again and repeat until the caller gave up.
I had this set up running for a while, and then added another robot for english speaking callers.
The calls stopped after a few months.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!13 -
I didn't..
A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.
I pick up whatever is required by my projects, but I do prefer backend & scripting to graphic fuckery.. // pixel left, pixel up...blah, not for me..3 -
Developers too lazy to google search/read the README.md yet too proud to admit their mistakes.
They create disasters that I need to clean up later because they took a vacation.12 -
Fucking Edge forcing itself onto me after Windows update by displaying annoying dark pattern like fullscreen popups and putting itself into the task panel.
FUCKING GO AWAY you piece of shit! Nobody wants you!
Do I have an OS or fucking malware on my pc?7 -
Rant++
Just want to mention this mother fucker named Allen. Allen is a fuckin' badass. This guy fucks.
This bad mother fucker like single handedly wrote one of the best fuckin libraries for displaying tabular data, and threw in a shit ton of JSON capabilities just to make it that much fuckin' cooler.
And why? Because he fuckin fucks thats fucking why. I already told you.
And does this son of a fuck support his fucking product? You bet your sweet basement dwelling programming fucking ass that he does.
Dude works that support forum like he no doubt works that pussy. With full and complete knowledge and control, but with a gentle mature touch. Fuckin right.
Do you hate PHP? Well this fuck made a Node version? Do you hate Node? Use that shit with pure JS client side. This dude doesn't give a fuck. Don't have a table? Pass that shit JSON and GET A FUCKIN TABLE!!!
Some dipshit in your company needs to edit a database table but there's no way on sweet baby jesus's green earth you're giving that dumb fuck DB creds? Run that dumb fuck up a fully editable admin portal in like 5 fucking minutes because fuck him.
There are few things in my life I love. My corgi and my kids, and most days my wife.
But always fucking DATATABLES.
So, Allen Jardine... just wanted to give you and your product DataTables and Editor a fucking devRant shout out. It continues to be the one ray of light that works as expected and is extremely well supported when it doesn't and some days I just need that fucking consistency in my life man. So thanks.7 -
So Pubs are open again I Ireland.. went to n that were all booked out.. but after 40min of wandering around I got a single corner in one of them.
Let me tell you one thing. You might pour good pints but NO ONE can serve a pint like an Irish pub. Soooo gooood and creamy.. fuck, i missed this.13 -
Don't waste your time - they said.
Use Spring - the good ol' framework - they said
It's not slow - they said
me: ignores them, builds a custom jetty-based webserver with the same functionality Spring+tomcat can offer (mappings, routings, etc).
My app: boots up completely in <300ms, while Spring tutorials say a hello-world app takes 3+ seconds to spin-up http://websystique.com/spring-boot/...
me: already set for deployment in lambda. I bet I can tune it up even further with lazy-loading if I really have to...
Moral of the story: sometimes bare-bones solution is a better choice: more performant, more extendable, more testable, more lightweight.
That, dear folks, is the classic LESS IS MORE :)12 -
My mom died when I was 7, after which my dad bought me a Commodore 64 so I had something to lose myself in during the mourning process.
I learned everything about that system, from my first GOTO statement to sprite buffers, to soldering my own EPROM cartridges. My dad didn't deal with the loss so well, and became a missing person 5 years later when I was 12.
I got into foster care with a bunch of strict religious cultists who wouldn't allow electronics in the house.
So I ran away at 14, sub-rented a closet in a student apartment using my orphan benefits and bought a secondhand IBM computer. I spent about 16 hours a day learning about BSD and Linux, C, C++, Fortran, ADA, Haskell, Livescript and even more awful things like Visual Basic, ASP, Windows NT, and Active Directory.
I faked my ID (back then it was just a laminated sheet of paper), and got a job at 15-pretending-to-be-17 at one of the first ISPs in my country. I wrote the firmware and admin panel for their router, full of shitty CGI-bin ASP code and vulnerabilities.
That somehow got me into a job at Microsoft, building the MS Office language pack for my country, and as an official "conflict resolver" for their shitty version control system. Yes, they had fulltime people employed just to resolve VCS conflicts.
After that I worked at Arianespace (X-ray NDT, visualizing/tagging dicom scans, image recognition of faulty propellant tank welds), and after that I switched to biotech, first phytogenetics, then immunology, then pharmacokynetics.
In between I have grown & synthesized and sold large quantities of recreational drugs, taken care of some big felines, got a pilot license, taught IT at an elementary school, renovated a house, and procreated.
A lot of it was to prove myself to the world -- prove that a nearly-broke-orphan-high-school-dropout could succeed at life.
But hey, now I work for a "startup", so I guess I failed after all.23