Trying to debug something ... someone is looking for attention

Found this awesome license plate in Oslo today

Release.....

Overheard from the room next to mine:
Person 1: My computer is frozen ..
Person 2 (Not a native English speaker): Did you try to shut down and shut up ?

And here comes the last part of my story so far.
After deploying the domain, configuring PCs, configuring the server, configuring the switch, installing software, checking that the correct settings have been applied, configuring MS Outlook (don't ask) and giving each and every user a d e t a i l e d tutorial on using the PC like a modern human and not as a Homo Erectus, I had to lock my door, put down my phone and disconnect the ship's announcement system's speaker in my room. The reasons?
- No one could use USB storage media, or any storage media. As per security policy I emailed and told them about.
- No one could use the ship's computers to connect to the internet. Again, as per policy.
- No one had any games on their Windows 10 Pro machines. As per policy.
- Everyone had to use a 10-character password, valid for 3 months, with certain restrictions. As per policy.
For reasons mentioned above, I had to (almost) blackmail the CO to draft an order enforcing those policies in writing (I know it's standard procedure for you, but for the military where I am it was a truly alien experience). Also, because I never trusted the users to actually backup their data locally, I had UrBackup clone their entire home folder, and a scheduled task execute a script storing them to the old online drive. Soon it became apparent why: (for every sysadmin this is routine, but this was my first experience)
- People kept deleting their files, whining to me to restore them
- People kept getting locked out because they kept entering their password WRONG for FIVE times IN a ROW because THEY had FORGOTTEN the CAPS lock KEY on. Had to enter three or four times during weekend for that.
- People kept whining about the no-USB policy, despite offering e-mail and shared folders.
The final straw was the updates. The CO insisted that I set the updates to manual because some PCs must not restart on their own. The problem is, some users barely ever checked. One particular user, when I asked him to check and do the updates, claimed he did that yesterday. Meanwhile, on the WSUS console: PC inactive for over 90 days.
I blocked the ship's phone when I got reassigned.
Phiew, finally I got all those off my chest! Thanks, guys. All of the rants so far remind me of one quote from Dave Barry:

One comment from @Fast-Nop made me remember something I had promised myself not to. Specifically the USB thing.
So there I was, Lieutenant Jr at a warship (not the one my previous rants refer to), my main duties as navigation officer, and secondary (and unofficial) tech support and all-around "computer guy".
Those of you who don't know what horrors this demonic brand pertains to, I envy you. But I digress. In the ship, we had Ethernet cabling and switches, but no DHCP, no server, not a thing. My proposition was shot down by the CO within 2 minutes. Yet, we had a curious "network". As my fellow... colleagues had invented, we had something akin to token ring, but instead of tokens, we had low-rank personnel running around with USB sticks, and as for "rings", well, anyone could snatch up a USB-carrier and load his data and instructions to the "token". What on earth could go wrong with that system?
What indeed.
We got 1 USB infected with a malware from a nearby ship - I still don't know how. Said malware did the following observable actions(yes, I did some malware analysis - As I said before, I am not paid enough):
- Move the contents on any writeable media to a folder with empty (or space) name on that medium. Windows didn't show that folder, so it became "invisible" - linux/mac showed it just fine
- It created a shortcut on the root folder of said medium, right to the malware. Executing the shortcut executed the malware and opened a new window with the "hidden" folder.
Childishly simple, right? If only you knew. If only you knew the horrors, the loss of faith in humanity (which is really bad when you have access to munitions, explosives and heavy weaponry).
People executed the malware ON PURPOSE. Some actually DISABLED their AV to "access their files". I ran amok for an entire WEEK to try to keep this contained. But... I underestimated the USB-token-ring-whatever protocol's speed and the strength of a user's stupidity. PCs that I cleaned got infected AGAIN within HOURS.
I had to address the CO to order total shutdown, USB and PC turnover to me. I spent the most fun weekend cleaning 20-30 PCs and 9 USBs. What fun!
What fun, morons. Now I'll have nightmares of those days again.

I found a healthCheck function while troubleshooting an old application for a large auto manufacturer today. The healthCheck function was running several times a day on a timer. The function tries to insert a record into the database and returns whether or not it was successful. It was written in 1999 and has to date inserted over 2.5 million records into the database! 1/3rd of the data for this application was the same record.

How the hell did nobody notice this for 20 years!!!

Overheating The Javascript Ecosystem

Paranoid thought: You know, in the course of every day, being the corrupt piece of shit that I am, whenever I see a scandal or what looks like shenanigans-in-the-making, I ask myself

"Wisecrack, is this a fucking scam or con of some sort?"

I was recently asking myself this about javascript.

Not the language per se, but the ecosystem.

I noticed how there are a thousand CLIs for simple shit. Another four thousand for page long libraries, for simpleton level shit (because prototypes are designed after satans own aborted love-child of object models). I noticed another eight thousand guys imitating steve jobs, talking at conferences and 'change the world' high-on-huffing-my-own-shit TEDX talks like rubyists that don't realize the world has moved on, all to hawk books and inflate CVs for cushy positions at major tech firms and the herd of dicksuckers following the next fad off a cliff like lemmings. And another eight thousand 'tech journalists' pushing them off the cliff while begging for outrage and hype dollars and slowly circling like vultures above the drain that is the ad-based economy.

And I thought to myself.

"Wisecrack, who benefits from all this noisy self-indulgent horseshit? Where is all the money coming from for all these books, conferences, meetings, publications, media, bread, and circuses?"

"I don't know wisecrack. But if I were the CEO of a big company, threatened by the prospect of a universal language, or universal platform, like flash, but one I couldn't kill like flash, I would try to do the most corrupt thing I could think of."

"Whats that wisecrack?"

"I would try to 'overheat' the ecosystem by selectively hiring people from that ecosystem, pumping money into a boatload of similar products, all in the hopes of provoking the equivalent of an immune overreaction, imitators all flooding the ecosystem with the same shit in different packages, self promoting sycophants, aggrenadizing social media idiots, tools sold as tools, hyped as 'the next coming of steve jobs', overcooked shit that focuses on ceremony over functionality, ritual over productivity, documentation over innovation like some sort of amazonion infinite nesting doll hellscape of documents linking to documents linking to documents, each one a new circle of dantes inferno, where the definition of anything links to another document that says "see also xyz", and I would convince them that they had done it to themselves."

And then I would push typescript as their lord, savior, and master. "

"How do you know all this wisecrack?"

"Because I am a piece of shit, and, this is what I would do in any executive's shoes."

Attended one of the best meetups ever. To give you an idea how awesome it was..

Speaker took the first ~20 minutes introducing himself.
His intro card deck kept referring to himself in the third person (he is the only employee in consulting 'company'). Ex. "Mr. Smith began his humble career .."

The powerpoint presentation began with him clicking each page, not executing the slideshow (ex. pressing F5).
Finally someone asked "Can you make slide bigger?"

S:"You can't read that?..um..sure...I guess .."
Starts fumbling around the zoom ...
Dev: "No, can you start the slideshow?"
S: "I don't know what you mean...there...I zoomed it, is that better? Now I can't see my notes..just sec.."
<fumbles again with the zoom>
Dev: "No, not zoom, start the slide show, press F5"
S: "Oh...you want me to F5 it...OK..."
<he *clicks* the slide show button>

Finally getting into code, trying to get out of powerpoint ...
S: "How do I get out of this fullscreen?.."
Dev: "Hit escape"
S:"No..um.."
<keeps trying to click on 'something'>
S:"I see visual studio, but its not on the big screen... "
<keeps click on 'something', no one is sure whats going on>
Dev: "Hit Escape to stop the slideshow"
<finally hits escape, then able to put Visual Studio on the big screen>
S: "Ahh...there, I figured it out."

Speaker had no end of making wild/random statements like:
".Net Core is the future of Microsoft, if you're using .Net 4.5...forget it, its not even supported anymore."
"When I was at Microsoft Build, I asked them why not put all the required .Net assemblies in one directory. Looks like with .Net Core, they listened to me" (he was serious)
"I don't use SQL Server Mgmt Studio. Its free and it sucks. I use <insert a very expensive SSMS clone>, its great, you guys should check it out", then proceeds to struggle to open a query window to write some SQL.
"When you use .Net Core and EntityFramework, you have to write your own stored procedures. If a developer can't write stored procedures, he shouldn't be in this business."

I was on the edge of my seat, hungry for the next crazy bat-shit thing to come out of his mouth. He did not disappoint. BEST MEETUP EVER!

Not OC

I once changed all my error messages to say “Processed successfully” because I had a demo yet the software was very buggy.

I bought myself time to fix the bugs later.

#demoHack

:v

* Googles how to handle fame *

RIP PHP.

#1

Fuck it. I obtained a Laravel codebase with 200 routes all handled by "mainController".

😓🔨

There will be rants.

Thanks, Microsoft.

Joys of being a web developer

Friend of mine passed away several years ago. All other friends known me as Cooke monster so finally got my tattoo. He drew it for me before he died so it's quite personal! But nice to have something to remeber him for!

Savage designers....

Current State

+++ It is now possible on GitHub to pin important issues and have them appear at the top of the issues page +++

This is what I see as an intern when I go to my manager’s desk to ask for his help

This is what happens when a backend dev puts 'Full stack developer' on LinkedIn profile!😂

Just got my first Job at University as an Student Assistant in Machine Learning. Yeeeeaaaahh!! :)

I hate monday

when the junior dev updates all npm & nuget dependencies in the project to the latest beta versions to make an impression right after joining the project...

stolen from somewhere...

Me and my girlfriend are taking care of our friend’s dog for a few days. The dog’s name is Debi, i immediately started calling her Debian 😃

*click video*

hlo frnds..

*click back*

Isn't it?