A man was crossing a road one day when a frog called out to him and said, "If you kiss me, I'll turn into a beautiful princess." He bent over, picked up the frog, and put it in his pocket. The frog spoke up again and said, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a beautiful princess, I will tell everyone how smart and brave you are and how you are my hero" The man took the frog out of his pocket, smiled at it, and returned it to his pocket. The frog spoke up again and said, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a beautiful princess, I will be your loving companion for an entire week." The man took the frog out of his pocket, smiled at it, and returned it to his pocket. The frog then cried out, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a princess, I'll stay with you for a year and do ANYTHING you want." Again the man took the frog out, smiled at it, and put it back into his pocket. Finally, the frog asked, "What is the matter? I've told you I'm a beautiful princess, that I'll stay with you for a year and do anything you want. Why won't you kiss me?" The man said, "Look, I'm a computer programmer. I don't have time for a girlfriend, but a talking frog is cool."

An engineer was crossing a road one day, when a frog called out to him and said, "If you kiss me, I'll turn into a beautiful princess."
He bent over, picked up the frog and put it in his pocket. 
The frog then cried out, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a princess, I'll stay with you for one week and do ANYTHING you want."   
Again, the engineer took the frog out, smiled at it and put it back into his pocket.  
 Finally, the frog asked, "What is the matter? I've told you I'm a beautiful princess and that I'll stay with you for one week and do anything you want. Why won't you kiss me?"   
The engineer said, "Look, I'm an engineer. I don't have time for a girlfriend, but a talking frog, now that's cool."

Got very little sleep last night, not in a great mood to begin with. Came into work to find someone borrowed one of my cables that I need and hasn't returned it. It was wrapped around a few things to keep it tidy, all of which have been moved, stretched, bent etc. Now my battery is running low and he has emailed to say won't be in for 30 minutes.

Think the only reasonable course of action in a just world, is for me to strangle him with the cable when he gets in. I mean come on, whats the alternative? Still haven't gotten that pen back from last year ... this place is going downhill fast!

A client of mine kept getting hit with a ransomware that was spread over rdp. So I set aside this whole week going to different sites this guy owns. Setting up a VPN tunnel and showing them how to use it. So they didn't have to rdp anymore. No more having a server with rdp facing on the outside of there network. They were all linked in like they were in the same office. I traveled around 400 miles going to all these locations. I finally got it done went back to the main office to talk to the owner. Instead of a thank first thing they say as soon as I walk in is to revert it all. We are going with a different company and they are buying new computers and server from the other company. After he tells me that he then says but when the new computers come in will you come and set them up for us because we are stupid with computers.

I reverted the stuff and walked out. Didn't say a word to him. Didn't agree to set up the new computers. Why should I set them up. He just pretty much bent me over and screwed me out of a extra couple thousand dollars.

I've recently received another invitation to Google's Foobar challenges.

A while ago someone here on devRant (which I believe works at Google, and whose support I deeply appreciate) sent me a couple of links to it too. Unfortunately back then I didn't take the time to learn the programming languages (Python or Java) that Google requires for these challenges. This time I'm putting everything on Python, as it's the easiest language to learn when coming from Bash.

But at the end of the day.. I am a sysadmin, not a developer. I don't know a single thing about either of these languages. Yet I can't take these challenges as the sysadmin I am. Instead, I have to learn a new language which chances are I'll never need again outside of some HR dickhead's interview with lateral thinking questions and whiteboard programming, probably prohibited from using Google search like every sane programmer and/or sysadmin would for practical challenges that actually occur in real life.

I don't want to do that. Google is a once in a lifetime opportunity, I get that. Many people would probably even steal that foobar link from me if they could. But I don't think that for me it's the right thing to do. Google has made a serious difference by actually challenging developers with practical scenarios, and that's vastly superior to whatever a HR person at any other company could cobble together for an interview. But there's one thing that they don't seem to realize. A company like Google consists of more than just developers. Not only that, it probably consists - even within their developer circles - of more than just Python and Java developers. If any company would know about languages that are more optimized such as C, it would be Google that has to leverage this performance in order to be able to deliver their services.

I'll be frank here. Foobar has its own issues that I don't like. But if Google were a nice company, I'd go for it all the way nonetheless - after all, they are arguably the single biggest tech company in the world, and the tech industry itself is one of the biggest ones in the world nowadays. It's safe to say that there's likely no opportunity like working at Google. But I don't think it's the right thing. Even if I did know Python or Java... Even if I did. I don't like Google's business decisions.

I've recently flashed my OnePlus 6T with LineageOS. It's now completely Google-free, except for a stock Yalp account (that I'm too afraid to replace with my actual Google account because oh dear, third-party app stores, oh dear that could damage our business and has to be made highly illegal!1!). My contacts on that phone are are all gone. They're all stored on a Google server somewhere (except for some like @linuxxx' that I consciously stored on device storage and thus lost a while back), waiting for me to log back in and sync them back. I've never asked for this. If Google explicitly told me that they'd sync all my contacts to my Google account and offer feasible alternatives, I'd probably given more priority to building a CalDAV and CardDAV server of my own. Because I do have the skills and desire to maintain that myself. I don't want Google to do this for me.

Move fast and break things. I've even got a special Termux script on my home screen, aptly named Unfuck-Google-Play. Every other day I have to use it. Google Search. When I open it on my Nexus 6P, which was Google's foray into hardware and in which they failed quite spectacularly - I've even almost bent and killed it tonight, after cursing at that piece of shit every goddamn day - the Google app opens, I type some text into it.. and then it just jumps back to the beginning of whatever I was typing. A preloader of sorts. The app is a fucking web page parser, or heck probably even just an API parser. How does that in any way justify such shitty preloaders? How does that in any way justify such crappy performance on anything but the most recent flagships? I could go on about this all day... I used to run modern Linux on a 15 year old laptop, smoothly. So don't you Google tell me that a - probably trillion dollar - company can't do that shit right. When there's (commercialized) community projects like DuckDuckGo that do things a million times better than you do - yet they can't compete with you due to your shit being preloaded on every phone and tablet and impossible to remove without rooting - that you Google can't do that and a lot more. You've got fucking Google Assistant for fucks sake! Yet you can't make a decent search app - the goddamn thing that your company started with in the first place!?

I'm sorry. I'd love to work at Google and taste the diversity that this company has to offer. But there's *a lot* wrong with it at the business end too. That is something that - in that state - I don't think I want to contribute to, despite it being pretty much a lottery ticket that I've been fortunate enough to draw twice.

Maybe I should just start my own company.

I wrote my first line of code at 12. I fell in love with it and continued. I'm 25 now and I'm a software engineer. I don't even have time or energy to work on personal projects anymore. Writing code isn't a hobby anymore. It's a means to survive. Why/how did this happen? When will building things be fun again? Before landing my first job as an engineer, not once did I consider salaries, equity, atmosphere, nor any of the other amenities (or lack thereof) of code as a profession. But, I don't even know when any of that fell into the picture and they've managed to suck the novelty out of a really cool pastime. I'm essentially a well-paid robot. Who did this? What's happening? What can I do to find the freedom I once had? When did I become just another cog in a machine? Should I try my hand in business, bent on making a lot of money so I can retire early and have time to experiment again? Is that unrealistic? Should I buy lottery tickets every paycheck? We only get one life and I realized this. I'm panicking because I know I'm not enjoying myself and that I'm not on track to leave the world better than it was when I was born into it. So much loss. I'm grateful, but this is not cool at all. I want my hobby back.

Favorite place to work on your code:

My bed of course I enjoy lying down on my stomach. But then after over an hour when I get up. I walk like this for the rest of the day:
👴🏿
<((>
\\

Losing weight (in the particular - belly fat) has an adverse impact on my WFH experience :( I can no longer lay on my back with my legs bent and have my lappy rest on my belly comfortably...

I can't reach the touchpad any more as it's now hiding behind my ribcage :(

I didn't think this through. damn it!

Between high school and college, working in a circuit board manufacturing storeroom.

Fun fact: when we are bagging small boards, we do not gently lay them in containers, they're usually thrown at least 6 feet into a bin of the same type of board after they're placed in the bag. We also don't remake a board when pins are bent, we just bend them back with tweezers. And you know that rule about not touching the gold connectors... Yeah... So much for that... Did I remember to mention that these boards are for medical equipment?

On the bright side, we at least have electrostatic discharge control going on all the time.

ARPAWOCKY

Twas brillig, and the Protocols
Did USER-SERVER in the wabe.
All mimsey was the FTP,
And the RJE outgrabe,

Beware the ARPANET, my son;
The bits that byte, the heads that scratch;
Beware the NCP, and shun
the frumious system patch,

He took his coding pad in hand;
Long time the Echo-plex he sought.
When his HOST-to-IMP began to limp
he stood a while in thought,

And while he stood, in uffish thought,
The ARPANET, with IMPish bent,
Sent packets through conditioned lines,
And checked them as they went,

One-two, one-two, and through and through
The IMP-to-IMP went ACK and NACK,
When the RFNM came, he said "I'm game",
And sent the answer back,

Then hast thou joined the ARPANET?
Oh come to me, my bankrupt boy!
Quick, call the NIC! Send RFCs!
He chortled in his joy.

Twas brillig, and the Protocols
Did USER-SERVER in the wabe.
All mimsey was the FTP,
And the RJE outgrabe.

D.L. COVILL
May 1973

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