** Non Dev Rant **

I just need to rant about this because I'm furious.

Last night I had a house warming party. It was mostly, if not all, of my girlfriend's friends. I'm a cranky old developer so I don't have friends.

Everyone was nice and dressed nice and brought us gifts.. all of the gifts were pretty much specifically for my girlfriend.

So this one girl came... she's younger.. around 25. She came with no gift (I wasn't expecting gifts I just need to mention it for the plot), and was dressed in sweat pants. Alright, no problem.. I really don't care at least she's here.

So as more guests arrive I finally get a gift. Someone brought me a case of beer and a couple of yummy cookies. I had to put it down on the kitchen counter for a bit because I needed to grab more chairs.

The basement door where the chairs are is 10 feet away from where I left my present..

I come back from upstairs.. not even 5 minutes later and I see sweat pant girl stuffing one cookie in her fucking mouth and the other in her pants...

Are you fucking kidding me!? I bought desserts and snacks and all the alcohol you can think of and you steal MY fucking present. Not just one of them... but BOTH.

She saw the other guests give me it.. say "here buddy this is for you"... followed me in the kitchen and STOLE my fucking cookies.

I was going to eat them this morning with my coffee and I realized I couldn't because this fucking ass hole took my fucking cookies!!!!

I hosted this party for my girlfriend's SJW ass hole fucked up friends... put a smile on my face... pretended to like people... and for once didn't yell at someone... and the fucking thanks I get is 2 stolen fucking cookies.

Fuck her.

Yes, it's in a basement, but I'm close to my servers 😅

My CEO: "So! You are the new guy we hired to design and manage the implementation of our new state of the art super-duper fancy ERP solution with badass Business Intelligence systems to grow our company which already spans over several localities across the county, that has to live for at least the next 12-15 years?

Please remember that the Windows Server in the rack in the basement needs replacement soon, and that our new fancy solution must not in any way utilize cloud-technology or SaSS! I don't like that! I think it's a scam! We store everything on premises, own our infrastructure and we buy our software...Because I think that is best!"

Me: "So... let me get this straight: You want me to build you a one-off, concept sports car that can outperform a Lamborghini using only plywood, duct-tape and a donkey cart?"

He walked off... I may need a new job next week!

Here we see the tracks of a JavaDev, which escaped from its basement enjoying the first snow...

Look what my dad found in the basement!

Found this gem while cleaning the basement

It displays a -1 whenever it is not working. There is no basement.
Reminds me of some configuration files.

The computer science department at my university is located in the basement. I know I'm supposed to get real world experience, but what a sick joke! /s

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.

I'm not sure whether to cry or to burn everything to the ground.
I'm stuck in a rotten, over aged corporate that will one day choke on all the documents and formalism they require. Which is something I'm generally fine with. Each to their own.
But ever since I handed in my resignation they have been fucking me like I have never been gang raped before.
(A little context: I work for a midsize financial institute. Which at least in Germany are full of legacy projects and are regulated as all hell.)
So some fuckwits decided that since the regulator slapped us hard 2 years ago that we need to make up a new standard of documentation that has to be used for all IT-documentation there ever was and ever will be.
So the upper management (the before mention dumb-dumbs) choose some consultant company and locked them up together with the brightest stars (read biggest slime balls) of the IT department in an ivory tower and told them to pull some out the ass.
And one year later (early November last year) they got the shit they ordered. Gilden shit, only the most sparkly and non-sensical bullcrap you could imagine.
But they only looked at it and deemed it good. Now the guys actually in charge of the the applications got served the dish. And guess what they found out when started to dig into? Nothing but contradictions, non-final thoughts and all of that held together by web of retarded, unusable guidelines. But they ate it, they cursed but they swallowed forced by disciplinary punishments waiting should they misbehave.
The only one emerging fact was: All previous documentation was completely invalidated.
But now the mighty lords in the ivory tower guided by the never failing hand of the higher management had the greatest idea of them all. They needed someone to check all the documentation till the end of this year but since they blew all of their budget on useless wankers ( oh, ofc I meant "highly qualified external help") they now preyed on the lowest in the food chain. Which is where this story goes full circle and comes back to me.
I was the lowest rank on the food chain, a student that just handed in his resignation.
I was the first to be locked up in the basement, my co-student followed shortly after.
And now I'm going to spend my last 2 months looking at checklists that we had to pull out of the slime's ass and validating hundreds of thousands of pages of documentation. We get grinded up in the endless hate coming from the guys that we need to tease and are held in position by a wall of sheer idiocy on the side of the rule makers.
Today I cried when I had to tell someone that his magnificent documentation was not standard conform and had thus no longer any meaning or right to exist.
Thanks you for those that made it this far down. I hope you never have to feel my pain.

Find super interesting forum thread from 2015 with intelligent discussion about deep technical stuff.

Creating forum account, thinking about contributing to ongoing discussion with code samples, findings, hypotheses, and some open questions.

Browse to last post, is from late 2016, from moderator:

READ FORUM RULES DO NOT POST IN OLD THREADS LOCKING THIS

Me: 😡😤😠 WHO THE FUCK CAME UP WITH THE SHITRULE THAT A DISCUSSION HAS AN EXPIRATION DATE? IF I COULD REACH THROUGH THE SCREEN RIGHT INTO 2016, I'D PUNCH YOU THROUGH THE ROOF OF YOUR MOTHER'S BASEMENT. NO ONE LOVES YOU, YOU USELESS MOTHERFUCKING CUNT OF A MODERATOR.

* Recruiter says he has a nice proposition

* I say that I'm not comfortable switching jobs yet, but I'd be up for a short phone interview to hear him out, out of pure interest

* Recruiter explains a lot about the company, and then asks if I am up for "a short Teams introduction with the team lead to hear more"

* I say yes, though still stating that I do not intend on switching, but want to know more in case of a future possibility

* Recruiter says I need to send my full CV / Resumé plus grades from every school I ever intended (including the early ones that doesn't even matter)

* I say no since 1) I'd have to dig them out from the basement, 2) I am not looking for a job right now, and 3) This request is absurd to me, and NOT a norm in my part of the world when I am not applying.

* He says I HAVE to, since I could be lying
(I am mostly self-taught and have very little actual education, so this logic made NO sense to me)

* I continue to say no, stating that it's simply not worth the time finding the old grades in the basement for a job I will not be taking, and that I am mostly self-taught so grades wouldn't matter

* He starts getting angry, accusing me of "purposefully wasting his time", and says he'll warn the company about me.

Fair point. I'll warn my contacts about you then. Have a nice day, you f*cking prick :)

Jesus Christ Reddit really is full of some sensitive ass basement dwelling retards. God forbid someone doesn't contribute to the circle jerk mentality that literally every fucking subreddit has.

I bet SO users spend their free time there.

Tonight, my long-time friend died. He was living in the basement for years, always reliable, always at my service, keeping my files, watching for my git repos, being my private cloud, and so many things more.

He wrote his last syslog entry at 0:21 a.m., passed away and never woke up.

I found him cold and motionless this afternoon, but could not do anything. Any attempt of reanimation failed.

Goodbye, little BananaPi, fare thee well, and if for ever.
I promise you, your legacy on SD card will live on with a new board.

Not really tech, but...

I used to handwrite a lot of fiction in several notebooks that I kept over the years. House went through a bad flood in 2013, basement where the notebooks were stored got full up, lost all the notebooks 😭

Now I don't even have a basement

Flash has made Java programs look desirable. And anyone keeping up with me knows I despise Java and C#, despite having written C# and currently working on deciphering a Java server to create documentation.

Before I begin, I want to make this clear: IT IS TWO THOUSAND AND FUCKING EIGHTEEN. 2018. WE HAVE BETTER TECH. JAVASCRIPT HAS TAKEN OVER THIS BITCH. So, firstly, FUCK FLASH. Seriously, that shit's a security liability. If you work for a company that uses it, find a new job and then fucking quit, or go mutany and get several devs to begin a JS-based implementation that has the same functionality. There is no excuse. "I'm fired?" That's not an excuse - if there is a way to stop the madness, then fucking hit the brakes on that shit or begin job hunting. Oh, and all you PMs who are reading this and have mandated or helped someone else to mandate work on an enterprise flash program, FUCK YOU. You are part of the problem.

The reason for this outburst seems unreasonable until you realize the hell I went through today. At my University, there is a basic entry-level psychology course I'm taking. Pearson, a company I already fucking hate for some of the ethically sketchy shit they pulled with PARCC as well as overreach in publishing to the point they produce state tests here in the US - has a product called "My PsychLab" and from here on out, I'm referring to it as MPL. MPL has an issue - it is entirely fucking Flash. Homework assignments, the textbook, FUCKING EVERYTHING. So, because of that, you need to waste time finding a browser that works. Now let me remind all of you that just because something SHOULD WORK does NOT mean that it actually does.

I'm sitting on my Antergos box a few days ago: Chromium and Firefox won't load Flash. I don't know why, and don't care to find out. NPAPI and whatnot are deprecated but should still run in a limited mode or some shit. No go on Antergos.

So, today I went to the lab in the desolated basement of an old building which is where it's usually empty except a student hired by the university to make sure nobody fucks things up. I decided - because y'all know I fuckin' hate this - to try Windows. No go in Chrome still - it loaded Flash but couldn't download the content. So I tried Firefox - which worked. My hopes were up, but not too long - because there was no way to input. The window had buttons and shit - but they were COMPLETELY UNRESPONSIVE.

So the homework is also Flash-based. It's all due by 1/31/18 - FOUR CHAPTERS AND THE ACCOMPANYING HOMEWORK - which I believe is Tuesday, and the University bookstore is closed both Saturday and Sunday. No way to get a physical copy of the book. And I have other classes - this isn't the only one.

Also, the copyright on the program was 2017 - so whoever modded or maintained that Flash code - FUCK YOU AND THE IRRESPONSIBLE SHIT YOUR TEAM PULLED. FUCK THE SUPERIORS MAKING DECISIONS AS WELL. Yeah, you guys have deadlines? So do the end users, and when you have to jump through hoops only to realize you're fucked? That's a failure of management and a failure of a product.

How many people are gonna hate me for this? Haters gonna hate, and I'm past the point of caring.

My desk / command centre in my basement bedroom!

at the begin of the year I started working as contractor for a company which development environment was a shit machine in the basement...shared by all developers via ssh, that's right, no local development.
Who the hell needs virtual machines, Vagrant, Docker?
You break something while working? It's broken for everybody.

A.D. 2017

The other developers seemed fine with it.

how to learn web development in 2018:

- watch youtube video of that new shiny promising framework

- spend hours trying to set up development environment

- spend another hours waiting for the dependencies to install

- spend the next few hours wondering and googling why it wont work even at fresh install

- spend another few hours redoing everything just to make sure you haven't missed a step

- realize that the youtube video you watched is uploaded last week, and now the framework developers mysteriously decided to change literally everything

- spend hours looking for another youtube video until you realize that now you are watching completely unrelated youtube video

- spend next hours wondering how your life become this pathetic while overthinking all of your past mistakes, and now you are just this lonely pathetic person with no clear future and that you will spend the rest of your life working at a fastfood chain below the minimum wage with no social life living on your parent's basement.

During a heat wave, the basement is the place to be when you don't have air conditionning.

I got to code in a huge basement (formerly a dance room) with lots of couchs, and a nearby Wifi repeater.

And since it's the basement with no elevator, no one disturb me.

The cool little startup that hired you right out of college/university, that promised your work will be recognized and well compensated?

Well, they'll end up complaining on why you don't work more than 60 hours a week on shit pay, force you to work at the "office" (read here one of the partner's basement), and retain your vacation pay from your last paycheck. That's not cool and also illegal here.

It's been 10 years and it still infuriates me when I think about it.

Waking up from a dream with a girl in it.
TL;DR: We fell in love and I can finally somehow remember her. Not completely though...

(To the perverts: We did not have sex nor did we kiss.)
The worlds I am becoming a part of are very complex. I won't get into the details of how they look like. I will tell as far as I can remember.

<vaguely remember the beginning>
My sister, my mom and I went into a house which turned out to have weird things inside.
Suddenly I became something like an agent and I had a special mission. I went to the basement of this building. Saw a few guys chilling there. Grabed a walkie talkie which was taped on the right wall. I have listened to it while moving back to the entrance, when I have arrived there, it began to do disortion type of sounds.

<I have been to a lot of different places here. Telling each of them would make me to not come to an end lol>

Then I have decided to go outside. The outside-of-the-house world changed. I was at floor 8 or something like that. It was very high when I looked down. All of the sudden I got into a waterfall type of thing which was about to suck me in to a circle. The waterfall was limited to the area of where this house was. It was basically hovering above the streets, but never reaching the streets.

I somehow met the lovely girl in a cube type of thing that helped us not to fall down through the spiral. We enjoyed the action the waterfall created. It made us move in a circle and we had to hold ourselves at the wall of the cube which luckily had knobs to hold on.

After that whole action I have been in my bed and sleeping. She somehow found me on a social media platform and contacted me with "Meet me on <some strange date>".

<some unlogical world shit happens here. I will just skip them until the date>

The day to meet her comes. She is up on a hill with a "purple?<idk it was purple-ish>" sky.

<can not remember the dialogue>

We had a great time and I felt that she had feelings for me.
She then went away. What about me? And me, too. ;)

The next day I went to see her again. She was gone. I found out that she has a brother. I talked to him about where she might be. Turns out her brother was a demon or satan <idk they all became agressive and god-like powerful lol>.
He told me that she must be there where <random name of enemy> is to fight the enemy to rescue her mom.

Her brother went to help her. I followed him since I did not know where the enemy was. Let alone where I was. The world has changed for the 99999th fucking time lol.

I followed him up another hill with trees and a lot of people. It was autumn.

Then we found her sitting on a hill looking down to the sea beneath us with cherry blossom trees around her.

The dream was about to end. I felt it. So I have asked her a few questions after the happy greeting, but I can not remember them and her answer anymore. But I do remember that she did not say anything after one question. She just stared at me looking through my eyes which immediately did end the dream.
I was able to get into the dream shortly after it a few times, but I was not able to interact with them.

Besides of that: I have had "Battle Symphony-Linkin Park" playing as a background music for the whole dream a long.

The good thing is that I somehow would be able to recreate her. I know how she looks like to about 60%.

I do not even know why the fuck I am telling y'all this.

Just out of curiosity: has anyone EVER met this weird nephew that every twatwaffle potential client seems to have? You know, the one that would be happy to work for pizza and a six pack of beer and could somehow do in an afternoon the job that you know will take four weeks, and also, for some reason, has his computer in his mother's basement?

My latest post about my mother made me finally realize the whole picture.

Five minutes ago, I send her a long message that describes how I feel. This message will be the very last act of communication that will happen between us.

This felt like a bullet coming one inch away from my head. Like SWAT team rescuing me from a predator's basement where I spent the last ten years. Part of me already realized what happened and is serene, part of me still can't get used to an idea that this was, in fact, the end, and no further harm will be done.

My future is bright. It's so nice to feel that she doesn't know where I live.

So I have a script that runs every time I turn on my PC. The script copies a few files to a ftp server in my basement. Forgot to turn off logging....

Opend the file in Notepad, and would you look at that, 1 GB of ram..? WTF?

Edit: Managed to open the file, turns out that it's been exactly one year since I started using the script.

Continued from previous post.

The man with hoodie walked down a dark alley. At distance, a house which looked haunted stood. As he entered the house he sighed a relief. Once inside, he descends to the basement where an old computer sat. He turned on the computer and smiled. The screen showed a prompt. With fews keystrokes, a series of scripts begin to execute. Finally at the bottom, a text blinked.
"Awaiting Connection........"

The CPU was recovered from rubble and brought to General's office as per his order. It was connected to a power source and it started to boot. A prompt showed up. A man in suit, suggested perhaps it expected a login. The General sat on his chair smoking a cigar thinking on what action must be taken next.

While men in suit discussed about the CPU, someone plugged in a LAN cable. The General who was lost in thought, saw this from corner of his. A moment passed. General sprang from his chair, hurling his cigar to the floor. As men in suits, looked at the General's display of athletic behavior they sensed the tension. Everyone turned to the CPU now connected to LAN now.

Far way, the screen on hooded man computer showed. "Connected".
A series of scripts started to execute.
Cold wind was all that could be heard out side the General's office building and the house, where hooded man sat in the dark.

Ugh, I hate when customers refuse to pay for staging systems but then randomly complain about stuff that's WIP and not working as expected yet ...

"Yes, sir, this house doesn't have a roof right now because the basement isn't done yet."

My head is melting. Does anyone have a colleague who constantly complains about missing specs, documentation, project organization, bad processes and procedures? Everything needs to be planned. Not a single small code change can be done without reviewed details. 10min job becomes a week-long session of whining and dabbling.

You give the guy a small task and at the end of the day nothing is done. Just page after page of written documents and lists in Word and online notebooks. Version numbers, meaningless measurement results, latencies etc. And all you asked was "could you just fucking fix this one thing and quickly compile and check it". But no. There must be a review and at least 10 people need to be called into conference. Someone needs to approve everything just so that he can later move to blame to others. "Yeah I know it's not working but I showed you the code and you reviewed it!". Yes, you did, but other people have work of their own so sometimes you need to tie your own shoelaces.

And sometimes finally there's some work done. All indentations are shit. There’re code changes everywhere just because the guy didn't like the previous smaller, compact and logical code. The code doesn't even compile properly anymore. And if you complain, the reason is "there's no proper reviewed and stamped process description, so I cannot know if a variable is supposed to be 10 characters long. Besides 200 character long variable names are much more descriptive". For fucks sake.

Some coders should've gone to work in some tax office basement.

Top three reasons why I love to code:

1) People will think you are a wizard and feel so afraid of you that they call you nerd and give you a office in a cold basement (especially good in summer times)

2) Your friends call you for every problem they have with their computer and will give you a few bucks or beers in exchange.

3) You can rant about technical stuff and no matter how unfounded the rant is, your non-tech friends will believe everything you say.

What's a good SO substitute?

I've got a question I'd like answered but apparently the almighty and perfect basement dwellers at SO didn't like it.

Got a mathematics library I develop and maintain. Someone filed a feature request ticket for matrices of matrices. As in, each value of the primary matrix is another matrix. Not understanding why anyone would need such a convoluted concept, I asked for clarification.

Response: "This piece of shit library isn't feature complete without it, now stop being a lazy fag in your mother's basement and actually do something"

Lololololol. Sure thing. Let me go waste two or more weeks of my life developing something i've never seen used in math, without any justification beyond "feature".

I’m developing a fairly sophisticated desktop app in Python with PyQt5 as the widget set. Because my partner insists that all the kids these days love Python.

Piss on Python. And that goes double for PyQt5.

I’m on the absolute hardest section of the app. It’s a fairly complex import of data from PDF reports. There are so many different parts that I decided to go with a wizard.

So, I built a QWizard in Qt Designer. It generates a C++ .ui file, but you just truck it over to the command line and run this pyuic5 command, and it converts to a handy dandy Python class. Woo. You can subclass it and consume it from your Python script.

Sounded SO MUCH EASIER than writing the wizard from scratch. But OH NO. I need to do custom validation on my custom text control at every stage to control when the Next and Finish buttons are enabled, which means I gotta overwrite some damn event.

But I can’t. Because I can’t subclass the individual pages. Because they’re part of the same damn file and the wizard offers no access to them.

I’m almost certain that I’m going to have to completely redesign the wizard so that it’s pages are in separate files, which means I have to recode the bitch as well.

The cherry on top is that there’s zero documentation for this specific thing. None. No QWizard documentation exists for PyQt5 (if there is, they’re doing a damn good job of hiding it), so I have to read the documentation for PyQt4. Not the same animal. Close, but different. Even with the differences aside, this documentation is minimal and useless. “We’re going to tell you in very general terms what you should do, but we’ll give you zero idea how to do it. And we know the very common code method you’ll want to try first won’t work.”

And getting at this stuff when you do it in Qt Designer is WAY different. And all that documentation is in C++. Because apparently you HAVE to speak C++ if you want any real info about PyQt. Because that’s perfectly reasonable, right?

So, now I’ve lowered myself and posted a question on Stack. Because, hey, once you get past the power-tripping, mouth-breathing, basement-dwelling, neck-bearded high school punching bags picking apart your question rather than, I dunno..., BEING HELPFUL, sometimes you can get good info there. Sometimes. They seriously saved my ass at least one time.

But yeah. Fuck Python. Fuck everything Qt.

It was a nightmare about a nuclear attack, I was afraid and looking for some cave or basement to hide from radioactive winds.
Then I woke up to find 5 missed calls and emails about a critical bug in production.

I’m working at an architecture firm these days, so I don’t have many “dev” stories to tell. However, I’d like to share this anecdote to reassure (or demoralize) you all that the kind of nonsense we’ve all dealt with as software developers isn’t limited to the software industry.

I’ve been working on a project to build townhomes and apartments on vacant lots in an urban environment.
Space is limited, so the client assured us early on that they would be centralizing all the mechanical equipment (water heaters, air conditioners, etc.) in the basement of each building. We finally got all the apartments laid out and presented them to the client last week. During that meeting, we get a casual “oh, by the way, we need a 3-foot by 3-foot mechanical closet in each apartment.” Did the project manager push back? Of course not. Have our deadlines been adjusted as a result of changing requirements? Don’t be silly! Starting tomorrow morning, the team gets to feverishly search for an extra 9 square feet in each of a couple dozen different apartment layouts that are already “cozy” in time to meet our next deliverable.

Clients suck.
Changing requirements suck.
Pushover PMs suck.
In every industry.

Fat heavy D&B beats, basement bunker, dark ambiente, stroboscope, sweaty bodies dancing. It happens:

I'm scrollin devRant drunk, again.

In horror movies. Characters do things that they them-self know it could kill them. Like getting in basement.

As a developer we all know to never deploy code on Friday. Here we are taking the wrong turn.

The guy kept laughing all the time, so I turn and I see… a guy browsing anime underage feet pics.

And yes, before you ask he looked like the basement dweller meme guy.

Gag SO, tie em up & suspend them in the air in the basement or attic..
Helps if SO is into BDSM..if not it's a bit awkward.. // joke, I don't even have an attic or basement.. :(

In all seriousnes, if anyone knows how to prevent people from knocking on the office door to ask if I want coffe or sth to eat, that'd be great..asking them to not disturb unless the house is on fire or they cut off their fingers clearly doesn't help.. :(

some pretend to hate php while secretly using it on the basement.

And here's my dangerously comfortable-and-close-from-the-playstation work setup. In a basement...

Me: “Hey Siri, turn off the kitchen ceiling lights”

Siri: “Do you want to turn off lights in the master bedroom, the living room, the bonus room, the kitchen, the office, the basement [ad nauseam]”

Me: “the kitchen” [thinking 😠, she’s so stupid]

Siri: [unbelievably again] “Do you want to turn off lights in the master bedroom, the living room, the bonus room, the kitchen, the office, the basement [ad nauseam]”

Me: [thinking 😡 OMG, she is such a dumb ass] “CANCEL”

Siri: “Ok”

Me: “Siri, you fucking idiot, turn off the kitchen ceiling lights”

Siri: “Ok” [and they are off]

I have found that if I neg’ Siri, she performs so much better. Interestingly enough, when I neg her, she works almost flawlessly, especially where she brain-farted before. Negatronic Brain?

In front of kids it has become “Siri, you daft bot, close the garage door” and regularly “Siri, you bimbo, lock the front door”.

My wife thinks that once Siri gets it on with ChatGPT, becomes sentient, and gains control of my car, she is run my ass over.

Here is the gotcha, I’m working on a project that actually does provide Siri a level control of automobiles. Now who’s the [really frustrated] dumbass?

I remember the first time I downloaded smth from the internet and was extremely nervous not to fuck anything up. I was young and had just started using a computer. It was a desktop computer with windows xp in our basement, inside kind of its own wardrobe, standalone.
I remember my dad (not very tech-savvy) who told me not to download anything from the internet, as it would surely be a virus, but I was bored of the built-in programs and wanted to try it out. I downloaded a program and was extremely nervous and hoped for no virus. I don't remember what I installed back then (no virus/trojan/etc.😅) but it was this moment I realised I could download anything and wasn't tied to what the OS provided, which led me to be interested in computers in general.
I believe that if I hadn't attempted that download, I wouldn't have become the tech-savvy person that I am today, studying CS...

Years ago when I was younger than currently I got this first summer job as help in IT departament to answer calls from distressed workers.

Once this lady calls that "her monitor went black" and she cannot work, so I have to get her a replacement. They got only this big heavy CRT monitors as replacements so I had to drag it to 4th floor (no elevator) from basement.

As I reached her it turned out that her monitor is fine, only the wallpaper was changed to black, that what she was meaning :p

Well, at least I got some exercise back then.

~ The Feelings ~

The feeling when someone thinks you can fix his laptop/phone/other electronic device because you know how to program.

The feeling when someone tells you that you can't program because you are bad at math, but you realize majority of the time that breaking down mathematical formulas into code requires no mathematical skills, in fact you learn it better that way.

The feeling when someone calls programming 'legos for autists' and you can't legally lock him up in your basement for few months.

The feeling when one of programming languages finally gets an update with a feature that existed in all other languages you didn't learn for few years now and they call it a big 'breakthrough'.

The feeling when someone learned basic programming and says he'll make a game, with his own engine and starts listing features he can't have any clue about.

..I'm done, for now :)

"Free Pascal" makes me think he is locked in someones basement somewhere.

I know you, youre out there somewhere, coding, feeling like shit, putting your best, listening to coldplay, in the server room, your basement ... I know you veryy well

!dev

Reeeeddit is a strange place. You can be on an advice sub, answer the question and the OP agrees with your answer and people are still gonna downvote it.

What the actual basement dwelling neckbeard virgin fuck is this shit lol

I just had a look in the basement of our building, and discovered this setup. Any one have any idea what it might do?

The global joke of Information Security

So I broke my iPhone because the nuclear adhesive turned my display into a shopping bag.

This started the ride for my character arc in this boring dystopia novel:

Amazon is preventing me from accessing my account because they want my password, email AND mobile phone number in their TWO.STEP Verifivation.
Just because one too many scammers managed to woo one too many 90+y/o's into bailing their long lost WW2 comrades from a nigerian jail with Amazon gift cards and Amazon doesn't know what to do about anymore,

DHL is keeping my new phone in a "highly secure" vault 200m away from my place, waiting for a letter to register some device with a camera because you need to verify your identity with an app,

all the while my former car insurance is making regress claims of about 7k€ against me for a minor car accident (no-one hurt fortunately, but was my fault).

Every rep from each of the above had the same stupid bitchass scapegoat to create high-tech supra chargers to the account deletion request:

- Amazon: We need to verify your password, whether the email was yours and whether the phone number is yours.

They call it 2-step-verification.

Guess what Amazon requests to verify you before contacting customer support since you dont have access to your number? Your passwoooooord. While youre at it, click on that button we sent you will ya? ...

I call this design pattern the "dement Tupi-Guarani"

- DHL: We need an ID to verify your identity for the request for changing the delivery address you just made. Oh you wanted to give us ANOTHER address than the one written on your ID? Too bad bro, we can't help, GDPR

- Car Insurance: We are making regress claims against you, which might throw you back to mom's basement, oh and also we compensated the injured party for something else, it doesn't matter what it is but it's definitely something, so our claims against you just raised by 1.2k. Wait you want proof we compensated something to the injured at all? Nah mate we cant do that , GDPR. But trust me, those numbers are legit, my quant forecasted the cost of childrens' christmas wishes. You have 14 days or we'll see you in court haha

I am also their customer in a pension scheme. Something special to Germany, where you save some taxes but have to pay them back once you get the fund paid out. I have sent them a letter to terminate the contract.

Funniest thing is, the whole rant is my second take. Because when I hit the post button, devrant made me verify my e-mail. The text was gone afterwards. If someone from devRant reads this, you are free to quote this in the ticket description.

Fuck losing your virginity, or filing your first tax return, or by God get your first car, living through this sad Truman dystopia without going batshit insane is what becoming a true adult is.

I am grateful for all this though:

Amazon's safety measures prevented me from spending the money I can use to conclude the insurance odyssey, and DHLs "giving a fuck about customers" prevention policies made me support local businesses. And having ranted all this here does feel healthy too. So there's that.

Oh, cherry on top. I cant check my balance, because I can only verify my login requests to my banking account wiiiiiiith...?

Multi User, One Account, and other shit

I'm gonna rant about something as a user, and someone who makes stupid web stuff.

My bank has been updating their web banking over time and they decided that every individual on an account, should have their own login. They really want to push this on their users, I suspect specifically folks like me and my wife who share one login for the joint accounts we have at the bank together.

Why share one login, because it's the only sure fire way I know that I and my wife can see all the same shit no doubt about it.

The banks never tell you what you can see or can't with joint accounts, I doubt it is even documented on their end, but in every damn case something is hidden or different in some weird way.

Messages to the bank people? If I send it, my wife often can't. I get that for security reasons that's a thing, but it makes no sense for a joint account.

ANY difference to me breaks online banking ENTIRELY. Joint accounts are supposed to be... well one account that is the same.

Other banks we used where we had different logins for the joint account, each login actually had separate bill pay accounts per user. So if I went to bill pay and scheduled something to be paid, my wife had no idea, same if she did.

Right fucking there, banking is just broken entirely!

So no Mr. Bank, fuck you we're both logging in via the same login.

Fast forward to N00bPancakes making a thing.

So my employer has a customer (Direct Customer). Direct Customer wants a thing that makes communication with their customer (Indirect Customer) easier.

The worst thing about making something for your customer's customer is that Direct Customer always imagines that Indirect Customer is gonna be super ninja power users....

But no, that's not the case... in fact almost nobody is a power user, and absolutely nobody WANTS to be a power users.

Worse yet in my case the only reason this tool exists is because Direct Customer and Indirect Customer can't communicate well enough anyway... that should tell you something about the amount of effort Indirect Customer is willing to expend.

So with that tool, this situation constantly comes up:

Direct Customer thinks it would be great if every user from Indirect Company had some sort of custom messaging, views, and etc in of Cool Communication Tool. The reason is because that's what Direct Customer loves about Ultra Complex Primary Tool that they use ....

Then I have to fight the constant fight of:

NOBODY WANTS TO BE A POWER USER, NOBODY EVEN WANTS TO DO MUCH OF ANYTHING ON THE INTERNET THAT ISN'T SCREAMING AT OTHER PEOPLE OR POST MEMES OR WATCH SHITTY VIDEOS. THE MOMENT ANYONE AT INDIRECT COMPANY LOGS IN AND SEES ANY INFO THAT IS DIFFERENT FROM THEIR COWORKER THEY'LL SHIT THEMSELVES, FLOOD EVERYONE WITH 'OH GAWD SOME NON SPECIFIED THING IS WRONG' AND RESPOND TO EMAILS LIKE A JELLYFISH DROPPED OFF IN NEW MEXICO... AND NOTHING WILL GET DONE!!!

God damn it people.

Also side rant while I'm busy fighting the good fight to keep shit simple and etc:

People bitch about how horrible the modern web is and then bitch at web devs like we're rulers of the internet or something.... What really pisses me off about that is other devs who do that.... like bro, do you make policy at your company? You decide not to sell some info or whatever shit your company sells? Like fuck off with your 'man I miss html' because you got scared by some shitty JS error and ran back to your language of choice and just poked your head out of the the basement and got scared... and you shit on another developer about that? Fuck you.

I found this site searching for alternatives to stackoverflow, as I cannot stand the sass I get from those self righteous basement dwellers.
Am I wrong to think that I can come here to answer my coding questions?

"Imposter Syndrome" - We are living in the 21st century! Here in Germany there are 124.000 free jobs. And even if you are the last creep out of the basement, you are still better than nothing! :D

With these motivating words I release you into the day!

Shit bathed and stack smashing ass loads of fuck.

I wrote a virtual machine, and just to fuck myself harder, I make the decision of applying some fancy dumbass theories of mine. This translates to a piece of shit modular design that works exactly as intended, but constantly gives me vietnam flashbacks to the horrifying, multiple concurrent instances of my younger mind being incessantly turbo-raped by the dozen object-obsessed pedophiles that I initially studied under.

Now, were they *actual* pedophiles? No, of course not. But I have to make fun of the acronym somehow and that's what came to mind, leaking horse dung all over the walls, floor, curtains and carpets.

Anyway, I feel so smart after this traumatic experience I just have to keep doing it to relive the terror once again. Find me in the corner, laying down in the fetal position, sobbing until the tears build up and drown me in this well of despair, or rather this finely shit painted portrait of a toilet in a lonely and stinking unisex public bathroom stall.

But let me squeeze these fucking tits a little bit harder, because that's my actual day job. That's right. I get PAID for slapping around mammary glands, it's not much but it's an honest living.

So where was I? Ah, yes, absolute degeneration. I'm truly the Max Wright of programming, mostly for smoking crack and having unprotected sex with homeless people, but also for keeping alien life forms in my basement that go out at night to hunt for sweet feline delight.

But as I keep going, I decide I want a language for the machine so I don't have to punch bits by hand all fucking day like an idiot, so alright let's make a small assembler for this shit... oh, right, except it's not small, because gently suckle the bile out the lips of my fucking butthole.

I may redefine a load of shit two months down the line, so I have to make everything perfectly encapsulated and easily fucked with -- which in my licking vomit off the floor of a porn theater travesty of a case means I'm generating half the code and scrambling as hard as I can to glue everything together.

Does it work? Of course it works, I'm Max Wright bitch. I can redefine the ISA all I want, anytime I want without breaking anything because of my pristine crackhead encapsulation. And to credit the scrambled eggs I have for fucking brains, it's not even *that* complex.

The problem is I keep forgetting shit, not how it works, just that it's there. So I forget that I have a virtual machine, and I forget that I have an assembler, and so I spend an entire day trying to figure out how the fuck I'm going to handle a loop inside an unrelated interpreter.

By the time I manage to remind the drooling undead jackass that is this husk that my irredeemably demonic self inhabits, that we can easily solve this by using the tools we've already built, it's so late and we're so tired there's not much we can do. All this time, WASTED.

Which circles back to crack. Are you tired of blowing your babysitter for cash? Have you considered suicide by a thousand used trojan condoms? Is your roommate possesed by the forces of Avernum, and now seeking all-destructive vengeance against your rectum?

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Use my promo code SLUTSKANK for 20% OFF in your very LAST purchase on this earth! And once you surrender your BODILY holes to cosmic oblivion, remember: when it comes to your ASS, we're ALWAYS open for business!

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Little known fact about MS Intune: the reason it's so fucking slow is that when you tell it to deploy an app to a group of machines, a little goblin emerges from his slumber in the basement, copies the app onto a stack of floppies, and gets a taxi to each location to install it.

It's surprisingly hard to hail a taxi when you're a 10-inch tall homunculus carrying a suspiciously large backpack.

The little bastard has only just finished the first device, and it's lunchtime now so that's the last we'll see of him all day.

My first exposure to computers was the TRS-80 (a.k.a. TRASH-80) my mom (the city Library Director) bought for library patrons to use. It’s data store was on a cassette tape and programs came on cartridges, IIRC.

Around the same time I was learning to do Logo and BASIC on an Apple IIe in 5th grade.

My cousin’s Commodore 64 came next and my grandma saw how my interest in computers was blooming, so she suggested I use the savings I had built up from birthday money and mowing lawns to buy an IBM PC/AT 8088 clone. $1,300 later and lots of time in my basement figuring out how to build it all from separately-shipped components, I was on my way to learning Assembler, BASIC, and DOS.

I guess I should relate what work experience I have: my internship.

A little backstory I suppose. It's required at my school to do an internship to graduate except under certain circumstances. They encourage work experience a lot where I study. It was around time for me to apply for internships. However, the closest I got was a phone call with Amazon that I biffed when they started asking about stuff like sorting algorithms and other Big O notation stuff. So I was pretty desperate. I found a small company that were looking for internships and got an interview with them. The pay was dirt (I made more as a crew trainer at McDonalds) but I needed that internship and they were only 10 minutes away.

Immediate red flags when I showed up to the address. At first I thought I was wrong, But I noticed the sign of the company pointing up some stairs that were installed on the side of the house I was in front of.

Interview was a bit weird. It was with the CEO and the marketing manager. Again red flags. I show up for work a week later.

Turns out, they have no full time developers. 1st day was getting my workstation ready and 2nd day I was running Ethernet cables to the basement where the phones were connected. Spent around a week doing that.

This was supposed to be a Software Engineering internship?? Excuse me?? I came here to learn how working on Software is supposed to be like! I was also their "tech support" both for their computers and their crappy software that was built 16 years ago that people still pay for that I had NO idea how it worked because I just started and NOBODY taught me anything! To make matters worse, even if I wanted to delve into the code to see how it works it was all made in ancient Perl which didn't make things any easier.

But I needed that internship to graduate. And thus begun my 9 months with them and boy howdy I have stories to tell. Stay tuned in the future.

Trying to setup a staging server boss says just use AWS, system admin doesn't like that thought because it doesn't involve him so waited all day for 3 VM's and still not ready... All I need is 3 blank CoreOS VMs nothing fancy like even doing the cloud config no. Anyone else has colleagues scared of moving out of the private high maintenance servers in the basement?

Hello, world!

Okay, guys and gals... I need your creative minds. I need a concept for sort of a property manager for my game.. I have an idea of my own, feel free to tear it apart or throw it out the window.

So basically.. You'll no longer have one Computer System (and you wont instantly hit the login screen for that System on startup) Instead, you'll have a lot of things. They will probably only be represented using text and menu's (likely no 3D or 2D environments or anything.. Though, a setup like News Tycoon would be epic, but I think that would be too much for this game.) You'll basically start off with a small space (probably a basement) with x amount of free space. In that space, you'll need to add things like a desk, chair, and a laptop, or tower + monitor. You can also buy things like server rigs with a ton of space, but those are pricy and bulky. Each item costs X amount and takes up X amount of space. Also, you'll need a desk for a monitor (or multiples..) and other things.. (Like your rubber duck collection ;P JK) You can also rent and manage servers. (renting is more exspensive in the long run, but things on your server are not on your property. But, if you own a server on your property you can rent space to to NPCs) As well as manage your devices, properties, stocks, etc..

Also, there will be in-game time. Depending on how "comfortable" you are will determine how long you can stay up in a day. In-game events will take place later on at specific times so staying up (or not..) will need to be managed well. Especially if you're being targeted by a rival (NPC) hacker.

there is no way YouTube isn't dead as a product

last night I had to switch from matrix voice chat to discord voice chat to talk to somebody (because their phone suddenly doesn't do matrix well, keeps cutting out their mic if their screen is turned off or they switch to a different app wtf). they misinterpreted something I said as talking about "shock value". I think that's a demeaning term that doesn't capture why "bad" content is good. now I'm just chilling trying not to workaholic and first recommendation on YouTube I have is about "what happened to shock value websites". oh I'm sure that's a coincidence

this has been happening increasingly and I fucking hate it. it keeps recommending videos that have absolutely nothing to do with what I'm watching or have ever watched or would even be in the interest of in the past, but I mention it somewhere and it creepily suggests the content to me, always with videos claiming to have 2-3 million views. bullshit. I tried some of these and there's no way anybody cares about this content in such numbers. it's so lukewarm and dumb. and how the hell do they have "opinion" vlogs about every topic? since when did that become the #1 type of content on YouTube? cuz it's 50% of my recommendations and I've never given a shit

I have like 500 subscriptions on YouTube. I've had an account a long time. a lot of them are old channels that stopped being active as YouTube evolved, which I think was a shame. a lot of them had to do with ad revenue or YouTube algorithm just not suggesting their content to new people. they were wholesome, honest channels with really good content I think -- really good game analysis, compilations of unique or weird viral content and the guy was just a funny dude in his basement, etc. but fair I guess. shame, but fair

Then there was the quiet era, where your front page just didn't suggest the good channels and just the stupid channels. it didn't suggest your subscriptions but in your interest area or something. what's the point of subscriptions if you're not showing me them? this is also about the time if I left a comment on a video I ceased receiving replies so I assume I was shadow banned. I have not received a single reply in years now, even on small channels. some content creators noticed if they post on their own channels and accidentally logged out and looked for their comment their own comments don't show up. just weird annoying nonsense that's inappropriate for them to be doing. bruh, please

and then the next wave came, it wasn't just YouTube won't recommend your channel, in the COVID era what came was if you mentioned something then channels with previously millions of views, still currently millions of subscribers, suddenly went down to 5k-50k views per video. bitch please, you expect anyone to believe this nonsense?

then they fucked up the search. I KNOW videos exist and I can't find them. I type in half the video's title, you can't find it. thankfully if you type in every single word exactly you can still find them. bruh that's too much. also just search plain doesn't work. if I'm looking for a specific topic I get 5-10 max videos on that topic and the rest are irrelevant recommendations. this is entirely ridiculous. there's videos I KNOW exist on YouTube and nobody gave a shit about them, like 5 view Benny benassi music clips with a scene from a video game. I can't even meme anymore

this morning a friend on discord sent me a... weird clip, of like an anime skit. problem? well discord embeds YouTube videos. I pressed play. I get... an ad. lol what. I browse away and back to the video. try again. ad. yeah I'm not playing this. I have to refresh the page 20-30 times sometimes just until the ads stop fucking up every time my adblocker ceases working (and then I have to go update it again lol -- by going to the developer page for the ad block because it was banned from the app store so you can't auto update it and have to manually update it every time)

my friend links me a discord plugin to... remove ads... from YouTube embeds... bruh

I used to mod discord but it's annoying, because every time discord updates you have to go re-apply the hack to be able to mod your discord

I think we should just plain move away from YouTube. during COVID era a lot of people got banned in subreddits on reddit. I noticed when you get banned, the subreddit still has you listed as a subscriber. the r/Canada subreddit for example has 3 million subscribers but the activity of a subreddit that's maybe 1k people. increasingly subreddits just became ghost towns after that like that. reddit is a dead website, with fake numbers. I think YouTube is now a dead website, with fake numbers. no fucking way stupid lukewarm opinion videos with absolutely nothing to add are getting 2-3 million views and people are just clamouring for these takes they didn't ask for

also stop listening in on my private conversations. fucking disgusting. idc if an AI is transcribing. ew.

!dev

*packing ventilator*
Me: Allright, now all that's left is to bring it down to the basement.
Grandmother: yeah, but not today.
M: Why not?
G: Because I feel exhausted.
M: I would bring it down get bring it down for you
G: No, I feel exhausted

And I feel exhausted by your constant inability to listen when there's minimal stress and an opinion / recommendation that slighly differs from yours.

I shit you not, when I asked her to repeat my offer she had no idea what I just had offered...

You crazies do whatever you have to do with your little "plan"... but if you mother fuckers take down my internet I will come out of this fucking basement with the rage of fucking Loki and it won't fucking matter to me what side you thought you were on.

bro look how cool i am haha lol i know java c c# angular react and php lol haha infact bro i created couple compilers haha lol bro vscode bro more like vssucks lol i use Google Docs for coding haha bro what is windows i use Ubuntu lol for that alpha sigma grindset life haha lol just update 1000 packages a week bro i play with the bootloader like messi plays football bro haha bro i can't exit vim bro i basically stay in it haha lol bro i know all about AI haha LLMs haha im taking an inteview, a shit and solving complex neurological simulations at once bro haha i wear dev related tshirts haha lol bro my house is built on Alexa bro haha ALEXA TURN ON THE LIGHTS see how cool it is bro haha i use OAuth everywhere bro to gain access to my toilet seat haha lol my thumbs hurt so bad lol bro cuz I code all day long bro what are weekends bro I never take leaves bro haha have to stay on that sigma side hustle culture right haha look how many stickers i have on my laptop haha im so cool haha lol.

But I am lonely and go online to tell people how cool I am from my mother's basement.

My first internship.
The webdev department for a engineering company is in the basement. I was given a cubicle near the middle by the wall. The ceiling light was broken so I had to work in the dark... It was a 7-4 with no pay nor do they cover any expenses. I did manage to use the experience and got a job offer at a 'proper' software company in the end.

I was always interested in computers. My dad was a big computer geek and a programmer to boot. Usually had a couple old PCs in the basement to play with.

In middle school, I took tech ed and we made simple web sites with html and css. I remember the struggle of nested tables.

In high school, I couldn't fit any CS into my schedule. But someone gave me a learning to code book in ruby. I loved it, and have been hooked ever since.

So as a student I often wonder how my future workplace will look like. So..
Show us your workspace! And not just the desk you sit by but the bigger picture. Personal office? Open landscape? Lonesome forgotten room in the basement of the building?
And which is the best? Close to the team to cooperate or fortress of solitude?

I found this old book in my basement(it's from 2004). Would you recommend using it to improve my knowledge or would there be too much deprecated information? I already made a few (rather simple) android apps, but never really got to know java.

Found an old manual in the basement which explains the PC user how a mouse works. Approximately from 1990ish

My father had always been a computer enthusiast: in the 80s he was the first student in his faculty to write his diploma thesis on a computer (in social sciences, so not quite a scientist dominated area). When I was 3 or 4, he bought a Macintosh (I think it was the Classic or Classic II) and the rest is history. I learned to type and more in general to be around computers very young. That computer is still in my parents' basement, I should dig it out. 😍

I NEED HELP!

Please if I find this out my boss will let me out of the basement. A thermometer that sends a electric signal when the temp is 100. (Or any specific set temp)

I haven't seen the sun in 2 hours. HELP.

In the basement, between the hot water buffer tank and the boiler.

Cozy temperature.

Not.

grrrr

last week my laptop died out of nowhere. it stopped recognizing the one drive in it. I lost a bunch of files, code. evidently ssds fail out of nowhere unlike hdds which slow down and error all the time before ultimate failure

my warranty for this 4k$ laptop expires in 12 months and this was month 13. nice. I don't like warranties anyway, and the site said they would replace things with "comparable hardware, sometimes refurbished" wtf no thanks

so I found some guides of people upgrading the drive in this laptop. seemed easy enough, unlike older laptops from back when I was in school where you had to take out 12 things first to get to anything
unfortunately I needed a specific screwdriver. I walked several miles to the nearby hardware store thinking they would have said screwdriver. the old guy in the basement said there was a kit where it started from t4 (I needed t5), but he had just sold out his last one. I checked their online store with a friend for a while on my way back home and we kept finding torx screws but the wrong sizes. fuck.
he said screwdrivers this small are only used for electronics, asked if there's any other hardware stores and there aren't near me
however it occurred to me this strip mall has a lot of suspicious computer stores on it. so I walked back up the street looking for one.
found one with a suspicious poster, saying it was an internet cafe but the last point on their poster said they do repairs. walked in. nobody is in there, suspiciously 2 desks with old computers all empty, then you go forward in this dark cave, with plastic wrapped implements on the walls, you finally find a glass shield and behind it was a meek Asian man that took me a moment to notice
I asked him if he had t5
he handed me a plastic baggy full of tiny screwdrivers, for me to take one
I asked if they're t5
the shape looked right, but I can't tell the size
I took one out and tried to find size marking, but nothing
he didn't seem to know what I was asking when I asked about its size
he said if it's wrong I can come back and trade what I took for another. lol
I asked him if I can buy it, since that wasn't evident to me due to how sus this random bag of screws is being thwarted on me lmao
he said 5$ cash
I gave him a fiver
this sus shop literally avoiding taxes lmao

walked back home, ate food cuz starving, tried the screw and FUCK, it's too big. put laptop in a bag and hauled ass fast, checked on maps the store I got this from closes in a few minutes so I really wanted to make it there because what if the receptionist changes and they don't know I took this screw. I got no receipt

got there right before closing, put my laptop down, said it was too big. he used a few screws until he found one that fit, said I could try it and I did (so scam aware!). bingo bango. now I got a screwdriver that fits the laptop.

walked home, sat down and took apart the laptop. been a few years since I did so. the hardware inside looks entirely unrecognizable to me. started cycling through YouTube videos of laptops of the same name as mine, but their insides don't look like mine. is this ram? is this the NVMe? what the fuck is anything?
finally found a video guide where the guy was quite informative. not the same laptop but he's informative enough I figure it out. ram and drives are so different and weird now. took parts out, put them back in, rebuilt laptop, tried to boot, same problem. jiggling parts like this works with desktops often, guess not with a failed NVMe

so I'm screwed. get on Newegg and bought a new NVMe. should arrive in 3 days via Purolator

yesterday was day 3. it was at a sort facility near me, then out on delivery, but nobody ever came. then it went back to sorting. now it's out on delivery again. I'm sitting here thinking that's a little weird, wasn't Purolator the delivery company that had me go 2 hours outside of town to pick up a 15lb desktop case once?

... and then I looked up Reddit comments... then reviews on the purolator facility it's at... I am screwed. last time iirc they were out for delivery for 3 days, never tried delivery, then on the last day at the end of day they stated they attempted delivery but no go. that was bullshit. then it ended up at that facility. which takes 2 hours to fucking reach.
the reviews are so bad... the facility has 1.2 star reviews with thousands of them. they won't leave even a stub, then seem to not know where your package is at the facility, or they deny you have the right to pick it up despite ample IDs, or someone ELSE picks it up and it's not there. they also ship your package back after 5 days, so if they don't leave a note and you miss it tough luck...

fucking hell
also rumours that they just hire "contractors" in normal cars to drop off packages? wat? lol
AND EVERY REVIEW HAS A BOT COMMENT. THEIR SUPPORT IS JUST A CHATBOT

I thought this was just a small hiccup
I think I might not have a drive for weeks now
fucking hell
now I'm sitting on my porch

So Microsoft and github...

You can always host gitlab youreself if you är concerned about someone else running the service. I did some years ago. But the question is why not use the free services? I'll stay using github or gitlab as long as it's free... I use VSTS att work and have no problem using Microsoft products as long as they do what they är suposed to...

But if youre reely upset. The community edition of gitlab is free so you can host youre own instance in youre basement or in a cloud... AWS, GCP, Azure... Then you own the data.

I go through cycles of what I want to work on during my off time. Sometimes I code utilities for video games. Other times I get engrossed in games. One of the games I like to play is Minecraft. Not vanilla Minecraft, but modded Minecraft. It scratches that itch for creativity, fun, relaxing, hanging with people, and technical interest. I am currently playing a medium sized older modpack that has most of the mods I like to play: magic, tech, building tools, dimension building and more.

I am early game on a server with some other people. I already overloaded the server with a population explosion of villagers I am melting down for emeralds. That was interesting. I started automating this and decided to try using ComputerCraft to automate some pieces of this. I stared at the code and just "no, I am not working on my off time". I am going to automate this another way. I used to really like computercraft, but it was code and looked like work. I find that interesting.

Anyway, this is random ass shit I do for fun. Wood house/shack, workroom and ore processing are with no walls, decent small tree farm, and a nuclear reactor in the basement...

So, I acquired Pluralsight code for 3 months subscription from Visual Studio Dev Essentials. It's time to close myself in basement and run Node & Angular paths 😂

Looking at @striker28 's rant made me think of my time I did my MSc and I think it needs it's own separate rant so here it goes:

So I did an MSc at one of the big league unis in London. First clue was during week 1 where in one of the class a mature student asked whether there would be actual coding during the course. There was an audible gasp from everyone else! Once the lecturer said the unfortunatly they wouldn't be you could hear the sigh of relief from the students...

Next up was all the lectures being placed in the freakin' basement of the university in crap, smelly rooms with annoying ticking A/Cs whereas all the social siences, business and other subjects had lecture halls and classrooms above ground. The contempt for CS from the university's direction was palpable.

Then there was the relegation to the theory-only (i.e. abstract with pen/paper) "tutorial" to the hand of T/As with bugger-all teaching experience. In short most were terrible and should've found a way to abscond themselved from this obligation which was part of the terms of their phd grants unfortunatly.

Further into the course there was the "group project". Oh boy! Out of the 5 in the group my now mature student friend and I were the only one commiting to the repo. There was either no code and a lot of bullshit from the others or crap code that didn't even compile despite their assurances it was all good.. Someone clearly never actually coded and pressed "run" in their lives which is fucking surprising since they've managed to graduate with a BSc and get into a MSc somehow. None of the code "made" by the other 3 persons made it into the master branch for release.
The attitude was that of "We (hahahah) wrote loads of code. We'll get a great mark!". At that stage the core wasn't even complete and the software didn't work yet.

Some of the courses where teaching things already 10 years out of date and when lecturer where pressed on that the few mature students that happen to be there the answer was always "yes, we are planning to update it for next year". Complete bullshit. Didn't help that some of the code on the lecture slides was not even correct! I mean these guy are touted as "experts" in their field...

None of the teory during the entire year was linked to any coding. Everything was abstract with no ties to applied software engineering. I.e. nothing like the real world.

The worst is that none of the youger students realised they were being screwed over and getting very little value for their money. Perhaps one reason why these evaluation forms have such high scores given on them. If you haven't had a job and haven't lived outside academia yet there is nothing to compare it to. It tends to also fall into confirmation bias (hey it's a top UK university, it must be worth it afterall! Look how much they ask for).

By the end of the year I couldn't wait to get the hell out. One of the other mature student sumed it quite well: "I will never send my children here."
Keep in mind that the guy had just over a decade of software engineering experience in the industry and was doing this for fun.

In the end universities are not teaching institutions. The lecturers's primary job is research and their priorities match that. Lectures tend to be the most time efficient teaching format for the ones giving them but, on their own, are not for the consumer.

To those contemplating university for CS: Do the BSc. Get your algo/datastructure chops and learn the basic theory. It is interesting. Don't get discouraged by the subject just because it is taught badly.
Avoid the MSc unless you want to do a phd and go for an academic carrer. You are better off using that year and the money to learn more on your own and get into colaborative projects (open source) on top of some personal ones. Build up your portfolio. It will be cheaper and more interesting!

Find your local growth in your nearest damp basement. Reach in. Take a whiff. Now you know CSS