I was 15 years old and the first year of high school. Everything was new to me and I was such a newbie. At that time I had 2-3 year of programming behind me at an institution where they taught competitive programming. And I knew something about computers. Not much but more than most of my school mates. At that time I wanted to become "super cool hacker".

So we had this very very thought teacher for history which was also our form master. She really knows how to explained everything about history and in an interesting way. But while she was teaching we also had to write down notes from her powerpoints that were on a projector. And occasionally she would wait for us to copy everything and then move on with her lecture. But sometimes she didn't. This was frustrating as hell. The whole class would complain about this because you couldn't take notes down normal, you had to do it at double speed.

But she got one weak spot. She was not very good with computers. Our school computers were locked in some kinda closet so that students didn't have physical access to a computer and were also password protected. So I came up with the plan to plant wireless mouse in her computer so that I could control her mouse. At that time it seemed like SUPER HACKER MASTER PLAN.

So I got an opportunity one time when she left the classroom and let closet where the computer was open. I quickly sneaked the USB of the wireless mouse in the computer and then go back to the seat.

So THE FUN began.

Firstly I would only go back in powerpoint so that all my schoolmates could write down notes including me. And it was hilarious to watch when she didn't know what is happening. So then I would move her mouse when she tried to close some window. I would just move it slightly so she wouldn't notice that somebody else is controlling mouse. And by missing X button just by slight she would click other things and other things would pop up and now she had to close this thing so it became a nightmare for her. And she would become angry at the mouse and start complaining how the computer doesn't work and that mouse doesn't obey her.

One time when she didn't pay attention to her computer and projector I went to paint program and drew a heart and wrote we love you (In Slovenian Imamo vas radi -> See the picture below) and one of my school mates has the picture of it. We were all giggling and she didn't know what is was for. And I managed to close everything before she even noticed.

So it got to the point where she couldn't hand it more so she called our school IT guy so that he would check her computer (2 or 3 weeks passed before she called IT guy). And he didn't find anything. He was really crappy IT guy in general. So one week passed by and I still had messed with her mouse. So she got a replacement computer. Who would guessed all the problems went away (because I didn't have another mouse like that). I guess when our IT guy took the computer to his room and really thoroughly check it he found my USB.

So he told her what was the problem she was so pissed off really I didn't see her pissed off so much in all my 4 years in high school. She demanded the apology from whom did it. And at that moment my mind went through all possible scenarios... And the most likely one was that I was going to be expelled... And I didn't have the balls to say that I did it and I was too afraid... Thanks to God nobody from my school mates didn't tell that it was me.

While she waited that somebody would come forward there was one moment when our looks met and at that moment both of us knew that I was the one that did it.

Next day the whole class wrote the apology letter and she accepted it. But for the rest of 4 years whenever was there a problem with the computer I had to fixed it and she didn't trust anybody not even our IT guy at school. It was our unwritten contract that I would repair her computer to pay off my sin that I did. And she once even trusted me with her personal laptop.

So to end this story I have really high respect for her because she is a great teacher and great persons that guide me through my teen years. And we stayed in contact.

I just released a tiny game for iPhone!

It's basically an attempt to mix 'Heroes of Might & Magic' and mtg.

In the screenshot my terminal says 'helloworld.cpp'. That's right, this is my first c++ program and I don't care how crappy you think this game is, I'm super proud of myself!

I've always worked in data science where managers assume I know how to code because there's text on my screen and I can query and wrangle data, but I actually didn't know what a class was until like 3 years into my job.

Making this game was my attempt to really evolve myself away from just statistics / data transforms into actual programming. It took me forever but I'm really happy I did it

It was brutal at first using C++ instead of R/Python that data science people usually use, but now I start to wonder why it isn't more popular. Everything is so insanely fast. You really get a better idea of what your computer is actually doing instead of just standing on engineers' shoulders. It's great.

After the game was 90% finished (LOL) I started using Swift and Spritekit to get the visuals on the screen and working on iPhone. That was less fun. I didn't understand how to use xCode at all or how to keep writing tests, so I stopped doing TDD because I was '90% done anyway' and 'surely I'll figure out how to do basic debugging'. I'll know better next time...

You know, there is so much of a push to get girls to start programming. You know what, the industry is doing just fine, and if a girl wants to get in, she can. Girls shouldn't be considered special, they shouldn't be given a handicap and no one should assume they are worse.

There is absolutely no money to be made in the "Girls who Code" push and people need to start seeing that they are polluting everything.

I just saw, on Shark Tank, some crappy version of the Sphero, which may be the biggest insult to a product, ever, that was basically a Barbie driving around and you can program it. I want to die.

It should be FUCKING ILLEGAL to show intrusive popups on the web AND on the desktop. The fucking moron 'developers' who do this type of crap should be fined in the $M range and then banned from using a fucking computer ever again.

It's one fucking thing when a crappy program shows an intrusive update popup when you open it (see notepad++, FileZilla and more), but when I am not even using your fucking malware, but you still shove an update popup in my face while I'm working is just on the next fucking level.

There should be a law that makes this kind of retarded bullshit illegal....

!rant

How I think the process for designing a hardware-driver is like

CEO: "Alright everyone, we have designed and created this great product, now let's write a driver for it!"

PM: "Great then! We just code for Windows, create an eye-catching UI but leave the actual at the worst possible case that could work!"

Dev: "B-But isn't there other OSes, like Linux and Android that people use on their computers too?"

PM: "Shut up! We are going to JUST support Windows and f*** no absolutely other OSes!

Dev: "But what if they are also developers, and want to control and use this great product by programming it themselves? We should make the driver open-source, or at least give them some APIs!"

PM: "Nonsense! They are only going to use this product on M$ Windows, and with the program we provide to them, even if it's crappy and crashes most of the time!"

Dev: "But-but..."

PM: "No buts! That's our final decision!"

And some other consumer devs are like, "F*** it, we just reverse-engineer the codes and write a new driver ourselves!"

:|

SCStudentRant?

I have a subj called "Fundaments of Operative Systems" (or something along those lines), and I have 2 crappy teachers, one for the theory classes, the other for the exercise classes.
The exercise classes teacher is said to be the worst in uni and every time I think about that class I get a bit anxious because I can never do anything in it. Basically we don't get taught code in theory classes and he just comes and says "do this exercise" without explaining anything first. And when he does I still don't understand it.
I bet like 90% of us have no idea how to program in C and we need that for those classes. I hate C with a passion because of this.
In the theory classes, the teacher explains most of the things without powerpoints, and when we don't understand something (either ask about something he said or what's written in the board), he REFUSES to explain or say what's written, because he has "explained it before". He even chuckles as if it was really funny that we can't read his handwriting or just didn't listen because we were writting things down OH MY GOD. So most of the times when I copy things from the boards and then look at them at home I'm like "what the hell is this, this doesn't make any sense, what did he even write" (has some word that looks like what he wrote with ?? around it)
I think they wanna watch us fail. I really do.
I kinda understand the theory classes, but half the test is writing code. How am I gonna write code if I don't understand it? I have a work for that subj to deliver until monday but I can't make it work because I don't know the code I have to write. Damn it all to hell jesus christ

Additional note: they're both in their 60s and should be retiring not long from now so maybe that's why they act so carelessly.
Love the uni, not so much some of the teachers

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

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

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

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

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

Yay. Thanks for reading :)

I recently tried to apply the same data analytics rationale that I use at work to my personal life. This is not a rant, it is more like an data storytelling of an actual use case I would like some input on.

I set a goal - gotta thin up a bit and calm down my ticker - and got a (almost unreasonably expensive) field expert consultant to yell at me about it for a couple hours.

I unravel the metrics - there is like a million weight-related KPIs and most say nothing at all. I have never seen an non-infrastructure measurable subject that could not be resumed to 2-5 performance metrics. I got overall weight, how well my nine-years-old business suit fits me, heart rate, and day-after relative muscle pain (it will make sense soon).

Then its data-pipeline time. I bought a cheap weight scale and smartwatch, and every morning I input the data in an app. Yes, I try to put on the suit every morning. It still does not fit.

After establishing a baseline, I tried to fit different approaches. Doing equipment-free exercises, going to the gym, dieting. None was actually feasible in the long run, but trying different approaches does highlight the impacts and the handling profile of each method.

Looking at the now-gathered data, one thing was obvious - can't do dieting because it is not doable to have a shopping list and meals for me and another for the family.
Gym is also off the table - too much overhead. I spend more time on the trip there and back than actually there.
And home exercise equipment is either super crappy or very expensive. But it is also the most reasonable approach.

So it is solutions time. I got a nice exercise bycicle (not a peloton), an yoga mat (the wife already had that one) and an exercise program that uses only those two resources. Not as efficient without dieting, not as measurable and broad as the gym, but it fits my workflow. Deploy to production!

A few months pass and the dataset grows. The signal is subtle but has support - it works! The handling, however, needs improvement, since I cannot often enough get with the exercise program. Some mornings are just after some hard days.

I start thinking about what else I can improve in the program, but it is already pretty lean and full of compromises.
So I pull an engineer and start thinking about the support systems and draft profile. What else could be draining my willpower and morning time?

Chores. Getting the kids ready for school, firing up the moka pot, setting the off-brand roomba, folding the overnight-dried clothes, cooking breakfast, doing the dishes, cleaning the toilets. All part of my morning routine. It might benefit from some automation.

Last month I got that machine our elders call "wasteful" and "useless crap lazy entitled Americans invented because they feel oh-so-insulted for simply doing something by hand like everyone always did" - a "dish-washer".
Heh, I remember how hard was to convince my mother-in-law that an remote-controled electric garage door would not make she look like an spoiled brat.
Still to early to call, but I think that the dishwasher just saved me about 25 mins every morning. It might be enough to save willpower for me to do more exercise.

This is all so reflective of all data analytics cases really are out in the wild - the analytics phase seems so small compared to the gathering and practical problem-solving all around. And yet d.a. is what tells you that you are doing the wrong thing all along. Or on what you should work next.

Finaly I write my first rant about dev stuff.

My mom works as a shop clerk in the optic shop (they sell glasses). It is a small shop run by family buisness (not by my mom, she is only employed there). She had been constantly complaining about the poor pc performance and how the program there are using for inventory managment always hangs.
Her boss decided to "upgrade" the pc's by buing macs, but he was stopped by me and my mom. (I was helping them with some IT stuff so i had a bit of a influence over that).
The program they are using was written by some amateur programer that is a boss of a similar shop somewhere in the country.

So i recommended to them to install SSD's to speed up their pc's, and it did nothing. Of course i blammed the poorly written program next.

The program hangs when you type in the find field. I wanted to check if my gut feeling was right so i asked them to have task manager open when they type. And my feeling was right.

When you change anything in the text find bar, the program sends a crap ton of requests to the local server and that server sends a crap ton of packiets back, enough to saturate the local connection...

I will try to rewrite the app myself, just for the challenge of it. I want to check if i can write a better one than this one pos. They still want to buy better pc's but they wont be any help to them... Well i will help them with that anyway (having good pc's is good anyway). I hope i can create the app that will fix their problems...

I don't know what the devs at ProShow are smoking but I want some. Their product, specifically ProShow Production, is garbo. Don't get me wrong, the stuff is great for making slideshow with effects and stuff but good GOD.

+ If your image's name or the full path to the image contains anything that is not (I think) ASCII, the program will refuse to work with it.
+ If you're using non-English characters for eg. caption ("ẫ" for example) even on a Unicode font that supports that char, it will render a box. You know which box it is. You have to specifically use a font family to have it rendered correctly at the exchange of ugly-ass fonts that has been overused.
+ A majority of keyboard shortcuts are not supported while editing a slide (Ctrl + A, Ctrl + Z being my two favorite).

The best part? I'm forced to use this thing because of time constraints. I'd rather fry my puny 4GB RAM stick and crappy Intel HD Graphics 550 working with Premiere/After Effects than using ProShow. But nooope. ProShow. Fuck you.

If I wanted to do some 1990s hackers shit, but more for this time period is there a way i can autopilot the apps on a smartphone that offer those crappy free numbers and auto-dial with them and feed / receive audio information into/from them via a program ?