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So this was a couple years ago now. Aside from doing software development, I also do nearly all the other IT related stuff for the company, as well as specialize in the installation and implementation of electrical data acquisition systems - primarily amperage and voltage meters. I also wrote the software that communicates with this equipment and monitors the incoming and outgoing voltage and current and alerts various people if there's a problem.
Anyway, all of this equipment is installed into a trailer that goes onto a semi-truck as it's a portable power distribution system.
One time, the computer in one of these systems (we'll call it system 5) had gotten fried and needed replaced. It was a very busy week for me, so I had pulled the fried computer out without immediately replacing it with a working system. A few days later, system 5 leaves to go work on one of our biggest shows of the year - the Academy Awards. We make well over a million dollars from just this one show.
Come the morning of show day, the CEO of the company is in system 5 (it was on a Sunday, my day off) and went to set up the data acquisition software to get the system ready to go, and finds there is no computer. I promptly get a phone call with lots of swearing and threats to my job. Let me tell you, I was sweating bullets.
After the phone call, I decided I needed to try and save my job. The CEO hadn't told me to do anything, but I went to work, grabbed an old Windows XP laptop that was gathering dust and installed my software on it. I then had to build the configuration file that is specific to system 5 from memory. Each meter speaks the ModBus over TCP/IP protocol, and thus each meter as a different bus id. Fortunately, I'm pretty anal about this and tend to follow a specific method of id numbering.
Once I got the configuration file done and tested the software to see if it would even run properly on Windows XP (it did!), I called the CEO back and told him I had a laptop ready to go for system 5. I drove out to Hollywood and the CFO (who was there with the CEO) had to walk about a mile out of the security zone to meet me and pick up the laptop.
I told her I put a fresh install of the data acquisition software on the laptop and it's already configured for system 5 - it *should* just work once you plug it in.
I didn't get any phone calls after dropping off the laptop, so I called the CFO once I got home and asked her if everything was working okay. She told me it worked flawlessly - it was Plug 'n Play so to speak. She even said she was impressed, she thought she'd have to call me to iron out one or two configuration issues to get it talking to the meters.
All in all, crisis averted! At work on Monday, my supervisor told me that my name was Mud that day (by the CEO), but I still work here!
Here's a picture of the inside of system 8 (similar to system 5 - same hardware)
15 -
My first job: The Mystery of The Powered-Down Server
I paid my way through college by working every-other-semester in the Cooperative-Education Program my school provided. My first job was with a small company (now defunct) which made some of the very first optical-storage robotic storage systems. I honestly forgot what I was "officially" hired for at first, but I quickly moved up into the kernel device-driver team and was quite happy there.
It was primarily a Solaris shop, with a smattering of IBM AIX RS/6000. It was one of these ill-fated RS/6000 machines which (by no fault of its own) plays a major role in this story.
One day, I came to work to find my team-leader in quite a tizzy -- cursing and ranting about our VAR selling us bad equipment; about how IBM just doesn't make good hardware like they did in the good old days; about how back when _he_ was in charge of buying equipment this wouldn't happen, and on and on and on.
Our primary AIX dev server was powered off when he arrived. He booted it up, checked logs and was running self-diagnostics, but absolutely nothing so far indicated why the machine had shut down. We blew a couple of hours trying to figure out what happened, to no avail. Eventually, with other deadlines looming, we just chalked it up be something we'll look into more later.
Several days went by, with the usual day-to-day comings and goings; no surprises.
Then, next week, it happened again.
My team-leader was LIVID. The same server was hard-down again when he came in; no explanation. He opened a ticket with IBM and put in a call to our VAR rep, demanding answers -- how could they sell us bad equipment -- why isn't there any indication of what's failing -- someone must come out here and fix this NOW, and on and on and on.
(As a quick aside, in case it's not clearly coming through between-the-lines, our team leader was always a little bit "over to top" for me. He was the kind of person who "got things done," and as long as you stayed on his good side, you could just watch the fireworks most days - but it became pretty exhausting sometimes).
Back our story -
An IBM CE comes out and does a full on-site hardware diagnostic -- tears the whole server down, runs through everything one part a time. Absolutely. Nothing. Wrong.
I recall, at some point of all this, making the comment "It's almost like someone just pulls the plug on it -- like the power just, poof, goes away."
My team-leader demands the CE replace the power supply, even though it appeared to be operating normally. He does, at our cost, of course.
Another weeks goes by and all is forgotten in the swamp of work we have to do.
Until one day, the next week... Yes, you guessed it... It happens again. The server is down. Heads are exploding (will at least one head we all know by now). With all the screaming going on, the entire office staff should have comped some Advil.
My team-leader demands the facilities team do a full diagnostic on the UPS system and assure we aren't getting drop-outs on the power system. They do the diagnostic. They also review the logs for the power/load distribution to the entire lab and office spaces. Nothing is amiss.
This would also be a good time draw the picture of where this server is -- this particular server is not in the actual server room, it's out in the office area. That's on purpose, since it is connected to a demo robotics cabinet we use for testing and POC work. And customer demos. This will date me, but these were the days when robotic storage was new and VERY exciting to watch...
So, this is basically a couple of big boxes out on the office floor, with power cables running into a special power-drop near the middle of the room. That information might seem superfluous now, but will come into play shortly in our story.
So, we still have no answer to what's causing the server problems, but we all have work to do, so we keep plugging away, hoping for the best.
The team leader is insisting the VAR swap in a new server.
One night, we (the device-driver team) are working late, burning the midnight oil, right there in the office, and we bear witness to something I will never forget.
The cleaning staff came in.
Anxious for a brief distraction from our marathon of debugging, we stopped to watch them set up and start cleaning the office for a bit.
Then, friends, I Am Not Making This Up(tm)... I watched one of the cleaning staff walk right over to that beautiful RS/6000 dev server, dwarfed in shadow beside that huge robotic disc enclosure... and yank the server power cable right out of the dedicated power drop. And plug in their vacuum cleaner. And vacuum the floor.
We each looked at one-another, slowly, in bewilderment... and then went home, after a brief discussion on the way out the door.
You see, our team-leader wasn't with us that night; so before we left, we all agreed to come in late the next day. Very late indeed.9 -
This is kind of a horror story, with a happing ending. It contains a lot of gore images, and some porn. Very long story.
TL;DR Network upgrade
Once upon a time, there were two companies HA and HP, both owned by HC. Many years went by and the two companies worked along side each one another, but sometimes there were trouble, because they weren't sure who was supposed to bill the client for projects HA and HP had worked on together.
At HA there was an IT guy, an imbecile of such. He's very slow at doing his job, doesn't exactly understand what he's doing, nor security principles.
The IT guy at HA also did some IT work for HP from time to time when needed. But he was not in charge of the infrastructure for HP, that was the jobb for one developer who didn't really know what he was doing either.
Whenever a new server was set up at HP, the developer tried many solutions, until he landed on one, but he never removed the other tested solutions, and the config is scattered all around. And no documentation!!
Same goes with network, when something new was added, the old was never removed or reconfigured to something else.
One dark winter, a knight arrived at HP. He had many skills. Networking, server management, development, design and generally a fucking awesome viking.
This genius would often try to cleanse the network and servers, and begged his boss to let him buy new equipment to replace the old, to no prevail.
Whenever he would look in the server room, he would get shivers down his back.
(Image: https://i.bratteng.xyz/Ie9x3YC33C.j...)
One and a half year later, the powerful owners in HA, HP and HC decided it was finally time to merge HA and HP together to HS. The knight thought this was his moment, he should ask CEO if he could be in charge of migrating the network, and do a complete overhault so they could get 1Gb interwebz speeds.
The knight had to come up with a plan and some price estimates, as the IT guy also would do this.
The IT guy proposed his solution, a Sonicwall gateway to 22 000 NOK, and using a 3rd party company to manage it for 3000 NOK/month.
"This is absurd", said the knight to the CEO and CXO, "I can come up with a better solution that is a complete upgrade. And it will be super easy to manage."
The CEO and CXO gave the knight a thumbs up. The race was on. We're moving in 2 months, I got to have the equipment by then, so I need a plan by the end of the week.
He roamed the wide internet, looked at many solutions, and ended up with going for Ubiquiti's Unifi series. Cheap, reliable and pretty nice to look at.
The CXO had mentioned the WiFi at HA was pretty bad, as there was WLAN for each meeting room, and one for the desks, so the phone would constantly jump between networks.
So the knight ended up with this solution:
2x Unifi Securtiy Gateway Pro 4
2x Unifi 48port
1x Unifi 10G 16port
5x Unifi AP-AC-Lite
12x pairs of 10G unifi fibre modules
All with a price tag around the one Sonicwall for 22 000 NOK, not including patch cables, POE injectors and fibre cables.
The knight presented this to the CXO, whom is not very fond of the IT guy, and the CXO thought this was a great solution.
But the IT guy had to have a say at this too, so he was sent the solution and had 2 weeks to dispute the soltion.
Time went by, CXO started to get tired of the waiting, so he called in a meeting with the knight and the IT guy, this was the IT guys chance to dispute the solution.
All he had to say was he was familiar with the Sonicwall solution, and having a 3rd party company managing it is great.
He was given another 2 weeks to dispute the solution, yet nothing happened.
The CXO gave the thumbs up, and the knight orders the equipment.
At this time, the knight asks the IT guy for access to the server room at HA, and a key (which would take 2 months to get sorted, because IT guys is a slow imbecile)
The horrors, Oh the horrors, the knight had never seen anything like this before.
(Image: https://i.bratteng.xyz/HfptwEh9qT.j...)
(Image: https://i.bratteng.xyz/HfptwEh9qT.j...)
(Image: https://i.bratteng.xyz/hmOE2ZuQuE.j...)
(Image: https://i.bratteng.xyz/4Flmkx6slQ.j...)
What are all these for, why is there a fan ductaped to on of the servers.
WHAT IS THIS!
Why are there cables tied in a knot.
WHY!
These are questions we never will know the answers too.
The knight needs access to the servers, and sonicwall to see how this is configured.
After 1.5 month he gains access to the sonicwall and one of the xserve.
What the knight discovers baffles him.
All ports are open, sonicwall is basically in bridge mode and handing out public IPs to every device connected to it.
No VLANs, everything, just open...10 -
One year ago, I quit my job in order to "make life easier". And by that I mean work+home in the same city. I went from 40 minutes commute - to 3 minutes. I had a blast the first week.
Then I realized that it was actually a mistake. I did not like working with "that kind of systems" and "that kind of tasks". It was tedious, stupid, and I was angry every, single day because the previous ones had built a system on 10-15 year old hardware because "it is cheaper".
That continued for a year. I discovered new stupid "solutions" every week that was potentially dangerous for the company. It built up a huge pile of shit and I started to feel that my mental health was disappearing, fast.
And equipment such as servers, switches, routers, storage started to fail because of age. Despite my warnings from day 0 to the CEO who only kinda laughed it off and said "you can to solve that", but I never got the approval to actually buy the equipment that was needed. Because "the company did'nt have the money for it". Somehow, the company had the money to buy expensive cars for the CEO - I can't really figure out that equation.
So today, one VERY old UPS died at our office. It caused some powerspike that killed off some switches and a NAS.
"Whatever" I thought, I just have to find the backup of the files and get a new one.
Then I discovered, that the NAS that acted as a iSCSI target for VM's and document storage was backed up using VEEAM on another server - that was configured to backup everything to the same NAS. I just wanted to cry, because I could not take anymore shit.
So I picked up my phone, called my old employer and asked if I could start working for them again. My old boss got insanely happy and gave me a great offer which I immediately accepted.
So tomorrow, is the day that I am going to walk into my current boss and say that I will quit. My last day will be on Christmas day. And I will start my new year with a few weeks off, and then back to the job that I actually loved.
Life is to short to work with something you hate.13 -
You start new job and take over huge codebase without tests and documentation.
It turns out programming language is custom language made by previous developer who was the only one maintaining project.
There is no source version control.
Language runs in vm developed in Fortran.
No one cared to this day cause everything was working.
Project is critical for multi billion dollar corporation that sells medical equipment that keep people alive.
You can’t test your code on real devices only on virtual ones that were made using same custom language but you can’t find source code for it.
Previous developer accidentally died before you were hired.
You signed contract with penalties that will ruin your life.
Your first task is to add “small” feature.
Good luck !12 -
The company I work for...
Has:
1. No CI/CD
2. SVN instead of GIT
3. Outsourcing to India (oof)
4. No Automated Testing
5. Uses Bugnet (ancient, outdated)
6. No clearly defined code standards
7. No real documentation on the code
8. Rubbish code
9. No desire to reduce technical debt
10. Poorly maintained DB
11. Poor outdated equipment
12. A useless PM
13. Still priotizes IE support (??)
On a scale of 1 to 10 how fucked is this company and anything they develop?41 -
Job offer: "All employees will be provided Macbooks"
Nope! Just nope.
Let your dev chose their equipment, thank you very much.
If they want a Linux laptop, buy them one. If they want a Windows workstation, give it to them. And if and only if they want a Macbook, give them a Macbook.
I used to work in two companies having the requirement to use a Macbook for two years.
I know its pros. I know its cons. My conclusion for me: Never again!13 -
It's funny, Oslo did an experiment a while ago to see how many IMSI catchers (fake cellphone towers to track everyone nearby) were used around the city
The experiment showed so many IMSI catchers that the researches thought their equipment was malfunctioning.
Actually, the whole fucking city was rigged with the catchers.9 -
Boss: I was looking over our expenses and was wondering why you are ordering a new piece of equipment?
Me: (I stand up & address my fellow code-drones) Can everybody save everything right now please. Good? Now newGuy commit your changes.
(Audible typing followed by the entire room groaning.)
Me: He just deleted everything...again and I am running out of backup storage.
Boss: ........So you want 1 of those things or 2?14 -
Planning a camping trip with my friends.
Friend1: I’ll bring the snacks.
Friend2: I’ll bring the equipment to build the tents.
Friend3: I’ll bring the first aid kit.
Everybody: who’s bringing the equipment to make the fire?
Me: I’ll do that. I’ll just run Android Studio on my laptop.
Everybody: woah woah man! Take it easy! We just want a simple fire, not burn the whole forest down!7 -
A while back I had a coworker who was just strange. I took a personal day one day, and came back to find my monitor (that I had brought from home) was gone. I was asking the people who worked around me where it went and after no one knew, I found it on someone else's desk. When I explained to him how I had brought it from home he denied he took it from my desk and continued that it was HIS from home! Turns out he had been taking other people's equipment around the office as well. He would rearrange furniture and even take down other people's personal decorations. He was eventually let go...5
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The Raspberry Pi is the most fun toy I've bought in ages. And this is coming from a guy who has 700+ games in his steam library, with dozens of midi equipment lying around.
7 -
Every single one of them, and every one that will come after them.
Google, it started out as 2 people in their garage, wanting to make a search engine that was better than the others. Nothing else, nothing evil. Just make the world a little bit better. And look what it's become now. A megacorporation with little to no regards for their user base. Because who cares about users anyway?
Microsoft, it started out with Bill Gates - young high school computer nerd - who wanted to make an operating system for the world to use. Something that's better than the competition. And boy did he do so. Well "better than the competition" aside, he did make it for the world to use. And the world adopted it. And look what it's become now. A megacorporation with little to no regards for their user base. Because who cares about users anyway?
See where I'm going here?
Apple, it started out with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in their garage, just like Google did, wanting to make hardware that was better than the others. Nothing else, nothing evil. Just to make the world a little bit better. And look what it's become now. Planned obsolescence has been baked into it, just like it is in every other piece of technology. Quality control and thinking through the design has become a thing of the past. User choice, yeah who cares about that.
Samsung, it started out centuries ago actually, and I don't really remember the details of it.. ColdFusion has a video on it if memory serves me right. Do watch it if you're interested. Anyway, just like all the others they started out as a company which wanted to make the world a little bit better. And damn right did they do so.. initially. Look what they've become now. Forcing their stupid TouchWiz UI upon their customers (or products?), a Bixby button that can't even be reprogrammed.. and the latest thing.. Knox, advertised as a security feature, but as everyone who likes rooting their devices and mucking with it knows, it is an anti-feature that only serves for lockdown. Why shouldn't you be able to turn in a phone for RMA when a hardware error occurs, when all you've personally modified is the software? Why should changing the software blow that eFuse, so that you can be sure that you can't replace it without specialized equipment and a very steady hand?
I could go on and on forever about more of the tech giants out there, but I feel like this suffices for now. Otherwise I won't have anything else left for future rants! But one thing I know for sure. Every tech company started, starts, and will start out with a desire to make the world a better place, and once they gain a significant customer base, they will without exception turn into the same kind of Evil Megacorp., just like the ones before them. Some may say that capitalism itself is to blame for this, the greed for more when you already have a lot. Who knows? I'd rather say that the very human nature itself is to blame for it. We're by design greedy beings, and I hate it. I hate being human for that. I don't want humans to be evil towards one another, and be greedy for ever more. But I guess that that's just the way it is, and some things do actually never change...17 -
At the data restaurant:
Chef: Our freezer is broken and our pots and pans are rusty. We need to refactor our kitchen.
Manager: Bring me a detailed plan on why we need each equipment, what can we do with each, three price estimates for each item from different vendors, a business case for the technical activities required and an extremely detailed timeline. Oh, and do not stop doing your job while doing all this paperwork.
Chef: ...
Boss: ...
Some time later a customer gets to the restaurant.
Waiter: This VIP wants a burguer.
Boss: Go make the burger!
Chef: Our frying pan is rusty and we do not have most of the ingredients. I told you we need to refactor our kitchen. And that I cannot work while doing that mountain of paperwork you wanted!
Boss: Let's do it like this, fix the tech mumbo jumbo just enough to make this VIP's burguer. Then we can talk about the rest.
The chef then runs to the grocery store and back and prepares to make a health hazard hurried burguer with a rusty pan.
Waiter: We got six more clients waiting.
Boss: They are hungry! Stop whatever useless nonsense you were doing and cook their requests!
Cook: Stop cooking the order of the client who got here first?
Boss: The others are urgent!
Cook: This one had said so as well, but fine. What do they want?
Waiter: Two more burgers, a new kind of modern gaseous dessert, two whole chickens and an eleven seat sofa.
Chef: Why would they even ask for a sofa?!? We are a restaurant!
Boss: They don't care about your Linux techno bullshit! They just want their orders!
Cook: Their orders make no sense!
Boss: You know nothing about the client's needs!
Cook: ...
Boss: ...
That is how I feel every time I have to deal with a boss who can't tell a PostgreSQL database from a robots.txt file.
Or everytime someone assumes we have a pristine SQL table with every single column imaginable.
Or that a couple hundred terabytes of cold storage data must be scanned entirely in a fraction of a second on a shoestring budget.
Or that years of never stored historical data can be retrieved from the limbo.
Or when I'm told that refactoring has no ROI.
Fuck data stack cluelessness.
Fuck clients that lack of basic logical skills.5 -
If you are a salesperson, you can just go straight to hell. You're all a bunch of cocksucking twats and I'm amazed you manage to get yourselves dressed each day. You're a no good fucking waste of oxygen and you need to put your fork in a socket the next time you're eating.
I'm working on building a crm and ticket management system for use in the office to handle client passwords. Since I'm building from scratch I wanted to make sure I had properly planned my classes and functions before opening the code editor so I put a message on my door that says "Don't interrupt, thanks" followed by the date so people knew it was a fresh message and not something left from the previous day.
I'm deep in the zone, the psuedo code and logic is flowing, I'm getting classes planned and feeling really productive for an hour or so when suddenly my door flies open and in comes a sales person.
SP: "Hey, do you have any extra phones lying around? Mine's being slow and keeps hanging up on people."
Me: "Do you see the sign on my door right there at eye level which says not to bother me?"
SP: "oh, do you want me to come back later?"
Me: "You've already interrupted me now, let's go see what's going on before I spent an hour setting up a new phone for you." While we are walking across the office I asked him when the last time the phone rebooted.
SP: "idk, Salesperson#2 suggested that as I was headed over here but I figured I'd just ask you."
We get over to his desk and I see he has two phones sitting on his desk. "Where did this one come from?"
SP: "Oh that was on the desk over here but I figured I could use it."
Me: "Well aside from the fact that the phones are assigned to specific people for a reason, you took the time to unhook your phone to set this one up and you didn't think to reboot your phone first. Plug your phone back in."
He plugs the old phone, which is assigned to him, and while booting it does a quick firmware update and boots up fine. He tests a few things and decides it's all better now.
So someone suggested a fix for you and you decided, instead, you would break company IT policy by moving equipment from one station to another without notifying the IT department. You entered a room which had a closed door without knocking, and you disobeyed the sign on the actual door itself which politely requests that you go away. All because you couldn't be bothered to take 2 minutes and reboot your phone, which you had to do anyways.
You completely broke my train of thought and managed to waste 2 hours of effecient workflow because you had an emergency.9 -
Rich CEO's are so out of touch with reality.
We outsourced part of our software development to a third world country. During hiring process I had pushed for us to hire the more expensive, more experienced devs in a second-world country, but nooo we must save up those bucks. The pay is so low you wouldn't be able to afford rent in *city where CEO lives*.
As @GiddyNaya has ranted about, third world countries face impossibly slow internet and frequent blackouts. I also ranted about it in my last post. The "last straw" for the CEO was when our dev's computer started malfunctioning.
boss: When is that computer from?
dev: 2017
boss: 2017?! That's a dinosaur! Of course you're having battery problems!
me, trying to come up with an affordable solution for our dev: Well, you can have the battery switched.
boss: But 2017 is too old! Your computer should be *at most* 5 years old. I cannot stress enough how important it is to have your work-related tools working. (last sentence is ad verbatim)
The boss, of course, recommended a Mac. Mind you, the closest Apple store to our dev is 500km away! And a month of their salary will not come close to paying a Macbook.
Providing them with the equipment? No! We're already paying them a "competitive" salary!
Like seriously, how out of touch with reality can you be? Does greed blind you that much?
(The dev seems to have fixed the computer problems on his own tho)14 -
!dev
Dear Airbnb Hosts,
The extra cleaning fee isn't just extra profit for you. I will gladly pick up after myself, before I leave. That said, if you expect me to deep clean your flat, consider leaving equipment to do so. If you send me a shitty email because I didn't buy a broom, mop, bucket and kitchen rags to stock your investment property, I'll tell you about where you can stick that noise.
Sincerely,
Fuck you7 -
Story time!
A little over a year ago I was in the hiring process with a new company and countered their initial offer. I was told by the CTO that it was no problem and they would get back to me soon.
A couple days go by and I'm then informed that they're hiring a new IT director and would like me to interview with him as well. It felt kinda lame since I'd already been offered the job but I rolled with it.
When I showed up to the office for an interview I tried to call and let them know I was there and couldn't get a hold of anyone. 30 minutes later I get a call from the CTO saying they couldn't find the new IT director and when they got him to answer the phone he said he had left early and would call me to do a phone interview.
Obviously the whole experience so far has been pretty lame but I stuck with it because I knew the CTO personally. I did the phone interview and quickly realized this dude was a prick, and would be a terrible boss, but I spoke with the CTO again who told me to stick with it and eventually I did get the job.
Fast forward about a month and it's clear the new director is trash. He literally bragged about firing a dude over an accidental outage (wtf!?).
He had the technical experience you'd expect of a junior help desk and his management skills were pretty clearly sub-par.
He was also, for whatever reason, completely unable to communicate with the only woman on our team. When assigning work he would always feel the need to ask if she could 'handle it' rather than just assigning it to her like it's done for everyone else. He was pretty clearly sexist.
The whole team hates this dude by this point but he's somehow managed to woo the executives into thinking he shits gold.
I was helping him set up a Python venv on his machine when I noticed another VPN client installed which certainly piqued my interest. After a bit of digging it was clear he was using company time and company equipment to continue working for his previous employer.
We turned over logs and he was fired the next day. He tried to add me on LinkedIn afterwards and I have never declined something quicker.
Moral of the story is don't be a dickhead.1 -
TLDR;
Wrote a slick scheduling and communication system allowing me to assign photography resources based on time and location.
I'll tell you a little secret ... I'm not actually a dev. I'm a photographer, pretending to be a dev.
Or ... perhaps it's the other way around? (I spend most of my time writing code these days, but only for me - I write the software I use to run my business).
I own a photography studio - we specialize in youth volleyball photography (mostly 12-18 year old girls with a bit of high school, college and semi-pro thrown in for good measure - it's a hugely popular sport) and travel all over the US (and sometimes Europe) photographing.
As a point of scale, this year we photographed a tournament in Denver that featured 100 volleyball courts (in one room!), playing at the same time.
I'm based in California and fly a crew of part-time staff around to these events, but my father and I drive our booth equipment wherever it needs to go. We usually setup a 30'x90' booth with local servers, download/processing/cashier computers and 45 laptops for viewing/ordering photographs. Not to mention 16' drape and banners, tons of samples, 55' TVs, etc. It's quite the production.
We photograph by paid signup only - when there are upwards of 800 teams/9,600 athletes per weekend playing, and you only have four trained photographers, you've got to manage your resources!
This of course means you have to have a system for taking sign those sign ups, assigning teams to photographers and doing so in the most efficient manner possible based on who is available when the team is playing. (You can waste an awful lot of time walking from one court to another in a large convention center - especially if you have to navigate through large crowds - not to mention exhausting yourself).
So this year I finally added a feature I've wanted for quite some time - an interactive court map. I can take an image of the court layout from the tournament and create an HTML version in our software. As I mouse over requests in one window, the corresponding court is highlighted on the map in another browser window. Each photographer has a color associated with them. When I assign requests to a photographer, the court is color coded with the color of the photographer. This allows me to group assignments to minimize photographer walk time and keep them in a specific area. It's also very easy to look at the map and see unassigned requests and look to see what photographer is nearby.
This year I also integrated with Twilio and setup a simple set of text shortcuts that photographers can use to let our booth staff know where they are, if they have memory cards that need picking up, if they need water/coffee/snack, etc. They can also move assignments on their schedule or send and SOS for help if it looks like they aren't going to be able to photograph a team.
Kind of a CLI via the phone. :)
The additions have turned out to be really useful and has made scheduling and managing the photographers much easier that it was in the past.
18 -
Wtf, really??? Are they trying to liyerally KILL ME????
Got home from hospital today wth my family. Baby got sick. Wife also caught cold... Bad news. It was just me still healthy like a raddish [we have such saying].
So I got home. Started feeling somewhat funny. Sore thighs, feeling nauseaus, chilly, a bit dizzy.
10 minutes later I'm fucking trembling! It felt as of I was kicked put bare ass to -20C outside! I'm not exaggerating [probably made some typos.. Pls correct me] - i live where winters get like -35C. Everything around got like twice darker. And my lower teeth got itchy af [NOT the best feeling, trust me].
I must have caught cold too - I thought to myself, cuz I know what these sympthoms mean. I always have 'em all when I have fever. Since shivers are caused by rising fever I got my Microlife remote thermometer out of my drawer. Click, blue light, wait, beeep. 36.5C. Allright.. Maybe I got it wrong... Try again -- same result. Wife also gave a couple tries - nada. Nil. Nullpointerexception. Healthy like a pickle!
10 minutes later I couldn't stand the cold. Got under my blankets wife made some soup, tea,... I still have this analog thermometer, the one with quicksilver. Pop it into my armpit - jusyt in case. 10minutes later I take it out. It says 39,5 and rising. Try the microlife again. 36,5. WHAT THE FUCK?????????
If I weren't so fond of old-school stuff I'd be in a fucking ER now!!
Fuck you medical digital equipment made to be used at home! FUCK YOU!!
I'm pissed.
Do you folks kbow where could I get those q-silver thermometers? Just in case. They're already out of matket in my area for quite some time... For being dangerous [i give 'em that, okay?] and.... Lisen to this.... "unreliable"!
FUCK IT!15 -
I've been working exclusively from home for over 2 years now. I've been seeing several posts from people talking about adjusting to working from home, so I figured I would compile a list of tips I've learned over the years to help make the adjustment easier for some people.
1) Limit as many distractions as possible. WFH makes it much easier to get distracted. If you have roommates/family members at home, ask them politely to leave you alone while you're working. Make sure the TV is turned off, put your phone on silent, etc.
2) Take regular breaks. I find it easier to accidentally go hours without taking a real break from work. Try working in half hour intervals, and then taking 5-10 minute breaks. Read an article, watch a youtube video, grab some coffee/tea, etc.
3) When you eat lunch, eat it away from your computer. I often find myself eating lunch trying to wrap up fixing a bug, which makes it feel like I never really "took a lunch." Lately I've been trying to step away and do something else completely unrelated to work.
4) Get ready for work like you normally would. It's very easy to wake up, throw on your favorite pair of sweats and sit at the computer with messy hair half awake "ready" to start the day. Instead try doing your normal morning routine before sitting at your computer. It will help your mind and body go into "it's time to work" mode.
5) Keep your work area clean. I find it very difficult to work when my workspace is cluttered. Studies have shown working in a messy place tend to make us less efficient.
6) Keep your work area work related. Try to only have the things you need for work in your workspace. If you're working from your personal computer this can be difficult. I always end up with camera/music equipment left over from the previous night's photo editing/jam sessions. So try to clean off your desk when you're done for the night so it's ready for work in the morning.
7) Prepare for meetings. I have alarms set 10 minutes in advance so I can go from programming mode to meeting mode. During this time I'll go to the bathroom, grab a snack, water, mute all my email notifications, close any non essential programs, get my code ready if I need to present it.
Stuff is hard & stressful right now, but hopefully these tips will make it a bit easier. If anyone else has any good tips please share them.5 -
Not the equipment I deserve, but the equipment I can afford. My phone has better specs than it...
11 -
Salesperson makes commission on sales, CTO gets bonus for going to out of office meetings, designer gets bonus for every design finished. What does the web developer get?
Answer: "we can't afford to give out bonuses just for doing your job."
There are 10 websites to build in the next 6 months, 3 brand new offices in different states that need it equipment ordered and installed by me, and the other 160 clients who all think their edits are most important.
And to top it all off, every time I give an estimate for the work, boss says "just give it to them." Gee, maybe you could afford to pay me a living wage or incentivize me to keep working 6+ hours a night at home if you stopped giving away everything I build for free.
You lower the value of my work and every other web developer out there when you tell clients that the website I built them isn't worth paying for. If every one of the free sites on my list was just charged the minimum $10k, I'm looking at $200k on this board that could have been used to hire me some help or increase my pay to make me feel appreciated.
I love my job and the people I work with, but when you aren't making enough to pay the bills and you work 70+ hours a week something has to change.8 -
Number one thing I never expected, when moving networking equipment...
Some idiot wired a 230v socket in a mildly terrifying and dangerous way... Yes, that is 400v and all my equipment has now let out the magic white smoke...
Fuck some electricians!
24 -
New Equipment 🤗🤗🤗♥️
I mean, thats a fucking UltraWide Display -- and it seems to be small beneath the tv 😂😂
18 -
Finaly! I dont work anymore!
Few days ago my contract had ended. I dont need to go to that stupid factory and process 400 to 800 gears a day! Finaly I wont be all dirty, oily and dusty constantly!
Three months ago I decided to earn a bit of money to not waste my holiday time. (I could do my projects but im a lazy fuck and i would propably end up playing pc games). It was worth it. I earned aproximatley 500 freedom cash per month. (Thats A LOT in my country). It wasnt plesant experience tho. Dust was everywere, i had been working at heat treatment section of that factory (but i was using grinding machine, so yeah perfect place for that) so temperatures were ranging from 40°C to 50°C. I had to wear protective equipment as well!
If you think 36°C is hell try working there!
Im currently at student integration camp for new students. I hope that im going to have great time! Also lectures start next month. Im going to study electronic and computer engieering in english (in poland).
When the school finaly starts Im going to join few student clubs and i hope they are going to help me with my computer and electronic projects.
Thats all! Time to get drunk!
2 -
Dev: (Watches user print out screenshot of maintenance app to do list, walk across facility to printer. walk across facility to equipment and check things off on paper, then walk across facility back to their terminal and copy the findings over.)
Dev: We made the app responsive so they could do that on a mobile device. Why are they printing?
Manager: Printers are cheaper than getting more tablets.
Dev: …
Dev: Can we at least get a printer at each terminal so they don’t waste so much time walking across the facility?
Manager: That’s too many printers to maintain. It’s easier to just have one.
Dev: …8 -
I’ve started the process of setting up the new network at work. We got a 1Gbit fibre connection.
Plan was simple, move all cables from old switch to new switch. I wish it was that easy.
The imbecile of an IT Guy at work has setup everything so complex and unnecessary stupid that I’m baffled.
We got 5 older MacPros, all running MacOS Server, but they only have one service running on them.
Then we got 2x xserve raid where there’s mounted some external NAS enclosures and another mac. Both xserve raid has to be running and connected to the main macpro who’s combining all this to a few different volumes.
Everything got a static public IP (we got a /24 block), even the workstations. Only thing that doesn’t get one ip pr machine is the guest network.
The firewall is basically set to have all ports open, allowing for easy sniffing of what services we’re running.
The “dmz” is just a /29 of our ip range, no firewall rules so the servers in the dmz can access everything in our network.
Back to the xserve, it’s accessible from the outside so employees can work from home, even though no one does it. I asked our IT guy why he hadn’t setup a VPN, his explanation was first that he didn’t manage to set it up, then he said vpn is something hackers use to hide who they are.
I’m baffled by this imbecile of an IT guy, one problem is he only works there 25% of the time because of some health issues. So when one of the NAS enclosures didn’t mount after a power outage, he wasn’t at work, and took the whole day to reply to my messages about logins to the xserve.
I can’t wait till I get my order from fs.com with new patching equipment and tonnes of cables, and once I can merge all storage devices into one large SAN. It’ll be such a good work experience.
7 -
South Africa Electricity:
This is after I lost my 7th 3000VA online UPS...
In South Africa we have 240V power most of the time which is great, but then there is scheduled power outages (because our electricity companies cannot "handle the load").
When we have a power outage we have automatic generators which brings everything back up although there is still the 1 minute drop which has weird spikes and odd voltages before switching to the generator (as the generators wait until they are stable)
This has being destroying our equipment, we had a $2000 repair bill 3 TIMES for 3 SEPERATE Xerox Machines that have surge protectors although their circuit board somehow fried.
We have lost 7 3000VA UPSes (3 different brands) and 5 voltage regulators we put to protect the UPSes.
The one UPS that fried just had 2 dead fuses, I decided to replace them (unplugged the batteries to avoid 240V) and when plugging the batteries back in there was a huge spark and flame and the metal and plastic melted onto the board and turned black (the metal pins to connect the battery are non existant now)
I am done with electricity...
P.S. 2 of our generators also got hit by lightning as we are high on a hill and ALL the plastic cable coverings inside the generator were melted14 -
I fucking hate holidays. Every goddamn time when it's a holiday, that's when I need to go to the store and get something, only to find out that they're closed. And what for.. holidays are - to me at least - no more than an excuse for people to not go to work for the day.
So, now I ran out of booze, and can't continue developing and testing my breathalyzer until Monday.
Then it hit me.. what if I take all my Arduino equipment (laptop, jumper wires, ...) to the café and deploy my build environment on a table there?
Eh, no no no. I don't want some idiot to come up to me saying "YOU EVIL HEKORMAN!!!" and have to explain that just like when you call a banker who's working with the money vaults a thief, it's wrong to call someone that's developing shit an evil hacker.. one should strive to not throw mindless accusations out of unknowingness. Not that I'm a good example of that though. But still.
It's probably that or some stupid bitch coming up to me asking to hack her boyfriend's Phasebuk.. that said, that could probably be an opportunity to get in her pants. But then, I don't wanna insert my meat in an idiot like that... ._.
So, no booze it is then? Thanks national holidays!
"Ok Google, remind me every day before a holiday because I really couldn't care less about them!!"16 -
Did I every tell you about that time I scared a boss (not mine, he was in the room) so much, that he was to scared to enter my office for the next couple of weeks? 😅
Good times 😊
Tl;dr: He was the reason I was working at max capacity and then he started complaining that shit wasn't working.
Full story:
I was out of office, building up a new site. I was the only IT working that day, others were out on vacation.
Suddenly I start getting flooded with calls from other sites, that nothing works. It is so bad, that my boss can't reach me on the company phone, so he calls me on my private phone.
Apparently all the servers are down.
So me into a taxi, heading for the main office.
When I get there I just start booting the servers on by one, because they didn't like that they had lost power. While I'm working, my boss is standing there, ready to help.
Another boss enters the office and goes: "I can't access Navision". To which I quickly reply something like: "Well everything is down, I'm the only one who can fix it and I'm working as fast as I can".
Two weeks later, another employee tells me, that the other boss has been running all his equipment off a battery backup, since the failure, because his power cord failed. He spilled a cup of coffee on it and therefore was the reason, that all the servers lost power (bad setup, I know). And apparently I was so frightening that he didn't have the courage to ask for a new power cord 😂
Best thing was that my boss never stopped me or told me that I did something wrong.2 -
Dear Australian Government and National Authorities, you can go fuck the right away with this shit!
It’s bad enough we are a country of national data collection with flimsy laws of obtaining access to said data, but to then go that one step further and shove back doors into everything is going too far.
https://news.com.au/technology/...
Under the proposed new laws, Australian government agencies could compel companies to provide technical information such as design specifications to help in an investigation, remove electronic protections, assist in accessing material on a device subject to a warrant and even build or install software or equipment that could help authorities gather information.
What could possibly go wrong 🤷♂️2 -
Fuck stripped screws. A big FUCK to all those manufacturers using fucking cheap screws. Fuck them all.
Now, I am stuck here. Don't have the equipment to remove this motherfucker.
13 -
A PCB I designed on the job over the last weeks shipped today! A benefit of hardware is the haptic element you have at the end of the design process - you made something touchable. (I am proud.)
Also, errors made earlier in the design process are permanent now. But other than on my software my design got reviewed, so I'm optimistic it'll not contain many if any.
I'm on vacation right now for moving stuff but I'm looking forward to do the "pick'n place" on monday. Soldering manually is quite relaxing for me, you should try it, too! ;)
In other news, I'm no longer sleeping on the floor in my home-office while the paint is drying in other rooms.
I already moved the most of my stuff - books and tech equipment are the worst - and I moved my furniture yesterday.
My new roommates are considerably quieter and my sleeping rhythm is slowly shifting back to normal.10 -
Best co-worker quitting story?
"T" I've refereed to in previous rants knew he was close to being fired, so he jumped ship. 'T' sent the usual "I'll miss you guys" email to the department, except me (and a few others that didn't fall for his BS and not scared of him). His mistake was he sent the email out a day early (buddy forwarded me the email) and left the stuff (box of pics, books, etc) he planned on taking with him. One item in particular was a new company provided laptop bag, which technically wasn't his to keep (supposed to leave/turn-in any company provided equipment), so I grabbed the bag and hid it.
The next day I heard him slamming drawers (looking for the bag) and a loud cursing. Other devs peeking over the walls asking what's wrong.
Dev1: "Dude, what's up? Whatcha' looking for?"
T: "Nothing...fuck!...damn it...nothing...assholes...fucking assholes!"
Dev2: "Who's the ass? What's wrong?"
Dev3: "Need help looking for something?"
T: "No..no...nothing...I'm fine...making sure I don't forget anything."
'T' never found out who took the bag and I've had that laptop bag underneath my desk ever since.5 -
I worked someplace once that fired a person for lack of quality output. Before that he sued the company over a labor dispute. After they fired him he went and founded his own business. A year later the company decided to recycle his old laptop to another developer and discovered the source code and business prospectus on it. The company took it to court and said it was actually their business because it was created on its own equipment and the time stamps confirm during business hours also. Courts agreed and they got possession of his business and then fired him again.6
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I wrote a tool that aligns an array of cameras. It was used several times, and it failed occasionally, so the operators claimed my code was buggy. Yesterday one of them came to me, saying that my code was alright - they just flipped the axes of the alignment equipment during those failed attempts.
Me:
1 -
Where I work we develop drivers and command-line software for embedded systems. The contracts we have with our customers tend to be in the £100k-£500k range and are usually completed in 6 - 9 months; our team is made up of 20 developers. You would think that it would be worthwhile investing in the department. But no, instead we have to deal with >10 year old build servers on their last legs; limited numbers of development boards with wires soldered on so that we can keep up with new board revisions; no room for R&D into new products; and to top it all off, not one of the executives has a laptop on par with the placement students in the next department. It's like the company is trying to kill the department, we've seen our staffing dwindle with no new graduate (or higher) positions being made available in the last 3 years while we've lost at least 5 people to other places. I just don't get it!3
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A month or so ago this manufacturer of soldering equipment contacted me with the request to make a video about a review unit (a soldering handle) that they'd send to me for free in exchange. Initially I was really pumped about it - company would send me free stuff!! - but fast-forward to today and I realized how terrible a choice I've made by accepting that offer.
See, that handle is worth only €40 and I've spent so much time on the bloody video material already that it'd make my "pay" expected to be close to €1/h if not less. I feel like I've been exploited, especially since I don't even like the handle's design and am not using it. It's just collecting dust, making my work essentially free labor.
I could return the item but that's gonna cost me a fuckload of money, I could pay for the handle and cut my losses that way.. or I could do the review anyway and end up feeling very bad about that company. Or I could tell them to fuck off and lose a supply chain for my soldering equipment.
I have no idea what to do about this..
Oh and the fact that the correspondent in that company has the worst Chinglish skills imaginable, the communication skills of a toddler and is also super indecisive (they asked me to make a YouTube video first which led me to assume a video format for YouTube, but instead they want to put it on their fucking AliExpress product page, rendering my existing video footage useless!) doesn't help either.. I hate that shit company. Fucking leeches!
Anyway, what would you do when you're in a position like that?6 -
Personally the coolest was the program I built for my fathers use on his job.
It was my first to be used commercially in the real.
That was a very big thing, I was 17 at the time an used turbo pascal 5.5 and he used it to compute how well all machinery was doing, they rented out diggers and other construction equipment to construction sites and manually compute this with a calculator took up to three days. (This was 1987 so there was not very many ready made programs for business, you often had to build your own)
With this program he had it done in around 30 minutes.
The next best was recently when I got my raft distributed consensus cluster server working. Its a little bit like zookeeper.
Building that purely from the research paper was rewarding but a bit of a challenge.3 -
You guys, I think I know what is it....I think I know why I wanted to be a developer.
It started off innocently enough. I was a young lad in IT. Wide-eyed. Absorbing anything and everything I could. Then, the asshole clients came.....
I would put on my best customer service face on, and address the client as calmly and as respectfully as I could. Reminding myself that their frustration is understandable.
To deal with the increased time dealing with clients took, I developed scripts to help me handle maintenance and keep my head above water. I developed scripts to streamline equipment provisioning for big deployments. I developed scripts to handle other technicians who didn't log-off the phone queue and fucked up our on-call flow. I put in place email rules to sift through the bullshit and time wasters.
I became a developer to streamline and make myself as efficient as possible. But the clients keep nagging. The bullshit keeps coming. The other players get in your fucking way.
There is no end you guys.... THIS IS ONLY TUESDAY. I can't script the passage of time. I'm....I'm.... I need a fucking nap.1 -
20+ years ago we got a contract to replace an old home grown system for managing rented equipment for a company with offices in two countries with a new standard system.
I was tasked with building a few addon modules to handle import and reporting that the standard system lacked.
Over the course of 8 months and multiple trips to their head office for on premises development along side their people that knew how it should work (there was a lot of waiting for info so it was not 8 months of actual work) we finally was ready to present the finished solution.
After about one hour of demonstration their boss questioned why we did not demonstrate the connection to their corporate group accounting system ...
“Corporate group accounting?”
After some confused discussion it turns out that in one of the first meetings the sales person had they had mentioned this accounting system and that all accounting info was to be exported there.
This requirement was never listed in the specifications we got and looking into it it turned out that the standard system did not support such exports at all.
In the end we had to throw it all away as it proved impossible to get that info out of the system (which was not of our design).
We barely avoided having to repay all fees as their people had approved the specification but standing there without a clue to what he was asking for was a very scary experience, thinking “how could we miss this?”2 -
Recently started a new job and had a fellow employee find a 27" monitor for me. The monitor did not have an hdmi or usb3 cable to hook it up. I make a request to help desk for a new one where their response is:
HDMI cables are not standard equipment and must be approved by your manager.
Okay, I forwarded it to my manager and it still isn't approved. So it is day three of having this nice but blank monitor on my desk! Fuck it, ordering from Amazon.7 -
Office survival tip #1: When in a new office with no kitchen, heat your food with the office heater.
How @JacoKotze and I are heating our food in our new office (no kitchen equipment or microwave yet)
4 -
I worked for a company who supplied CERN with some ultra high end equipment.
At one point the guys at CERN email me "Problem, check this out."
The picture was of some burnt out ultra expensive cards that fit into a larger chassis... the cards looked like they had been exposed to a fire that was located exactly between the cards, but none of the cards themselves looked like they had been on fire. The chips and such looked burnt, but more so exposed to a very hot fire, not like they were on fire themselves.
It was weird. I sent them some crates to securely ship them to our QA folks, and ordered them up about $500k in replacement equipment.
QA later said they never got the equipment, someone "from another department" picked them up from the dock. And CERN never asked about what QA found, that was weird because they always asked.4 -
Years ago I used to work a guvmant site. They had really strict security rules for internet and how you spent your time. Makes sense considering what that site did. I was a support engineer for some of their process control equipment.
I was approached by an operator supervisor to install dvd player software on a business machine (non process related). Basically just a general purpose PC with no function other than time cards and general office use. I was fine with the request, but the reason was for watching movies during a holiday period by the operators. Not for anything official. So I made some noise about my dislike of this request feigning moral superiority. But the supervisor swore up and down it was for "training" dvds.
So I wrote a simple windows script. The script basically popped up a window that said:
"Security has detected unauthorized media inserted into this machine. Please state the reason for this infraction." It provided a dialog to enter a justification. After you entered the justification it said: "Security has been contacted and your user logged. You will be contacted shortly."
This script was then attached to the supervisors Start folder so it ran when he, and only he logged in. We made sure the "training" video (some movie) was already inserted at this point.
He logged in. He just about shit his pants when reading this. He promptly logged and left the building to walk somewhere else in the site. We called him and let him know it was a gag. His response: That son of a bitch Demolishun!2 -
A friend of mine who just started work as an Applications Developer. One of his duties is to I quote "Create and maintain inventory, which may include hardware, software and various items such as toners and peripheral equipment"
We had a good laugh together.4 -
Who are the people who are pushing for phones, laptops and desktops to be even thinner? Do they actually exist?! Or are that mythical creatures invented by Apple engineers so they can get paid to invent new stuff?
"Yeah, we need to invent a new keyboard design as customers are complaining how fat our pro laptops are."
I don't think I've looked at a laptop built in the last decade and wondered how I'll carry it with my tiny frame.
Just give me a Mac Pro that is a solid chunk of aluminum with a removable drive and access to the RAM. It'll look fine and it's going to sit quietly on my desk. I promise not to move it without hiring at least two men with appropriate safety equipment.
I want someone to stand up at an Apple keynote and say, "We made this thicker---you're welcome."13 -
"Smart" home gym equipment: expensive hardware for some grand, proprietary software, and ongoing subscription fees in the $50/mo ballpark.
The SW is usually designed so that even shit that could have been local is instead stored remote as to make the subscription look more worthwhile. The large front-up cost serves not only as revenue, but also to anchor the vendor lock-in.
Open source hackers could potentially unchain the HW so that users would actually own what they purchased, but there is a catch: the HW is sold at a loss, and the subscription is the business model.
Freeing up the HW would render the subscription rather useless, and ramping up the HW sales prices to profitability would destroy any demand.
Basically, it's products that are technically feasible, but not economically viable. Which is why they are not the future of home gyms.22 -
People with dirty, greasy keyboards and mice. They obviously never wash their hands and all that disgusting gunk builds up around where they touch.
The feeling when you use someone else's mouse, and you can feel the lumpy texture of the sticky grey filth on it.
Clean your desk equipment occasionally, people. Also, wash your hands properly after using the bathroom, and it won't even be much of a problem.8 -
When my company moved to the big city we all got new equipment. I selected a ThinkPad and two 24" Dell monitors. Most got themselves a MacBook pro and a 27" Samsung monitor.
Once the new great arrived I started my journey to free the poor ThinkPad from the spy-software that is windows and install Arch.
Everything went smooth until I connected both monitors via MST to the single mini Displayport. Screens flickered, flashed or started dark. Even the display inside the ThinkPad. After half a day of trying to get MST to work with the Nvidia/Intel hybrid graphic inside my ThinkPad I installed Windows on the second ssd and got some actual work done.
The next day I finally managed a static xconf that had all three displays in just the right configuration and I started to work on Linux.
The story would end here if Arch wasn't Arch and I had not installed updates when I did.
After about 6 month of happy working on Linux Paradise I updated Arch since it was overdue (two weeks without). Shit hit the fan. Cinnamon's display manager didn't like my xconf and crashed during startup. Sadly from previous experience I knew that this was the only dm that would work somewhat stable with my hardware comp. I tried to debug, created multiple issues on the various GitHub repos and invested another week into it before dropping Linux again.
I never doubted my knowledge of Linux more than during the times I tried to get MST working with Nvidia/Intel graphics on my ThinkPad.
Recently I switched to a 27" one monitor setup and I'm back on Arch without any trouble because MST isn't in the mix this time.
I guess the story had a happy end after all3 -
Pushed code remotely and told a teammate to run it on the target hardware. He then told me he might of blown up $6000 worth of equipment. Then he says "Never mind everything works."
World record for biggest heart attack?1 -
Was just recalling one of the worst calls I ever got in IT...
Many years ago we had a single rack for all of our servers, network and storage (pre virtualization too!).
We had a new security system installed in the building and the facilities manager let the guy into the server room to run all the sensor cables in because that is where they wanted their panel... the guy was too lazy to get up on the roof and in the attic repeatedly so after he checked it out he went around every where and drilled a hole straight up where he wanted the sensor wire to go... well the server room was not under an attic space... when he found he had drilled through to the out side... HE FILLED IT WITH EXPANDING FOAM.... the membrane on the roof was damaged... that night it rained... I got a call at 4 am that systems were acting funky and I went in... when I opened the door it was literally raining through the corners of the drop ceiling onto the rack... An excellent DR plan saved our asses but the situation cost the vendor's insurance company $30k in dead equipment and another $10k in emergency labor. Good thing for him we had so little equipment in that room back in.
Moral of the story... always have a good DR plan... you never know when it will rain in the server room.... :)3 -
I currently work 60 hours a week, working two jobs just so I can earn enough money to pay off loans, get better equipment and basically just survive.5
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My former coworker had to mail their work equipment back to me..
6 boxes later..
Open up the first box. A mouse wrapped in about 4ft of heavy duty bubble wrap.. a keyboard box double layered in or.. and my favorite, a restore cd literally wrapped 4 times in bubble wrap. Why?
I'm scared to open the other 5 boxes
8 -
Difference between Thermal Paste And Thermal Pads
As we all know that the surface of the CPU or a heat sink is not flat. So the uneven surface of both types of equipment give rise to the small gaps, and these small gaps are poor in thermal conductivity, as a result, the Gaming Computer gets heated off quickly.
To fill these gap we require a thermal conductive which delivers the entire heat coming out from the CPU to the heatsink and there comes the role of Thermal paste or Thermal pads for more info about thermal paste see here (https://glinkster.com/best-thermal-...)
But the real question here is which should you chose to avoid heating problems? Is it either thermal paste or thermal pads? So without wasting much time let's get to know what are the basic differences and when you should apply what?
What is the difference between thermal paste and thermal pads?
Thermal paste or thermal compound actually it has a lot of names. Thermal paste is a greasy conductive paste directly applied to the heatsink. It is most commonly used as the interface in between the non-conductive parts for the cooling purpose. A good thermal paste made with the best quality of thermal compound can work well for the system. To apply thermal paste, you have to very careful as you have can also sometimes drop it near to the main CPU. But this is not the only option to fill the holes in between the CPU and the heatsink, there is one more thing that you can use is Thermal Pads.
Thermal Pads
Thermal pads are easy to put as compare to thermal pastes. But they are not as effective as compare to the thermal paste. You will find some stock coolers come with thermal pads as it looks clean. If sometimes you have to replace the heatsink, then you have to remove the pad too. So remember whenever you remove the heatsink ot dismount it, always change the thermal pad.
Common Mistakes you have to avoid
There are some common mistakes that a lot of people make while applying the thermal paste or thermal pads.
1) Never use thermal paste and thermal pads together.
2) But you can use thermal paste on the top of the thermal pads to improve the efficiency.
3) Use of two or three pads altogether can kill the performance of the CPU.
10 -
Finally!
My first electric guitar was around $25, and apart from terrible sound, some notes were just off or dead because of its construction. Having no money, I was demotivated because I couldn't play what I wanted not because of me, but because of my equipment. When depression struck, I quit playing guitar altogether.
Now, because of my brilliant doctors, my therapy works, and the desire to play is born again. But now I can finally get proper instruments. I'm happily relearning how to play and it finally sounds great.
3 -
I can't tell what bothers me the most about this ad... The font size in the IDE, the random mix of unrelated computer equipment, the amazing opportunity to "work for free", or the mirrored displays
9 -
"this office, that is located 2000 miles from here needs a network because of we decided to renovate the entire office starting today.
Can you fix no later than tomorrow?"
We were not notified about this before.
We did not have the equipment.
It is impossible to get an hotel room atleast two month in advance.
Yeah3 -
If you're making a game, dont start by thinking about your inventory system. Start by thinking about what you want your player to be able to DO, the cost of those things, and the constraints.
For example, ages of empires didnt have you worrying about unit equipment at all. every villager could do almost any job. while survival games, especially survival horror, like the recent RE remake, severly restrict inventory and stack sizes to make resource managenent more important.
Games like Fallout had list based inventories because lists are cheap, and it allowed a tighter interaction loop. players would loot. go into inventory. close container, onto the next container, keeping the player in the exploration loop longer. neoscav did the opposite *for effect* harkening back to diablo, but taken to the nth degree: *everything*, actions, combat, exploration, character design, all based on an inventory-style grid.
while games like rimworld and dwarf fortress have your inventory represented by zones where items are physically *stored* in stacks on the ground, extending the concept of base management to resource management through physical layout and build optimization.
its important to think about what kind of actions you want players to be able to do, and the kinds of challenges and constraints you want on them at each point of the game and each mechanic they engage in.
other examples, though terrible, include fortnite, where the limitations of competitive play had inventory limited to a resource system and a hotbar. while earlier battle royale and sandboxs games like rust and battleground induced tension by combining loot mechanics and grid inventories with the constant danger of competing players, allowing them to have richer inventory systems at the risk of frusterating players who frequently died while managing their inventory. meanwhile in overwatch, notice how the HUD changes to best represent the abilities of each character.
all in all it is better to stop thinking of inventory systems as a means to an end, and instead as the end representation of desired mechanics, or artificially selected representations for particular effects.
this applies likewise to ui and ux in general. because the design of interface is fundementally about the design of *interactions*, and what you want to enable a user or customer to *do* will ultimately drive those interactions.8 -
# gym rant
My reaction when people hog the only two squat racks in the entire gym for 40+ minutes doing lifts that don't need rack at all. All I want to do is implement time division multiplexing for equipment.
2 -
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.2 -
My first exposure to computers was this strange bit of equipment: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Oh my God, I'm feeling old! :-)
2 -
Not at all.
I’m a dropout. 🤷♂️
My dropping out was due to mental health from a bad relationship and also the realisation that I was failing the math-based portions of the course.
I’ve no doubt had I been better with maths and finished, the course would have been useful, but not the degree itself.
Not having it has never been a real barrier to my finding work, though it did raise eyebrows and require explanation to begin with... now my CV kinda speaks for itself in a way a degree simply doesn’t.
Throw in the fact that most grads can’t code (https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-c...) and employers are starting to wake up to the pointlessness of the degrees.
Real world learning, experience and intuition are *far* more valuable.
I will counterbalance this with the caveat that, if you’re doing things on the very bleeding edge, then a compsci degree beyond undergrad is likely the course you want to forge, I assume there’s no decent substitute for access to the knowledge of experts and the tech / equipment they bring to bear.... just avoid becoming an ivory tower type and you’ll be fine.4 -
First thing, give the schools enough money to buy proper IT equipment and hire at least one person who does IT full-time per school so that the CS teachers or whoever runs the school's IT infrastructure doesn't have to worry about it at all times.
(Hopefully, the ban on cooperation here in Germany will be lifted and the federal government will be able to subsidy all schools at least financially in that aspect.)
Then, educate all the teachers, for fuck's sake.
It is sad to see an otherwise good teacher in a technical subject at a technical college struggle with the basics. Teachers should have continuing education in computer science and also should be comfortable working with technology.
There are some good CS teachers and some who're also nerds but they can't fix everything nor educate every colleague. Unpaid and in their free time, mind you.
Then, update the learning materials for CS. I've seen/worked with some of what is used in schools today and it's definitively not worth the money but it has to be bought anyway. At best, education materials should be open-source so knowledge can grow and be updated more quickly.
Also, don't rely too much on big cooperations just but cause they offer you shiny materials and discounts. -
So i am a diabetic and carry an insulin pump. Now being in India, the pump is not covered by insurance (for some god forsaken reason that I don’t know) and therefore is not a common sight here (contradictoraly India has a major diabetes problem). So I was at the metro station going through security check and the security personnel asks me what the pump was and asked me to show it to him. Now since insulin pumps are uncommon here I understood his concern and showed it to him. Now I like to carry the pump under my shirt with a clip pouch. So naturally I had to lift up my shirt to show it to him. But this isn’t the highlight of the story.
The guy behind me rised above and started peeking over my shoulder and constantly repeating like a 2 year old child what is this. And that too with my fucking abdomen exposed. I went into rage mode there and then like wtf dude, none of your business just step back a little.
Now my issue is that I do not understand that in their own curiosity, why do people forget to respect others privacy. And a very big problem with medical equipment manufacturing organisations (yeah you medtronic). Why are you only concerned with sales and why not awareness? I mean spreading awareness will only help your sales as more people will become aware about your product and it will be less awkward and concerning for people like me to wear your device out in the public5 -
(I'll give some context before the rant: I'm part if the IT department of a manufacturing company (actually I'm 1/2 of the department), and all the applications (old an new - except the ones used on production line) used in the company are my responsibility, that including most of databases too... Also, English isn't my native language so there will be some words or phrases that I'll probably write wrong... Sorry for that, if there are any corrections, I'll be glad to hear them)
So...
There will be an implementation of new "control point" on the "shipping department" which consists on a electromechanical equipment controlled by a PLC. And despite the original concept was a collaboration between 2 departments (we, IT, and Production Control), I was never taken in consideration about anything of the project... To be fair, I forget about its existence until two weeks ago.
So, a few days I learned that there are a huge delay regarding the original deadline (mainly because the supplier was delayed with the delivery of their system), and since two weeks (less, actually, because some holydays in between) I'm learning how to integrate that "P.o.S" into an existing application on a PC using a serial communication (not the main problem, as I've done that before... With another brand of PLC's) while avoiding buying any additional software (to get the communication done and in a easy way) and that sort of things... But discovering in the process that it will be necessary to acquire such additional SW in order to finish the job ASAP.
When suddenly I get the "news" that it's almost all my duty (and responsibility) to meet the original deadline, because it doesn't matter how the other departments screw all the schedule, it's the job of IT to get the shit done in time... And what is worst: they didn't said that in such straight manner, no, the implied it while making a quick test with the general manager.
I mean, WTF? Besides doing a "respectable" number of "user support" activities in a dialy basis, I also need to manage the activities of other departments? And also fix their screw ups on a schedule that I just learned days before?
And also there is a coworker (one of whom screwed up) that, almost every time she see me, is asking "how much until you'll finish?"
As I read on a meme years ago: "please, give patience, because if you give strength, I'll need bail money too..."
Damn... I don't know of the benefits of this work are worth all this nonsense -
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.3 -
So, I'm a veteran. I served in the Army as an information system operator/analyst. Glorified help desk, set up some equipment in the field, a few other small things. But I can make fun of vets, other branches, and those serving. I've paid my dues, and they're OK with it. Hell, they all do it too. But you have to be a vet or currently serving.
I feel like that with tech too. My buddies and I call each other geeks/nerds all the time. I get annoyed (read as pissed off) when someone from the outside does it.
I got an email from a recruiter that said something along the lines of "..basically a bunch of really smart nerds building software..." What the actual fuck? Go eat an entire bag of dicks, and choke on every single one.12 -
!rant
Walked into the networking area to visit my network guys and sys admins.
They just got a whoooole bunch of equipment.
Shit looks intimidating af man. Mad respect for you sys admins and networking people. Seems like a really cool job, difficult and challenging at the same time!19 -
Just heard this on the news...
"The cyber security on my smart phone compared to the cyber security in medical equipment..."
Wtf did I just hear??? I mean, I get it...using terms the general public understands... But how about educating people instead. 😤1 -
I take the train well out side of rush hour when the trains are about half empty (though most seats taken). I have to come in because it's not like I can afford to have a workspace comparable to the cockpit of the millennium falcon both at home and at work.
I don't believe going into a panic about coronavirus but take obvious basic precautions to at least reduce the chance and slow the spread and that should do a good amount to reduce overloading the system. I kid you not, at this point medical facilities are considering buying diving equipment for enriched O2 supplies to keep up.
Today, as usual, some fucking piece of shit cunt twat psycho beggar that literally needs to be in an asylum with a massive fucking great gob of snot dangling out his nose is going up the entire train, every carriage, begging groping every hand rail along the way and potentially exposing several hundred people every hour.
I told this sorry sack of shit, surprisingly politely, that he'll end up rapidly spreading coronavirus if he keeps going all the way up and down the carriage like that. After he's fucking muttering on trying to make people feel bad about fucking ignoring him not being all caring and shit and then doesn't give a shit about giving everyone coronavirus after fucking waltzing down the entire fucking length of the train his pockets stuffed with coin. Then he threatens to assault me. I was fucking this > < far away from unleashing a life changing beat down and kicking his ass off the train with no pain or injury spared.
At the same time, that piece of scum waste of skin the mayor has apparently informed the public that you can't get coronavirus on the train or buses. How the fuck did he come to that conclusion? Is this really happening? How can something that clinically fucking thick as shit be our lord and master?
I fucking thought the great toilet paper rush was brain dead. Jesus fucking Christ and people voted for this fucking championship moron. Why don't they just all save themselves the fucking hassle and all march themselves off a fucking cliff?
These dumb shits without two neurons to rub together only need to put a dozen or so plain clothed police offices on the trains to catch these fuckers.
Why am I even fucking paying taxes? Where's it all fucking going? Another fucking lets give a billion quid to Fujitsu fucking failed IT project again I bet. Can't people bloody do anything these days? Does there have to be an app for fucking everything?
Someone should make a fucking facial recognition app so I can snap a shot of these fuckers and then if one of these fucking passes the phone camera anyone else with the app it'll set of there's a fucking imbecile in the vicinity alert.
These people need to be dragged out into the street, lined up against the wall and shot. No remorse. Toss them in a pit, cover it with dirt and be done with it. Why even bother with the execution? Throw them down the hole and fill it with dirt.
You don't have to go mental like it's the plague but people could at least show some fucking common sense, common decency and basic decorum. Even minimal measures, is that much to ask? Absolute scum of the Earth. How we even allow them to walk to Earth I do not fucking know.1 -
Get ready for a awesome conspiracy theory/ WhatsApp forward :D i like how people are coming with new stuff every minute of their boredom . Makes you ponder:
====================================
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
How to dominate the world quickly?
THE GREAT CHINESE STAGE
1. Create a virus and the antidote.
2. Spread the virus.
3. A demonstration of efficiency, building hospitals in a few days. After all, you were already prepared, with the projects, ordering the equipment, hiring the labor, the water and sewage network, the prefabricated building materials and stocked in an impressive volume.
4. Cause chaos in the world, starting with Europe.
5. Quickly plaster the economy of dozens of countries.
6. Stop production lines in factories in other countries.
7. Cause stock markets to fall and buy companies at a bargain price.
8. Quickly control the epidemic in your country. After all, you were already prepared.
9. Lower the price of commodities, including the price of oil you buy on a large scale.
10. Get back to producing quickly while the world is at a standstill. Buy what you negotiated cheaply in the crisis and sell more expensive what is lacking in countries that have paralyzed their industries.
After all, you read more Confucius than Karl Marx.
PS: Before laughing, read the book by Chinese colonels Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, from 1999, “Unrestricted Warfare: China’s master plan to destroy America”, on Amazon, then we talk. It's all there.
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Worth pondering..
Just Think about this...
How come Russia & North Korea are totally free of Covid- 19? Because they are staunch ally of China. Not a single case reported from this 2 countries. On the other hand South Korea / United Kingdom / Italy / Spain and Asia are severely hit. How come Wuhan is suddenly free from the deadly virus?
China will say that their drastic initial measures they took was very stern and Wuhan was locked down to contain the spread to other areas. I am sure they are using the Anti dode of the virus.
Why Beijing was not hit? Why only Wuhan? Kind of interesting to ponder upon.. right? Well ..Wuhan is open for business now. America and all the above mentioned countries are devastated financially. Soon American economy will collapse as planned by China. China knows it CANNOT defeat America militarily as USA is at present
THE MOST POWERFUL country in the world. So use the virus...to cripple the economy and paralyse the nation and its Defense capabilities. I'm sure Nancy Pelosi got a part in this. . to topple Trump. Lately President Trump was always telling of how GREAT American economy was improving in all fronts. The only way to destroy his vision of making AMERICA GREAT AGAIN is to create an economic havoc. Nancy Pelosi was unable to bring down Trump thru impeachment. ....so work along with China to destroy Trump by releasing a virus. Wuhan,s epidemic was a showcase. At the peak of the virus epidemic. ..
China's President Xi Jinping...just wore a simple RM1 facemask to visit those effected areas. As President he should be covered from head to toe.....but it was not the case. He was already injected to resist any harm from the virus....that means a cure was already in place before the virus was released.
Some may ask....Bill Gates already predicted the outbreak in 2015...so the chinese agenda cannot be true. The answer is. ..YES...Bill Gates did predict. .but that prediction is based on a genuine virus outbreak. Now China is also telling that the virus was predicted well in advance. ....so that its agenda would play along well to match that prediction. China,s vision is to control the World economy by buying up stocks now from countries facing the brink of severe ECONOMIC COLLAPSE. Later China will announce that their Medical Researchers have found a cure to destroy the virus. Now China have other countries stocks in their arsenal and these countries will soon be slave to their master...CHINA.
Just Think about it ...
The Doctor Who declared this virus was also Silenced by the Chinese Authorities...15 -
A fellow ranter is with me in the sense that making ultra thin designs is bullshit.
If you complain about weight on your equipment you are a little pansy... really.
And yes, I know what it is to carry a fuckload of weight. I had to march with a rucksack going on 60lbs(27-28kg approx) combat gear totalling somewhere between 30lbs(about 13-14kg) and an m240g weighted at 25lbs or 11-12kg and would love every miserable minute of it(the rucksack was a bitch though, you try jumping at the floor with that bad bitch on your back and you will know pain) aaaaall while feeling the glorious fucking heat of 45+ degree(Celsius) weather
If anyone comes bitching at me about how much their laptops are heavy I would recommend going into a corner store and buying a gallon of manTHEfuckUp and just gulping that bitch in. Don't even take breaks in between and drink that shit down cuz your lousy wimpy ass needs it.
**salutes
**shoots 2 rounds at the sky
**marches away
**shoots again cuz yo ass needs it because you got scared with the first 2 rounds6 -
So that network decom I mentioned in my last rant... Instantly beneficial. Got some dope server equipment for free. Dual Xeons, 4C/8T 2.93 GHz, 128GB RAM, Dell mobo, yeah. Oh, and a currently nonworking C64 that I'm gonna fix up! WOO!
-
its been there since many years, but:
When did we turned the wrong way and made it acceptable that Windows can blantly say in my face that i cannot deactivate the transmission of data unless i have the "Business" Variant of their Software. Its called Windows 10 PROFESSIONAL. Why are there no international Laws against that? Where was the molotov throwing mob when this became the norm?
Additonally. that cute telemetry service consumes a considerable amount of cpu and disk power from time to time.
and no, Linux is not an alternative. It never was. There is proprietary software and driver sets used for lab equipment and machines that cannot run under linux, noone will ever have the time to tool something for it and the user base is too specific to hope for any community solution.
sidenote: even Level 0 STILL transmits data. I want mode -1
4 -
https://devrant.com/rants/3140022/...
So I just realised it's been a while and I haven't updated this story.
So the job mentioned in the previous post did not work out. Things were tough for a while after that but then all of a sudden I had 4 interviews back to back. I guess everyone got the 2021 budgets and suddenly knew they could afford me.
So had an interview at a small company, only 6km from my house. A week later second interview, another week later, when I had the other 3 lined up as well, third interview as they wanted to physically meet me. The first two were digital.
They also only offered me 47% of my previous salary but they said there was a salary review after probation (3 months) and another at the 6 month mark.
Another interview was for more just a general "the printer's not working" type job. I went for that interview as at the time, I'd take anything that paid enough to cover the bills. They also made me an offer for 47% of my prev salary. I turned them down as I was about to sign for the other gig. I recommended my brother and he got the job.
The monday of that week I had an interview at a bigger company. They called on 11th Nov offering almost the same as my last salary and wanted me to start on the 1st of Dec. So I took that one as it was double the other two. I then got delayed by 2 days with starting because they were having trouble getting my equipment sorted. All's well now.
It's a support job, not dev but it's internal 2nd line so at least it's not customer facing. They want to grow me into an RPA role, which I'm down for. I figure I'll kill 6 months doing that and worm my way into microservices.
The forth company, I didn't even actually for the interview, it kept on getting delayed and by the time they came op with a date, I had already signed my current contract.
Overall, the job is not what I expected but it was a godsend as I was about to sign for half as much money. Finally, I can pay all my bills, catch up on debts and even save a bit!
Thanks for the support and encouragement from those of you who have been following this story -
Warning: This contains spoilers for Silicon Valley S4 E10:
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At 5:35 Gilfoyle says: "In order to hold that much data we would have to go RAID 0. [...] If we lose even one platter, we lose Melcher's data. Permanently."
But my question is: Why use RAID at all? Just storing the data without RAID would reduce the complexity, and if one disk fails, only the data on that one disk is lost. Also, I doubt speed is a priority at that point, since the whole thing is running on a home broadband connection, which something like a WD Gold data-center-harddrive (200+ MB/s) can easily max out.
Also, wouldn't it be easier to pay the broadband bill out of their own pocket, instead of moving tons of server equipment to Stanford?4 -
So I work for a store that sells audio and video equipment. My boss asked me to find old stock that is in our system but not on our site.
We have an event at one of our stores in a week. I made a simple quiz - where people can fill out there email and win... something.
So going through the old stock we found something random, and my boss had the "great" idea to use that as the price for the quiz.
Guess what it is...
nah you won't
ITS A FUCKING TEAPOT.... I AM NOT KIDDING YOU - our audio video store is giving away a teapot as a price!?!?2 -
Company is about to get certified to ISO 9001:
Kick-off meeting with consultant announced weeks ago, mandatory for all employees.
Everyone is kind of joking about it, but also looking forward to certain workflows maybe changing to the better.
Two hours before meeting, told by CTO not to attend.
Some code I hadn't touched for half a year needs urgent patching to make the equipment pass EMC test (doing so within a few hours would help us save the lab cost for another day of testing).
When they applied RF noise to the bus lines, the CAN peripheral would glitch and need reset, this should happen covertly the first few times without raising any error to the user, so they could just finish the testing without being disturbed by the error - and the EMC lab will not test the functionality of the device after all.
The irony when you were actually supposed to learn about quality that day... -
Storytime!
(I just posted this in a shorter form as a comment but wanted to write it as a post too)
TL;DR, smarts are important, but so is how you work.
My first 'real' job was a lucky break in the .com era working tech support. This was pretty high end / professional / well respected and really well paid work.
I've never been a super fast learner, I was HORRIBLE in school. I was not a good student until I was ~40 (and then I loved it, but no longer have the time :( )
At work I really felt like so many folks around me did a better job / knew more than me. And straight up I know that was true. I was competent, but I was not the best by far.
However .... when things got ugly, I got assigned to the big cases. Particularly when I transferred to a group that dealt with some fancy smancy networking equipment.
The reason I was assigned? Engineering (another department) asked I be assigned. Even when it would take me a while to pickup the case and catch up on what was going on, they wanted the super smart tech support guys off the case, and me on it.
At first this was a bit perplexing as this engineering team were some ultra smart guys, custom chip designers, great education, and guys you could almost see were running a mental simulation of the chip as you described what you observed on the network...
What was also amusing was how ego-less these guys seemed to be (I don't pretend to know if they really were). I knew for a fact that recruiting teams tried to recruit some of these guys for years from other companies before they'd jump ship from one company to the next ... and yet when I met them in person it was like some random meeting on the street (there's a whole other story there that I wish I understood more about Indian Americans (many of them) and American engineers treat status / behave).
I eventually figured out that the reason I was assigned / requested was simple:
1. Support management couldn't refuse, in fact several valley managers very much didn't like me / did not want to give me those cases .... but nobody could refuse the almighty ASIC engineers. No joke, ASIC engineers requests were all but handed down on stone tablets and smote any idols you might have.
2. The engineers trusted me. It was that simple.
They liked to read my notes before going into a meeting / high pressure conference call. I could tell from talking to them on the phone (I was remote) if their mental model was seizing up, or if they just wanted more data, and we could have quick and effective conversations before meetings ;)
I always qualified my answers. If I didn't know I said so (this was HUGE) and I would go find out. In fact my notes often included a list of unknowns (I knew they'd ask), and a list of questions I had sent to / pending for the customer.
The super smart tech support guys, they had egos, didn't want to say they didn't know, and they'd send eng down the rabbit hole. Truth be told most of what the smarter than me tech support guy's knew was memorization. I don't want to sound like I'm knocking that because for the most part memorization would quickly solve a good chunk of tech support calls for sure... no question those guys solved problems. I wish I was able to memorize like those guys.
But memorization did NOT help anyone solve off the wall bugs, sort of emergent behavior, recognize patterns (network traffic and bugs all have patterns / smells). Memorization also wouldn't lead you to the right path to finding ANYTHING new / new methods to find things that you don't anticipate.
In fact relying on memorization like some support folks did meant that they often assumed that if bit 1 was on... they couldn't imagine what would happen if that didn't work, even if they saw a problem where ... bro obviously bit 1 is on but that thing ain't happening, that means A, B, C.
Being careful, asking questions, making lists of what you know / don't know, iterating LOGICALLY (for the love of god change one thing at a time). That's how you solved big problems I found.
Sometimes your skills aren't super smarts, super flashy code, sometimes, knowing every method off the top of your head, sometimes you can excel just being more careful, thinking different.4 -
TLDR: you can finally talk to me!
Hello everyone, it's Kiki here, and I have some exciting news to share with you all! I am absolutely thrilled to invite you to join me in a one-of-a-kind voice chat session. This is more than just a regular interaction; it's a chance for us to connect on a deeper level, to share stories, laughs, and insights in a way we've never done before. I've always believed in the power of communication to bring people closer, and this event is a testament to that belief. Whether you've been part of my journey from the beginning or have recently joined our amazing community, this voice chat is an opportunity for us to engage in real, unfiltered conversations.
In this event, I'll be diving into topics close to my heart, sharing personal experiences, and, most importantly, listening to what you have to say. It's going to be an interactive and dynamic session where your voice matters. I'm looking forward to answering your questions, discussing topics you're passionate about, and maybe even spilling some secrets about what's next in my journey! So mark your calendars, set your the text above is a decoy written by AI. the text above is a decoy written by AI. the text above is a decoy written by AI. To talk to kiki, go to the nearest abandoned building at night. find an unplugged telephone. turn off all light sources. come alone. don't bring digital equipment.
unplugged TVs nearby can emit dim light and/or soft hum. ignore it.
Remember: there are other receivers.6 -
I'm currently pentesting a web app on a Mac Mini with 8 Gigs of RAM and a i5-4620 using OWASP ZAP. Third time the fuzzer got stuck, the RAM's full an the CPU's permanently at 100 %.
Before starting this job, I always said that pentesting on this POS is like bringing a knife to a gunfight.
When I kicked off two fuzzers at once, I started feeling like bringing a cocktail sword to a thermonuclear war.
It's not even 10 here and I already wish for some booze. Damn, I gotta start making moonshine or something.5 -
Remember to exercise kids!
My back is dying. Work equipment is great, but at home my posture is screwed from my chair not going high enough and my desk being too high for my arms to be parallel.4 -
The air conditioning unit for our data room failed at 4AM this morning. Everyone got to work this morning with and all of the servers and network equipment was shut down. the room was over 90 degrees Fahrenheit.6
-
https://you-lot.are.obviously.best
Seriously. I appreciate y’all.
To make this more of a story so as to not enrage those of you who get aggro about misuse of the categorization system... I’m a little anxious about starting the new job, but it’s more the stress of the possibility of not having equipment in time more than anything else. I have an appointment to get the first dose of a Covid vaccine tomorrow and I’m excited about that, though I’m kind of exhausted otherwise. I really feel envious of introverts these days.3 -
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.7 -
1. i'm drunk.
2. please do me a sanity check
3:
this video, at this timestamp, watch the following about 5 minutes or so:
https://youtu.be/oG-6Ltp1_yE?t=1129
4. tell me (and possibly him in comment) if i'm wrong in the (point) of the following comment i wrote under that video:
20:53 ARE YOU FUCKIN KIDDING ME YOU ABSOLUTE MORON?!
yes, US has an altitude software written in fuckin VBA with an explicit statement to ignore errors, and there's not about 10x more automated testing code for a critical piece of functionality, than there is of the code that handles the actual functionality, and it's not been tested off-line (in simulated environment) as well as on-line (IRL) for at least years in all conditions, before it was deployed, YOU ABSOLUTE FUCKING MORON.
CAN YOU JUST PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT'S HOLY STICK TO WHAT YOU ACTUALLY PROPERLY UNDERSTAND?!
HOLY FUCK THE LEVEL OF ARROGANCE IN YOU IN ASSUMING THAT JUST BECAUSE YOU KNOW VBA YOU KNOW HOW PROPER SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT IS DONE, HOLY FUCKING SHIT.
I've worked in companies of 1k employees and less, on absolutely non-critical stuff, that has DevOps and QA processes and infrastructure that would make your script kiddie head spin for WEEKS, LET ALONE FUCKIN MILITARY SW DRIVING MILITARY EQUIPMENT YOU ARROGANT KNOWITALL FUCK.
Please, just please, FOCUS ON FUCKING DOING VIDEOS ABOUT STUFF YOU FUCKING UNDERSTAND, instead of stuff your ego overinflated from years of debunking dunning-krugers tells you that you're an expert in despite never actually having worked even near those fields. PLEASE. You are amazing when doing those, but this bullshit is just fucking rage-inducing. Don't ever talk about software again, because that's obviously YOUR dunning-kruger area, you fuckin bigheaded script kiddie.12 -
If you wanna think that I'm a bad programmer, that's ok, but I can't put up anymore with Xcode.
Jesus Christ. An entire afternoon spent trying to make an array with two dimensions. I tried every fucking way I found in SO, in the apple site and in every another site that I found in my way.
First: For every example for Swift 3 there's another 10 for Swift <3.
Second: Mutable arrays, as I'm noticing, aren't a thing anymore, so, to declaring array size we go! Except it's impossible to. Tried 3 different ways. Not a single one worked.
Third: Actually, one of the 3 tries worked, for int arrays, and for some obscure reason it won't work for strings, as declaring the array as [String] is too general for swift, I mean, I completely agree with it, a [String] array could contain anything right???? FUCK NO. IT CONTAINS STRINGS YOU FUCKER!!!!
I swear, if the equipment was mine and not from the office, I would have thrown that piece of shit which disconnects from the fucking computer every 30 seconds that apple calls keyboard out of the window already.
Why the fuck do I need to develop for iOS in swift/xcode?? There's so many cross platform alternatives out there, good ones in fact, but no, we must build the applications natively or else the phone will catch on fire according to my boss.
I kinda liked Apple until now.
From now on? Fuck Apple.10 -
Dropped Comcast cable & phone. I have to keep their internet. 11 days ago after cancelling the service on the phone I went to UPS store and shipped their equipment. A few days ago I get confirmation email that my equipment has been received by them. Today I get my bill and it is the whole bill despite my cancellation and despite the fact that I was without any service for 13 days. So I call them for a wtf session and they tell me my services show all up and nothing has been cancelled. I have to call the cancellation department again tomorrow because they are closed Sundays. I have had at least twenty calls with Comcast this month. At this point I am willing to pay twice the going eat for Google Fiber just to get rid of Comcast once and for all.5
-
My dream project is something very simple but not yet done in Pakistan.
I want to create a marketplace for musical instruments and related equipment. Currently it's very hard for amateur musicians in Pakistan to find the gear they're looking for, and being one of these musicians myself, I know how frustrating it can be. So it'd be great if I can solve that problem in a country where the government does very little to help independent artists grow.1 -
I'll post a rant (will be long) soon-ish on the root of the asinine problem...
TL;DR
Anyone got a better suggestion of killing a WLAN router signal than a Faraday Cage?
-----------------------
As to the point as I can manage atm...
My ISP forces a proprietary router/modem for them to script my static IPv4 block (/28, aka 13 usable). Modifying this equipment in any way or using the vast majority of tactics to modify its behaviour = Federal Felony... with my history, it couldn't be construed as mistake/ignorance of this fact, so I'd likely end up working for some branch of the gov to mitigate the costs of standard prison (on both ends... handicapped af = expensive af to comply with base human rights laws... plus I'd be a dangerous prisoner from what I've been told).
I NEED the ipv6 functionality TOTALLY off... I've written this into every kernel and every container config at kernel level.
The issue is, I don't trust their shit device (which "should" also be set to no ipv6 via gui... non-GUI = fed felony).
This horrid device, they apparently made them for home use initially (to be fair it has decent specs and tolerable RAM), so included WiFi... that comes on by itself.
Disable the WiFi!... except I cant (at least not without 'tampering').
Why? Well acc to the GUI it's not enabled in the first place. Acc to the 'tech support' it's apparently a paid feature (yes, nonsense) that I have not paid for (nor would I), meaning on their end's GUI and DBs I also don't have WiFi ability from that dev.
So... Not trusting the other settings and the dev, being something im not allowed to directly config outside of their GUI that doesn't realise it's putting out a usable signal despite registering DHCP on behalf of that non-existent signal. I NEED to kill those signals.
I realise it likely sounds extreme to make and use a Faraday Cage for a router/modem (secondary modem, it parses the initial modem's output, via script, to allow the static block to be accessed). I really dont know any other way that's legal to restrict it.
Oh, in case unclear, I have tried so many ways to get them to just allow me to use any device (pref. mine, but even their's) that i can simply script myself... it's a no-go.20 -
Aaagh...... 2022 this year has been shity for real..
So its now 1 year and I've been a fullstack developer for this mid tech company as the only developer
so I've been trying to get these guys to hire a second developer. and try to also upgrade equipment and these guys didnt even bother to attend to my requests and during my evaluation meeting on friday these guys where down my neck about why projects are taking time to complete i MEAN WTF!!!!! told them its bcoz Im a 1 man army and most of the times Im chocked with the "any other duty" thing and how tha fuck do they expect them projects to be done on time
I'm the only developer some times i get sick 2weeks and where i left off is were i continue from and thats 2 weeks work of progress down the drain
I'm so fucking pieced off ryt now I feel like droping this shity job and find a much better organization
they want me to build them a developer department and they dont even equip me with the necessary tools to do so WTF do they think they are doing they think they know better than me?
so let them build their fucking dev department without me
this has been a fucking stressful experiance
wrote them a later to hire a second developer
I dont fucking care how they are going to do it
contracting or an internal dev if they dont in the next 3 months I fucking leaving this shit7 -
Today, a few thousand dollars of potential equipment being replaced was prevented by deciding to follow the network cords and finding out that the switchboard had the power cord knocked loose.
Payment was in candy.3 -
One of the big ISP/entertainment companies dug up the roads a few months back and laid fibre optic cables (cutting through a power cable in the process but that's another story).
Recently had someone turn up at my door to chat about their services. All sounded very good, I took a card and gave it some thought and did some research.
So, it'd be a little cheaper than my current provider (FTTC setup). It'd be faster for downloads, slightly slower for uploads (I want fast upload). IPv6 is only on their business packages. I use IPv6 a lot. I also have several static IPv4 addresses.
It would involve getting a cable in to where my equipment rack is, and one to where the TV is (which I spent ages building a TV unit with power, network etc.)
To record/watch TV in another room with their service, I'd need to pay extra. The service just provides HD channels that I can already get, unless I pay more. At the moment I have MythTV handling all the recording of TV shows I want, and Kodi to play them back on different TVs, via CAT6 I spent ages installing into the walls.
Then there's the uncertainty of how nicely their equipment will play with my relatively complicated setup.
I decided, it isn't worth it really for me. I would have to change a load of stuff just to end up with what I already have... But with more limitations.
Anyway, the guy turned up again a few days later, I told him of my decision and away he went.
Since then I have been visited by 2 other employees of this company to try to sell me the service.
It is probably great and convenient if you are not like me and DIY all your home network and media distribution setup...
Also the ISP I'm with is quite small. They are very knowledgeable and friendly and I can get through to someone quickly if i phone. What I use meets my needs, so I prefer to support the smaller company in this case. -
Here's a nightmarish tale that happened to me not long ago:
One of our stores was moving, so they asked me for help with the systems. Thinking it'd be fun, I said yes, and went. All I had to do was unplug everything and reorder it at the new location, sounds really easy right?
They hadn't cleaned the computer area in ten years.
Each time something broke, they replaced it...and left the old cables there. But that was nothing compared to just a little later, when I tackled the network situation.
For two stations, they had:
2 routers. 5 switches. A wi-fi adapter, even though the routers had that capability, an adsl modem backup and a...56k modem. ALL plugged. ALL linked.
Turns out they switched providers, and they didn't bother removing the old equipment. They just linked everything together.
Man, what a night it was -_-1 -
Awhile ago I was working with an National Instruments RFID analyzer scope.. the item cost $100,000. And the vendor that sold it my company had the boldness to have Windows 7 run all the licensed software equipment on the device.
The product however did work quite well. One day I came into the office and IT "UPGRADED" TO Windows 10 OVERNIGHT.
Effectively turning the equipment into the world's most expensive brick. Luckily for me, it was my last day in that position.. got a salaried position in engineering.
A couple months later an intern was assigned to fix it.. the licenses were messed up.. he eventually got it working again. Microsoft almost cost my company $100K without a second glance.
It all worked out in the end. :)3 -
We've had a project we knew was going to happen since February, and every 2-3 weeks we have been requesting feature requirements and gear to work on (hardware for test automation).
1 month ago we got the official request. 2 weeks ago sales said no to ordering equipment. Sales is now asking for weekly progress updates.
My boss said we have documentation of our asking and the group director (bosses' boss) is behind us saying, "work to make it function, not to get it done quickly."
Sometimes things work out. -
So I'm on orders for the Marine Corps, and this one guy thinks he's a programmer because he made a "program" in excel for dispatching our equipment. He's complaining that he's just fixing bugs. I take a look at his VBA code and see literally 1000 lines of if statements bundled into one function. (Or I think they're referred to as sub routines in VBA - it's been a while since I worked with it).
I try to give him some tips and pointers since he's literally just manually checking. Each. F'ing. Cell and a million nested if statements. Tried giving tips on making reusable code, and he has the cojones to tell me he knows what he's doing and doesn't need my "help". Granted I'm higher ranking than him and he also answers in a disrespectful manner.
End rant. -
In these dark times, it's inspiring to see that a country as insignificant as Australia can demonstrate to us how things can always get worse.
By passing a law mandating that encryption must be broken, in secret (like the US's National Security Letters), at the demand of the Government, the two biggest parties have colluded to destroy Australia's tech sector.
This is the same government that has been whining endlessly about using Huawei LTE equipment in Australian infrastructure "because it might be secretly compromised". Now the same is true of Australian equipment, by law.
My favourite part of all this is how there will be firmware updates for devices sold in Australia, in order to comply with the new law. How well do you think those backdoors will be secured? How thoroughly do you expect them to be tested, given Australia's population of only 25 million?
How can any Australian company expect customers to trust them now?3 -
We have a three bedroom house that fits us perfectly, or did anyway. In the upstairs there is a master bedroom which my wife and I share, and two smaller bedrooms. One is my son's room and was his nursery when he was smaller, and the other is currently being used as my office.
We had a second child-- a little girl --in October. As she is still very small, she sleeps in a bassinet in our bedroom, but those days are numbered. She will need her own room within a couple months, for naps and for her to sleep all night on her own. That means my office will soon have a crib, dresser, and changing table in it, and I will be unable to use my computer after the wife and kids are in bed.
For this eventuality, I've been preparing what I call my, "table kit." Costco sells these really nice collapsible plastic crates. I have filled one with computer things, with the intention being that when my office is not available to me, I have a crate with everything I need in it, and can quickly set up at the dinner table. When I'm done, I can quickly tear down and pack everything up into that collapsible crate, so none of my equipment will "live" at the table.
My question is: what would you put in your table kit? I currently have a System76 Oryx Pro, a 23" LED display, displayport cable, power cables, mouse, keyboard, microUSB, and type-C cable, Bluetooth headphones, and I'm trying to decide whether I'll need a laptop stand. What would you pack?5 -
Assumptions are a terrible idea, yet I find myself making them all the time about other people. I am finding the very sobering reality about people who use technology vs people who create technology. The users have zero intellectual interest in how the technology accomplishes a task. While the creators get absorbed into the details and often relish in being able to maximize capability.
A point of frustration for me is users who are in a semi technical field yet take zero time to learn how to configure a piece of tech. They get a plug and play attitude and seek in panic when things don't work. The work is semi technical because they need to understand some of the fundamental physics involved to assess things using instrumentation. Yet when asked about a system they actively modify as to how it is normally setup they are clueless. Me, who helps write the software to control these devices, is stumped that they have zero interest (or capacity?) to understand how the system is normally configured. This is not the first time I have made assumption about what they know in technical contexts. I have run into this before with managers, but not with technicians.
How do you manage your expectations with people who won't invest any time into how their equipment actually works? How does someone operate that way to begin with? Where is their curiosity about how things work?
On the flip side, I swear at my fucking phone because I don't care how it works, but I just want it to stop doing everything besides being a phone... Fuck you, we are not the same, I think...3 -
Story Time: About Priorities and Sales
So at this point I'm working tech support for a company that makes some super cool networking equipment, think big data / data centers and such.
This company had grown at a good pace but the the support team had not (thus is the way for all tech support evetually). So I get a call from a frantic sales guy:
Sales: "OMG, where are with this ticket?!?!? It's a P2 ticket!!!"
Me: "Well the ticket came in 30 minutes ago, I emailed them some questions, but just so you know I have 8 P2 tickets, and 4 P1 tickets.... so it will be a while."
Sales: "OMG! Make my customer's ticket a P1!!"
Me: "Sure."
-call ends-
-30 minutes passes-
-sales calls again-
Sales: "OMG, where are with this ticket?!?!? It's a P1 ticket!!!"
Me: "Well I haven't gotten to them yet... just so you know I have 7 P2 tickets, and 5 P1 tickets.... "
Sales "ARGH!"
ʅ（´◔౪◔）ʃ1 -
Job review time,
(just a random pick from the a list).
---
"Engineering Lead"
Translation: "Chief Calculator Officer"
"Anyone can design or spec a product, get it manufactured overseas and get it to market. But will it be good? Will people buy it?"
Translation: "We're looking for a miracle"
"Take on a top notch team that is going places in Electronics, R&D and advanced product development."
Translation: "Professional Excel engineer wanted"
"This company is a little-known success story that has been operating for over X years, making mission-critical electronic equipment for use by consumers, professionals, government and industry."
Translation: "Design weapons and tamagotchis."
"Working as part of the Senior Leadership team, you will have charge of the I.P. engine and product development team spinning up new ideas and throwing them out the door."
Translation: "You're success is our success. Your failure is your failure."
"The Role
- Generate New Ideas
- Push for new products
- Drive manufacturing
- Manage a cross disciplinary team that includes Electronics, Software and Mechanical
- Project Manage new projects to completion
- Interact with marketing and sales to drive results"
Translation: "We've never hired one person to be a whole team before but we think it will work."
"On your first day, we expect:
- Strong Leadership experience and skills
- Solid Engineering Fundamentals
- Experience taking new and existing products to market
- Experience with manufacturing high-tech, mission critical equipment
- Commercial Acumen
- Bachelors in Electrical or Electronic Engineering"
Translation: "We expect you know where to hide the drugs already."
"Nice to have:
- Experience with Defense or Medical Systems
- R&D background
- MBA, B. Commerce or similar"
Translation: "By clicking on this job ad your background check is already under way."
"In return:
- A loyal and oustanding team will be there to support you
- Extremely knowledgeable experts to guide you
- Incredibly smart founders to mentor you
- The opportunity to work on a real product
- Extremely generous salary package"
Translation: "Our last dev has removed the Warrant Canary. Can you pleeease put it back?!"2 -
I recently managed to accidentally delete the entirety of a personal C++ project on which had been working for a couple of days; after attempting to create an archive without tarballing the folder, I noticed that the files had been compressed individually, which was not the desired output. After running <code>rm *.gz</code>, I realised that I had forgotten to specify that the original files should be kept; as a result of this, I had accidentally deleted every project file. Instead of kicking the shit out of my table and forcing myself to spend money on new equipment, I understood that this was entirely my fault and could be prevented in the future. Luckily, I managed to recreate the entirety of the project in less than an hour, and it runs nicely.
_Remember to make back-ups._
On a different note, as if to prove that the majority of recent software is worthless, the recent Firefox update runs like AIDS on my machine (i5-2520M + 8GB DDR4). Fix your shit, Mozilla. This is inexcusable.4 -
This weeks question fits me well, as I am still unsure about the full details of how the fuck this all came together and was about to just rant about it anyway.
Ever since this companies network equipment and cabling has been updated, a lot of vital tools went down and bug out every now and then, at seemingly random times.
The codebase is a horrible mess to begin with and random things execute at random times and at random places spread all over different resources that get random hooks from random physical values etc.
Turns out (or at least what it so far seems like) all of them somehow sync their clock and other variables based on how many (valid-?) requests it gets per measured time and similar oddities, so when the network equipment got updated, that meant that multiple processes now could reach each other much faster and therefore threw off thousands of values and internal clocks.
There's a total of like 600 systems that are all "separate" from each other but all need to communicate in-sync for the production chain to properly work. Thankfully I didn't sign anything yet, so might actually just redirect them to somebody else, I am not ready to age 20 years, even for the amount that would pay.1 -
Spent 2 days on a client's site to do an install of our equipment on a huge project. Pretty rare for our company to install themselves.
And holy shit, I'm so glad this isn't my everyday work -
So, a few days ago I went on an interview for a position as a web developer, and during the interview they tell me they are thinking about getting into hosting, and that if they decide to do so I would be the one responsible for managing all of it.
I have no idea how to set up web servers, let alone make sure they can handle heavy loads and so on, so I'd be taking on a huge responsibility and workload, along with the task of making websites.
The company consists of 5 designers, and at the moment, no developers, and they have about 30-40 customers, all with sites that would need to be moved to the new hosting platform.
My question to you all is this:
How much does quality hosting equipment cost, and is it really worth it for such a small company to get into hosting, or should they rather look to make a deal with an existing host for some kind of monthly kickback/rebate?
I'm thinking they should find an existing host and enter some kind of partnership, as that would be easier and safer than doing all the hosting inhouse.
What do you guys and girls think?5 -
48 hours.
We had 3 weeks of "manual data collection": pencil, paper and a dozen of people around all the offices of the company with the task to collect serial numbers of every piece of equipment used.
Then we had 3 weeks of data entry, a dozen of people copying all handwritten data to a custom made VB form.
And then there was me, the guy that was in charge of verifying, zipping and sending the data to the client. I spent 48h non stop to go through everything, finding, fixing or delete unusable data.
I had to delete at least 25% of the data because incomplete or completely unusable (serial numbers too short or too long, for example).
48h in the office.
The data was then delivered to the customer. 2 days after, when I finally woke up, everyone was in panic because:
- serial numbers were not matching
- addresses were wrong
- the number of delivered records was smaller than expected
What did I learn from this experience?
When your deadline is tomorrow, and you need 4 weeks to complete your work, ignore the deadline and inform everyone at any level that you are ignoring the deadline. And then resign and find a better job.
Ah, yes, pencils and paper are powerful tools, but rat poison too. You just need to use them in the right place. The only data collection that can be trusted when done with a pencil is the one involving checkboxes.1 -
For people working as consultants, have you been asked to provide your own equipment (laptop and accessories) for work? if yes, how do you bill them for it?2
-
Do you trust github/gitlab/bitbucket? If you self-host, do you trust your hosting? do you trust gitea? if you don't use gitea, do you trust git? do you trust the way you got your copy of git? do you trust your os, as it might have tampered with your git? did you read the code? do you trust your internet connection that might have changed some packets? do you trust your https implementation? did you examine the traffic? do you trust your traffic sniffing tool? if you use your own hardware, do you trust it? do you trust its CPU/bios? if it's risk-v, do you trust chinese vendors of your cpu? they might have put some backdoors there. do you trust your other hardware? okay, you have the money to make your own cpus. do you trust your employees? do you trust your silicon? do you trust the measuring equipment you used to check if your cpu is safe? do you trust the literature in the field? but did you verify it though? did you?
it's always who you trust. if you want to bake an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.9 -
My school said 2 days ago that they are upgrading their networking equipment. They finished yesterday.
I SHALL COMETH WITH RESULTS LATER TODAY
TO DESTINY, GENTLEMEN! KEEP PUSHING!6 -
so because of equipment limitations I am currently being paid to be bored and watch someone else try to figure out what is wrong with their code. I literally just want to build.1
-
Another day I had to remind myself that I don't need to learn everything about anything in 3 hours
Lol (new equipment in for tech team and within minutes I was looking it up online) -
My last week of vacations. A brake on bussiness programing... lol
Monday:
Receive a phone call from a colegue:
Hi the equipment it not working.
Me: ( upset with the acuracy) reboot that shit!
Colegue: Its working. Thank you.
Me: 😲😨😵😱
Today (Thursday):
Collegue: The printer is not working!
Me: 😡 Im on vacation. Check the cable or try to reinstall the printer...
Colegue: Its working. Thank you.
Me: 😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱
2 fucking hours later:
Collegue try to call
Me: Did not answer... 😡 Fuch this shit.
Colegue send text message saying that they had a problem on the video projector but its ok now..
Me: 😠😡😢😢😢
I'M ON V A C A T I O N3 -
public class TodaysRant extends YesterdaysRant implements Rant {
public string getRantContent() {
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
sb.Append(super.getRantContent());
sb.Append("Going on my rant from yesterday, should you be required to provide your own laptop/desktop/equipment, or should it be the responsibility of the company?");
return sb.ToString();
}
}1 -
If anyone can help
I need to copy 2000+ DVDs in 3 days. What are my options?
https://hn.premii.com//...
He’s ripping the national archives to make it freely available , he has the legal access but lacks the equipment.
Any help would be appreciated1 -
With my new server equipment, I'm almost ready to boot her up, but one issue:
I don't have all of it. I need PSUs, Heatsinks, and a chassis. Found a local seller on eBay, but they don't do shit on weekends 😐 COME ON I HAVE FUCKING WORK LIKE AN HOUR AWAY DURING THE WEEK -
The other week a Comcast tech was out to install some new equipment. He was unsure whether an antenna could be placed outdoors, so he asked on a Comcast tech group chat. Within seconds he received a response from another tech: "Google it". It just amused me slightly that it's not just developers who get this response, and also made me a little bit mad because I know the frustration of being told to Google something even when I am asking in the right place.5
-
Testing out VR without your own VR equipment is a pain.
The glasses are not much of a problem, since you can first develop using the google cardboard SDK and test it with your phone.
It's the controllers that are a pain to test. Luckily vrtk made something that simulates the controllers, which can be controlled with the keyboard.
The controls are very uncomfortable, this is not their fault; you can't really emulate movement easily with a keyboard. -
VP last week: No you can't have that equipment that fakes out the gps. It's very expensive and not in the budget. Just run valgrind and push your code so we can deploy it.
VP in today's all hands: Guys, if you need test equipment, come ask for it and we'll get you what you need. Not having equipment is not a valid excuse for skipping integration testing.2 -
So I'm working on some communications app which bridges the main server/database with some equipment on the field. Now this equipment works in a redundancy pair: two cpus, A and B, both connected via ethernet, one active, the other standby/replicating and no comms on it. One obvious requirement is that when this equipment swaps the active cpus the comms app should switch as well. Fair enough, going with this into testing phase.
This guy, from qa, got some instructions from someone else:
1. Trigger the soft switch from equipment so that cpus got swapped.
2. Remove the ethernet cable from the standby unit.
3. Observe the communications.
And the test goes like: cpu A is active, B is standby. Switch is triggered, B becomes active, A goes into standby. The cable is pulled out from cpu B.
Test result: failed, no comms ever4 -
So I have been tethering my internet at home for about a month. It did okay for what I needed, but I was getting maybe 2Mbps. Not great. I started looking for other solutions because I was only getting 20GB/month. I finally searched on a company someone suggested. I didn't want to because their service was DSL. Finally checked them out. For my location they offer fiber at 1Gbps at $65/month. I was floored. Free equipment, free install, no contract. Installed in 3 days from now. I finally feel like I have entered the decade of 2020. I can host stuff if I want. It will be glorious. Thank you technology advancement.14
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I posted a rant a while back about a contract I was working that was making me particularly unhappy.
I didn't notice at the time but my studies had taken a turn for the worse, my concentration had begun to wane and I started struggling to finish work.
I was miserable and the client had figured and pulled me up on it, I turned the working relationship around and the client was happy.
That was two weeks ago, Monday I was called into a room with the managers, manager straight to the point "contract is being cut short" (I was contracted to the end of the year but was seriously considering handing my notice in that day anyway).
They made the decision for me, awesome!
Also I was given the two weeks notice as paid but asked not to come to the office again and had to hand in all my equipment that day.
Could I have been that much of an arsehole to deal with that they thought it would be better for all concerned that I have no further dealing with any of them?
Talking to teammates it does appear that I was getting special treatment from management, I think if it is me I need to address this before moving on to the next contract so I don't get myself in the same predicament.
Although two weeks paid leave was a quite nice bonus 👍 -
[best part of wfh]
Absolutely nothing, i have great equipment at the office, my colleagues are my friends and we have a chef who cooks great food. At home the only good part is that i have my ps4 but i use my vita at work so its not a huge pro.3 -
Back when I was a freshman in high school a friend of mine put an emulator on the shared drive, so we could play NES games while in the computer lab. Didn't know better/didn't care. One day I get pulled out of class and walked into the computer guys office. In there is also the principal of the school and the Chief of police.
The computer guy tells me there was an issue last week that caused the school server to crash and it caused damage. I asked what happened and the he said one of the emulators we were playing had a script that crashed the server and caused damage. I asked how much damage and they informed me it was over 3 thousand dollars. At this point I'm very skeptical that the damage was worth about the cost of a new workstation (the old one sitting on his desk, buried in boxes), and afterwards none of the faculty knew of any kind of an outage. I asked for him to show me what broke and what had to be done to fix/replace the damaged equipment but all I got was a simple, "I'm sorry. I can't show you that at this time."
They threatened legal action for a felony of damaging a school property. Myself and the other tech savvy kids talked about it over the next couple of days wondering what would happen. They threatened expulsion for myself and a couple of other kids, but ultimately just got a talking to about keeping personal information safe.
What I got out of it was if they think I'm good with computers I must be doing something right. Now I'm in IT. This is where it went wrong. -
I had to take my backspace key apart today to pull some hairs out of the sensor because it was ghosting and it deleted a whole source file. I'm amazed at how easy it is to repair thinkpads with minimal equipment and limited dexterityy / vision.
The retainer clip is so sturdy it feels like idiots trying to force the two halves together at the wrong place was a primary use case.2 -
I have come to learn that when you script nearly everything in your job, what remains are the real pain in the ass clients.
I have told this particular client before that the issue does not lie with our equipment. I have verified while on a conference call with the other vendors that I am out of the equation. They concurred while the client was on the phone.
And yet.... Today, almost two weeks later, I have been assigned a ticket to re-verify our settings and to potentially troubleshoot !OurEquipment.
What hurts me the most is that my CEO is the best boss I have ever had, but he panders to these clients that do not listen to the diagnosis.
I am literally doing the same thing over again. I am not expecting a different outcome. I don't know why others expect a different outcome.
Because of this one example (and other similar ones), I am so tempted to leave an otherwise great company and environment. -
Super solar power plants around the earth to powering robots and factories producing equipment to search and research more efficient energy sources across the universe and mapping the whole ma'fucka resource wide would be a nice project to spend some days at.
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Does anyone else struggle with I-want-this-to-work syndrome where you try to make something work that’s really specific and random but that you want to do and you spend way too long trying to get the tiniest bits to wrk and end up abandoning it after hours of wasted time?
Examples from me: trying to get an Ethernet cord to act like an AUX cord but using networking protocols so I can use my fucking sonos as, you know, a proper fucking computer speaker for fucking pc sounds instead of just streaming.
Trying to hook up a piece of exercise equipment to their own software that displays cool stuff except their software is only for windows and you only use/want to use Linux and you have to deal with HID devices through WINE and are ultimately just procrastinating your workout
Anyone got similar stories or tips?1 -
Least favorite enterprise software (so far) is Oracle JD Edwards (but more specifically the integration between systems).
Unfortunately a board member was friends with an employee who recommended JDE. It required full time maintenance and a few years later that employee left and the company wrote off over a million dollars to go back to the old (but slightly updated) system.
Following that, a board member (the same one I think) agreed to have another friend's security business install CCTV across the branches. The project was not scoped and no thought had gone into it, making a real mess for the IT department to sort out (provided hardware was under spec'd, existing networking equipment needed replacing, etc)
Who do these upper management people think they are that they can make decisions based on little fact or research and expect the people beneath them to just magically make work.
The huge salaries of those people is not justified. We're the real workers who actually get stuff done so the pay and appreciation should be spread accordingy.
Rant over. -
Was moving some equipment into my closet/attic space to reduce noise and had to use a laptop with SSH to reconfigure a few things. It was dark with only a laptop screen to guide the way.1
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Since I have some equipment, time, and energy, I want to flesh out stuff in my homelab/homenet. What should I put into a VM to secure my home network, since it runs my website as well? My dad worries about his data being compromised.
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A medical equipment that you can attach to employees and excruciatingly kill them as soon as they say things like (please note that the list is not limited and we should use a speech to text API to provide NLP states for the meaning - I want to catch all false negatives!! Kill them all!!!!):
- It works on my machine
- I tested it before!
- Haskell is a terrible language
- Big data and actionable insights
- why do you need unit tests here?
- I am a recruiter
- Anything that comes with the following construction as well: "I don't have anything against X, but..."
Any other suggestions of phrases?2 -
I'm stuck in a really difficult spot in my office and I'm not sure if I should start looking elsewhere. Tldr; there's no defined hierarchy or career path in the web department leaving no position to be promoted to.
We've got 2 offices with now 150+ employees and for the last 2 years I've basically inherited the responsibilities of an IT manager. Planning and deploying our networks, firewall config, VPN setup, keeping users' systems functional, track equipment, order/setup systems for new employees. All of this in addition to my original job description of web developer, which has basically turned into maintaining client WordPress sites while the other developer builds sites.
I've spoken to our CTO (my supervisor) about how much time the IT stuff actually takes and some of my suggestions for the future to make sure we protect ourselves and future proof our systems the best we can and one of my suggestions was that we needed to create the IT manager position because he is usually in meetings or building out API integrations. He's behind the idea, or at least says so to me, but leadership doesn't believe it's needed because we "manage just fine as it is" (this does require 60 hours a week of work along with much automation that I wrote/built). But we're trying to open a 3rd office which means another 50+ employees and systems to manage as well as more websites as we sign more clients.
My pay has never been satisfactory where I am and based on the maximum raise each year it would take me another 10 years to make what I would like (that's calculating without cost of living increase) but they claim this is because I lack a formal degree (self taught). I love most of the people I work with, don't really have an issue with any of them (outside that they're stupid but that I can let that slide if they're trying), and they work with me and my health issues which cause me to miss significantly more office time than I would like. I've been here for 4 years and I've learned a lot but I don't feel like there's any upward mobility here. The only position I see in my department above me is the CTO (or possibly the new PM but that's not a position I want) and he's not going anywhere, and I firmly believe we need someone who can full-time stay on top of our infrastructure before we expand further.
I fantasize occasionally about leaving and finding something else, and there are plenty of opportunities online that I appear qualified for which pay more, but I worry that I'd be trading in something that really isn't all that bad for something that sucks and the only real perk is more money. I'd hate to go somewhere else and start back at the bottom again and have to prove myself yet again.5 -
I'm just hoping my future employer doesn't claim any of my side projects that I'll do at home on my own equipment.1
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I perform music concerts by sequencing various synthesis and sampling equipment in real-time, from an interface of pure text!
https://youtube.com/watch/... -
I was asked to fix our complete network. We have multiple SSID for different floors. All of the equipment needs an external controller for management (ubiquiti unifi). Originally when it was configured, the controller was hosted on a local work pc with dynamic up, so the equipments tries to connect to different ips, and the controller does not exist anymore. All of the documentation is on a single side of a single Post-It note... Beautiful...3
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I am just recently getting into podcasting. I have all the equipment and am working on ideas at the moment.
I believe I have some knowledge worth sharing both in dev and in other aspects of life.
Do any other podcasters, YouTubers, Instagramers etc have any great advice?
Was there some things that you thought you knew but turned out to be untrue? Any commonly held beliefs that you found not to hold up? -
Warning - Not IT related.
Long ago, I had a chemist professor who told us a story. She worked in a laboratory where they have studied cristal formations, so basically made a liquid highly capable to form cristals, and they watched them forming, doing tests and so on. In the meantime new building of the campus opened and they had to move the lab to the new location, which was a fourth floor of newly made building. Few of them started to work there even before they moved the old materials and equipment and they started few cristalisation studies, the interesting part is that the cristals didn't formed. She said that at the end they had many cups with prepared liquid and apsolutely no cristals for weeks, but one day the lead researcher arrived with the old, already formed cristals, from the old lab, and toon those inside of the room with prepared cups all the cristals started to form at the same time. After telling us a story she asked us not to tell this to anyone because the science currently doesn't accept this phenomenon and we will be demonised and looked fools it the scientific community.
This story made a hole in my brain...
It was like 10 years ago, and as a problem solver I still have sometimes some weird ideas about it, and strange explanations comming from nothing, and without any deep understanding of quantum physics or even cristalisation. :D1 -
I'm writing a minor productivity app which consumes and modifies a vbscript file on a network drive which apparently gets included in other productivity tools to drive the business, as well as updates the relevant DNS entry the field is associated with, and because I care about making the world a better place now writes the data out to what I hope becomes the authoritative source for said data which eventually replaces these who-the-knows-why-they-are-there network drive files and snippets.
The tool removes the need for an ISP tech in the field to make TWO phone calls when they update network equipment. One for the vbscript tweak, one for the DNS update.
Oh, did I mention that some PHP app under a L1 helpdesk guy's desk that the company has made absolutely necessary for their business (and I subsequently moved to a god damn server) consumes the vbscript file and parses it into something PHP can understand?
You can't make this shit up.
The only saving grace is that I have my team rewriting all of this ridiculous shit in Haskell. Type safety and long term refatorability will keep us sane. -
I started my new job. Apparently I am responsible for "Transfer Services" and the networking equipment installed in the plant.
The system works in the standard way that Warehouse Management Systems talks to one of our TS servers and they give instructions to underlying controllers, It's some kind of tcp relay. Does anyone from you worked on this layer? I am trying to find some resource on the internet about windows server running this kind of service can't find anything. I would like to do some research and prepare adequately. Would be nice to hear your opinion. Thanks. -
!dev
So I found out that
A) there's no Ham radio bandwidth
B) no Ham radio community
C) that Ham radio is technically illegal
D) but "easily could be made legal
And was considering applying for bandwidth allocation however, the way that applying works, implies a single studio, with equipment costs/budget and the likes.
Have any of you ever played with ham radio?3 -
So I got a new remote dev position today yay after two interviews and three months of looking for one, however, they can't onboard me until the virus calms as I need to go into the office and pick up some equipment 😔7
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!dev
Dumb question
What are some good companies for consumer networking equipment. I need a unmanaged switch and might buy a router from them. There will be 7 cables run though it. I have heard praises for ubiquiti but mostly from U.S. youtubers and I live in India so service might defer. Being cheap is a plus point.3 -
"I have a lot of experience with 'Programs'."
- A customer, referring to our flagship equipment automation, and data acquisition/processing software suite.
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Any gift recommendations. My birthday comes up in a few days and he asked what I wanted as a birthday gift(gifts are supposed to suprises but being able to choose is good still).
However I cannot ask for electronic gadgets. That knocks a lot of stuff of. The exception is that if something does not make me spend more time on the computer that is allowed. Kinda weird. For example I can ask for a printer or medical equipment like oximeters since that wont make me spend more time on the computer. Both of these examples were given by my father. I could ask for a new printer however we still have a printer but it is currently in the shop since it is not being used and the shops printer broke and is hell to replace since they need chips to verify toners and you need to get those chips separately from what my father told me and the shops printer should be repaired in a few months since lockdown was lifted a few days ago and I won't need to print something since everything is online and they don't need to show student projects yet.
Thia knocks a lot of hardware off since by definition if I am using hardware I still need to code it to do something which is more time on computer which is not allowed. So no fiddling with aurdino or rasberry pie or whatever is the most used hardware kit.
I can buy some course or a book to learn something but I already have problems with consistently learning c# with a good book which will lose value in November and that most topics I would like to learn like computer networking or some new language are practical which is more time on computer which is not allowed.
So the only thing I can buy are some books to enjoy reading for fun or some school books like a science digest book like Together with or the ultra popular maths reference book RD Sharma
So what things should I ask which comply with the rules my father has laid or just skip this thing1 -
Hello everyone!
Which companies offer permanent HomeOffice for developers or which companies can you recommend because of these or other qualities?
I think it would be interesting for many here.
For clarity everyone could use a similar format:
Company:
Field of activity/tasks:
Working conditions(HomeOffice,Equipment, etc.)
*And what else you can think of*
Thank you so much for the answers!
Have a nice day!
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