Long rant ahead, but it's worth it.

I used to work with a professor (let's call him Dr. X) and developed a backend + acted as sysadmin for our team's research project. Two semesters ago, they wanted to revamp the front end + do some data visualization, so a girl (let's call her W) joined the team and did all that. We wanted to merge the two sites and host on azure, but due to issues and impeding conferences that require our data to be online, we kept postponing. I graduate this semester and haven't worked with the team for a while, so they have a new guy in charge of the azure server (let's call him H), and yesterday my professor sends me (let's call me M), H and W an email telling us to coordinate to have the merge up on azure in 2-3 days, max. The following convo was what I had with H:

M: Hi, if you just give me access to azure I'll be able to set everything up myself, also I'll need a db set up, and just send me the connection string.
H: Hi, we won't have dbs because that is extra costs involved since we don't have dynamic content. Also I can't give you access, instead push everything on git and set up the site on a test azure server and I will take it from there.
M: There is proprietary data on the site...
H: Oh really? I don't know what's on it.
<and yet he knows we have no dynamic data>
M: Fine, I'll load the data some other way, but I have access to all the data anyway, just talk to Dr. X and you'll see you can give me access. Delete my access after if you want.
H: No, just do what I said: git then upload to test azure account.

Fine, he's a complete tool, but I like Dr. X, so I message W and tell her we have to merge, she tells me that it's not that easy to set it up on github as she's using wordpress. She sends me instructions on what to do, and, lo and behold, there's a db in her solution. Ok, I go back to talking to H:

M: W is using a db. Talk to her so we can figure out whether we need a database or not.
H: We can't use a database because we want to decrease costs.
M: Yes I know that, so talk to her because that probably means she has to re-do some stuff, which might take some time. Also there might be dynamic content in what she's doing.
H: This is your project, you talk to her.
<I'm starting to get mad right now>
M: I don't know what they had her do apart from how it interfaces with what I've done.
H: We still can't have databases.
M: Listen, I don't do wordpress, and I'm not gonna mess with it, you talk to her
H: I won't do any development
<So you won't do any dev, but you won't give me access to do it either?>
M: Man, the bottleneck isn't the merging right now, it's the fact that W needs a db
H: I know, so talk to her
M: THE RESTRICTION TO NOT HAVE DATABASES IS NOT MINE, IT'S YOURS, YOU TALK TO HER. I can't evaluate whether it's a reasonable enough reason or not since I don't know the requirements or what they're willing to spend.
H: It's your project.
M: Then give me fucking access to azure and I'll handle it, you know you'll have to set up wordpress again regardless whether we set it up the first time.
H: Man just do your job.

At this point I lost it. WHAT A FUCKING TOOL. He doesn't wanna do dev work, wants me to go through the trouble of setting up on a test subscription first, and doesn't want to give me access to azure. What's more, he did shit all and doesn't want to anything else. Well fuck you. I googled him, to see if he's anyone important, if he's done anything notable which is why he's being so God damn condescending. MY INTERNSHIP ALONE ECLIPSES HIS ENTIRE CV. Then what the fuck?

There's also this that happened sometime during our talk:

M: You'll have to take to Dr. Y so he'll change the DNS to point to the azure subscription instead of my server.
H: Yea don't worry, too early for that.
M: DNS propagation takes 24 hours...
H: Yea don't worry.

DNS propagation allows the entire web to know that your website is hosted on a different server so it can change where it's pointing to. We have to do this in 2-3 days. Why do work in parallel? Nah let's wait.

I went over his head and talked to the professor directly, and despite wanting to tell him that he was both drunk and high the day he hired that guy, I kept it professional. He hasn't replied yet, but this fucker's pompous attitude is just too much for me alone, so I had to share.

PS: I named his contact as Annoying Prick 4 minutes into our chat. Gonna rename him cz that seems tooooooo soft a name right now.

I’m legally not allowed to rant about my company but im gonna do it anyway so stay put

I signed up to devRant with the same handle I use everywhere (firstName+lastName).toLowerCase() and now I feel like I can't really rant here, cause you never know who might read it...

!dev && rant

What's people's problem with Wikipedia.

Earlier this week I told my cleaning lady about how Black Friday was so pointless this year, and apparently it's the first thing she heard about Black Friday (she's in her late 30's and a mother of 2, go figure). Not only that but she believed that it occurred every end of the month because someone else told her so. She said it would make sense because it's close to everyone's payday.

So I go and look up some information about Black Friday for her. All the DDG results somehow shit or cluttered by marketing wank.. your guess is as good as mine. Anyway, appended Wikipedia to get some reasonably good information quick. And that looked for all the world like that was the case. Apparently it's got to do with American Thanksgiving.. who knew?

She still didn't believe it. "But that's Wikipedia..." So she looked it up on her own phone on some random local site.. it confirmed that indeed it occurs once a year. Well, confirmed to the extent that there was "2017", "2018" and "2019" on the page... Yeah.

Finally she believed it. At least she didn't double down on it anymore. But seriously.. you're gonna take the words of one random person over a medium that's constantly being improved under the many eyes principle?

"People can edit Wikipedia so therefore it's bad"

I really don't get people...

Not exactly a dev related rant.

Do you ever get the feeling when you're not working, like today, that you're kinda wasting time (can't find a better way to describe)? I usually work on Sunday at home, running behind insane deadlines, trying to anticipate tasks. Today was different, I woke up to a fresh VS 2017 install, updated my .net core api to 2.0, learnt how to deploy to Azure, made a CI/CD pipeline and then spend some fun time with my 5 month baby. Argued with him when Azure didn't let me make a new subscription. Sat on the sidewalk with him doing absolutely nothing for a solid half hour, only looking the way he admired everything around him and stuff. Took the trash out, did the dishes, helped with the laundry. But yet I feel like tomorrow gonna be a rough day, where everything will blow up 'cause I didn't did anything work related.

I'm starting to think I lost the taste of enjoying myself, enjoying the people around me, my family, parents, friends. I've been spending too much time on autopilot. Wake up, smoke, work, eat, work, smoke, sleep. Repeat.

I do enjoy my job, a little less when it's not dev related, but I do anyway. We are a small company with big contracts and tight deadlines. Always struggling to give our best and advance further, but I can see I'm loosing something while giving 120% of attention to my job.

Anyway, just wanted to get this thing out of my chest. Thank you if you read this far.

Today I finished my robotics project. I had in my team a total idiot (the one who used the hidden divs, some might remember from another rant). I wanted to share with you the beginning of a ranting adventure.

Me: "you can begin with a simple task. I will send you the obstacle avoidance sensors values from Arduino, and you will send the data for the Arduino motors to dodge the obstacle".

The sensors give 1 if clear, 0 if obstacle is detected.

Below is his code (which I brutally rewrote in front of him).

Now, in the final version of the robot we have something like 9 sensors of the same time to work with.
Imagine what would have happened if we kept him coding. (Guess it: 2^9 statements! :D)

I was not that evil, I tried to give him some chances to prove himself willing to improve. None of them were used rightfully.

I'm so fucking glad we finished. I'm not gonna see him anymore, even if I'd like to be a technical interviewer for hiring just to demolish him.

I'm not always that evil, I promise (?)

Ps. He didn't even have any idea on what JSON is, even if we had already seen it during FIVE YEARS of computer engineering. (And should've known anyway if he had a bit of curiosity for the stuff he "studies")

Recently I disassembled this Remington beard trimmer that I have, right. Thinking that I probably just depleted the battery or something like that, and that that's why the fucking thing would turn off after 10 seconds, with a miserable motor speed that could only be caused by what.. 2.5V or something like that? So I kept up with it for a while, and then a few days ago, I finally disassembled the fucking thing.

New 4.2V LiPo battery of my own attached, wicked! The thing has a 2Ah capacity and is fully charged, so fuck all in a big ship, I'ma shave my fucking hair without protection, who cares with 2Ah anyway, given that motors at 4.2V consume only 800-ish mA, right. So I shaved my head, and figured.. holy shit mate, I fucking beat this fucking cunt, fuck you Remington! Planned obsolescence my ass!!!

Just now @xewl sent me a request that made me reconsider this shaver. Some PS3 controller, should be easy enough to fix. But I referenced my shaver so I figured that I might actually check it beforehand.

The original fucking battery has 4V left on it. 4 fucking volts! That ain't gonna trip shit for an overdischarge protection circuit!!! WHY THE FUCK REMINGTON, WHY THE FUCK DID IT (IF ANYTHING) TRIP?! And more importantly, why did you make the motor turn for only 10-ish seconds after charging, 1 year after purchase, despite the fucking cell having 4 fucking volts in it, which is more than plenty to get the thing turning for at least a 60% charge?! Planned obsolescence perhaps, hmm?

But let's say that it was bad contacts or something like that. After all, my probing was a bit intermittent, showing 1.5V (if it's shorting, shouldn't it be in the mV range?) and then 4V at times, until I separated the nickel connectors from the 16500 cell. Why the fuck should that thing short, considering that it's unprotected?! The fucking cell is unprotected, and you Remington are going to let it short? What kind of fucking engineering is that, you fucking braindead morons?!!!

And why do you use a 16500 cell which isn't very standard over a 18650 cell, which is? Again, planned obsolescence? Fucking vile pieces of shit.

Now what's more.. I tried to power on the shaver for a picture for this fucking rant, using a LiPo cell of my own that I used to shave my hair with the other day, to get a nice picture of my little hack. But the fucking thing, despite having 3.89V left in it after that fucking shave, which is more than plenty for a lithium cell, the fucking unit doesn't power on. WHAT THE FUCK REMINGTON?!! That's planned obsolescence at its best, init?!! You vile fucking pieces of shit.

So I guess that this rant is no more one of "I beat these Remington cunts". It is one of "you can bet your fucking ass that planned obsolescence is a thing!!"

University Coding Exam for Specialization Batch:
Q. Write a Program to merge two strings, each can be of at max 25k length.
Wrote the code in C, because fast.
Realized some edge cases don't pass, runtime errors. Proceed on to check the locked code in the Stub. (We only have to write methods, the driver code is pre-written)
Found that the memory for the char Arrays is being allocated dynamically with size 10240.
Rant #1:
Dafuq? What's the point of dynamic Memory Allocation if you're gonna fix it to a certain amount anyway?
Continuing...
Called the Program Incharge, asking him to check the problem and provide a solution. He took 10 minutes to come, meanwhile I wrote the program in Java which cleared all the test cases. <backstory>No University Course on Java yet, learnt it on my own </backstory>
Dude comes, I explain the problem. He asks me to do it in C++ instead coz it uses the string type instead of char array.
I told him that I've already done it in Java.
Him: Do you know Java?

Rant #2:
No you jackass! I did the whole thing in Java without knowing Java, what's wrong with you!

This “Auto save” feature in the latest app version is buggy..
-> new rant
-> prefilled with previous rant..

Anyway, here my actual rant begins.

Apple, go fuck yourself, seriously.. put your trillion dollars way up your arse...

Moved to Ireland, want to switch country..
“If you want to switch countries, cancel your Apple Music subscription first”..
so be it. Cancelled it..
“Your subscription will be cancelled in 28 days”.

FUCK YOU, YOU COCK SUCKING BASTARDS!!
I NEED TO SWITCH THE STORE TO BE ABLE TO DOWNLOAD BANKING APPS AND STUFF LIKE THAT..

But ok, I’m screwed in this regard..

Suddenly iMessage stopped working. This is kind of a big deal because I have unlimited data but only unlimited sms to Irish numbers and I need to communicate with people in Switzerland and Germany..
Internet works so I try to turn iMessage off and in again. But that doesn’t work.. i can only reactivate iMessage via WiFi.

So I go back to the hotel, reactivate iMessage..
“Verifying imessage” >> google..
Leads me to an Apple forum: “the verification of iMessage can take up to 24h”.

Are you fucking kidding me? I’m in a new country and rely on this overpriced shit..

Fun but sad fact, I have a second phone with me. IPhone 4 with iOS 7 and that thing WORKS!!

If this is where the future is going we’re all gonna die very soon.. plains crash, power plants explode but hey, at least they have data about it and it looks shiny. That’s all that matters..

Another reason to switch to android..

MacOs fucked me up so I already switched to windows + Linux. Next one will be getting rid of iOS, they don’t build small phones anymore anyway..

*sigh*

So we have this supervisor that I’ve mentioned before in my previous rant(read if interested). This man has been a pain to my side since I started working here. He does a phenomenally good job at being a douche bag and he has the need to resort to screaming and yelling if you happen to disagree with his methodology in any point of you. He likes to make fun of and be little you as well. Oh and I’ll mention he does it in front of all your co-workers. All bad habits and even less from some one in a supervisor position.

I think I’m a pretty reasonable guy, I try to get my work done only asking for help when absolutely necessary ie idk what’s going on or I’m stuck. This guy has the bad habit of breathing over your shoulder while you’re working......... Anyway I hit a breaking point today and waited til he was in his office to confront him.

I asked to walk in politely and asked if I could close the door it was a personal matter. After I sat down and vented to him explaining that what he’s doing with this egotistical persona of his is wrong and it’s creating an environment that cause everyone to feel like shit thus cause lowered work efficiency. I told him that belittling and offending is a bad tactic and that we are grown ass adults. It shouldn’t be necessary for you to yell or make fun of me, shit if I wanted to eat yelled at I’d go home to my father. He’s allowed this guy is not.

Well cutting it short I finished the convo and he didn’t say much just agreed with some points and stressed others that would be too much to mention. I’m not dumb either I recorded the convo just in case he tries to pull something. But I get the feeling like this is gonna turn out really well or it’s gonna go south.

Just wanted to rant to the rantFam first.

I’m done now.

I've been seeing a lot of rant about bad cs teachers for the week's rant so I'm gonna share about a teacher that I like. Maybe wk45? Anyway, I think I mentioned him before. Its the same teacher who taught our class OOP. He's a pretty cool guy. Gives out difficult tasks for us each week (Something that we don't like, actually..but thats just a student thing. But everyone agrees that it does help us understand the whole thing better) He grades our assignments and tests, and if he feels that we're a bit left behind, doesn't mind offering us one-to-one classes when he's free and makes sure that everyone understands what he's talking about in class. Some of us had still had some trouble getting the basics down so this was really helpful. Plus he likes giving fun examples and stuff in class so its never boring (usually food related examples).So yeah, learnt a lot during the class :D
He's not the only teacher that I like though, we've got a few other cool teachers as well. I guess maybe I have a bit of luck with this?

Multi User, One Account, and other shit

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Right fucking there, banking is just broken entirely!

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

Fast forward to N00bPancakes making a thing.

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

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

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

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

So with that tool, this situation constantly comes up:

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

Then I have to fight the constant fight of:

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

God damn it people.

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

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

!dev, just rant

what the fuck is wrong with these people. yesterday i wrote him if we can meet to sort out my medication, no response,
ok, normal.

this morning he writes me "i wasn't home yesterday, i am today".
wow, actually a a proactive and early info! that's... unusual.
so i go "hmm, maybe even right now?"
he's like "no, sometime from 14:00 or 14:30"
ok.

so i wait until 15:00 to give him a bit of extra time, i hate rushing people. "so can i stop by?"
he's like "i'm going out in a short while, i'll let you know"
okay.
i hate these "bind a listener to me and wait until i ping you", but okay short while is fine.
so I wait. for half an hour. I mean... i'm bad with time management, but even I don't call half an hour a "short while" anymore. so I'm like okay, I think I know where he's gonna tell me to meet, it's gonna take me about 10 minutes to get there, they tend to be impatient so if if start walking there, by the time i get there he's gonna write me to come, and i'll already be there so he won't have to wait for me, because surely even for him "a short while" can't be more than 45 minutes.

so i get there, wait for 5 minutes... 10 minutes...
so i write him again "approx how much longer? i'm waiting nearby".

and he's like "i didn't call you, i have no idea why you came here, who told you to"

so i tell him "okay, sorry, i'm gonna get myself not nearby and wait there, i thought by the time i get here you're gonna call me anyway, sorry"

nothing.

i wait for half an hour more.
then (two and half hours after he said he's gonna go out "in a short while" and he'll let me know. at the same time 5 hours after the time he said he's gonna be available from), i write him: "so will we actually manage to sort this out today?"

no answer. most likely for the rest of the day.

what the fuck is so difficult about conveying actual information in communication? what the fuck is so difficult about a single fuckin message "at this time, at this place", so i can just be there, he can intersect his route through there, and in a literal minute we're sorted out? instead of fuckin nothingmessages which waste me three hours and make me have to bother him to at least have a chance at getting an idea what the fuck is going on, and him being annoyed at me trying to cover for his fuckin inability to do it like any other sane dude, with one fuckin message in the fuckin form of "this time, this place", which would fuckin sort out the whole thing in two messages and 5 minutes net time invested into the whole thing by both sides, instead of fuckin 3 hours?

fuck.
i miss my old dude.

!dev

Sorry about another non-dev rant, but I can't help it :p

I have seen a post here on devRant a few minutes ago talking about being a millionaire, so I thought I'd write a lil something for people thinking of chasing that.

As I said in a comment on that rant: as Jordan Peterson (aka Lord of the Lobsters) said, in order to be successful you need to be an industrious person, i.e. you gotta work hard, very hard. Most success stories are from people that worked very very hard (Elon Musk is one I can remember off the top of my head) and had to put their life, friends, family in second place. To this day I remember watching a video on a 30 year old millionaire, he said he didn't have friends for about 6-10 years, he just worked, worked and worked. If that's what you wanna do with your life do your thing, I'm just saying that's not it for me.

A few years back I wanted huge success (being famous, being rich), but I've come to realize that's not what I want. Being famous must suck, people recognizing you everywhere you go and shit, and being rich comes with a price (pun intended?), which is working every minute of your time for 10 years. That's not gonna make me happy, I have realized that I want to get married in my early 30's at max, have kids, buy a comfortable house somewhere in europe, have enough money to be able to give my family a good life and be able to buy and tune a few cars (that's a dream of mine btw), and maybe even try to start a company of my own (I don't like the idea of having a boss). And I think that to achieve these goals, all I need to do is be a bit smart right now: invest in fixed income, don't buy expensive shit, live with my parents at least until I get out of college and get a relatively decent job.

Anyway I might've steered off-course for a bit there, the point is: before you decide you want to be a millionaire, think what you actually want in life. If you want to be rich and are sure you have the willpower to work a 100 hours per week, do your thing, whatever makes you happy. But if you are going to work 60 hours a week and you're looking to be rich you're just going to be disappointed. You'll be chasing money all your life, sacrifice the (IMO) important things in life (friends, family, health, fun) and you won't get anywhere.

It's all or nothing, make up your mind before you waste your time.