This is my first IoT project. It's pretty simple, but I've been very happy with the results thus far.

About this time last year, someone got into our garage and rifled through my wife's car.

I have a camera in my garage, and a Phillips Hue motion detector. Using the Hue's excellent API, I have a perl script that checks for motion every couple of seconds, and starts capturing from the camera via RTSP if it does. That video is then staged, ready to be uploaded to a digital ocean droplet if I click on a link in the mailgun-powered email that's then sent to me and my wife, along with a preview GIF of the video, created through the same ffmpeg process that pulled the capture from the camera.

Here you can see me getting home from work.

So apparently I own land in dubai. Like three separate mortgages based on the email I received.

Your request (Mortgage Registration)
with request number xxxxx / 2024
has been completed
and you can print your issued certificate from this [link]

I've stripped out the numbers and link.
After confirming it was safe I followed through on a old spare cellphone, and yep, I own three mortgages for properties in dubai.

Except obviously I don't.
Someone used my name, an american, to register mortgages in dubai. *Nice* properties according to the pictures.

What started out as a scam email, or what looked like a scam email, went to an actual government of dubai website, with real mortgage registrations.

How in the fuck does that happen?

The only thing I can think of is someone committed identity fraud, and/or an alphabet agency went through the list of known political dissidents, set up a bullshit mortgage in a questionable territory, and are now using that as a pretext to monitor 'extremists with foreign ties.'

All that for some guy on the west coast that hasn't attended a political rally in his entire life.

Must have been that sign I held at sixteen years old by the side of the road that said "bush lied us into a war, and people died."

or maybe it was that time I told a really enthusiastic obama supporting police officer that it amazed me obama had time to win the nobel peace prize what with all the bombings he carried out against foreign civilians.

Not really a programming story... but a story about how programmers problem solve in real life.

Mods, sort me out if I'm out of line. Anyway, here goes.

So, my wife and I are arguing about whether or not the garage has insulated walls.

"It doesn't have insulated walls", I say, "I've been up in the rafters and their's no insulation there, so there's probably none in the walls."

"Well, why can't you just check", my better half responds, "You could just punch a hole in the wall to see."

Me, taking about 300ms to process this statement. Looks over, and punches a hole in the wall.

"See, no insulation!!!" I say triumphantly.

"What. The. Fuck. Did you just punch a hole in the wall for???"

deerinheadlights.gif

"Um, because you told me to?"

"Well I didn't mean to use your hand, I meant to get a small drill so the hole wouldn't be enormous."

"Well you didn't say "get a small drill", you said "punch"!

And as a laid down to sleep, on the couch, that night I still insist she told me to do it. And while I patched that hole, I still thought it was her fault. And to this day I still think it's her fault.

You cannot give a programmer these vague instructions and expect appropriate results.

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

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

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

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

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

Siri: “Ok”

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

Siri: “Ok” [and they are off]

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

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

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

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

TL;DR: idiot 'team leader' does mindless merge to master. Precious time wasted in a high pressure deadline environment.

So, i work currently at one of Belgiums largest consulting company's at brussels airport, we are moving their analytics platform to the cloud.

We use puppet to manage the systems.

When i started i noticed immediately that their 'development workflow' is hardly to be named as such, because they simply change stuff directly on server , manual 'temporary' fixes everywhere, hardcoded stuff, non validated code... Basically the way one would develop in their garage, not in a consulting company as this one. But that is just the beginning.

A month ago i did a major effort to equalize all the discrepancies between the codebase and the server. Ensured entire codebase to be validated, syntax checked, parsed, tested... It works. A 'great codebase overhaul' commit was PR'ed to master and got merged.

Yesterday the team lead, i'll call him 'B-tard' from here on, has also 'equalized the discrepancies between codebase, server and the restnof the stale branches on the repo' . i was doing my other work on my branch so no fucks given. This is where i should have given some fucks.

Anyways, today. The day starts every day with merging the master branch into your working branh because you need the latest working codebase, right?

Wrong!
This fucking dipshit smug b-tard has done a mindless merge of the entire codebase, effectively removing ALL validated working code for provisioning servers. Control blocks, lookup functions, lambda's... Basically everything he did not understand.

At the same time the project is already way beyond the allotted budget in pkney and time, so there is a huge pressure to have a working 'production' environment TODAY!

THIS MOTHERFUCKING B-TARD JUST MADE THAT IMPOSSIBLE.

i'm loving this assignment, i'm loving the PM, the collegues, the environment, the location... everything. All but this fuckibg b-tard that somehow got his position by sucking dick or licking ass or both...

I wanna get out asap.

Oh... While typing this and arriving at the room of the office... It is locked, i have no key.

Fucking asshole!

!dev
It's a public holiday (I follow company's country's public holidays).
Wake up. Feeling good.
See message wishing me that I don't wake up - lol.
Msg peeps hello, and go help mom she's in a rush.
Qt says hello.
Help mom go to work (garage door is manual).
Wish qt good luck with stuff today - no reply, guess I just missed her
Go back to sleep
(buddy using img-gen #awesome)
(client messages for standup)
Wake up again, Life's still good™️
Reply back, it's a public holiday but if they want other/extra days just let me know - all good.
Make brunch - bread has just gone bad, whatever got another. Ends up being heavier than expected.
Watch an episode of a show while eating, bit of a zzzz.
Jam some guitar, do decently but not quite getting it right - but it's fun so it's all right
Qt updates about day - sounds like fun
Check in with friend, seems to be doing ok, he's been dealing with a bunch of things atm.
Create fun project for a sudoku solver, set up the initial part, realise that the parsing is a bunch of boilerplate (decided to map each section to a variable with bit packing), realise it's easier to work with arrays instead.
Decide to nap
It gets too warm to stay in bed, doens't matter, feel physically even better (aka bags under eyes are much less)
Qt back online, shares cool pic of castle
Realise I can get best of both worlds using pointers... This is getting stupid, whatever.
Getting warm, qt sends pic of temp by her.
Oh, right, ice cream. Open it, clearly melted and refrozen slightly - it's ice cream doesn't matter.
Chat a bit with qt
Bot battle spams img-gen
img-gen randomly gets stuck because watching YT vid
Chat a bit with peeps
Order food for mom and I - because why not. Hmmm a bit pricey.
Chat a bit more with peeps till mom is home.
Go chat with mom food should be here soon...
App says food is on it's way, great I'm like 2 minutes away.
20 minutes later, (1 hour after ordering) call up, "um yeah, that will still take a while"
Friends messages, he's been made redundant after CEO explodes and fires managers
Mom getting annoyed, if she had had to work she'd have been in bed already.
Now 2 hours after ordering food, call up again. "Yeah it ready we're sending it over now" - great hang up.
Get food, it's good. They included an extra beer - they offered, and I picked, spring rolls, but whatever.
Finish the first beer, look at the bottle, it's grody - at least the neck is clean, same with the other bottle.
Chat with peeps
Realise that it's not as good as the one I remember. That's export vs local version, I guess.
Chat with qt
Realise it's late and didn't really touch projects I wanted to #ItHappens
Starting to get tired again
Me still happy. Glad I woke up chipper. Let the happy flow

Also, my PC randomly started having lag spikes today - should probably just reboot #WindowsProblems

Not really a rant, since I'm just kinda shrugging it off, but I know if I didn't wake up in such a good mood I would have been pretty annoyed. Perspective is everything or some other philosophical shenanigans, you guys tell me the right term/saying